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rhetoric / women’s studies “By analyzing popular antebellum Methodist periodicals, Lisa Shaver attends to the words and work of Methodist women who might otherwise go unnoticed. These periodicals created textual communities for the church that extended across the nation and fostered new rhetorical opportunities for Methodist women, expanding the roles available to women in the church.”—Elizabeth Vander Lei, Calvin College “Shaver argues that American Methodist publications in the first half of the nineteenth century rhetorically constructed women’s roles in the home, in the church, in the community , and as writers—and in so doing gave women places ‘beyond the pulpit’ from which to be rhetorically effective. Her argument is well supported by attention to primary texts and to theoretical and scholarly sources. Shaver’s book offers a focus on ordinary and unnamed women, rather than on the usual heroes of feminism and/or rhetorical history.”—Beth Daniell, Kennesaw State University Women played a significant role in helping the Methodist Church become America ’s largest denomination by the mid-nineteenth century, yet, women’s official roles diminished during that time. In Beyond the Pulpit, Lisa Shaver examines Methodist periodicals as a rhetorical space to which women turned to find and make self-meaning. In 1818, Methodist Magazine first published “memoirs” that eulogized women as powerful witnesses for their faith on their deathbeds. As Shaver observes, it was only in death that a woman could achieve the status of minister. Another Methodist publication, the Christian Advocate, became America’s largest circulated weekly by the mid-1830s. It featured the Ladies’ Department, a column that reinforced the canon of women as dutiful wives, mothers, and household managers. Here, the church also affirmed women in the important rhetorical and evangelical role of domestic preacher. Outside the Ladies’ Department, women were increasingly portrayed as models of piety and charity, benefactors , organizers, Sunday school administrators and teachers, missionaries, and ministers ’ assistants. These texts cast women into nondomestic roles that were institutionally sanctioned and widely disseminated. By 1841, the Ladies’ Repository and Gatherings of the West was engaging women in discussions of religion, politics, education, science, and a variety of intellectual debates. By providing a forum for women writers and readers, the church gave them an official rhetorical space and the license to define their own roles and spheres of influence. As such, the periodicals of the Methodist Church became an important public venue in which women’s voices were heard and their identities explored. Lisa J. Shaver is assistant professor of English at Baylor University. pittsburgh series in composition, literacy, and culture univeRsity of PittsBuRgh PRess www.upress.pitt.edu Cover illustration: “Have mercy upon us miserable sinners” (cartoon). Harper’s Weekly, 31 October 1857. Courtesy of the Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University, Waco, Texas. Cover design: Ann Walston 9 7 8 0 8 2 2 9 6 1 6 9 7 ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-6169-7 ISBN 10: 0-8229-6169-5 ...

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