Interview with Andrew Newman on “Permit Us to Speak Plainly”

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)