Dr. Catherine Hobbs: “American Women Learn to Speak”

Dr. Catherine Hobbs, professor of English at the University of Oklahoma, is discussing her forthcoming book Sisters of the South: Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Citizenship at Public Women’s Colleges.  We invite you to join us as we welcome Dr. Hobbs.

Below is a brief description of Dr. Hobbs’s presentation in her own words.

“Historians of rhetoric have long worked to recover women’s education in reading and writing but have only recently begun to explore women’s speaking practices, from the parlor to the platform to the varied types of institutions where women learned elocutionary and oratorical skills in preparation for professional and public life. This new work in our field, comprised of many scholars’ local archival studies, is helping us understand the richness of U.S. women’s rhetorical history. 

My talk, “American Women Learn to Speak,” will draw from the introduction of my forthcoming book project entitled Sisters of the South: Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Citizenship at Public Women’s Colleges (co-authored with David Gold). This book project is a reconsideration of women’s oratorical education.”