Heidt, Stephen

This thesis enters a journey of inquiry to investigate how self-help leadership
manuals are subject to patriarchal influences. Specifically, I analyze two self-help
leadership biographies in this thesis, Wooden On Leadership by John Wooden and Steve
Jamison and Reach For The Summit: The Definite Dozen System For Succeeding At
Whatever You Do by Pat Summitt with Sally Jenkins. Both leadership manuals implicate
cultural conceptions of gender. Wooden’s text exemplifies ways in which traditional
masculine gender roles can infiltrate leadership manuals and Summitt’s text portrays
masculine and feminine gender negotiations as a prerequisite for success. This project
also contains a survey of literature on leadership studies as a whole as well as gender
studies and applications of both gender and various leadership styles. This analysis of
these two biographical accounts of leadership is initiated through feminist rhetorical
criticism and narrative criticism.

This study analyzes various forms of visual and textual rhetoric found in popular
black-owned print media from 1900-1970, including: beauty product advertisements,
magazine cover photography and feature articles in order to contribute to a rhetorical
history of color bias within the African-American community. The imagery included here
validated and encouraged the transformation and lightening of African-American bodies
through what I call embodied mimicry in order to achieve dominance within the racial
group and a semblance of acceptance outside of it. Mimicry of white societal standards
by African-Americans including: formatting of print media, circulation of beauty ads and
physical embodiment of white physical features ultimately re-inscribed the tenets of
racism into the black public sphere in the form of colorism. The intention of this research
is to analyze the rhetorical history of colorism in order to better understand the current
state of colorism in American society.