Militant citizenship : rhetorical strategies of the National Woman's Party, 1913-1920 / Belinda A. Stillion Southard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stillion Southard, Belinda A., 1978-

Series:

Presidential rhetoric series ; no. 21.

Presidential rhetoric series ; no. 21

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Suffrage--United States--History--20th century.

Women.

National Woman's Party--History.

National Woman's Party.

History.

Political leadership--United States--History--20th century.

Political leadership.

Rhetoric--Political aspects.

Women--Suffrage.

United States.

United States--Politics and government--1913-1921.

Politics and government.

Rhetoric--Political aspects--United States--Case studies.

Rhetoric.

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

x, 303 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

College Station : Texas A&M University Press, 2011.

Summary:

Between 1913 and 1920, the National Woman's Party (NWP) waged a campaign to write women's voting rights into the US Constitution. Unlike other woman suffrage advocacy organizations of the Progressive Era, however, the NWP was committed to militant agitation: publicly burning the printed speeches of the US president, heckling public officials, silent protests outside the White House gates, hunger strikes, and other strategies. Predictably, such actions by the NWP were met with institutional measures of social control including censorship, arrests, beatings, and force-feedings. And yet, by the end of the woman suffrage movement, the NWP had earned the endorsements of every major political party, as well as of prominent politicians-including some of those they heckled.

In Militant Citizenship: Rhetorical Strategies of the National Woman's Party, 1913-1920, Belinda A. Stillion Southard explores the ways in which the militant NWP negotiated institutional opposition and secured such a prominent position in national politics. In addition to her historical focus, Stillion Southard advances the critical concept of "political mimesis" to help explain the ways in which the NWP mimicked political rhetorics and rituals to simultaneously agitate and accommodate members of the political elite. Incorporating volumes of NWP discourse, including correspondence, photographs, protests, and publications, she situates the NWP among the historical and ideological forces of the period and examines how a relatively powerless group of women used rhetoric in order to constitute themselves as "national citizens."

Students and scholars of political and women's history will find this important new study a source of fresh thinking and cogent analysis of the importance of political militancy and mimesis as tools for effecting social change. Book jacket.

Contents:

Women, citizenship, and US nationalism

Mimesis and political ritual: the National Woman Suffrage Parade

Mimesis and third-party politics: the Woman's Party

Mimesis and the rhetorical presidency: the Silent Sentinels

Mimesis and US internationalism: statue protests and the "Watch Fires of Freedom."

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1603442812

9781603442817

9781603442824

1603442820

OCLC:

701672518

Publisher Number:

99946135256