This study examines rhetorical practices through which disenfranchised women developed tenable political identities and integrated themselves into the public realm in the Pacific Northwest between 1868 and 1912. Through close analysis of rhetorical activities in which thousands of women participated--including club discourse, public commemoration, legal advocacy, petition work, and publication--it illuminates how these activities reconciled femininity and political involvement in an era and place that categorically denied women the right to self-government. Specifically, this dissertation argues that collective rhetorical practices made available rather than merely expressed new identities and skills among women in Oregon and Washington. As they engaged in symbolic action, together, women bridged the divide between their conventional roles in the private realm and leadership in public life, thereby changing themselves and their communities. In addition to expanding interdisciplinary understanding of woman's rights and suffrage activism in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States, this study provides insight into modes of communication that construct public identities, cultivate new ways of thinking and acting politically, and create grounds for public reform.

Last modified

• 09/07/2018

Creator

• Cindy Koenig Richards

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N23M8P

Subject

• Communication Studies

Keyword

• woman's rights
• social movements
• Washington
• rhetoric
• suffrage
• Oregon

Date created

• 2008-05-08

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright