Pedagogies of Public Memory: Teaching Writing and Rhetoric at Museums, Memorials, and Archives

210 Pages·2015·2.08 MB·English

by  Jane Greer

Pedagogies of Public Memory
Pedagogies of Public Memory explores opportunities for writing and rhetorical
education at museums, archives, and memorials. Readers will follow students
working and writing at well-known sites of international interest (e.g., the Flight
93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum), at local sites (e.g., vernacular memorials in and around
Muncie, Indiana and the Central Pennsylvania African American Museum in
Reading, Pennsylvania), and in digital spaces (e.g., Florida State University’s
Postcard Archive and The Women’s Archive Project at the U niversity of Nebraska
Omaha). From composing and delivering museum tours, to designing online
memorials that challenge traditional practices of public grief, to producing and
publishing a magazine containing the photographs and stories of individuals
who lived through historic moments in the Freedom Struggle, to expanding and
creating new public archives – the pedagogical projects described in this volume
create richly textured learning opportunities for students at all levels – from
first-year writers to graduate students. The students and faculty whose work
is represented in this volume undertake to reposition the past in the present
and to imagine possible new futures for themselves and their communities. By
exploring the production of public memory, this volume raises important new
questions about the intersection of rhetoric and remembrance.
Jane Greer is Associate Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies
at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, USA. She is the editor of Girls
and Literacy in America (2003), and her scholarship has been published in
College English, College Composition and Communication, English Journal,
Women’s Studies Quarterly, and numerous edited collections.
Laurie Grobman is Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Pennsylvania
State University Berks, USA. She is the 2014 Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching Outstanding Baccalaureate Colleges Professor of
the Year. Grobman has published two books: Multicultural Hybridity: Trans-
forming American Literary Scholarship and Pedagogy (2007) and Teaching at
the Crossroads: Cultures and Critical Perspectives in Literature by Women of
Color (2001), and she has edited Undergraduate Research in English Studies
(2010) and On Location: Theory and Practice in Classroom-Based Writing
Tutoring (2005).
Routledge Studies in Rhetoric and Communication
1 Rhetorics, Literacies, and 9 The Rhetoric of Food
Narratives of Sustainability Discourse, Materiality,
Edited by Peter Goggin and Power
Edited by Joshua J. Frye
2 Queer Temporalities in Gay and Michael S. Bruner
Male Representation
Tragedy, Normativity, and 10 The Multimediated Rhetoric
Futurity of the Internet
Dustin Bradley Goltz Digital Fusion
Carolyn Handa
3 The Rhetoric of Intellectual
Property 11 Communicating Marginalized
Copyright Law and the Masculinities
Regulation of Digital Culture Identity Politics in TV, Film,
Jessica Reyman and New Media
Edited by Ronald
4 Media Representations of L. Jackson II and Jamie
Gender and Torture Post-9/11 E. Moshin
Marita Gronnvoll
12 Perspectives on Human-Animal
5 Rhetoric, Remembrance, and Communication
Visual Form Internatural Communication
Sighting Memory Edited by Emily Plec
Edited by Anne Teresa Demo
and Bradford Vivian 13 Rhetoric and Discourse in
Supreme Court Oral
6 Reading, Writing, and the Arguments
Rhetorics of Whiteness Sensemaking in Judicial
Wendy Ryden and Ian Marshall Decisions
Ryan A. Malphurs
7 Radical Pedagogies of Socrates
and Freire 14 Rhetoric, History, and
Ancient Rhetoric/Radical Praxis Women’s Oratorical
S.G. Brown Education
American Women Learn
8 Ecology, Writing Theory, and to Speak
New Media: Writing Ecology Edited by David Gold and
Edited by Sidney I. Dobrin Catherine L. Hobbs
15 Cultivating Cosmopolitanism 20 Communication, Public
for Intercultural Discourse, and Road Safety
Communication Campaigns
Communicating as Global Persuading People to Be Safer
Citizens Nurit Guttman
Miriam Sobré-Denton
and Nilanjana Bardhan 21 Mapping Christian Rhetorics
Connecting Conversations,
16 Environmental Rhetoric Charting New Territories
and Ecologies of Place Edited by Michael-John
Edited by Peter N. Goggin DePalma and Jeffrey M. Ringer
17 Rhetoric and Ethics in the 22 Identity and Power in
Cybernetic Age Narratives of Displacement
The Transhuman Condition Katrina M. Powell
Jeff Pruchnic
23 Pedagogies of Public Memory
18 Communication, Public Teaching Writing and Rhetoric
Opinion, and Globalization in at Museums, Archives, and
