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January 26, 2005
Methodology - Better late than never?
Dear classmates (blogmates?),
I had a bit of a family emergency last week that totally disrupted my work schedule. I sincerely apologize for posting this so late and hope y'all understand that I'm not just being a slackass. Thanks!
-J
Kates, Susan. Activist Rhetorics and American Higher Education, 1885 – 1937. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001.
PURPOSE: In Activist Rhetorics, Susan Kates sets out to give a history of the rhetorical instruction geared towards three groups on the margins of society from 1885 to 1937: middle-class white women; African Americans; and the working class (xi). As Kates sees it, the instructors who worked with these groups “created a course of rhetorical study designed to confront the sexism, racism, and classism in the larger culture through a curriculum defined by its politics of difference” (xi). The overall aim of this work is to show current instructors of rhetoric and composition that “many of the present issues with which we struggle have faced rhetoric teachers in other historical moments” (xi). Looking at how those instructors took up these issues in their time might inform the theoretical approaches we develop today.
STANCE/ POSTION: Early on in the book, Kates asserts that the activist education – which she defines as “rhetorical study that pursues the relationship between language and identity, makes civil issues a theme in the rhetoric classroom, and emphasizes the responsibility of community service as part of the writing an speaking curriculum” – that took place during this era is a predecessor to what know today as critical pedagogy (xi). Given her clear interest in groups that were (and in many ways still are) “excluded from traditional institutions of higher education in America,” and her interest in the connection with critical pedagogy, one can easily see Kates’ as an instructor committed to social change through rhetoric education. She sees a historical tradition of the rhetoric classroom serving as a site in which social norms are challenged and broken down (1).
DISCIPLINARY AIM: Kates identifies her work as a history and positions herself among “other rhetoric historians who take up pedagogical history to improve contemporary praxis” (xiii). Her contribution to the discipline, therefore, can be understood as an effort to bridge the gap between the historical and the contemporary, and to illustrate a lineage for the field of rhetoric that is tied to activism.
METHOD OF DATA COLLECTION: Kates focuses her attention on the pedagogies developed by instructors at three institutions dedicated to working with the students from these groups: Smith College, Wilberforce University, and Brookwood Labor College (1). To gather data on these institutions, Kates engaged in serious archival study that looked at “student papers, college mission statements, correspondence from students and teachers, and newspaper articles about these educators and their respective institutions, as well as articles written by the pedagogical architects in [her] study” (xii-xiii). Her decision to use these different cultural documents instead of “simple textbook historiography” stems from a desire to illustrate the complexity of “activist rhetoric instruction” and show that it had implications beyond the classroom (xiii).
METHOD OF ANALYSIS: As mentioned above, Kates does not limit her analysis to simply “scholarly” or “official” texts. By examining the various documents from the students’ and teachers’ lives, she enters into what might be considered a cultural studies approach. By looking at correspondences and examining teaching methods that place an emphasis on the connection between language and identity, for instance, Kates illustrates the process of active meaning making in which the students were engaging.
METHOD OF REPRESENTATION: The presentation of her findings could be described as both topical and chronological. The book itself is divided into five chapters, beginning with an overview of “Eduational politics,” moving into chapters about women, African Americans, and workers, and ending with a projection for where rhetoric and activism might go in the future. Within these chapters, Kates follows a chronological trajectory that moves “from the least radical…to the most radical” (xiii).
Posted by jwthom01 at January 26, 2005 11:00 AM