This essay examines the rhetorical significance of commonplace books kept by twenty-two Quaker women. Artifacts of remembrance, these books provide us with a detailed portrait of Quaker rhetorical culture during that era. The women who keep these books do more than just catalog and copy rhetorically significant texts. They participate in and help shape their rhetorical culture by reenacting invention practices central to the creation of powerful Quaker discourse. More specifically, they reveal the potential of three practices—prophecy, friendship, and conversation—to function as sites of rhetorical invention. As they weave into their books texts where prophecy, friendship, and conversation frequently give rise to powerful discourse, they affirm the value of these practices to their community, but they also provide insight into the particular purposes and processes at work when a creator engages in such practices. In this essay I analyze these frequent occurrences of prophecy, friendship, and conversation, arguing that early Quakers, especially Quaker women, understood successful invention not as a private and autonomous endeavor, but as a social process. Furthermore, their beliefs about invention have implications for later generations, influencing the rhetorical practices of women both within and outside the Quaker community.

Abstract This essay considers the diverse pedagogical purposes the study of drama served in the rhetorical preparation of teachers at three progressive-era normal schools for women, the Framingham, Westfield, and Salem State Normal Schools. Drawing on scholarship and archival materials, I argue that these normal schools both introduced future teachers to drama as a tool to help their pupils learn and employed dramatic activity as a means to prepare future teachers for their lives in the classroom. Through work in drama, future teachers made explicit connections between learning and playmaking, pedagogy and theatrics, teaching and performance.

Abstract This essay explores the rhetorical education of nineteenth‐century women attending the Westfield State Normal School, the second public and first co‐educational normal school in the United States. Archival research reveals that Westfield developed a program of rhetorical study that aimed to prepare both men and women to use oral and written persuasive discourse in their work as teachers. Westfield justified its progressive curriculum by arguing that advanced study in rhetoric would help future teachers to foster learning, win respect, and achieve meaningful moral influence among their pupils. While traditional gender ideologies at times complicated the efforts of female students to master oral and written persuasive discourse, Westfield's faculty and students remained committed throughout the century to the idea that study in rhetoric would aid the future teacher in cultivating a powerful public voice.