{"product_id":"gender-and-rhetorical-space-in-american-life-18661910-studies-in-rhetorics-and-feminisms-9780809324262","title":"Gender and Rhetorical Space in American Life  1866-1910 (Studies in Rhetorics and Feminisms)","description":"\u003cp\u003eNan Johnson demonstrates that after the Civil War  nonacademic or parlor traditions of rhetorical performance helped to sustain the icon of the white middle class woman as queen of her domestic sphere by promoting a code of rhetorical behavior for women that required the performance of conventional femininity. Through a lucid examination of the boundaries of that gendered rhetorical spaceand the debate about who should occupy that spaceJohnson explores the codes governing and challenging the American womans proper rhetorical sphere in the postbellum years.  While men were learning to preach  practice law  and set political policies  women were reading elocution manuals  letter-writing handbooks  and other conduct literature. These texts reinforced the conservative message that womens words mattered  but mattered mostly in the home. Postbellum pedagogical materials were designed to educate Americans in rhetorical skills  but they also persistently directed the American woman to the domestic sphere as her proper rhetorical space. Even though these materials appeared to urge the white middle class women to become effective speakers and writers  convention dictated that a womans place was at the hearthside where her rhetorical talents were to be used in counseling and instructing as a mother and wife.  Aided by twenty-one illustrations  Johnson has meticulously compiled materials from historical texts no longer readily available to the general public and  in so doing  has illuminated this intersection of rhetoric and feminism in the nineteenth century. The rhetorical pedagogies designed for a postbellum popular audience represent the cultural sites where a rethinking of womens roles becomes open controversy about how to value their words. Johnson argues this era of uneasiness about shifting gender roles and the icon of the quiet woman must be considered as evidence of the need for a more complete revaluing of womens space in historical discourse.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45275636170805,"sku":"ByrdShop_0809324261","price":100.02,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780809324262.jpg?v=1780511080","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/gender-and-rhetorical-space-in-american-life-18661910-studies-in-rhetorics-and-feminisms-9780809324262","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}