- 14
- Episodes
- 2022
- First episode
About Hidden Literacies
Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children. This podcast includes interviews with contributors to Hidden Literacies and explores how they discovered these fascinating examples of literacy, how they interpret them, and why they matter. These interviews were recorded in 2020-2021, and all content reflects those dates.
- Publisher
- Hidden Literacies
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- history
- Language
- en
- Explicit
- No
- First episode
- 1 Nov 2022
- Latest episode
- 1 Nov 2022
Latest episodes
14 episodes in the feed.
1 Nov 2022
Trailer
Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from Indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children. By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers. This podcast includes interviews with contributors to Hidden Literacies and explores how they discovered these fascinating examples of literacy, how they interpret them, and why they matter. Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org (https://www.hiddenliteracies.org) Transcript: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16pZw0llfV0E5qGHuj392N00Lv-JIGj37/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/16pZw0llfV0E5qGHuj392N00Lv-JIGj37/view?usp=sharing) Sound Credits: “Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)
1 Nov 2022
Interview with Caroline Wigginton on “Visions, Versions, and Deeds”
At first glance, the archives show her to be Mary Bosomworth, wife of an English colonist, bereft of a voice or any rights separate from his. But a careful reading reveals Coosaponakeesa, a Creek "language bearer," whose multiple modes of literacy reflect multiple versions of a distinct self: a Native woman navigating the English social and political world. Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1InAInX8xYJAHGsJ5Aa0LBZKhOQuXC9Ur/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1InAInX8xYJAHGsJ5Aa0LBZKhOQuXC9Ur/view?usp=sharing) Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org (https://www.hiddenliteracies.org) Learn more about Caroline Wigginton’s work here: https://english.olemiss.edu/caroline-wigginton/ (https://english.olemiss.edu/caroline-wigginton/) Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children. By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers. Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss. Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies. Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies. Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services: Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney. Sound Credits: “Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)
1 Nov 2022
Interview with Karen Sanchez-Eppler on "Juvenile Journalism and Genocide"
A group of boys in 1890s New Hampshire played at writing, editing, and publishing a manuscript magazine about an elaborate fictional world based on their own back yard. Their writing deftly mimicked the real world of children's periodicals -- and unwittingly illuminated the violent social reality young white men were entering in the U.S. of the late nineteenth century. Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u3DNMi8N0XdcUdpKnbrCwgtfYEq_cLJX/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u3DNMi8N0XdcUdpKnbrCwgtfYEq_cLJX/view?usp=sharing) Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org (https://www.hiddenliteracies.org) Learn more about Karen Sanchez-Eppler’s work here: https://www.amherst.edu/people/facstaff/kjsanchezepp (https://www.amherst.edu/people/facstaff/kjsanchezepp) Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children. By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers. Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss. Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies. Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies. Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services: Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney. Sound Credits: “Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)
1 Nov 2022
Interview with Margaret Noodin on “Birch-Bark Publications of Simon Pokagan”
On this episode, Margaret Noodin interprets stories by Simon Pokagon, a nineteenth-century author and member of the Pokogon band of the Potawatomi tribe. Rather than reading the texts for story or narrative, Margaret is interested in the ways these stories preserve knowledge about climate change. Specifically, Pokagon’s work describes how to live in a certain region along the Eastern Shore line of what is now known as Lake Michigan and reveals how people there were aware of the watershed and how it changed. Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nIdIU6eS_wczhWdo-TdKirWuaUjWotvb/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nIdIU6eS_wczhWdo-TdKirWuaUjWotvb/view?usp=sharing) Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org (https://www.hiddenliteracies.org) Learn more about Margaret Noodin’s work here: https://uwm.edu/english/our-people/noodin-margaret/ (https://uwm.edu/english/our-people/noodin-margaret/) Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children. By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers. Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss. Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies. Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies. Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services: Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney. Sound Credits: “Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)
1 Nov 2022
Interview with Kelly Wisecup on “Accounting for Mary Fowler Occom”
An account of household purchases may seem trivial or banal, but in the case of the Indigenous woman Mary Fowler Occom--whose history lies in the shadow of her better-known husband, the Mohegan preacher Samson Occom, who himself labored in the shadow of his erstwhile mentor, the founder of Dartmouth College--the details of housekeeping shine a light on what's otherwise hidden. Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LdRacQYobq0HqSO6S2bfqOq-OAhMNxcd/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LdRacQYobq0HqSO6S2bfqOq-OAhMNxcd/view?usp=sharing) Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org (https://www.hiddenliteracies.org) Learn more about Kelly Wisecup’s work here: https://english.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/wisecup-kelly.html (https://english.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/wisecup-kelly.html) Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children. By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers. Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss. Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies. Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies. Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services: Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney. Sound Credits: “Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)
