“Jane Donawerth’s new book fills a significant gap in our understanding of both the history of women’s rhetorical practices and women rhetoricians’ influential contribution to theory and pedagogy. [This book] is certain to be required reading for historians of rhetoric and composition and feminist researchers alike.”—Nan Johnson, author of Gender and Rhetorical Space in American Life: 1866–1910
“Arguing that for women in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, the model for discourse was conversation, not public speaking, Donawerth draws on their treatises defending women’s education, their conduct books, their preaching, and their elocution manuals to demonstrate how women theorized the communication they took part in. Assiduously researched and beautifully written, this project’s contributions to our understanding of women’s rhetorical traditions is, in a word, magnificent.”—Lucille M. Schultz, coauthor of Archives of Instruction:Nineteenth-Century Rhetorics, Readers, and Composition Books in the United States
“With her trademark intellectual energy and prowess, Jane Donawerth teaches us the many ways that women’s conversation delivers rhetorical power while simultaneously enacting rhetorical theory. Conversational artfulness equates with rhetorical competence, as Donawerth’s rhetorical analysis so amply displays. Donawerth set a formidable (transatlantic, three-century) task for herself, one she fulfilled admirably.” —Cheryl Glenn, author of Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity through the Renaissance and Unspoken: A Rhetoric of Silence
“Jane Donawerth is the historian of rhetoric who has done the most to establish the significance of conversation as a women’s genre. It is tremendously valuable to have her new and groundbreaking work here, in which she demonstrates that conversation forms the basis not only of premodern women’s rhetorical performance but more, of women’s rhetorical theorizing from the parlor to the pulpit and eventually onto the public platform.” —Patricia Bizzell, coeditor of The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present
“An excellent example of close textual analysis, use of diverse sources, theoretical interpretation, and bridging theory and context, this book would appeal to a variety of audiences ranging from undergraduate student to scholar. Most significantly, this history is a story about the power of rhetorical theory. Its interdisciplinary appeal and thorough analysis makes it an informative and enjoyable read, and a foundational contribution to the field of rhetorical theory and history.”— EMILY BERG PAUP, The College of St. Benedict’s and St. John’s University, printed in Rhetoric Public Affairs, 16:1, Spring 2013, published by Michigan State University Press
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