Thinking Together: Lecturing, Learning, and Difference in the Long Nineteenth Century

261 Pages·2018·6.587 MB·English

by  Angela G. Ray (editor), Paul Stob (editor)

THINKING TOGETHER
RDD
RHETORICANDDEMOCRATICDELIBERATION
VVOOLLUUMMEE 1136
edited by cheryl glenn and stephen browne
the pennsylvania state university
Co-f ounding Editor: J. Michael Hogan
Editorial Board:
Robert Asen (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
Debra Hawhee (The Pennsylvania State University)
J. Michael Hogan (The Pennsylvania State University)
Peter Levine (Tufts University)
Steven J. Mailloux (University of California, Irvine)
Krista Ratcliffe (Marquette University)
Karen Tracy (University of Colorado, Boulder)
Kirt Wilson (The Pennsylvania State University)
David Zarefsky (Northwestern University)
Rhetoric and Democratic Deliberation focuses on the
interplay of public discourse, politics, and democratic action.
Engaging with diverse theoretical, cultural, and critical
perspectives, books published in this series offer fresh
perspectives on rhetoric as it relates to education, social
movements, and governments throughout the world.
A complete list of books in this series is located at the back
of this volume.
THINKING TOGETHER
Lecturing, Learning, and difference
in the Long nineteenth century
edited by angela g. ray and paul stob
The Pennsylvania State University Press | University Park, Pennsylvania
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Ray, Angela G., editor. | Stob, Paul, editor.
Title: Thinking together : lecturing, learning, and
difference in the long nineteenth century / edited
by Angela G. Ray and Paul Stob.
Other titles: Rhetoric and democratic deliberation.
Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : The
Pennsylvania State University Press, [2018] | Series:
Rhetoric and democratic deliberation | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Summary: “Explores the myriad ways that people in
the nineteenth century grappled with questions
of learning, belonging, civic participation, and
deliberation. Focuses on the dynamics of gender,
race, region, and religion, and how individuals and
groups often excluded from established institutions
developed knowledge useful for public life”—
Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017053093 | ISBN
9780271080871 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Education—History—19th century.
| Learning—History—19th century. | Lyceums—
History—19th century. | Lectures and
lecturing—History—19th century. | Deliberative
democracy—History—19th century.
Classification: LCC LA126.T45 2018 | DDC
370.9034—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053093
Copyright © 2018 The Pennsylvania State University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press,
University Park, PA 16802–1003
The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member
of the Association of University Presses.
It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University
Press to use acid- free paper. Publications on uncoated
stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material,
ansi z39.48–1992.
Contents
Acknowledgments | vii
Introduction | 1
AngelA g. RAy And PAul stob
Part 1 Disrupting Narratives
1 The Portable Lyceum in the Civil War | 23
RonAld J. ZboRAy And MARy sARACino ZboRAy
2 Women’s Entrepreneurial Lecturing in the Early National Period | 41
gRAnville gAnteR
3 Mobilizing Irish America in the Antebellum Lecture Hall | 56
toM F. WRight
4 Authentic Imitation or Perverse Original? Learning About Race from
America’s Popular Platforms | 72
KiRt h. Wilson And KAitlyn g. PAtiA
Part 2 Distinctive Voices
5 A Lyceum Diaspora: Hilary Teage and a Liberian Civic Identity | 97
bJøRn F. stillion southARd
6 Secret Knowledge, Public Stage: Joseph Smith’s King Follett
Discourse | 113
RiChARd benJAMin CRosby
7 The “Perfect Delight” of Dramatic Reading: Gertrude Kellogg and
the Post–Civil War Lyceum | 130
sARA e. lAMPeRt
vi Contents
8 Talking Music: Amy Fay and the Origins of the Lecture Recital | 150
e. douglAs boMbeRgeR
9 Hinduism for the West: Swami Vivekananda’s Pluralism at
the World’s Parliament of Religions | 169
sCott R. stRoud
Conclusion: Placing Platform Culture in Nineteenth- Century
American Life | 187
CARolyn eAstMAn
Notes | 203
List of Contributors | 237
Index | 241
ACKnoWledgMents
Scholarship is always collaborative, and an edited volume represents a con-
centrated form of collective endeavor. We are grateful to all those who have
