Traces Of A Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women
Traces of a Stream offers a unique scholarly perspective that merges interests in rhetorical and literacy studies, United States social and political theory, and African American women writers. Focusing on elite nineteenth-century African American women who formed a new class of women well positioned to use language with consequence, Royster uses interdisciplinary perspectives (literature, history, feminist studies, African American studies, psychology, art, sociology, economics) to present a well-textured rhetorical analysis of the literate practices of these women. With a shift in educational opportunity after the Civil War, African American women gained access to higher education and received formal training in rhetoric and writing. By the end of the nineteenth-century, significant numbers of African American women operated actively in many public arenas.


In her study, Royster acknowledges the persistence of disempowering forces in the lives of African American women and their equal perseverance against these forces. Amid these conditions, Royster views the acquisition of literacy as a dynamic moment for African American women, not only in terms of their use of written language to satisfy their general needs for agency and authority, but also to fulfill socio-political purposes as well.


Traces of a Stream is a showcase for nineteenth-century African American women, and particularly elite women, as a group of writers who are currently underrepresented in rhetorical scholarship. Royster has formulated both an analytical theory and an ideological perspective that are useful in gaining a more generative understanding of literate practices as a whole and the practices of African American women in particular. Royster tells a tale of rhetorical prowess, calling for alternative ways of seeing, reading, and rendering scholarship as she seeks to establish a more suitable place for the contributions and achievements of African American women writers.
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Traces Of A Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women
Traces of a Stream offers a unique scholarly perspective that merges interests in rhetorical and literacy studies, United States social and political theory, and African American women writers. Focusing on elite nineteenth-century African American women who formed a new class of women well positioned to use language with consequence, Royster uses interdisciplinary perspectives (literature, history, feminist studies, African American studies, psychology, art, sociology, economics) to present a well-textured rhetorical analysis of the literate practices of these women. With a shift in educational opportunity after the Civil War, African American women gained access to higher education and received formal training in rhetoric and writing. By the end of the nineteenth-century, significant numbers of African American women operated actively in many public arenas.


In her study, Royster acknowledges the persistence of disempowering forces in the lives of African American women and their equal perseverance against these forces. Amid these conditions, Royster views the acquisition of literacy as a dynamic moment for African American women, not only in terms of their use of written language to satisfy their general needs for agency and authority, but also to fulfill socio-political purposes as well.


Traces of a Stream is a showcase for nineteenth-century African American women, and particularly elite women, as a group of writers who are currently underrepresented in rhetorical scholarship. Royster has formulated both an analytical theory and an ideological perspective that are useful in gaining a more generative understanding of literate practices as a whole and the practices of African American women in particular. Royster tells a tale of rhetorical prowess, calling for alternative ways of seeing, reading, and rendering scholarship as she seeks to establish a more suitable place for the contributions and achievements of African American women writers.
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Traces Of A Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women

Traces Of A Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women

by Jacqueline Jones Royster
Traces Of A Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women

Traces Of A Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women

by Jacqueline Jones Royster

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Overview

Traces of a Stream offers a unique scholarly perspective that merges interests in rhetorical and literacy studies, United States social and political theory, and African American women writers. Focusing on elite nineteenth-century African American women who formed a new class of women well positioned to use language with consequence, Royster uses interdisciplinary perspectives (literature, history, feminist studies, African American studies, psychology, art, sociology, economics) to present a well-textured rhetorical analysis of the literate practices of these women. With a shift in educational opportunity after the Civil War, African American women gained access to higher education and received formal training in rhetoric and writing. By the end of the nineteenth-century, significant numbers of African American women operated actively in many public arenas.


In her study, Royster acknowledges the persistence of disempowering forces in the lives of African American women and their equal perseverance against these forces. Amid these conditions, Royster views the acquisition of literacy as a dynamic moment for African American women, not only in terms of their use of written language to satisfy their general needs for agency and authority, but also to fulfill socio-political purposes as well.


Traces of a Stream is a showcase for nineteenth-century African American women, and particularly elite women, as a group of writers who are currently underrepresented in rhetorical scholarship. Royster has formulated both an analytical theory and an ideological perspective that are useful in gaining a more generative understanding of literate practices as a whole and the practices of African American women in particular. Royster tells a tale of rhetorical prowess, calling for alternative ways of seeing, reading, and rendering scholarship as she seeks to establish a more suitable place for the contributions and achievements of African American women writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780822957256
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date: 03/24/2000
Series: Composition, Literacy, and Culture , #163
Edition description: 1
Pages: 352
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Jacqueline Jones Royster is former Ivan Allen Jr. Chair in Liberal Arts and Technology and dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology and professor emerita at both The Ohio State University and Georgia Tech. Her research focuses on the intersections of the history of rhetoric, feminist studies, and cultural studies, with interests in the connections between human and civil rights, as well as in the digital humanities. She is the author of Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women and Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, among other titles.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgmentsix
Introduction: A Call for Other Ways of Reading3
Part 1.A Rhetorical View
1.In Search of Rivers: Womanist Writers and the Essay17
2.Toward an Analytical Model for Literacy and Sociopolitical Action42
Part 2.A Historical View
3.The Genesis of Authority: When African Women Became American77
4.Going Against the Grain: The Acquisition and Use of Literacy108
5.From This Fertile Ground: The Development of Rhetorical Prowess176
Photographic Essay: African American Women Rhetors, When and Where They Enter239
Part 3.An Ideological View
6.A View from a Bridge: Afrafeminist Ideologies and Rhetorical Studies251
Appendix 1.Some Early African American Women Contributors, Editors, Publishers, and Owners of Periodical Publications289
Appendix 2.Some Early Periodical Publications with Which African American Women Writers Were Associated295
Notes297
Bibliography307
Index327

What People are Saying About This

Lucille M. Schultz

Lucille M. Schultz, University of Cincinnati

Traces of a Stream is stunning. I would recommend it with great enthusiasm to anyone interested in nineteenth-century studies, African American studies, women’s studies, or composition and rhetoric. Royster brings to light writers whose work is simply not included in the current research on literacy. And the primary sources she draws on—especially those periodicals with which nineteenth-century African American women writers were associated— serve as a powerful reminder that scholars interested in literacy and social change have only begun to explore nineteenth-century archives.—Lucille M. Schultz, University of Cincinnati

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