Urban China Memorials
Francis L.F. Lee, Chin-Chuan Edited by Jane Greer and
Lee, Mike Z. Yao, Tsan-Kuo Laurie Grobman
Chang, Fen Jennifer Lin, and
Chris Fei Shen
19 Adaptive Rhetoric
Evolution, Culture, and the Art
of Persuasion
Alex C. Parrish
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Pedagogies of Public Memory
Teaching Writing and Rhetoric at
Museums, Archives, and Memorials
Edited by
Jane Greer and Laurie Grobman
First published 2016
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the
authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
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and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Pedagogies of public memory : teaching writing and rhetoric at museums, archives, and
memorials / edited by Jane Greer and Laurie Grobman.
pages cm. — (Routledge studies in rhetoric and communication ; 23)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Communication in museums. 2. Museums—Social aspects. 3. Museums—Educational
aspects. 4. Museums—Public relations. 5. Museum visitors. 6. Authorship. 7. Narration
(Rhetoric) I. Greer, Jane, 1964- editor, author. II. Grobman, Laurie, 1962- editor, author.
AM125.P43 2015
069'.15—dc23 2015000690
ISBN: 978-1-138-90373-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-69667-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Contents
List of Table and Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Complicating Conversations:
Public Memory Production and Composition & Rhetoric 1
JANE GREER AND LAURIE GROBMAN
PART I
Museums
1 Remembering the Children of Lodz: Conducting
Public Research with the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum in a First-Year Writing Course 35
CAYO GAMBER AND BILL GILLIS
2 Sitting Still in the Right Places: Remembering
and Writing Civil Rights History in Prince Edward
County, Virginia 47
HEATHER LETTNER-RUST, LARISSA SMITH FERGESON,
AND MICHAEL MERGEN
3 “Keepers of Memory”: First-Year Writers and the
Central Pennsylvania African American Museum 61
LAURIE GROBMAN
4 Learning Out Loud: Freeman Tilden, Interpretation,
and Rhetorical Performance at The National Museum of Toys
and Miniatures 74
JANE GREER AND LAURA TAYLOR
viii Contents
PART II
Archives
5 A Pedagogy for the Ethics of Remembering: Producing
Public Memory for the Women’s Archive Project 91
TAMMIE M. KENNEDY AND ANGELIKA L. WALKER
6 Talking Back: Writing Assistants Renegotiate the
Public Memory of Writing Centers 105
PATTY WILDE, MOLLY TETREAULT, AND SARAH B. FRANCO
7 “Many Happy Returns”: Student Archivists as
Curators of Public Memory 117
MICHAEL NEAL, KATHERINE BRIDGMAN,
AND STEPHEN J. MCELROY
PART III
Memorials
8 Writing on the Frontlines of Public Memory: English
and History Undergraduates Contributing to the Flight
93 Oral History Project 135
DOUGLAS D. PAGE AND LAURA E. ROTUNNO
9 Teaching and Inventing Public Memorials: Chicago
Women Rhetors 147
JULIE A. BOKSER
10 In Loving Memory: Vernacular Memorials and
Engaged Writing 160
DEBORAH M. MIX
11 Teaching the Repulsive Memorial 171
BARRY JASON MAUER, JOHN VENECEK, AMY LARNER GIROUX,
PATRICIA CARLTON, MARCY GALBREATH, AND VALERIE KASPER
Contributors 185
Index 193
List of Table and Figures
TAbLE
1.1 This chart highlights the five different stages of
research in the Children of the Lodz Ghetto project
site, indicating what repositories the students may
access in their search for information about the
children of Lodz. 39
FIGURES
2.1 Mr. Nunnally’s certificate of completion of the
summer program 1965. Photo by Bart Kendrick. 54
2.2 Aleija “Mickie” Pride Carrington in the auditorium
of the Moton Museum. Photo by Samantha Hedger. 56
2.3 Linda Hogan’s story of raising tobacco to afford
private school tuition. Photo by Mike Kropf. 57
3.1 Edward Walker’s grave marker at the Charles
Evans Cemetery in Reading, PA. Photo taken
by Katie Legenski on 21 Oct. 2012. 70
4.1 Teddy Roosevelt’s Adventures in Africa, Schoenhut,
1909 (The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures). 77
4.2 Queen Anne Secretary, Frank Early, 1924
(The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures). 77
4.3 Colonial Mansion Dollhouse, Tynietoy, c. 1925
(The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures). 82
5.1 The Women’s Archive Project website landing page;
“UNO Women’s Archive Project website”; Image by
Tracy Bridgeford; Used by permission of Tracy
Bridgeford and UNO University Communications. 93
5.2 Graduate student Jessi Thomsen illustrates the research
process and the development of her own “passionate
attachment” with her research subject; “Passionate
Attachment”; Image from Going Down the Rabbit Hole
by Jessi Thomsen; Used by permission of Jessi Thomsen. 96