Activist Rhetorics and American Higher Education, 1885-1937 / Edition 3

by Susan Kates

Overview

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 provides a detailed look at the work of those students and teachers ostracized from rhetorical study at traditional colleges and universities. She explores the pedagogies of educators Mary Augusta Jordan of Smith College in Northhampton, Massachusetts; 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.

           

These teachers sought to enact forms of writing and speaking instruction incorporating social and political concerns in the very essence of their pedagogies. They 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809323401
Publisher:	Southern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	01/28/2001
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Susan Kates  is an assistant professor of English and women's studies at the University of Oklahoma.

Table of Contents

	List of Illustrations	IX
	Preface	XI
	Acknowledgments	XV
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	135
	Works Cited	141
	Index	149

Editorial Reviews

“Kates’s definition of ‘activist rhetoric’ provides a much-needed foundation for further study and development of this important pedagogical concept.”—Karyn Hollis, Villanova University

From the Publisher

Kates (English and women's studies, U. of Oklahoma) traces the rhetorical instruction generated by teachers at three institutions founded to serve middle-class white women, African Americans, and workers, particularly detailing the curricula they produced. She argues that because of the commitment of these teachers to students who were often denied admission to the more elite institutions, they created a course of rhetorical study designed to confront the sexism, racism, and classism through a curriculum defined by its politics of difference. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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