The Doula Dialectic: Feminist Rhetorics for Childbirth

By Sheri Rysdam

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1666955337
• ISBN13: 9781666955330
• Release Date: November 2026
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"