State of the Marital Union

Relying on extensive archival research, this examination of marriage in the US is well written, readable, and timely. It will be valuable to those interested in rhetoric and gender studies.

~Choice

Weaving together five nineteenth-century marriage controversies, Leslie J. Harris fastens on the metaphor of slavery to detail the complexity of women’s lives in a matrix of polygamy, divorce, prostitution and adultery, interracial marriage, marital rape, domestic violence, and immigration.

~Jane Sutton, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, York

Carefully argued, grounded in archival research, and packed with historical detail, State of the Marital Union elucidates the complex rhetorical intersections of national identity, sexual morality, familial ideology, and normative notions of race and gender in the discourses accompanying some of the 19th century’s most sensational public controversies.

~Bonnie J. Dow, Vanderbilt University, author of Watching Women's Liberation, 1970: Feminism's Pivotal Year on the Network News

A timely and insightful analysis of ‘the public conception of marriage’ in the United States

~Darryl W. Stephens, Marginalia

State of the Marital Union: Rhetoric, Identity, and Nineteenth-Century Marriage Controversies is a valuable contribution to a body of scholarship in rhetoric, communication, and gender studies. It is a deeply engaging and insightful study of how gender resides among interactions of discourses on race and the nation.

~Iklim Goksel, Rhetoric Society Quarterly

While the public nature of the allegedly private realm of marriage has been established in the academic literature for some time, Harris’s contribution is the specificity of her work, particularly in her use of rhetorical analysis (blended seamlessly with archival and legal research) to explore various marital controversies and their meanings. This approach allows her to build a persuasive case for the ways in which debates about the institution were especially meaningful from a gendered perspective.

~Kristin Celello, Journal of American Studies

State of the Marital Union is an important and timely book, offering subtle comment on our own era by way of its history.

~Eric C. Miller, Rhetoric and Public Affairs