Southern oratory: A field for research

Dickey, Dallas C.

doi:10.1080/00335634709381333

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…In so doing, they attempted to write themselves into the canon. They may have even heard Dallas C. Dickey's 1947 call for public address scholars to turn their attention to a "field completely unstudied in American public address" 116 -African American public address. "The quality of negro speaking will be of special interest to the student," wrote Dickey.…”

Section: Speculating Woodson As Part Of the Canonmentioning

confidence: 99%

My Sanctified Imagination: Carter G. Woodson and a Speculative (Rhetorical) History of African American Public Address, 1925–1960

Johnson¹

2021

Rhetoric and Public Affairs

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In 1925, Herbert Wichelns published The Literary Criticism of Oratory. By many accounts, the essay would become the founding document of the academic study of rhetoric and public address. However, in that same year, historian Carter G. Woodson published Negro Orators and Their Orations, which focused on the study of the African American oratorical tradition. In this essay, by way of speculative history and using my sanctified imagination, I wonder what an alternative or speculative history would look like if we can conceive Woodson as challenging the dominant (exclusively white) notions of public address and rhetorical praxis. By paying particular attention to Woodson’s introduction in Negro Orators and Their Orations, I submit that not only would we have been introduced to the richness and power of the African American public address tradition earlier but, more importantly, who we start to see as scholars and what we call scholarship would be different as well. I examine this by first, offering an examination of Woodson’s text, paying close attention to the introduction, where Woodson develops his theory of oratory. Second, I examine the African American rhetoric and public address scholarship between 1925 and 1960. Finally, I offer a speculative history of what could have been and what we can still do if we would include some of these voices and their scholarship in the public address canon.

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Section: Speculating Woodson As Part Of the Canonmentioning

confidence: 99%