TY - THES
AU - Amy Beth Aronson
AB - This dissertation makes the case that it was through the unique discursive dynamics of the American magazine that women came to constitute themselves as a distinct public in American life and letters.

The fundamental premise of the dissertation is that the magazine form functioned in American culture as a forum, driven by miscellaneous contributions and perpetuated by reader response. This formal "dialogism," distinctive to the American magazine as compared with its British forebears, enabled the American magazine to sustain a range and to promote the exchange of the competing ideas, norms, and beliefs of its readers. Definitively, the American magazine invited and embraced discrepant voices.

For women, the dynamics of this participatory and miscellaneous site were particularly advantageous. In light of the "political non-existence of women," in Harriet Martineau's famous phrase, magazines for women offered an unusual public opportunity for experimental expression and cultural response. As important as providing literate women with the liberty and a place to speak, the American women's magazine also positioned women's words in a uniquely productive way. Since amateur contributors were the primary source of Early American magazine content, women's magazines convened dialogue among communities of women readers and writers. Women's magazines invited a range of contributors, whose competing voices played off each other, provoking collaboration, rebuttal, revision and other forms of response from other contributors. This free play of competing discourses cooperated on magazine pages, innovating new gender discourse over time. As communities of women readers together wrote, reinforced, revoked, and renovated contents, they collectively negotiated and authorized new discourse for public use.

In five chapters covering the period from 1790-1860, this dissertation recovers some lost women's work, and discusses some ways in which Early American women's magazines functioned to fill absences and revise meanings in gender discourse by and for women's use. An Epilogue traces the play of major themes from 1870-1920.
LA - English
M3 - Ph.D. Dissertation
N2 - This dissertation makes the case that it was through the unique discursive dynamics of the American magazine that women came to constitute themselves as a distinct public in American life and letters.

The fundamental premise of the dissertation is that the magazine form functioned in American culture as a forum, driven by miscellaneous contributions and perpetuated by reader response. This formal "dialogism," distinctive to the American magazine as compared with its British forebears, enabled the American magazine to sustain a range and to promote the exchange of the competing ideas, norms, and beliefs of its readers. Definitively, the American magazine invited and embraced discrepant voices.

For women, the dynamics of this participatory and miscellaneous site were particularly advantageous. In light of the "political non-existence of women," in Harriet Martineau's famous phrase, magazines for women offered an unusual public opportunity for experimental expression and cultural response. As important as providing literate women with the liberty and a place to speak, the American women's magazine also positioned women's words in a uniquely productive way. Since amateur contributors were the primary source of Early American magazine content, women's magazines convened dialogue among communities of women readers and writers. Women's magazines invited a range of contributors, whose competing voices played off each other, provoking collaboration, rebuttal, revision and other forms of response from other contributors. This free play of competing discourses cooperated on magazine pages, innovating new gender discourse over time. As communities of women readers together wrote, reinforced, revoked, and renovated contents, they collectively negotiated and authorized new discourse for public use.

In five chapters covering the period from 1790-1860, this dissertation recovers some lost women's work, and discusses some ways in which Early American women's magazines functioned to fill absences and revise meanings in gender discourse by and for women's use. An Epilogue traces the play of major themes from 1870-1920.
PB - Columbia University
PY - 1996
EP - 358 pp.
TI - Understanding Equals: Audience and Articulation in the Early American Women's Magazine
ER -