The Doula Dialectic

Offering firsthand insight into the world of doula work, Sheri Rysdam shows how doulas are well-positioned to engage as advocates, to employ rhetorical strategies to facilitate greater care and consent, and to connect birthing people to community-based care.
The author - who is both a trained doula and a rhetorician - uses feminist methodologies to bridge rhetorical strategies and theoretical discussions with personal experience and narrative accounts of childbirth. In doing so, readers get an experiential, embodied, and community-based practice and theory of childbirth and doula work that is situated at the intersection of feminist rhetorics and reproductive justice.
With a mix of theory, practice, and experience, this book is relevant to scholars and students of rhetoric, feminist theory, and reproductive justice advocates; childbirth attendants, such as doulas and other nonmedical support people; medical practitioners, including midwives, obstetricians, nurses and their students; pregnant people; and others interested in improving childbirth.

Sheri Rysdam is Professor of English/Writing and Writing Center Director at Eastern Oregon University, USA. She is also co-author of Nonviolent Response: Strategies for Responding to Writing (2026).

Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
1. Rhetoric's Role in Doula Work: Feminist Understandings, Analysis, and Activism
2. A Long History of Reproductive Violence: Witches, Midwives, Femicide, and Oppression
3. Contemporary Childbirth Settings and the Need for Doulas
4. Doulas as Advocates
5. The Doula-Rhetor: Rhetorical Interventions by Doulas
6. Community Connection: Models for Doula Programs
7. Advocacy in Action: Feminist Rhetorical Strategies for Childbirth Justice
Bibliography
Index
About the Author