Deconstructing the praxis involved in the collecting of discourse in late nineteenth-century American autograph albums, this essay links the socially based practices involved in middle-class young women's (re)inscription of messages of friendship within such spaces to Jacques Derrida's theory of différance. While the commonplace language contained within such objects often has a conservative orientation, its circulation within communities through customary practices of exchange opened up opportunities for rhetorical invention. The opportunity to write in these locations also represented access to new discursive arenas, participation which likely played a part in women's gradually increasing access to the public sphere.

Through a review of some of the "daily themes" written by women at Radcliffe as well as scholarship on the history of coeducation, developments in pedagogy, the changing content of rhetoric textbooks, the influence of Harvard, and the work of scholars whose theories resisted the dominance of current-traditional rhetoric, this article challenges Robert J. Connors' assertion that coeducation contributed to the demise of agonistic rhetoric. The orientation of Connors' work suggests that while women's role in rhetorical history is slowly being recognized, their words and their experiences continue to receive less consideration than they warrant within the field.