CCR 691: Logan's (2008) *Liberating Language*

Logan, Shirley Wilson. Liberating Language: Sites of Rhetorical Education in Nineteenth-Century Black America. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008.

INTRODUCTION: “‘By the Way, Where Did You Learn to Speak?’”

An overview of her study, scope, method, and purpose as explained in her “Introduction”:

1. WHAT and WHEN: Logan seeks to answer the question, “Where did [African Americans in the late 18^th-early 19^th century] learn to speak?” Specifically, she’s interested in identifying and analyzing sites of rhetorical education—those places where AAs were instructed explicitly or implicitly in being rhetorical in their communicative experiences.

2. WHERE and HOW: Her sites of research and textual artifacts analyzed within her book are:

a. CH1: “white-sponsored slave missions and initiatives emerging from within communities of the enslaved,” “the black Union regiments during the Civil War,” “the activities of the Republican Loyal League” (6-7)

b. CH2: diaries from multiple individuals; published advice manuals (7)

c. CH3: literacy societies “primarily in Philadelphia and New York, both single sex and mixed, church-affiliated, school-affiliated, and community-based” (7)

d. CH4: Black periodicals (8)

e. Throughout each of her chapters: calls on famous Black rhetors to make “cautious generalizations” (9)

3. WHY: She seeks answers to her research question because she hopes it will “broaden our approaches to contemporary rhetorical education and thereby help to further participation in democracy” (3). She also hopes to inform: “This study will expand our understanding of the various ways in which African Americans, faced with the consequences of enslavement and oppressive color prejudice, acquired rhetorical competence during the late eighteenth century and across the nineteenth century” (9).

Her strategies for supporting her methodology:

· Shows exigency in her study by providing a few examples of the challenges AAs faced in engaging in literacy practices and illustrating how so many white folks were shocked (this being “a form of ‘soft bigotry,’” quoting Anna Perez, 3).

· Defines her terms (e.g. rhetorical education, basic literacy) by calling on main rhetoric folks (Burke, Bitzer, Aristotle).

· Situates her methods of analyzing literacy practices of a population in the margins by likening her study to other main literacy folks (Royster, Williams, Jarratt, Zaluda, Gold).

· Situates her focus on AAs by citing others with a similar target population (Kates, Schneider, Anderson, Franklin, Porter, McHenry).

CHAPTER 1: “Free-Floating Literacy: Early African American Rhetorical Traditions”

Her method:

· She investigates rhetorical traditions and literacy practices in multiple sites to make claims about the experiences of AAs in the 18^th-19^th centuries. Sites and summaries include:

o “Plantation Literacies”: Records of “invisible institutions” (like group meetings in the woods where members could develop expression and worship) and slave missions where AAs received literacy education. These practices often helped to engrain the oral traditions of the culture.

o “Pulpit Literacies”: Missions helped AAs develop memorization skills. Rhetoric textbooks like The Columbian Orator helped AAs like Frederick Douglas realize the power of rhetoric in enacting freedom.

o “Battlefield Literacies”: Since AAs were coming together in the military and sharing literacy skills and since some military officials would initiate literacy education and/or develop schools for these soldiers, much of their rhetorical traditions were garnered through these experiences. Specifically, AA individuals participated in literacy practices by reading, discussing, and producing letters, newspapers, and speeches/poetry readings.

o “Political Literacies”: Sponsored by Union or Loyal League Movement, AAs also experienced literacy through night schools and other community gatherings aimed at promoting political activity and power.

o “Postbellum Workplace Literacies”: Some AAs may have also experienced literacy through working at cigar factories where they practiced la lectura, a custom where individuals were elected (based on mutual respect for their intelligence) to read texts aloud during cigar rolling and workers would use these texts as bases for debate and public argument.

· The evidence she presents come from various sources:

o Examples of AA’s experiences in the 19^th century and many of her terms of analysis from scholars’ previous studies (Costen, Nunley, Raboteau)

o References to historical moments, folks, or events (antebellum South, slave laws, slave mission movements, Militia Act, etc.)

o Analysis of primary texts of published AA writing and of AAs’ personal narratives (Elizabeth Johnson Harris, Frederick Douglas, Charles Colcock Jones, Amanda Berry Smith, Christian Recorder, Weekly Anglo-African)

· She keeps the analysis informational and refrains from making connections between the literacy practices of then to what’s happening today.

