Rhetoric to the lovelorn: Women's newspaper advice columns between the wars

Abstract

This dissertation is a feminist rhetorical analysis of American women’s public and professional writing in the interwar period through the lens of the newspaper advice column. Using archival research, feminist rhetorical theory, and content analysis, I examine how syndicated and local advice columnists constructed ethe for themselves and agentive subject positions for their readers while responding to interwar exigencies pertaining to women’s conduct. I argue that interwar advice columnists, while professionalizing and diversifying the form and function of the genre, advocated for the value of women’s participation in the public sphere but not the destabilizing altogether of culturally and racially inflected notions of femininity. While many scholars writing revisionist histories and performing rhetorical criticism still rely predominantly on close readings, “Rhetoric to the Lovelorn” models the cross-fertilization of rhetorical and qualitative analysis, demonstrating that putting these methods into conversation can yield richer critical insights into various texts, genres, and media.