Jackie Bacon, '97Jackie Bacon Degree Information: Ph.D., UT Austin, 1997 Ph.D. Title: “’The humblest may stand forth’: marginalized voices in abolitionist rhetoric” Supervisor(s): Linda Ferreira-Buckley Current Position: Independent Scholar Recent Publications: Freedom’s Journal: The First African-American Newspaper (Lexington Books, 2007) “Descendents of Africa, Sons of ’76: Exploring Early African-American Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 36 (2006). (Co-authored with Glen McClish) “Reading the Reparations Debate,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 89 (2003). The Humblest May Stand Forth: Rhetoric, Empowerment, and Abolition (University of South Carolina Press, 2002) Awards/Honors (at UT and after): While in the English department at UT, I received an award from the Hanson Tufts Parlin Memorial Fund in 1993 toward travel expenses to attend the Fifth International D. H. Lawrence Conference in Ottawa, and the David Bruton, Jr. Fellowship, awarded by the University of Texas at Austin, in 1996. My 1999 article “Taking Liberty, Taking Literacy: Signifying in the Rhetoric of African-American Abolitionists” in Southern Communication Journal (volume 64) received the Southern States Communication Association’s Rose B. Johnson Southern Communication Journal article award. I was an alternate for National Endowment for the Humanities 1999-2000 Fellowship for College Teachers and Independent Scholars. The Humblest May Stand Forth was selected as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2002 by Choice magazine. What’s it like to be an independent scholar? What are the benefits? The challenges? Being an independent scholar is both wonderful and, at times, overwhelming. It is exciting to be able to pursue avenues of research and writing that interest me, and to follow research leads not knowing exactly how and when they will yield a final product. On the other hand, the lack of an outside system structuring my work (i.e. teaching schedule, tenure clock) means that I have to impose a structure on myself (schedules of goals and projects, for example) in order to avoid floundering without a direction. The main benefit to me is flexibility both in terms of family and work. I have two small children, and the leeway that my work as an independent scholar gives me helps me to be able to work within my sons’ schedules as well as my own. Although I am by nature a big planner, always charting things out in advance, parenting necessarily involves changes to one’s plans. As an independent scholar, I have the freedom to do so. There is also flexibility and freedom in my own publication and research. One of the advantages of not having to worry about a tenure file is that I can publish in magazines that are political, or that are online, or that otherwise wouldn’t seem “scholarly” enough to a committee. The main challenge is that my lack of institutional affiliation is often misunderstood or misjudged. Since my path is a nontraditional one, I have come to expect some confusion about what I am doing. Yet it is trying at times to continually be asked to explain why I am doing what I’m doing and to try to let people know that this path is right for me. Some people assume that my independent scholar status has resulted from failed searches or an inability to teach; others assume this is merely temporary. Editors at times seem to worry that I might not be connected enough in the discipline or that someone without institutional backing lacks credibility. I work hard to disprove these assumptions by keeping up with the discipline and contributing to it in various positive ways (peer reviewing, attending conferences, etc.) What are your academic interests? What courses or resources at UT helped you develop them? One of my major areas of study is African-American rhetoric and history. More generally, I am interested in the ways that people who are marginalized use rhetoric and language to fight for social justice and to empower themselves. Learning about nineteenth-century rhetoric at UT from Linda Ferreira-Buckley gave me the necessary foundations for understanding the rhetoric of antebellum social activists, both black and white. Michael Winship’s class on archival methods was invaluable, teaching me not only how to do archival research (which has been central to my work) but also how to follow paths that may seem to go in new and indeterminate directions and to alter my assumptions as I discover new information. What was the most important lesson you learned from your experience as a grad student at UT? I learned to always be open to reformulating my ideas and to challenging my assumptions. While I was a grad student, if I had an idea for a paper or turned in a draft of an essay, it was always given serious consideration, critique, and editing. Professors expected a lot from us, and they let us know that they took the task of making us into professionals seriously. This has been extremely valuable to me in working with editors, who often critique harshly even those essays that they like and want to see published eventually. From my experiences at UT, I learned that I should not let myself be overly intimidated by such responses and should not give up. As a grad student, I gained confidence that I could rise to the challenge of rewriting and rethinking an idea or an article and the courage to resubmit my writing. Looking back on your experience here, what would you say was most valuable or unique the rhetoric program? The professors in rhetoric are very approachable and treat graduate students as future peers. This is evident not only in the way they handle our work, as I note above, but in their openness to meeting with graduate students regularly and to discussing with them their future careers. Also, the professors and students in rhetoric at UT are a social, fun bunch who don’t take themselves too seriously; whenever we got together to study or to socialize, it was always friendly, open, and unpretentious. What advice would you offer prospective graduate students in rhetoric? Since rhetoric is a subject that depends upon broad understandings of language and context, take advantage of the wide range of classes offered in the UT English Department and in other departments, like Communication or History. Think of rhetoric expansively—not only as theories of persuasion or as histories of public discourse, but as a means for people to achieve self-determination, to fight for their own freedom and that of others, and to engage and improve the world. This approach allows scholars and teachers of rhetoric to make others see how important it is (and to counter the negative associations often popularly made about rhetoric). I believe it also calls us as teachers and scholars to use our own understandings of rhetoric to help others in various ways—using our skills in the public sphere on civic issues, helping students to value their own voices, or listening and responding critically to public pronouncements. |
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