Thinking Together

Angela G. Ray is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University and the author of The Lyceum and Public Culture in the Nineteenth-Century United States.Paul Stob is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Vanderbilt University and the author of William James and the Art of Popular Statement.

• ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction (Angela G. Ray and Paul Stob)Part 1: Disrupting Narratives1. The Portable Lyceum in the Civil War (Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray)2. Women’s Entrepreneurial Lecturing in the Early National Period (Granville Ganter)3. Mobilizing Irish America in the Antebellum Lecture Hall (Tom F. Wright)4. Authentic Imitation or Perverse Original? Learning About Race from America’s Popular Platforms (Kirt H. Wilson and Kaitlyn G. Patia)Part 2: Distinctive Voices5. A Lyceum Diaspora: Hilary Teage and a Liberian Civic Identity (Bjørn F. Stillion Southard)6. Secret Knowledge, Public Stage; Joseph Smith’s King Follett Discourse (Richard Benjamin Crosby)7 .The “Perfect Delight” of Dramatic Reading: Gertrude Kellogg and the Post-Civil War Lyceum (Sara E. Lampert)8. Talking Music: Amy Fay and the Origins of the Lecture Recital (E. Douglas Bomberger)9. Hinduism for the West: Swami Vivekananda’s Pluralism at the World’s Parliament of Religions (Scott R. Stroud)Conclusion: Placing Platform Culture in Nineteenth-Century American Life (Carolyn Eastman)NotesList of ContributorsIndex

“Thinking Together explores popular learning in the United States during the long nineteenth century through case studies of a broad multiplicity of lyceum speakers. Maintaining the particularity of each case, the volume vividly illustrates how distinct racial, ethnic, gender, and religious groups and individuals not only educated themselves but also constructed a sense of belonging while forging spiritual and political communities.”—Susan Zaeske, author of Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women's Political Identity