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

Abstract

Thinking Together, edited by Angela G. Ray, an associate professor of communications studies at Northwestern University, and Paul Stob, an associate professor of communications studies at Vanderbilt University, is a heterogeneous essay collection that examines the importance of popular learning in American life. Their introduction suggests that what “links the subjects treated in this volume is that people and groups in the nineteenth century, many of whom had limited access to formal education, pursued learning and developed knowledge useful for public life” (p. 4). Section descriptors and chapter titles offer further insights regarding how this collaborative effort can be connected and realized. Part 1, “Disrupting Narratives,” explores a range of public discourses that demonstrate the varied nature of nineteenth-century knowledge and debate. These essays include: “The Portable Lyceum in the Civil War” by Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, “Women's Entrepreneurial Lecturing in the Early National Period” by Granville Ganter, “Mobilizing Irish America in the Antebellum Lecture Hall,” by Tom F. Wright, and “Authentic Imitation or Preserve Original? Learning about Race from America's Popular Platforms,” by Kirt H. Wilson and Kaitlyn G. Patia.