During the 1800s, dance and etiquette manuals provided ordinary men and women with the keys to becoming gentlemen and ladies--and thus advancing in society. Why dance? To the insecure and status-oriented upper middle class, the ballroom embodied the perfect setting in which to demonstrate one's fitness for membership in genteel society. From the Ballroom to Hell collects over 100 little-known excerpts from dance, etiquette, beauty, and fashion manuals from the nineteenth century. Included are instructions for performing various dances, as well as musical scores, costume patterns, and the proper way to hold one's posture, fork, gloves, and fan. While of particular interest to dancers, dance historians, and choreographers, anyone fascinated by the ways and mores of the period will find From the Ballroom to Hell an endearing and informative glimpse of America's past.

This anthology is the first to feature women's rhetorical theory from the fifth through the nineteenth centuries. Assembling selections on rhetoric, composition, and communication by 24 women around the world, this valuable collection demonstrates an often-overlooked history of rhetoric as well as women's interest in conversation as a model for all discourse. Among the theorists included are Aspasia, Pan Chao, Sei Shonagon, Madeleine de Scudéry, Hannah More, Hallie Quinn Brown, and Mary Augusta Jordan. The book also contains an extensive introduction, explanatory headnotes, and detailed annotations.

Whether in the private parlor, public hall, commercial "dance palace," or sleazy dive, dance has long been opposed by those who viewed it as immoral--more precisely as being a danger to the purity of those who practiced it, particularly women. In Adversaries of Dance, Ann Wagner presents a major study of opposition to dance over a period of four centuries in what is now the United States. Wagner bases her work on the thesis that the tradition of opposition to dance "derived from white, male, Protestant clergy and evangelists who argued from a narrow and selective interpretation of biblical passages," and that the opposition thrived when denominational dogma held greater power over people's lives and when women's social roles were strictly limited. Central to Wagner's work, which will be welcomed by scholars of both religion and dance, are issues of gender, race, and socioeconomic status. "There are no other works that even begin to approach this definitive accomplishment." --Amanda Porterfield, author of Female Piety in Puritan New England