Cover

Download PDF
pp. C-C

Series Page, Title Page, Copyright, Dedication, Quotes

Download PDF
pp. i-viii

Contents

Download PDF
pp. ix-x

List of Illustrations

Download PDF
pp. xi-xii

Clever Deployments: A Foreword

Download PDF
pp. xiii-xvi

Few among us are immune to the psychological tugs of what Lindal Buchanan calls the motherhood code. In fact, few of any ilk are immune to it. We get pulled into its emotional force, or we are repositioned by or push against those who are so pulled. When people think, and rhetors speak, of motherhood, they call forth widely shared cultural codes that...

Preface

Download PDF
pp. xvii-xx

Discourses about mothers, mothering, and motherhood permeate U.S. political culture and are employed by both women and men in order to advance themselves and their agendas within the public realm. These discourses, however, prove to be slippery rhetorical terrain for women, on the one hand, affording them authority and credibility but, on the other,...

Acknowledgments

Download PDF
pp. xxi-xxiv

1. Theorizing Motherhood in Public Discourse

Download PDF
pp. 1-23

When presidential hopeful John McCain surprised party and political pundits by announcing that a relatively unknown Alaska governor would serve as his running mate, Sarah Palin entered history, becoming the first female vice-presidential candidate on a Republican ticket. Her electrifying address to the Republican National Convention (RNC) ...

2. From “Wild Woman Writer” to “Mother of Two”: Margaret Sanger, Birth Control, and Ethos Repair

Download PDF
pp. 24-62

Margaret Sanger had a serious image problem in 1914. In March of that year, she founded the Woman Rebel, a militant, feminist paper with the masthead “No Gods, No Masters.” It appeared at a time when “American radicalism was at one of its peaks of strength and breadth” (Gordon, Woman’s Body 207). Sanger, as an editor with “advanced...

3. Motherhood, Civil Rights, and Remembrance: Recuperating Diane Nash

Download PDF
pp. 63-86

When Diane Nash entered the Hinds County Courthouse on 31 April 1962, fully prepared to begin serving a two-year prison term, the twenty-three-year-old leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was protesting southern segregation and sending a message to the broader civil-rights community. She was convinced...

4. Changing Constructs of Motherhood: Pregnancy and Personhood in Laci and Conner’s Law

Download PDF
pp. 87-114

With these words and a flourish of the pen, President George W. Bush signed Laci and Conner’s Law: The Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA), the congressional bill named to honor Laci Peterson, an eight-months-pregnant woman heinously killed by her husband, Scott, in 2002. Bush identified both the “expectant mother” and “unborn...

Conclusion: Interrogating Motherhood, Transforming Gender

Download PDF
pp. 115-126

Those who study women but ignore motherhood do so at some peril, for, as Patrice DiQuinzio observes, it permeates culture, society, and politics. Although motherhood is both powerful and pervasive, its construction and implications for women have been little studied within rhetoric to this point....

Appendix

Download PDF
pp. 127-130

Notes

Download PDF
pp. 131-148

Works Cited

Download PDF
pp. 149-160

Index

Download PDF
pp. 161-170

About the Author, Series Goal, Further Reading, Back Cover

Download PDF
pp. 171-BC