The US Navy admitted women into the submarine force in 2010, then one of the last male-only professions remaining in the Armed Forces. Examining rhetorical ecologies surrounding the integration decision, this essay charts the contextual forces and stakeholder discourses that shaped submarine assignment policy over a critical fifteen-year period. It also traces shifting assumptions about gender and space within that policy and their consequences for women. Time, then, is a vital component of policy analysis, permitting feminist rhetoricians to identify gendering processes in the workplace and discursive patterns of organizational change.

An emerging area of interest for composition and rhetoric researchers concerns southern women’s rhetorical education and practices as a spate of new publications suggest, including Kimberly Harriso...

This essay examines actresses on the London stage between 1660 and 1890, focusing on the investigative topoi of pregnancy and rhetorical access and charting the starts and stops that characterize women’s entry into public forums. The performance schedules of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London actresses reveal that both married and unmarried women routinely performed while “big with child.” With the ascent of new constructs of sex and gender, however, women’s recourse to and options on stage narrowed considerably. Victorian actresses developed new career patterns and rhetorical strategies to accommodate pregnancy’s increasing relegation to the private sphere, their delivery thus reflecting and responding to a changed social context.

Actors, who deliver the words of playwrights rather than their own, have largely been disregarded by rhetorical scholars despite the fact that the theatrical stage was one of the first arenas in which women struggled to gain public acceptance. A noteworthy public woman in this regard was Sarah Siddons, the late-eighteenth-century actor whose talent and influence led to her recognition as an exemplar of delivery in such rhetorical manuals as Gilbert Austin’s Chironomia (1806) and Henry Siddons’s Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action (1807). This article recovers Siddons’s rhetorical legacy by examining her distinctive delivery style, emotional powers, and maternal performance in public spaces.

This article examines issues surrounding the maternal rhetor in public spaces through a case study of Anne Hutchinson, a leading figure in the antinomian controversy that divided the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony during the late 1630s. It details how Puritans employed Hutchinson's fertility and malformed offspring to discredit her, silence her supporters, and consolidate secular and religious power. Their argumentative uses of Hutchinson's pregnancy and childbirth constitute a form of maternal rhetoric, a set of gendered obstacles, opportunities, and persuasive means that arise at the junction of maternity and public discourse.

Research Article| November 01 2005 Review of Roxanne Mountford. The Gendered Pulpit: Preaching in American Protestant Spaces. Studies in Rhetorics and Feminisms Series. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003. xii + 194 pages. Lindal Buchanan Lindal Buchanan Department of Liberal Studies, Kettering University, 1700 West Third Avenue, Flint, MI 48504, USA ljb9601@yahoo.com Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (2005) 23 (4): 401–403. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2005.23.4.401 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Lindal Buchanan; Review of Roxanne Mountford. The Gendered Pulpit: Preaching in American Protestant Spaces. Studies in Rhetorics and Feminisms Series. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003. xii + 194 pages. . Rhetorica 1 November 2005; 23 (4): 401–403. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2005.23.4.401 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. © The International Society for the History of Rhetoric Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Reviews Roxanne Mountford. The Gendered Pulpit: Preaching in American Protes­ tant Spaces. Studies in Rhetorics and Feminisms Series. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003. xii + 194 pages. The Gendered Pulpit makes a significant contribution to rhetorical studies, investigating the heretofore largely overlooked issue of how gender affects rhetorical performance in sacred spaces. Roxanne Mountford employs multi­ ple lenses—including rhetorical theory, feminist historiography, church and homiletic tradition, personal experience, and ethnography—and produces a sweeping, comprehensive, and compelling analysis of her subject. The first two chapters identify masculinist biases embedded within the spatial and sermonic conventions of the Protestant church. In chapter one, Mountford introduces an original and sure to be influential conception of "rhetorical space/' which includes not only the architectural setting and physical props incorporated into an oratorical performance but also entirely non-material elements: "rhetorical spaces carry the residue of history within them . . . [and so are] a physical representation of relationships and ideas" (17). Thus, culture, tradition, and ideology inhabit rhetorical space and shape speakers' performances. Mountford illustrates this point via the pulpit, an object/space imbued with "masculine" connotations that pose challenges to women preachers. First, the pulpit is designed for male rather than female bodies. One woman minister studied by Mountford must stand on a foot­ stool in the pulpit because of her small stature; even so, she is so dwarfed by the furniture that only her neck and head are visible to the congregation. Second, the pulpit enforces a distanced, hierarchical relationship between the preacher and the audience, spatially encoding the speaker as the authority and the listeners as silent, passive recipients of "his" wisdom. Mountford argues that this type of relationship is unappealing to women preachers, who tend to prefer a "populist" stance and seek more intimate connection with the congregation. Third, because of its strong masculine associations, the pulpit automatically casts women ministers as misfits in that sacred space. To overcome the gendered obstacles posed by the pulpit, women often opt to deliver sermons in alternative spaces, for example, leaving the pulpit and speaking from the church floor or preaching outside of the church entirely. Rhetorica, Vol. XXIII, Issue 4, pp. 401-404, ISSN 0734-8584, electronic ISSN 15338541 . ©2005 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights re­ served. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Rights and Permissions website, at www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm. 402 RHETORICA Women also confront problematic gender assumptions within preaching textbooks. Nineteenth-century manuals, for example, encouraged ministers to develop an authoritative, heroic, manly character that would empower them to save the world one person at a time, an irrelevant and inappropriate ethos for women. Twentieth-century manuals, while not as overtly mascu­ line, failed to address gender directly and instead promoted "a generic ideol­ ogy of gender" that left traditional masculinist biases intact (63). Women's strategies for overcoming the gender biases inherent to sacred spaces and traditions are examined concretely in the book's remaining chapters. Chapters three, four, and five examine the intersections of rhetorical performance, space, and the body through the practices of three contem­ porary and very different Protestant preachers, all of whom are the first women to lead their respective churches: Patricia O'Connor, pastor of a large and affluent suburban Lutheran church; Barbara Hill (Rev. Barb), minister to a struggling church located in a strip mall and serving a low-income, African-American community; and Janet Moore, leader of an urban and deeply divided Methodist church composed of conservative, aging, white, working-class core members and liberal, young, prosperous, gay and lesbian professionals. Although possessing varied gifts and serving dissimilar con­ gregations, the three women pursue a similar goal in their ministries, which Moore describes as creating "a community of Christians dedicated to peace, social justice, and diversity" (137). This "populist" purpose, so at odds with that promoted in conventional preaching manuals and traditions, inspires the women to develop new rhetorical strategies. One of the most significant is their use of sacred space to create a sense of community. As noted, tradition places the authoritative, male preacher in the pulpit and promotes...

Abstract An intricate network of collaborative relationships surrounded and supported nineteenth‐century American women's public discourse. Antebellum women worked closely with families, friends, and hired help to create and deliver rhetoric, negotiate conflicting private and public obligations, accommodate gender norms, and construct “feminine”; ethos. However, despite collaboration's central importance to women's rhetoric, scholars currently lack a model that accounts fully for its many forms and multiple functions. This article introduces a new model of collaboration capable of explaining how and why this cooperative method offers marginalized groups their most effective means to the public forum in resistant surroundings.

Abstract This article contributes to ongoing feminist efforts to regender the rhetorical canons, in particular, by exploring how the fifth canon of delivery changes once the assumed male at the center of the rhetorical tradition is replaced by a woman who is both a mother and a speaker. Delivery—which conventionally focuses upon the speaker's use of voice, expression, and gesture—is usually considered the most material of the canons. However, once viewed from the perspective of nineteenth‐century maternal rhetors, distinctive corporeal, ideological, and performance issues become apparent, all indicative of significant gender differences in men's and women's delivery. More broadly, this study illustrates how recasting the canons by recognizing and incorporating the experiences of previously marginalized groups promises to produce a more comprehensive, complex, and compelling understanding of the history and practice of rhetoric.