1 Nov 2022
Interview with Tara Bynum on “Cesar Lyndon Was Here”
An enslaved man in eighteenth-century Rhode Island kept an account book in fine handwriting. But how much can a simple inventory of goods, in pounds and pence, really tell us? As Tara Bynum reveals, it actually documents a vibrant African American community enjoying each other's company at a pig roast. Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oNCTc1UpMDRMyON72AnEVG1XUzvuqoKD/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oNCTc1UpMDRMyON72AnEVG1XUzvuqoKD/view?usp=sharing) Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org (https://www.hiddenliteracies.org) Learn more about Tara Bynum’s work here: https://english.uiowa.edu/people/tara-bynum (https://english.uiowa.edu/people/tara-bynum) Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children. By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers. Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss. Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies. Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies. Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services: Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney. Sound Credits: “Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)
1 Nov 2022
Interview with Jodi Schorb on “Writing the Prison”
The supposedly modern reformers who conceived New York state's Auburn Penitentiary forbade writing by inmates. But as the formerly incarcerated writer John Maroney made clear in his autobiography, there are other ways literacy could inform life in prison -- and there was a lot the literacy of the imprisoned could do. Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CdNwPpk7l4uWYRr0fsMwmoF5s6_n6Tkl/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CdNwPpk7l4uWYRr0fsMwmoF5s6_n6Tkl/view?usp=sharing) Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org (https://www.hiddenliteracies.org) Learn more about Jodi Schorb’s work here: https://english.ufl.edu/jodi-schorb/ (https://english.ufl.edu/jodi-schorb/) Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children. By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers. Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss. Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies. Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies. Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services: Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney. Sound Credits: “Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)
1 Nov 2022
Hidden Literacies: An Introduction
Hidden Literacies is an archive of a sort that most people—even many students and teachers of American literature—have not seen. It includes texts created by people who weren’t formally educated or whose ways of reading and writing were not mainstream in their own time; texts that have been rarely or unevenly preserved, that are hard for non-specialists to make sense of. By making these kinds of texts newly accessible, Hidden Literacies makes the human lives and experiences behind them newly visible. On this introductory episode of Hidden Literacies, the podcast, we’ll hear from the project founders, Hilary Wyss and Christopher Hager, both of Trinity College. Chris Hager is a professor of English and Hilary Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith, professor of English. Chris and Hilary describe their own encounters with hidden literacies as researchers and scholars and explore what it means for texts to be “hidden.” Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XVShtHGrK1v5MgS-_gHMQBhqBohKT20v/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XVShtHGrK1v5MgS-_gHMQBhqBohKT20v/view?usp=sharing) Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org (https://www.hiddenliteracies.org) Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children. By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers. Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss. Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies. Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies. Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services: Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney. Sound Credits: “Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)
1 Nov 2022
Interview with Andrew Newman on “Permit Us to Speak Plainly”
Members of the Munsee community had been displaced to present-day Kansas by the 1840s, but they well recalled their northeastern homelands and knew what befell their ancestors more than two centuries before. When they described their legacy of dispossession in a petition to the U.S. President in 1849, their "X-mark" signatures connoted illiteracy--but the history they recounted showed enduring and reliable knowledge. Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16vqXkYKH_ZMHWSUgS-Vg2Q_tOSECk6F_/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/16vqXkYKH_ZMHWSUgS-Vg2Q_tOSECk6F_/view?usp=sharing) Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org (https://www.hiddenliteracies.org) Learn more about Andrew Newman’s work here: https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/english/people/newman.php (https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/english/people/newman.php) Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children. By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers. Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss. Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies. Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies. Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services: Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney. Sound Credits: “Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)
1 Nov 2022
Interview with Philip Round on “Outlandish Characters”
The early 19th-century Kickapoo leader Kenekuk contrived a unique, non-alphabetic representation of a religious vision and inscribed it on ten-inch wooden boards. The "prayer stick" proliferated and helped galvanize a religious community. But what does it say, and for whose eyes is its message? Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W__9Z0Qj-LYm6bJy_YPmf6QZ2viiH-1_/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W__9Z0Qj-LYm6bJy_YPmf6QZ2viiH-1_/view?usp=sharing) Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org (https://www.hiddenliteracies.org) Learn more about Phillip Round’s work here: https://english.uiowa.edu/people/phillip-round (https://english.uiowa.edu/people/phillip-round) Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children. By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers. Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss. Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies. Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies. Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services: Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney. Sound Credits: “Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)
