Conference Proposal for 19c Rhetoric / Still working on the title...
Rhetoric Society of America, 14th RSA Biennial Conference
May 28-31, 2010 Minneapolis

In 1977, Sandra Allen, a self-described sixth generation “orthodox” Mormon was recruited by an influential member of her ward to participate in an effort to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment Referendum in Nevada.  This paper promises to explore, through Sandra Allen’s account recorded in journals and materials left to the University of New Mexico’s Center for Southwest Research, why and how she (and a group of like-minded Mormon women) participated in myriad, unexpected, and sometimes covert methods to shape public debate over the ERA.  Specifically, Allen infiltrated a pro-ERA group to discover its rhetorical strategies and reported them back to the Mormon Church.
The investigation will begin with a discussion of a ritual practice in the Mormon Church wherein a member is “set apart,” or given a special blessing involving a “laying of hands.”  While the connection between the ritual blessing Allen received as a result of her willingness to become involved in the anti-ERA campaign may appear to belong to the symbolic realm, Burke argues that “we are clearly in the region of rhetoric when considering the identification whereby a specialized activity makes on a participant in some social or economic class.”  Exploring the ways this “acting-together” motivated Allen and her group’s discursive activities and entrance into the public sphere against, at times, internal (self-motivated) and external (spousal, familial) objections, provokes two questions which will be explored utilizing Burke’s theory of identification and consubstantiality in A Rhetoric of Motives:  first, what rhetorical strategies were used by the Mormon Church’s leadership to recruit women like Allen – women who fought for an end (the defeat of the ERA referendum) which was counter to their personal, social, and economic interests?  Secondly, how did Allen and her cohort, who had little previous experience participating in “front lines” of public debate, utilize their gendered identities (and subvert these identities, when necessary) to sway the outcome of the Nevada ERA Referendum?