Tom F. Wright's Transatlantic Rhetoric as an American Studies Teaching Resource

Extract

I first read Tom F. Wright's Transatlantic Rhetoric: Speeches from the American Revolution to the Suffragettes in late summer 2020, while drafting the syllabus for a new undergraduate rhetoric course in my university's Writing major. I proposed “Writing across Cultural Differences” several years ago and had been waiting eagerly to teach it, only to find myself delivering the inaugural version over Zoom during the coronavirus pandemic. As I write this essay in December 2020, I am in the midst of syllabus-building email exchanges with a now-frequent teaching partner (Victorian literature specialist Linda Hughes), as we prepare to offer a graduate seminar in nineteenth-century transatlantic literature for the fourth time. (Our first foray into collaborative transatlanticism was in 2010.) While we plan for the upcoming class (also – sigh – being taught over Zoom), I am rereading Wright's book, this time focussed more on the “transatlantic” side of his title. A generative resource for my teaching in both these classes, Transatlantic Rhetoric enacts a global brand of American studies, modeling content and methodologies crucial to the field today. To illustrate, I will revisit some ways in which Wright's anthology is informing my pedagogy in this challenging COVID-shaped year.