Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from Indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children.  By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers. This podcast includes interviews with contributors to Hidden Literacies and explores how they discovered these fascinating examples of literacy, how they interpret them, and why they matter.

Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org

Transcript: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16pZw0llfV0E5qGHuj392N00Lv-JIGj37/view?usp=sharing

Sound Credits:

“Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)

On this episode, Margaret Noodin interprets stories by Simon Pokagon, a nineteenth-century author and member of the Pokogon band of the Potawatomi tribe. Rather than reading the texts for story or narrative, Margaret is interested in the ways these stories preserve knowledge about climate change. Specifically, Pokagon’s work describes how to live in a certain region along the Eastern Shore line of what is now known as Lake Michigan and reveals how people there were aware of the watershed and how it changed.

Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nIdIU6eS_wczhWdo-TdKirWuaUjWotvb/view?usp=sharing

Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org

Learn more about Margaret Noodin’s work here: https://uwm.edu/english/our-people/noodin-margaret/

Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children.  By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers.

Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss.

Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies.

Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies.

Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services:

Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian

Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator

Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian

Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney.

Sound Credits:

“Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)

An enslaved man in eighteenth-century Rhode Island kept an account book in fine handwriting. But how much can a simple inventory of goods, in pounds and pence, really tell us? As Tara Bynum reveals, it actually documents a vibrant African American community enjoying each other's company at a pig roast.

Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oNCTc1UpMDRMyON72AnEVG1XUzvuqoKD/view?usp=sharing

Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org

Learn more about Tara Bynum’s work here: https://english.uiowa.edu/people/tara-bynum

Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children.  By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers.

Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss.

Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies.

Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies.

Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services:

Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian

Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator

Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian

Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney.

Sound Credits:

“Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)

The early 19th-century Kickapoo leader Kenekuk contrived a unique, non-alphabetic representation of a religious vision and inscribed it on ten-inch wooden boards.  The "prayer stick" proliferated and helped galvanize a religious community.  But what does it say, and for whose eyes is its message?

Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W__9Z0Qj-LYm6bJy_YPmf6QZ2viiH-1_/view?usp=sharing

Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org

Learn more about Phillip Round’s work here: https://english.uiowa.edu/people/phillip-round

Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children.  By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers.

Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss.

Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies.

Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies.

Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services:

Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian

Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator

Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian

Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney.

Sound Credits:

“Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)

The supposedly modern reformers who conceived New York state's Auburn Penitentiary forbade writing by inmates. But as the formerly incarcerated writer John Maroney made clear in his autobiography, there are other ways literacy could inform life in prison -- and there was a lot the literacy of the imprisoned could do.

Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CdNwPpk7l4uWYRr0fsMwmoF5s6_n6Tkl/view?usp=sharing

Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org

Learn more about Jodi Schorb’s work here: https://english.ufl.edu/jodi-schorb/

Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children.  By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers.

Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss.

Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies.

Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies.

Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services:

Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian

Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator

Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian

Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney.

Sound Credits:

“Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)

The Cherokee syllabary, created by Sequoyah in the early nineteenth century, is among the most remarkable inventions in the modern history of literacy. Ellen Cushman shows us what it made possible for a community of Cherokee men in an Oklahoma penitentiary during the 1950s.

Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r41rDKqha4q8N7NZQCrN2wNDJ_3pvf5S/view?usp=sharing

Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org

Learn more about Ellen Cushman’s work here: https://cssh.northeastern.edu/faculty/ellen-cushman/

Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children.  By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers.

Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss.

Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies.

Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies.

Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services:

Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian

Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator

Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian

Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney.

Sound Credits:

“Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)

An account of household purchases may seem trivial or banal, but in the case of the Indigenous woman Mary Fowler Occom--whose history lies in the shadow of her better-known husband, the Mohegan preacher Samson Occom, who himself labored in the shadow of his erstwhile mentor, the founder of Dartmouth College--the details of housekeeping shine a light on what's otherwise hidden.

Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LdRacQYobq0HqSO6S2bfqOq-OAhMNxcd/view?usp=sharing

Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org

Learn more about Kelly Wisecup’s work here: https://english.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/wisecup-kelly.html

Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children.  By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers.

Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss.

Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies.

Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies.

Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services:

Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian

Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator

Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian

Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney.

Sound Credits:

“Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)

At first glance, the archives show her to be Mary Bosomworth, wife of an English colonist, bereft of a voice or any rights separate from his.  But a careful reading reveals Coosaponakeesa, a Creek "language bearer," whose multiple modes of literacy reflect multiple versions of a distinct self: a Native woman navigating the English social and political world.

Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1InAInX8xYJAHGsJ5Aa0LBZKhOQuXC9Ur/view?usp=sharing

Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org

Learn more about Caroline Wigginton’s work here: https://english.olemiss.edu/caroline-wigginton/

Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children.  By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers.

Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss.

Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies.

Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies.

Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services:

Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian

Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator

Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian

Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney.

Sound Credits:

“Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)

A group of boys in 1890s New Hampshire played at writing, editing, and publishing a manuscript magazine about an elaborate fictional world based on their own back yard.  Their writing deftly mimicked the real world of children's periodicals -- and unwittingly illuminated the violent social reality young white men were entering in the U.S. of the late nineteenth century.

Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u3DNMi8N0XdcUdpKnbrCwgtfYEq_cLJX/view?usp=sharing

Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org

Learn more about Karen Sanchez-Eppler’s work here: https://www.amherst.edu/people/facstaff/kjsanchezepp

Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children.  By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers.

Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss.

Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies.

Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies.

Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services:

Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian

Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator

Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian

Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney.

Sound Credits:

“Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)

Members of the Munsee community had been displaced to present-day Kansas by the 1840s, but they well recalled their northeastern homelands and knew what befell their ancestors more than two centuries before.  When they described their legacy of dispossession in a petition to the U.S. President in 1849, their "X-mark" signatures connoted illiteracy--but the history they recounted showed enduring and reliable knowledge.

Transcript link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16vqXkYKH_ZMHWSUgS-Vg2Q_tOSECk6F_/view?usp=sharing

Explore Hidden Literacies at https://www.hiddenliteracies.org

Learn more about Andrew Newman’s work here: https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/english/people/newman.php

Hidden Literacies brings together leading scholars of historical literacy to investigate the surprising, often neglected roles reading and writing have played in the lives of marginalized Americans—from indigenous and enslaved people to prisoners and young children.  By presenting high-resolution images of archival texts and pairing them with expert commentary, Hidden Literacies aims to make these writers and texts—which too often lie below the radar of American literature curricula—more available and accessible to teachers and researchers.

Hidden Literacies is edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss.

Christopher Hager is Professor of English at Trinity College, where he teaches courses in American literature and American Studies.

Hilary E. Wyss is the Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches courses in early American literature, American studies, and Native American studies.

Hidden Literacies was produced with the support of the following staff members of Trinity College Information Technology & Library Services:

Cait Kennedy, Research, Outreach, and Technology Librarian

Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Coordinator

Joelle Thomas, Digital Learning & Discovery Librarian

Hidden Literacies: the Podcast was recorded, edited, and produced by Mary Mahoney.

Sound Credits:

“Crescents” by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)