shaped this book, from its inception in conversation through its oral perfor-
mance in an academic symposium to its print publication. We salute Bob
Schurk and Jim Mackay, whose invitation to the Alexandria Lyceum brought
us to Virginia in September 2015 to host an interdisciplinary academic con-
ference titled “Popular Knowledge, Public Stage: Cultures of Lecturing and
Learning in the Long Nineteenth Century.” The event was jointly sponsored
by the City of Alexandria, Northwestern University’s Department of Com-
munication Studies, and Vanderbilt University’s College of Arts and Science.
Contributors to this volume presented their work, along with the following
scholars: Monika Alston- Miller, Trudy Bell, Yvonne Carignan, Virginia Gar-
nett, Elisabeth Kinsley, Shirley Wilson Logan, Lisa McGunigal, Elizabeth
McHenry, Johann Neem, Britt Rusert, and Carly Woods. Others joined as
spectators and interlocutors: Christina Bevilacqua, Stephen Browne, Eliza-
beth Gardner, Johanna Hartelius, Jennifer Keohane, James Klumpp, Zachary
Mills, Kevin Shupe, Sara VanderHaagen, and Courtney Wright. We appreci-
ate all the participants’ contributions.
Many have assisted us in bringing this project to published form. For
their generosity and professional expertise, we thank Kendra Boileau and her
colleagues at the Pennsylvania State University Press. We also extend grati-
tude for the encouragement and aid of co- founding series editor J. Michael
Hogan and to current series editors Cheryl Glenn and Stephen Browne.
Nicholas Taylor provided superb copyediting, and Robert Elliot Mills offered
an insightful appraisal of the final manuscript.
Furthermore, Angela G. Ray acknowledges the indefatigable support of
Harold Gulley, and she is grateful to Paul Stob for his camaraderie, his daz-
zling skill in juggling concepts and minutiae alike, and his kind and gener-
ous spirit.
Paul Stob thanks Sarah Stob and Elliott Stob for their unflagging encour-
agement. In addition, he thanks Angela G. Ray for her tireless work, amaz-
ing attention to detail, and vision for the Alexandria conference and this
volume.
viii ACKnoWledgMents
The discussions that began in Alexandria motivated this book and
affected scholarship that appears elsewhere. We acknowledge all those who
have “thought together” with us through the production of this volume, and
we invite you, our reader, to consider yourself as part of this community, in
which we seek to learn from the past and draw on that knowledge to influ-
ence the future.
intRoduCtion
Angela G. Ray and Paul Stob
Scholars long have gathered at colleges and universities, have organized con-
ferences and symposia, have discussed ideas in person or remotely through
communication technologies from letters to video conferencing, and have
read about the latest intellectual advancements in books, journals, and peri-
odicals. Yet the future of thinking together—that is, of people assembling to
pursue knowledge and to forge collective understanding—now seems uncer-
tain. Changes over the past few decades have raised serious doubts about the
viability of these norms, modes, and practices. Technological advancements,
neoliberal economics, increased expenses, decreased governmental support,
and a widening chasm between academic and public cultures—such changes
have prompted questions about the pursuit of knowledge in the twenty-fi rst
century. Established models of higher education seem outmoded to many,
inciting a chorus of commentators calling for change. William Deresiewicz,
for one, chastises existing institutions for “exacerbating inequality, retarding
social mobility, perpetuating privilege, and creating an elite that is as isolated
from the society that it’s supposed to lead—and even more smug about its
right to its position—as the WASP aristocracy itself.”1 Richard and Daniel
Susskind go even further by prophesying an end to collegiate education as
we know it, particularly its system of certifying professional training: “In the
long run, increasingly capable machines will transform the work of profes-
sionals, giving rise to new ways of sharing practical expertise in society” and
decreasing the need for academically certified gatekeepers of knowledge.2
Such criticisms imply that in the future people will be thinking together in
very different ways than they do right now.
Yet scholars of intellectual history are demonstrating clearly that people
in the past also thought together differently than they do now. In the United
States, for example, collective inquiry did not always happen according to