Dissertation: “The Measure of Her Life: Identity, Authority, and Womanhood in Alabama Women’s Cookbooks, 1850-1930”
The dissertation examines unpublished manuscript, community, and commercially published cookbooks written by Alabama women from 1850-1930, arguing that women have employed these texts as rhetorical vehicles to establish individual and communal identity, claim authority of a written genre, and respond to dominant notions of womanhood. While focused on a particular place and time, this historiography uses archival research to expand the scope of feminist rhetorical scholarship and speaks to the value of studying everyday, extracurricular writing.
Director: Amy Dayton
Committee: Michelle Robinson, Yolanda Manora, Andy Crank, Jennifer Purvis
Selected Presentations
"Critical and Respectful: the Balancing Act of Historical Research," Conference on College Composition and Communication, April 7, 2016, Houston, TX
“Measured Bites at Her Just Desserts: Reading Notions of Womanhood in Women’s Cookbooks,” Conference on College Composition and Communication, March 19, 2015,Tampa Bay, FL
“Digital Literacy in Rural Lives: Examining the Intersections of Place, Access, and Literate Practice in the Lives of Six Rural Women,” Conference on College Composition and Communication, March 20, 2014, Indianapolis, IN
“Writing the Measure of Her Life: The Manuscript Cookbook of Martha Jane Coleman Banks,” Alabama College English Teachers Association, February 22, 2014, Gadsden, AL
“Exceeding ‘Life’ vs. ‘Choice’ – the Expansive Reach of Reproductive Justice” Feminisms and Rhetorics 2013, September 26, 2013, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
“Go Local: Using Digital Archives as Alternative Textbooks in First Year Writing,”Association of College and Research Librarians Convention, April, 16, 2013, Indianapolis, IN, Poster Presentation
“’Public-izing’ Student Writing: Revision via Multimodal Platforms.” Conference on College Composition and Communication, March 14, 2013, Las Vegas, NV