Key people and their terms:

· Ralph Ellison’s “free-floating literacy” (11)

· Shirley Brice Heath and Beverly J. Moss’ “literacy events” (11)

· Melva Wilson Costen’s “Invisible Institutions,” (12)

· Vorris L. Nunley’s “hush harbor rhetoric” (12)

My question:

Since in class we’ve been really emphasizing the importance of methods, methodology, and the building of a researcher ethos, it was a bit surprising to me that Logan does not spend time detailing her methods and methodologies. While she references primary sources and other scholarly work, we never seem to learn where and how she collected data. I then remembered how in our colloquium Lois focused less on step-by-step methods for a historical approach in her discussion of her research and Tolar Burton also stayed away from explicit discussion of procedural methods (even stating something about it might be boring for us to hear her methods). Although I imagine this trend for not detailing methods and methodologies is not unique to historiographers, I wonder why some are less inclined to provide such detailed accounts of data gathering and analysis. I wonder if we associate such descriptions as “boring” or too “science-like.” Maybe archival research feels too open-ended and exploratory to be defined methodologically. Maybe we just haven’t valued this practice as much until recently. Maybe historiographers assume we already know methods for historical approaches. Either way, I was interested to observe this trend, and I’m curious as to why researchers might be inclined to leave out discussions of their methods and methodologies and how we might work to address this issue.

CCR 691:Brandt (2001) *Literacy in American Lives*

Brandt, Deborah. Literacy in American Lives. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Some claims/assumptions:

· Literacy is part of the machine: it is part of material systems and is assigned a societal value

· Literacy is a tool for denial of opportunity; it is exploited for profit;

· Social privilege is associated with literacy

· Literacy is a resource like wealth, education, or trade-skill (5)

· Three themes

o “Literacy learning principally will refer to occasions when people take on new understandings or capacities; as we will see, literacy learning is not confined to school settings or formal study” (6-7).

o “Literacy development refers to the accumulating project of literacy learning across a lifetime, the interrelated effects and potentials of learning over time. It is closely connected to the life span and to the historical events that affect literacy as a collective good” (7).

o “Literacy opportunity refers to people’s relationships to social and economic structures that condition chances for learning and development. Realistically, these three dimensions are not easy to separate and, as literacy is lived, seem to be three sides of one coin” (7).

· “Together, these studies strongly imply that literacy among the U.S. citizenry has been underestimated by standardized tests and other narrow, usually school-based measurements that miss the meanings and forms of literacy in everyday life” (7).

Method

· Interviewed 80 folks born 1895-1985 about their literacy practices, all from Wisconsin

· Volunteers recruited through social networking and public locations (nursing homes, etc.)

· Looked at how literacy evolved for generations (especially throughout their lives as children, students, workers, parents, citizens)

· Research question: “How has literacy learning changed over the last century and how have rising expectations for literacy been experienced as part of felt life?” (4).

· Considers economical and historical influences of family, region, nation (politics, war, etc.)

· “collection of open-ended autobiographical monologues, structured and less structured interviews, and biographical surveys” (10).

· Cohort analysis over their life span

· Used interview script (appendix A)

· Addresses reading and writing, but more focus is on writing

· Transcriptions were edited for slip-ups, false starts, pauses, umms (13-14)

· Analytical framework: sponsors of literacy: “older relatives, teachers, religious leaders, supervisors, military officers, librarians, friends, editors, influential authors” (19). Seems to be missing other textual aritifacts.

· There is a LACK of theory and disciplinary framing

Some assumptions about methodology:

· Literacy should be viewed in context (looking at an individual’s unique experience)

· People refashion their memories (12)

· Editing for standard English aims at equality

Chapter 1: “Literacy, Opportunity, and Economic Change”

· Case studies of two women, showing how the rise, fall, and change of literacy is closely related to the rise, fall, and change of economics in their region. Surprisingly, it is the woman from the older generation who received more opportunity since economical advancements were available in her region at the time. Similarly, both had to negotiate “conservative effects of gender” (41).

Chapter 2: “Literacy and Illiteracy in Documentary”

· Case studies of two men, looking at how literacy standards change over time and depending on sites of literacy. For instance, one man’s skills for speech and debate are “eclipsed” when written language becomes the more privileged medium.

Chapter 3: “Accumulating Literacy: How Four Generations of One American Family Learned to Write”

· Case studies of four generations writing in one family (the Mays), showing that some literacy practices are passed from one generation to the next, while other practices are influenced by historical and technological change (The Depression, WWII, associations of literacy as elitism, industrialization, move from village to city to suburbia). See additional notes saved on this chapter.

Chapter 4: “The Power of It: Sponsors of Literacy in African American Lives”

· Case studies of African Americans who experienced literacy while being excluded from education and economic opportunity, thus literacy advanced without economic sponsorship. It appears that one major sponsor was AA churches.

Chapter 5: “The Sacred and the Profane: Reading versus Writing in Popular Memory”

· Considers how cultural context plays in when individuals learn to read vs. when individuals learn to write. Focuses on how “writing is a more ambivalently encouraged enterprise and is fraught, more than reading, with secrecy, punishment, and surveillance” (24).

Chapter 6: “The Means of Production: Literacy and Stratification at the Twenty-First Century”

· Considers how literacy and social inequity are at play by comparing literacy experiences of two individuals with different socio-economic backgrounds: one white male of privileged class and one Latina female.