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Locating Women's Rhetorical Education and Performance: Early MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School Certificate for Approving the Dissertation We hereby approve the Dissertation of Rebecca L. Fleming Safa Candidate for the Degree: Doctor of Philosophy ___________________________________ Director Paul V. Anderson ___________________________________ Reader Katharine Ronald ___________________________________ Reader Morris Young ___________________________________ Graduate School Representative Peter Williams ABSTRACT LOCATING WOMEN’S RHETORICAL EDUCATION AND PERFORMANCE: EARLY TO MID NINETEENTH CENTURY SCHOOLS FOR WOMEN AND THE CONGREGATIONALIST MISSION MOVEMENT by Rebecca L. Fleming Safa The first half of the nineteenth century was a unique period for women’s rhetorical education and work. Chapter I establishes the rhetorical and physical space of the study. Congregationalist and Presbyterian denominations in New England and Ohio, affected by the Great Awakening revivals, founded schools for women out of a desire for literate female congregants and missionaries. Chapter II argues that advocates of women’s education justified the value of women’s evangelical speaking and writing by explaining how it fit within conservative religious and social goals: women needed to be educated to teach and convert their children and students, and to start schools for women abroad to advance the evangelical cause. Chapter III argues that because the schools for women adopted the classical, religiously-infused curriculum as well as the purpose of many schools for men—to produce ministers—women also were trained as evangelists, though for different audiences. By the last few decades of the period, the schools for women provided an institutional support for their graduates’ public speaking and writing that was denied to other women rhetors of the century. Chapter IV argues that because the classical curriculum used in these schools for women had a religious focus, and because most of the textbooks were written by ministers, and had to justify their purpose in terms of their applicability to Christianity, women who used these texts had the opportunity not only for formal rhetoric and logic training, but also to see and model constant examples of arguments for Christianity in other subject matter texts. Chapter V argues that there were important extracurricular opportunities for women to practice their rhetorical skills at women’s schools that were analogous to the traditional literary and debating clubs at schools for men. Chapter VI explains why this unique school environment for women did not last. Around mid-century, the religiously based classical curriculum faded as schools became more vocationally oriented; women’s education was offered without need for elaborate religious rationales; and the Congregationalist mission board moved away from evangelizing through mission station schools and so no longer needed trained female teacher/evangelists. LOCATING WOMEN’S RHETORICAL EDUCATION AND PERFORMANCE: EARLY TO MID NINETEENTH CENTURY SCHOOLS FOR WOMEN AND THE CONGREGATIONALIST MISSION MOVEMENT A DISSERTATION Submitted to the faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English by Rebecca L. Fleming Safa Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2008 Dissertation Director: Dr. Paul Anderson © Rebecca L. Fleming Safa 2008 Table of Contents Chapter I: Breaking Rhetorical Boundaries for Women: Religious Education in Early to Mid Nineteenth Century New England 1 Defining Rhetoric in the Context of This Study 6 Why These Schools 10 Need For This Study 16 Limitations of This Study 21 Overview of Chapters 21 Chapter II: Creating the Social Space for Women’s Rhetorical Education: Evangelism and the Rise of a Feminine Evangelical Rhetoric 25 Rhetorical Groundwork for Women’s Speaking and Writing 27 A Space for Women’s Preaching Through the Occupation of Teaching 36 Conclusion 44 Chapter III: Creating the Educational Spaces For Feminine Evangelical Rhetoric: The Origins and Development of Five Religious Women’s and Co-Ed Schools of Higher Education 48 Intersection of Schools and the Mission Movement: the Academy 49 Intersection of Schools and the Mission Movement: The Seminary and College 54 A Community of Female Rhetors 63 Schools Create Short and Long Term Support Structures 65 Creating Independent Women 68 Conclusion 72 Chapter IV: Rhetorical Training for Women: The Curriculum Within The Curriculum 73 Training for Religious Leadership in the Curriculum of Early Schools for Women 75 Instruction in Religious Principles and Argumentation 77 Curriculum Encourages Female Participation in Mission Movement 80 Formal Rhetorical Training 83 The “Hidden Curriculum”: Informal Rhetorical Training 87 iii Conclusion 93 Chapter V: “With Or Without Hope”: