Communist Rhetoric and Feminist Voices in Cold War America

This book tells the story of a group of women affiliated with the United States Communist Party (CPUSA) who used a variety of rhetorical resources to build credibility and transform the party into a vibrant dwelling place for feminist discourse and activism during a conservative period. It evidences Communist women’s significant and creative resistance to Cold War society and its visions of appropriate, “normal” womanhood alongside their pleas for class and race consciousness in a country that took for granted the white, middle-class aspirations of citizens. Drawing on Marxist theory, transnational coalitions, and Cold War culture, Communist women’s rhetorical strategies were incredibly powerful, and this book provides insight into how they catalyzed changes in a rigid political movement by establishing a platform for their radical ideals.

Jennifer Keohane’s new book offers a counterhistory of the early Cold War that goes much deeper than the usual mix of Ike, bomb shelters, and McCarthyism.  Here is a groundbreaking and well-researched look at the rhetorical dynamics of the American Communist Party, particularly its Cold War-era struggles over women’s roles and their rightful place in society.  Anyone interested in this crucial period in American history—or in the incomplete history of the feminist movement—will find in Communist Rhetoric and Feminist Voices an invigorating new vantage point., Considering the new globalized era, complete with saber rattling of global nuclear powers in recent years, Keohane’s Communist Rhetoric and Feminist Voices in Cold War America is timely indeed. The book offers insights into the rhetorical complexity of discourses flourishing in the United States during the Cold War, but with the crucial inclusion of exemplars of women’s rhetoric featuring intersectionality. Keohane’s case studies recover and illuminate women’s agency during a timeframe for which most narratives have elided women’s voices and actions. From movies in pop culture to historical treatments, women’s Cold War era rhetoric tends to be diminished, reduced to an overemphasis on visual style: women’s coiffures, prim garb, and 50s cars. This book is a refreshing antidote, with scholarship that is relevant to areas of research and teaching from ethnic studies to rhetorical criticism, to women’s and gender studies. Keohane’s original take on Cold War communication is brought to life by vivid writing and amazing new examples showcasing women’s courage and resiliency in difficult times, with continuing echoes in contemporary women’s political agitation for justice., Jennifer Keohane's book represents a significant contribution to the study of radical persuasion, women's discourse, American Communism and Cold War rhetoric.  In addition to the more familiar figure of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Keohane focuses a critical lens on less well-known figures such as Claudia Jones,  providing readers with insight into the articulation and propagation of Black feminism within the Communist Party. The text also sheds light on women's activism during a time period largely omitted from feminist rhetorical criticism.  It is an important work. 

Jennifer Keohane is assistant professor in the Klein Family School of Communications Design at the University of Baltimore.