The Return of Political Oratory?

According to Jodi Kantor's article in today's "New York Times," Barack Obama "stood apart" from his colleagues when he was a law professor during his 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School. Some of Kantor's "inside details" about Obama's academic performance include Obama's suprising disinterest in publishing within academe and snubbing colleagues. However, he broke ground in offering courses on race and law among students who embraced him for his sharp skills in argument as well as for his approachable manner in teaching law, especially within the context of race. According to Kantor:

"His [Obama's] most original course, a historical and political seminar as much as a legal one, was on racism and law. Mr. Obama improvised his own textbook, including classic cases like Brown v. Board of Education, and essays by Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Dubois, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, as well as conservative thinkers like Robert H. Bork."

In addition to a featured syllabus, the article also drew my interest because of Obama's reverence for Frederick Douglass, which was a remembered by a former student. According to Kantor:

"Byron Rodriguez, a real estate lawyer in San Francisco, recalls his professor’s admiration for the soaring but plainspoken speeches of Frederick Douglass.

'No one speaks this way anymore,' Mr. Obama told his class, wondering aloud what had happened to the art of political oratory. In particular, Mr. Obama admired Douglass’s use of a collective voice that embraced black and white concerns, one that Mr. Obama has now adopted himself."

Obama indeed read my mind about the existence of the art of political oratory. Throughout his campaign, Obama has reminded us that he has achieved and now joined an important place within a diverse African American rhetorical tradition, which includes Douglass, DuBois, hooks and West. Even if he doesn't win the election, he has still made history.

Also, Obama has brought back eloquence. However, some are asking if that eloquence is supported by action. There can be no doubt that Obama's efforts in teaching race and law is evidence that his rhetoric is one about action.

Check out the article for yourselves:

"Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Slightly Apart"

Remembering Sin Fronteras/Without Borders

Frederick Douglass and Gloria E. Anzaldua are two rhetors whose rhetorical works will receive much attention in my dissertation on memory.

To date, Andrea Lunsford has provided scholars within our field an illuminating interview with Anzaldua wheareas Patricia Bizzell has written articles about the works of Frederick Douglass, as well as writing an introduction to the rhetorical works by Douglass and Anzaldua in The Rhetorical Tradition with Bruce Herzberg.

In talking about and remembering Gloria Anzaldua, I'm always searching for the ways in which scholars, activists, and writers remember her presence in their lives and the impression her work made on up and coming scholars in various fields/disciplines.

Shortly after the death of Anzaldua, Chicana historian Yolanda Chavez Leyva wrote a memorial tribute to Anzaldua as a way to remember someone who inspired Chavez Leyva to become an activist. Here, "activist" refers to the commitment to giving back to one's community instead of only thinking of the self in isolation.

There can be no doubt that this article further reinforced the argument that Anzaldua remains a critical figure in the Mexicana/Chicana rhetorical tradition, which has been eloquently advocated by rhetoric scholar Jessica Enoch in her article "Para La Mujer: Defining a Chicana Feminist Rhetoric at the Turn of the Century".

In remembering Anzaldua, Chavez Leyva writes:

"She loved words. She loved learning. She loved teaching. She became an avid reader as a child and a prolific writer as an adult. She worked with migrant farm worker children in the 1960s and university students from then on." (21)

There can be no doubt that Anzaldua gave back and, to date, continues to exemplify the term "activist" for the rest of us engaged in writing/escritura.

The aspects of Anzaldua's writing that I wish to explore at this point is how she used new age concepts and brought them to the act of writing. I am also interested in learning how she fused the spiritual with the act of using words in writing. I'm also drawn to the way that Anzaldua blended the spiritual and the political. All of these interests are driving my research and is the basis of a new collection of essays I am collecting on the impression that her work has had on my thinking as a citizen of El Mundo Zurdo.

(article above courtesy of "The Progressive")

"The Columbian Orator"

The Columbian Orator is a collection of speeches, dialogues, sermons, and poems published in 1797 and edited by Caleb Bingham. It was used as a textbook in American classrooms during the nineteenth century and--most importantly--profoundly influenced Frederick Douglass. According to historian Gregory P. Lampe's Frederick Douglass: Freedom's Voice, 1818-1845, The Columbian Orator gave the abolitionist orator the rhetorical skills that he needed to argue against the insitution of slavery. The website "E Pluribus Unum Project" contains some highlights as to the text's influence, especially on Douglass.

(Photo Courtesy of and featured in the digital library titled Nineteenth Century Schoolbooks)

Currently Reading....