Activist rhetorics and American higher education, 1885-1937 / Susan Kates.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kates, Susan, 1961-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English language--Rhetoric--Study and teaching--United States--History.

English language.

English language--Rhetoric--Study and teaching--History--19th century.

English language--Rhetoric--Study and teaching--History--20th century.

English language--Rhetoric--Study and teaching--Social aspects--United States.

Report writing--Study and teaching (Higher)--United States--History--20th century.

Report writing.

Report writing--Study and teaching (Higher)--United States--History--19th century.

Alternative education--United States--History--19th century.

Alternative education.

Alternative education--United States--History--20th century.

Minorities--Education (Higher)--United States--History.

Minorities.

Women--Education (Higher)--United States--History.

Women.

Women--Education (Higher).

History.

Minorities--Education (Higher).

Report writing--Study and teaching (Higher).

English language--Rhetoric--Study and teaching--Social aspects.

English language--Rhetoric--Study and teaching.

United States.

Physical Description:

xvi, 157 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, [2001]

Summary:

In this study of the history of rhetoric education, Susan Kates focuses on the writing and speaking instruction developed at three academic institutions founded to serve three groups of students most often excluded from traditional institutions of higher education in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America: white middle-class women, African Americans, and members of the working class.

Kates explores the pedagogies of educators Mary Augusta Jordan of Smith College in Northhampton, Massachusetts, as well as Hallie Quinn Brown of Wilberforce University in Wilberforce, Ohio; and Josephine Colby, Helen Norton, and Louise Budenz of Brookwood Labor College in Katonah, New York.

Exploring new ground in the history of the study of rhetoric, Kates provides a detailed look at the work of students who previously have received little attention and those students and teachers ostracized from rhetorical study at traditional colleges and universities. Seeking to educate their student constituencies and to enact forms of writing and speaking instruction incorporating social and political concerns in the very essence of their pedagogies, the rhetoric teachers in this study designed rhetoric courses characterized by three important pedagogical features: a profound respect for and awareness of the relationship between language and identity and a desire to integrate this awareness into the curriculum; politicized writing and speaking assignments designed to help students interrogate their marginalized standing within the larger culture in terms of their gender, race, or social class; and an emphasis on service and social responsibility.

These defining features of "activist rhetoric" represent important forms of alternative writing and speaking courses that addressed the needs of diverse student populations of the past. They provide an activist legacy of rhetorical education that encompasses the pluralism of linguistic conventions, social conventions, and possibilities of community. Further, they are broadly applicable to current pedagogical concerns as colleges and universities struggle to educate an increasingly diverse student population.

Kates has provided photographs of some of the educators in this study.

Contents:

1. Educational Politics: Rhetorical Instruction and the Disenfranchised Student 1

2. Gender and Rhetorical Study: The Pedagogical Legacy of Mary Augusta Jordan 27

3. Elocution and African American Culture: The Pedagogy of Hallie Quinn Brown 53

4. Ideology and Rhetorical Instruction: Brookwood Labor College 75

5. Borderlands, Intersections, and Ongoing History: Rhetoric and Activism in Higher Education 97.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 141-148) and index.

ISBN:

0809323400

OCLC:

43323662