Year of the Humanities @ Furman

Digitizing American Oratory

The “Oratorical Text Project” (OTP) is being conducted at Furman under the direction of Professor Sean Patrick O’Rourke, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, in concert with students and scholars at three other institutions (the University of Maryland, the University of Alabama, and Wake Forest University). The OTP seeks to recover, preserve, and provide access to all oratorical texts produced prior to 1925. Its initial focus is on “American” speeches, though the project uses the term quite broadly. To date the project has digitized over 400 speeches. A website with the domain name is under construction. The project will eventually create “e-texts” of several groups of speeches: critical editions of Congressional speeches, speeches of the Antebellum South, and miscellaneous speeches from the antebellum period, mostly northern speakers. The latter speeches include sermons, memorial addresses, lectures, and deliberative speeches.

OTP student scholars read, scan (and transcribe where necessary), edit, and recreate accurate electronic editions of as many speech texts as they can. They research the context of each speech and write introductions to each completed text. Throughout the process, they have also been developing and codifying the procedures and protocols to be followed when creating electronic versions of oratorical texts. Most recently, the student teams have included Maggie Holmes (Communication Studies and Spanish), Emily Paige Pusser (English), Case Cassedy (Communication Studies), Megan Huey (English and Communication Studies), and Caroline Leary (Communication Studies).

Perhaps the most exciting part of the project is a new initiative to create the “Oratorical Text Network” with students and teachers in U.S. high schools. The pilot project will be to contact local (Greenwood and Spartanburg Counties) high school teachers of American History and American Government, to outline the project, and to enlist their schools as participants. The project assumes that many forgotten speeches exist in local archives, historical societies, libraries, churches, and newspaper repositories, and that, with the help and direction of Furman students and faculty, high school students and their teachers can contribute to the project by recovering these speeches and creating edited e-texts of them. They would then send the texts (along with photocopies of the originals) to the Furman Center for Textual Studies, where the texts would be verified and posted on the web. The high school students and teachers would receive publication credit for their contributions. The project leaders hope that this pilot project will prove successful and lead to an ever-expanding network of contributing schools.


Home Furman National Endowment for the Humanities	Digitizing American Oratory The “Oratorical Text Project” (OTP) is being conducted at Furman under the direction of Professor Sean Patrick O’Rourke, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, in concert with students and scholars at three other institutions (the University of Maryland, the University of Alabama, and Wake Forest University). The OTP seeks to recover, preserve, and provide access to all oratorical texts produced prior to 1925. Its initial focus is on “American” speeches, though the project uses the term quite broadly. To date the project has digitized over 400 speeches. A website with the domain name is under construction. The project will eventually create “e-texts” of several groups of speeches: critical editions of Congressional speeches, speeches of the Antebellum South, and miscellaneous speeches from the antebellum period, mostly northern speakers. The latter speeches include sermons, memorial addresses, lectures, and deliberative speeches. OTP student scholars read, scan (and transcribe where necessary), edit, and recreate accurate electronic editions of as many speech texts as they can. They research the context of each speech and write introductions to each completed text. Throughout the process, they have also been developing and codifying the procedures and protocols to be followed when creating electronic versions of oratorical texts. Most recently, the student teams have included Maggie Holmes (Communication Studies and Spanish), Emily Paige Pusser (English), Case Cassedy (Communication Studies), Megan Huey (English and Communication Studies), and Caroline Leary (Communication Studies). Perhaps the most exciting part of the project is a new initiative to create the “Oratorical Text Network” with students and teachers in U.S. high schools. The pilot project will be to contact local (Greenwood and Spartanburg Counties) high school teachers of American History and American Government, to outline the project, and to enlist their schools as participants. The project assumes that many forgotten speeches exist in local archives, historical societies, libraries, churches, and newspaper repositories, and that, with the help and direction of Furman students and faculty, high school students and their teachers can contribute to the project by recovering these speeches and creating edited e-texts of them. They would then send the texts (along with photocopies of the originals) to the Furman Center for Textual Studies, where the texts would be verified and posted on the web. The high school students and teachers would receive publication credit for their contributions. The project leaders hope that this pilot project will prove successful and lead to an ever-expanding network of contributing schools.