ENG 4020 Fleckenstein Fall 2022

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has long asserted that, for nineteenth-century African Americans, alphabetic literacy, or mastery of language, constituted the sine non qua of the civilized individual. Thus, even as pro-slavery advocates depicted all Blacks, free or bound, “as devoid of reason,” and therefore incapable of functioning as productive citizens, nineteenth-century African Americans “metaphorically wrote themselves to freedom by articulating the complexity of their human subjectivity” (xxxi) through language (xxxi). “Freedom” Gates observes, “was embodied in literacy precisely because the ability to create forms through language use was one of the critical mainstays of the Enlightenment and well beyond. To many, it was the most visible embodiment of reason itself, and if one were ‘reasonable,’ then one's humanity could not easily be denied” (xxxi).

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 two (of eight) moments W. E. B. Du Bois identifies in 1945 as significant in the struggle for Black civil rights: 1850-1865, examining the rhetoric of Black civic virtue; and 1866-1877, analyzing the rhetoric by which Black activists sought to retain their civic rights. Throughout, we intertwine research in history, citizenship, and rhetoric to understand the specific rhetorical performances of Black activism.

Grades are based on the following: three essays and a group presentation on an African American periodical. Note: Archival research is an integral element of this class.

Course Pre-Requisites: ENG 3021