Thinking Together

“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

“A highly original collection that introduces readers not only to diversity in subjects and approaches but also to the commonalities in aspiration and pleasure. Contributors do justice to both in essays ranging from a lyceum in Liberia to meetings of soldiers imprisoned during the Civil War to immigrants on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.”

—Mary Kelley, author of Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America’s Republic

“In an era when we desperately need new ideas for reviving public deliberation, this interdisciplinary collection reminds us of a time when creative activists experimented with new ways to advance learning and promote moral and intellectual enlightenment. Extending beyond the lyceum movement, the volume recalls forums that empowered people excluded from formal education not only to speak, listen, and learn, but also to ‘think together’ about the crucial political and social issues of the day.”

—J. Michael Hogan, coeditor of Speech and Debate as Civic Education

“This collection calls attention to nineteenth-century contexts where unconventional modes of education were employed and exposes readers to alternative ways of thinking together, presented from multiple disciplinary perspectives. By looking at groups and individuals in a variety of settings, including lecturers, platform entertainers, journalists, and religious leaders, Thinking Together offers new ways to understand how we learn from one another.”

—Shirley Wilson Logan, author of Liberating Language: Sites of Rhetorical Education in Nineteenth-Century Black America

“Lecture platforms such as the lyceum were the true ‘social media’ of the nineteenth century, forging communities in pursuit of common understanding, insight, and wisdom. Ray and Stob have collected studies showing that the cultural practices of platform culture were robust even in the face of social disruption and among marginalized as well as mainstream populations. Each essay displays exemplary scholarship; together they illumine a vital but often neglected dimension of nineteenth-century public culture.”

—David Zarefsky, author of Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate

“In its mix of topics, methods, sources, and approaches, the varied examples collected together in this book emphasize how crucial opportunities for exchange were in the construction of identities (racial, gendered, colonial), the development of careers, and the sharing of new knowledge and ideas. The book recognizes the importance of diversifying historical voices and accounts and questioning received narratives.”

—Melanie Keene Isis: Journal of the History of Science Society

“Thinking Together teaches us about (to name a few things) formations of syncretic popular religion, women’s platform innovations, the creation of African American educational sites, and the Chautauqua’s reinforcement of nostalgic white supremacy. How do these historical narratives shift when we recall Native American performance in the nineteenth century? That Thinking Together is both greater than the sum of its parts and instigative of such queries regarding the performances to which it does not attend is a testament to its achievement as a shared scholarly endeavor.”

—Laura L. Mielke Rhetoric & Public Affairs