ENG 4020 Spring 2022 Fleckenstein

In this incarnation of ENG 4020, we explore the rhetorical efforts by which African Americans “wrote themselves” to freedom and citizenship—again and again—across the nineteenth century. Following a historical trajectory, we begin with overview of Black nineteenth-century rhetoric, aligning it with the complicated history of U.S. citizenship. We then investigate Black rhetoric in three (of eight) moments W. E. B. Du Bois identifies in 1945 as significant in the struggle for Black civil rights: 1800-1850, examining the rhetoric of colonization; 1850-1865, addressing a rhetoric of Black civic virtue; and 1884-1900, analyzing the rhetoric of the “New Negro.” Throughout, we analyze specific rhetorical performances of Black citizenship, identifying rhetors’ use the available means of persuasion, their invention of new means of persuasion, and their creative appropriation of emerging print and photographic technologies. Grades are based on the following: a primary source essay (this involves archival research as well as the use of secondary sources), midterm essay exam (with an evaluative reflection), and assorted activities (including 6-8 ruminations” as well as 6-8 “news of the day” presentations drawn from nineteenth-century African American periodicals). Students are advised to take ENG/ENC 3021 before signing up for ENG 4020.