1 Nov 2022
Interview with Ellen Cushman on “Letters and Characters”
The Cherokee syllabary, created by Sequoyah in the early nineteenth century, is among the most remarkable inventions in the modern history of literacy. Ellen Cushman shows us what it made possible for a community of Cherokee men in an Oklahoma penitentiary during the 1950s. Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r41rDKqha4q8N7NZQCrN2wNDJ_3pvf5S/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r41rDKqha4q8N7NZQCrN2wNDJ_3pvf5S/view?usp=sharing) Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org (https://www.hiddenliteracies.org) Learn more about Ellen Cushman’s work here: https://cssh.northeastern.edu/faculty/ellen-cushman/ (https://cssh.northeastern.edu/faculty/ellen-cushman/) Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children. By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers. Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss. Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies. Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies. Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services: Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney. Sound Credits: “Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)
1 Nov 2022
Hidden in the Archives
However texts that survive are created, used, and preserved, it is invariably the case that archiving serves other interests than those of the creators. A whole host of people render judgments on a text’s purpose, meaning, and value: the historical actors who kept some papers and discarded others, who gave what they kept to a library or historical society (or didn’t); the professional archivists who catalog it in certain ways and make it accessible in certain contexts; the researchers and readers who encounter texts via certain kinds of information—key words, finding aids—and see them through lenses of their own. Archives get reinvented over and over again by different generations of librarians and scholars. Along the way, knowledge can be lost or forgotten. Hidden Literacies emerges from our sense of responsibility to find anew what might have been left aside by a different generation, or by those looking for different kinds of materials. On this episode, we hear from two archivists at institutions contributing items to Hidden Literacies, Ilene Frank, Chief Curator at the Connecticut Historical Society and Christina Bleyer, Assistant Vice President for Libraries and Distinctive Collections. They discuss the roles archives play in preservation, whose stories archives allow us to tell and what digitizing items like those in our anthology can mean for people invested in exploring our shared past. Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xLg2QsU4MyTrPXV_wx92eVQ7PMQhpNrV/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xLg2QsU4MyTrPXV_wx92eVQ7PMQhpNrV/view?usp=sharing) Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org (https://www.hiddenliteracies.org) Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children. By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers. Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss. Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies. Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies. Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services: Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney. Sound Credits: “Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)
1 Nov 2022
Interview with Matt Cohen on “Walt Whitman’s Baby Talk”
"In the spring of 1875, the poet Walt Whitman, then living in Camden, New Jersey, received an unusual piece of fan mail from the South..." With wry understatement, so begins Matt Cohen's commentary on this artifact, bizarre even by the standards of Weird Americana. With a commitment to a close examination of the original, unregularized text, Cohen connects Johnson's engagement with Whitman's poetics of Democracy to the revanchist Southern nationalism that emerged after the Civil War, our contemporary wrestling with the problematics of commemoration, and his own experiences of the Tennessee River valley and Northern condescension to ideas of Southern literacy - Walt Whitman's Baby Talk (https://dsp.domains.trincoll.edu/HL/hidden-literacies/an-unusual-piece-of-fan-mail). Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BscE3PppfAbPO0tB5hCE4Kt4BfT2iGj0/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BscE3PppfAbPO0tB5hCE4Kt4BfT2iGj0/view?usp=sharing) Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org (https://www.hiddenliteracies.org) Learn more about Matt Cohen’s work here: https://www.unl.edu/english/matt-cohen (https://www.unl.edu/english/matt-cohen) Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children. By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers. Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss. Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies. Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies. Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services: Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney. Sound Credits: “Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)
1 Nov 2022
Interview with Katy Chiles on “Phillis Wheatley, Amanuensis – a letter from Susanna"
A letter from a prosperous Boston matron may not seem a surprising or noteworthy exercise of literacy -- until it appears, as scholar Katy Chiles proposes, that the handwriting of the letter likely belongs to Phillis Wheatley. What does it mean if the forced labor of this enslaved poet, now acclaimed as one of the progenitors of African American literature, taking dictation from her elderly enslaver? On this episode, Katy describes how she found the letter, and why it’s important to consider Philllis Wheatley’s work as an Amanuensis, or person who took dictation, in addition to her better-known work as a poetry. Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rU-z1yp4zJ-UxVmDS_7D-bP7SnrxC4dB/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rU-z1yp4zJ-UxVmDS_7D-bP7SnrxC4dB/view?usp=sharing) Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org (https://www.hiddenliteracies.org) Learn more about Katy Chile’s work here: https://english.utk.edu/katy-chiles/ (https://english.utk.edu/katy-chiles/) Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children. By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers. Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss. Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies. Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies. Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services: Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney. Sound Credits: “Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)
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