A Unique Extracurricular Rhetorical Curriculum for Women 96 Teachers as Preachers: Modeling Conversion Rhetoric 96 Student Activities Demonstrate Practice of Evangelistic Rhetoric 104 Female Missionaries Presented as Role Models for Other Women 107 The Mission Field an Extension of School Training: The Evangelical Rhetorical Work at Home and Abroad of Female Graduates 112 Conclusion 116 Chapter VI: Post 1950s Transitional Period: Why the Type of and Purpose for Women’s Education and Rhetorical Work Changed 118 Shift in Schools’ Purpose and Curriculum 118 The Decline of Female Missionary Teachers 121 Additional Support Systems for Female Evangelists 124 Relationship to the Women’s Rights Movement 125 Conclusion 126 Works Cited 129 iv Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my Dad, who has waited patiently for it a long time. v Acknowledgements Thanks to my committee for their guidance and support, and especially to Dr. Paul Anderson, who has spent long hours helping me to refine the quality and structure of my ideas. Thanks to my friends and family, who have contributed many thoughtful suggestions and continuous moral support. vi Chapter I Breaking Rhetorical Boundaries for Women: Religious Education in Early Nineteenth Century New England In early to mid nineteenth century New England and Ohio, a large number of women attended academies, seminaries, and colleges founded and supported by the popular denominations of the time, particularly Congregationalist and Presbyterian. As a result of this education, the revivalist atmosphere of the time, and the growing acceptance of teaching as a career for women, many women were trained to be rhetors in evangelical settings, often as missionary teachers in the western United States and in other countries, or as teacher evangelists in local schools. At schools such as the co-ed Bradford Academy, located in Bradford, Massachusetts, female seminaries such as Ipswich in Ipswich, Massachusetts, Mount Holyoke in South Hadley, Massachusetts, Western in Oxford, Ohio, and Oberlin Collegiate Institute, a co-ed college level school in Oberlin, Ohio, founders and teachers argued that equal education for women, and their rhetorical work as evangelical teachers and/or missionaries would benefit their religious efforts and society in general. A significant reason that some of these nineteenth century women were able to broaden the scope of their rhetorical work from the network of their immediate family and friends outward to anyone within reach of evangelical work is due to the curriculum and structure of the Congregationalist and Presbyterian schools for women, especially those that operated in the first fifty years of the nineteenth century. The Congregationalist and Presbyterian schools in this study patterned their curriculum on the classical curriculum that schools for men were using in the nineteenth century, which gave female students a rare opportunity to study logic and rhetoric, important components of the classical curriculum. The other textbooks they used as part of the standard classical curriculum of the day were ideal for helping them construct arguments defending Christianity to nonbelievers, as they were largely written to educate prospective ministers in schools for men. While women in these Congregationalist and Presbyterian schools did not have the opportunity to practice oration or debating as men did, the schools also developed an alternative informal rhetorical curriculum to train their female students in the practical 1 aspects of evangelical work. In the schools, instead of debating societies, women were encouraged to actively debate with each other by working for the conversion of students who doubted Christianity. They were prepared psychologically and practically to meet the challenges of a public oral and written ministry in the mission field. These schools encouraged women to play an equal rhetorical role in the evangelical mission field and gave them the rhetorical training to take advantage of those opportunities. After the growth of these schools, women had more rhetorical opportunities to speak and write even to large and/or promiscuous audiences, because of or as part of their mission work. This history begins in 1803, when Bradford Academy was founded. Other co- educational academies and seminaries for women such as Ipswich followed Bradford throughout the first and second decades. Oberlin Collegiate Institute was founded in 1833, followed by Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, in 1837, which was the first all- female seminary to proclaim its intention of offering a college level education for women. Western Female Seminary, founded in 1855, was one of the last schools for women to follow the pattern of a traditional classical curriculum, with a religious
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