Signatures of citizenship: Petitioning, antislavery, and women's political identity.

This article, a review of Susan Zaeske's Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women's Political Identity, argues that the book makes an important contribution to the ongoing conversations about the role of women in US political culture. Zaeske chronicles the history of petition writing, exploring why it became popular-particularly for women-how its tactics evolved, and the ways in which it affected antebellum reform movements. The book traces the evolution of women's petitions through various political and social sites and finds that through these efforts women made important strides toward securing their own nights and transforming the political identity of woman into that of active national citizen. The essay contextualizes Zaeske's work within scholarship about women and political culture and claims further that the book is the first to combine historiography with rhetorical analysis.