Lisa J. Shaver, Ph.D.
Professor Professional Writing & Rhetoric
Affiliate Faculty, Women's & Gender Studies Faculty
Coordinator, Women's Faculty Writing Program
Baylor University
lisa_shaver@baylor.edu
Welcome, I am Lisa Shaver a professor of Professional Writing and Rhetoric at Baylor University. I am the author of Reforming Women: The Rhetorical Tactics of the American Female Moral Reform Society (2018) and Beyond the Pulpit: Women’s Rhetorical Roles in the Antebellum Religious Press (2012). My work has also appeared in College English, CCC, Rhetoric Review, Peitho, Composition Studies, Pedagogy, JBTC, and edited collections. My research primarily focuses on women’s rhetoric, periodical studies, professional writing, and writing programs. I teach classes in professional writing and rhetoric and women's studies.
I served as director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program for five years and I am currently coordinating our Women's Faculty Writing Program at Baylor.
Reforming Women
The Rhetorical Tactics of the American Female Moral Reform Society, 1834-1854
Reforming Women (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018) locates the emergence of a distinct women’s rhetoric and feminist consciousness in the American Female Moral Reform Society. Established in 1834, the society took aim at prostitution, brothels, and the lascivious behavior increasingly visible in America’s industrializing cities. In particular, female moral reformers contested the double standard that overlooked promiscuous behavior in men while harshly condemning women for the same offense. Their ardent rhetoric resonated with women across the country. With its widely-read periodical and auxiliary societies representing more than 50,000 women, the American Female Moral Reform Society became the first national reform movement organized, led, and comprised solely by women.
Drawing on an in-depth examination of the group's periodical, Reforming Women delineates essential rhetorical tactics including women's stategic use of gender, the periodical pres, anger, presence, auxiliary societies, and institutional rhetoric--tactics women's reform efforts woudl use throughout the nineteenth century. Almost two centuries later, female moral reformers' rhetorice resonates today as our society continues to strugle with different moral expectaitons for women and men.
Beyond the Pulpit
Women's Rhetorical Roles in the Antebellum Religious Press
Beyond the Pulpit (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012) argues for a broader definition of women’s rhetorical roles within antebellum churches. For most American women, the church and church-affiliated organizations were the first organizations they participated in outside of the home. However, women’s activities were usually voluntary and were often excluded from formal institutional records and historical accounts.
By charting the rhetorical roles assumed by and ascribed to women in the Methodist church’s popular and widely disseminated antebellum periodicals, I identify numerous rhetorical roles assumed by and ascribed to women in the church’s periodicals, including iconic ministers, domestic evangelists, models of piety, benefactors and fundraisers, benevolent organizers and advocates, Sunday school administrators and teachers, missionary assistants, and assistant ministers.
Recent Publications
“Cultivating a Feminist Consciousness in the University Archive.” Teaching through the Archives: Text, Collaboration, and Activism, edited by Wendy Hayden and Tarez Samra Graban. Southern Illinois University, 2022.
Shaver, Lisa J. and Kara Poe Alexander. “Mobilizing Women Associate Professors through Investment Mentoring, Cross-University Networking, and Social Support in a Faculty Write-on-Site Group.” College English, vol. 84, no. 3, 2022, pp. 266-290.
Alexander, Kara Poe and Lisa Shaver. “Disrupting the Numbers: The Impact of a Women’s Faculty Writing Program on Associate Professors.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 72, no. 1, 2020, pp. 58-86.
Shaver, Lisa, Elizabeth Tasker Davis, and Jane Greer. “Making Feminist Rhetorical History Five Pages at a Time: A Cross-Institutional Writing Group for Mid-Career Women in the Academy.” Peitho, vol. 22, no. 1, 2019, pp. 80-93.
Shaver, Lisa. “Babe Didrikson Zaharias’s Rhetorical Branding: When It’s Not Enough to Be the World’s Greatest Woman Athlete.” Women at Work: Rhetorics of Gender and Labor, edited by David Gold and Jessica Enoch, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019, pp. 172-185.
Alexander, Kara, Michael-John DePalma, Lisa Shaver and Danielle Williams. “Approaching the (Re)Design of Writing Majors: Contexts of Research, Forms of Inquiry, and Recommendations for Faculty,” Composition Studies, vol. 47, no. 1, 2019, pp. 16-38.
Shaver, Lisa. “Female Tract Distributors and Their Door-to-door Rhetorical Education.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 38, no. 2, 2019, pp. 146-159.
Shaver, Lisa. “The Making of Available Means.” Peitho, vol. 20, no. 2, 2018, pp. 198-211.