An instructional note on foregrounding rhetoric across the curriculum to convey the rigor of professional and technical writing and assist instructors in claiming pedagogical ethos in a course that spans many disciplines.

“God Save the Queen: Kairos and the Mercy Letters of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots” analyzes the most consequential correspondence of these Renaissance women rulers—letters begging for mercy in the face of death. This analysis uncovers the similar rhetorical techniques of these documents composed in the heightened exigency of literal life and death situations, when these royal women turned to the community of which they were members to invoke pity and ask for mercy in their unique positions as inheritors of a male history in order to create strategies for the rhetoric of women rulers providing an historical exemplar of a kairotic rhetorical response.

Queen Mary I was crowned in 1553, becoming the first reigning queen of England. In order to provide a powerful image of female rule to her people, Queen Mary invented a rhetorical strategy that reflected her society's oppressive gender expectations of chaste silence so that she could become a powerfully voiced ruler. Her sister and successor, Queen Elizabeth I, later mirrored Mary's strategy. England's first female monarchs created an image of female rule by employing the figures of the spouse, the mother, and the maiden, embodying conventional roles for women in Tudor society, and reclaiming them as images of power.

Based on the experiences of three graduate assistant directors working in the Howe Writing Initiative, a joint WAC effort between Miami University's business school and English department, this essay introduces entrepreneurial consulting as a model for implementing WAC initiatives in different disciplines. The entrepreneurial consulting model emphasizes the need to establish an ongoing presence within a discourse community, to continually “sell” writing and rhetoric to both faculty and students, and to strategically use rhetoric to promote rhetoric.