Author: Dr. Shrout (Page 16 of 18)

By admin

In general, I’m interested in using the Davidson College Archives to source primary documents for my final project.

Three specific ideas:

1. Davidson student William Ardey kept a diary from 1862-65. The files are digitized in a searchable format. I might apply social network analysis using the people the Ardey mentions in his diary.
2. Apply network analysis to the College’s collection of “Presbytery Minutes Relating to the Founding of the College” to see who emerges as a central figure in Davidson’s founding. I expect that what the Presbytery minutes reflect may be different from what historical analysts would say do to the nature and structure of the primary source.
3. Apply topic analysis to inaugural addresses of Davidson’s founding. I will try to visualize what concepts the speakers emphasize.

By Dr. Shrout

The pieces by Warner and Stout for this week both concern the creation of new communities – one through print and the other through speech. These are simultaneous processes, but a reader of either article on its own might be forgiven for thinking that print developed separately from oral revolutionary culture, and oral revolutionary culture separately from print.

Cordelia helpfully points out that Franklin, though written about as a seminal “man of letters” might be a product, rather than a catalyst for the rise of a “republic of letters” (the same might be said of George Whitfield, the famous Great Awakening preacher). I hope we can explore in class, though, the question of whether literary reactions are inevitable in a largely literate culture? Under what circumstances do we expect oppressed populations to respond with text, and under what circumstances to we expect them to respond orally, or with violence?

Warner certainly presents a world where reacting literarily is the norm, but I think that Stout helpfully reminds us that other forms of resistance and popular culture were also possible. I also think we might (in coming weeks) need to unpack the idea of the press as a cohesive body. Certainly the reading for next Tuesday will show that there were many different circuits of Revolutionary communication.

By Cordelia

In Michael Warner’s article regarding Benjamin Franklin and his role in the press of colonial America, a line that stood out to me was the following:

“By a convenient happenstance, Franklin was also in one way or another involved in each of the political crises of the three major seaports.” (112).

Though his name is forever attached to the print revolution of revolutionary America, perhaps it was not Franklin that spearheaded the press movement but the press movement that spearheaded Franklin. He moves to major cities in the midst of political turmoil and that is when the press gains major ground, however, it could be argued that such political unrest would have caused an increase in calls for public opinion literature, Franklin or no Franklin. It’s fortunate that he was there and he certainly helped the movement, but throughout history, literate populations have responded to political dissatisfaction with literature. This was also the case in America, and Franklin just so happens to be remembered alongside it.

There is no doubting the importance of print in Franklin’s life, as pointed out by Michael Warner, nor the importance of Franklin in the transformation – or really, introduction – of the press, however, I reiterate that in times of political upheaval, the literate continuously respond with writing. See the Magna Carta – see the 95 Theses.

With the large amount of literacy in the American colonies, established primarily by religious schools – Puritan or otherwise – and the impending revolution, the creation of a widespread newspaper system could perhaps be deemed inevitable. The press helped to unify the colonies through the spread of information and this unification was arguably necessary for the upcoming war so the question lies in whether this unification by the press would have been otherwise created without it.

Another parallel question to all of this lies in whether the press developed because of the political upheaval and revolution – as a method to help it along with the increased spread of information – or whether it developed on its own alongside the unrelated happenings of the world at large. Were newspapers inevitable? Or did it take the increased calls for unification in the wake of a revolution for them to develop?

By admin

Eventually I will figure out how to get my collection onto the class Omeka site, but for now… here’s my new Omeka collection brought to you by the Davidson archives!

Heres the link http://avhaller.omeka.net/

By Dr. Shrout

The reading for today makes several sweeping arguments about American information technology from the early colonial era to the American Revolution. Centrally, he contends that early American information was top-down and restrictive, in contrast to the more open information environment of the early republic. Protestantism, Brown also posits, was central to this process.

Sherwood takes on this correlation between Protestantism and the opening up of information networks, contending that Protestantism’s central tenets were antithetical to hierarchies. I’d add to his critique another which is that not all people in early America were Protestant. I look forward to hearing more about how other religious structures would have impacted information access.

Avery continued to raise the themes that Sherwood brought up (and invoked the concept of priming, which is similar to framing). She also raises another critique – that Brown tells a story of social progress – known in history as Teleology or Whiggish history – and fails to consider challenges to that narrative of progress. I’ll add some more questions to those that Avery ended with. In a world where only propertied white men could vote, can we really talk about an informed citizenry as being pervasive? What about the information status of non-citizens?

By admin

Before I opened “A Nation Transformed by Information,” I read Sherwood’s post which accuses Brown glossing over the effects of Protestantism in early America to favor Brown’s top-down interpretation of the period’s information dissemination. And thus I primed myself to expect a sleek, too-neatly-packaged history from Brown. Although I may be suffering from confirmation bias, by his second sentence Brown fulfilled my expectations.

Brown writes that the “In global terms [the information culture in early America] was an astonishing development” because “[c]olonial society had been by European standards relatively crude, even backward” (39).

My problem with Brown’s statement is that he moves too smoothly between the local and the global. Colonial American information system development was not globally astonishing, it only seems astonishing given how different America’s infrastructure was from Europe. Europeans found colonial America’s blossoming unlikely only because America’s trajectory differed from Europe’s. Brown’s worldview is solidly Euro-centric, and it irks me that he conflates European sentiments with the global.

An even bigger sin, by not clearly contextualizing the viewpoint from which he departs (17^th and 18^th century European) Brown perpetuates what anthropologists like to call the “myth of social progress” or “myth of social evolution.” Rejecting the myth of progress means rejecting phrases like “backwards” to describe cultures and instead promoting the idea that societies do not progress, but only change. Brown does not write that contemporary Europeans found America “crude” and “backward;” he writes that America paled in comparison to “European standards,” subtly yet clearly placing Europe a rung above America on the figurative ladder of progress.

Brown goes on in his chapter to posit the various political parties’ commitment to an “informed citizenry” as the main motivation for developing a robust printing and pamphlet distribution infrastructure. But Brown’s overview left me with many questions. Who were the political parties targeting? In other words, who counted as a citizen? I would have appreciated at least a mention of who the recipients of information were.

I understand that his chapter is short and meant to provide a broad-brushed version of colonial information history, but overall the lack of nuance distracted me from being able to absorb Brown’s argument.