Beyond the Pulpit: Women’s Rhetorical Roles in the Antebellum Religious Press

Acknowledgments

ix I am indebted to so many people for their assistance and encouragement throughout this project. First and foremost is Kate Ronald, who willingly waded through early drafts and provided valuable responses and sage guidance since the inception of this project. I am certain she never expected to spend so much time with so many Methodist women but I am so glad she did. I am also grateful to Sarah Robbins for her generative feedback, suggestions , and expertise in literacy studies and nineteenth-century women’s literate practices. I am honored and privileged to have these two women as my mentors. I also want to thank those individuals who provided feedback on drafts and portions of this book. These include Carla Pestana, Morris Young, and Whitney Womack, whose suggestions provided important early guidance on this project. Portions of chapter 2 originally appeared in my article, “Women’s Deathbed Pulpits: From Quiet Congregants to Iconic Ministers,” published in Rhetoric Review 27, no. 1 (2008). Vicki Tolar Burton and Jan Schuetz provided valuable feedback on this article, and Vicki Tolar Burton’s scholarship on Methodism has long been a source of inspiration for my work. Portions of chapters 4 and 5 appeared in my article, “Stepping Outside the ‘Ladies’ Department’: Women’s Expanding Rhetorical Boundaries,” published in the September 2008 issue of College English (Copyright 2008 by the National Council of Teachers of English. Used with permission). I am thankful to John Schilb and the anonymous reviewers at College English for their thoughtful feedback on this article. I am also grateful to Patricia Bizzell, Jane Donawerth, Shirley Wilson Logan, Roxanne Mountford, and all the participants in the “Women’s Religious Persuasion and Social Activism in America 1780–1940” workshop held at the Rhetoric Society of America Summer Institute at Penn acknowledgments x State University in 2009. I received insightful feedback and a jolt of enthusiasm from this wonderful group of scholars and the important work they are pursuing. Additionally, I want to thank Deborah Meade, Joshua Shanholtzer, Alex Wolfe, and the anonymous reviewers at University of Pittsburgh Press for their suggestions and support of this work. This project has also benefited from generous institutional support. I received two summer sabbaticals from Baylor University as well as a grant from Baylor’s Arts and Humanities Faculty Research Program. I also want to thank my research assistant at Baylor, Julie Ooms, who helped me gather and peruse issues of the Ladies’ Repository. I received a “Women in United Methodist History Research Grant” from the United Methodist Church’s General Commission on Archives that enabled me to do research at the Methodist Archives and History Center at Drew University. Miami University also supported my initial research with a fellowship. On a personal note, I want to thank my friends and colleagues in the English Department at Baylor University, the University Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame, and the wonderful graduate community in the English Department at Miami University. I am especially grateful to my dear friends Cristy Beemer, Sarah Bowles, Jen Cellio, and Liz Mackey. I cannot fathom making this “road trip” without them. I also want to thank my pastors , teachers, and many friends at the five Methodist churches where I have been a member: First United Methodist Church in Neosho, Missouri; Trinity United Methodist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas; Peachtree United Methodist Church in Atlanta, Georgia; Oxford United Methodist Church in Oxford , Ohio; and Austin Avenue United Methodist Church in Waco, Texas. I especially want to thank my family—my parents, Roy and Ann Shaver, my sisters, Beth and Susan, and my brother, Mike. They have always been a constant source of encouragement and support; and one will not find a more enthusiastic publicist than my dad. Finally, I believe everyone should begin a big writing project by adopting a dog. Wylie has been my faithful mascot. When I was stuck or discouraged, we just needed to take a walk. acknoWledgments Beyond the Pulpit ...