Revisioning Americanization through Administrative History

ABSTRACT

This article calls for an expansion of the inquiry methods used to explore rhetorical education during the Americanization movement of the early twentieth century. It offers the methodology of administrative history as an approach to help scholars gain perspective on why and how local programs were developed and implemented from the perspective of administrators and participants. This approach enables a more robust understanding of not only the complexity of Americanization programs but also the diversity of approaches that were employed.

Notes

1. I would like to thank RR reviewers Suzanne Bordelon and Jessica Enoch for their immensely helpful feedback in shaping this essay. I am also grateful to Jennifer Bay, Mary McCall, and Patti Poblete for their insights and support.

2. Following the work of Shirley Wilson Logan, I define rhetorical education as the “various combinations of experiences influencing how people understand and practice effective communication” (3). Jessica Enoch employs this term as well, defining it as “any educational program that develops in students a communal and civic identity and articulates for them the rhetorical strategies, language practices, and bodily and social behaviors that make possible their participation in communal and civic affairs” (7-8). Given the conscious efforts of the Americanization movement to shape immigrants’ social behavior through English language teaching, this term woks well to describe the array of speaking, listening, reading, and writing-related education initiatives during this time period.

3. Given the massive size of the Americanization movement, it would be impossible to discuss the totality of histories of rhetorical education programs. In this essay, I focus on a small selection of histories covering several different sites of Americanization work, such as women’s clubs (White), city, state, and settlement house classes (Dayton-Wood; McClymer), and labor settings (Wan). Through this selection, I seek to illustrate general trends in historiographic work dealing with Americanization and rhetorical education.

4. The Dillingham Commission was a research group led by U.S. Senator William Dillingham beginning in 1907 to investigate the impact of immigration on the U.S. The 42 volumes of the Commission’s report generally argued that new-wave immigrants “posed a serious threat to American society and culture and should therefore be greatly reduced” (“Dillingham Commission”).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gracemarie Mike Fillenwarth

Gracemarie Mike Fillenwarth is an assistant professor of Writing Arts at Rowan University. Her research focuses on feminist historiography and writing pedagogy across a range of contexts, including second language writing and writing in the disciplines. Her work has appeared in CEA Critic, Connexions, and IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. Readers may reach her at [email protected].