Announcement: The Great Debaters opens December 25th. Check back here for our critical assessments of the ways in which it shapes Farmer’s legacy.
Timeline: We have assembled an easy to use timeline of Farmer’s life and work.
Why does Farmer matter? Here is our case!
Welcome: This site is being developed by members of the University of Mary Washington’s class of 2011 who are participating in the first year seminar on “James Farmer and the Great Debaters” in fall 2007. Our primary objective is to listen to, understand, interpret, and amplify the rhetorical legacy of the “forgotten man of the civil rights movement.”
Site Features:
- “FSEM 100AA” is our homepage – the portal for all things related to the seminar.
- “The Blog” contains all of the posts from seminar participants.
- “The Digital Archives” contains our work in progress as we research, collect, and digitize Farmer’s words.
Course Description: The course adopts a historical-critical approach to examining the rhetoric and public discourse of legendary civil rights leader James Leonard Farmer, Jr., with a special emphasis on his impact on the rhetoric of the civil rights movement as well as the roots and evolution of the forthcoming major motion picture, “The Great Debaters.” The course begins with a primer on how to perform historically situated rhetorical criticism and a historical overview of intercollegiate debate in the 1930s. Students will then work together to examine a wide variety of primary texts (speeches, debates, and writings) of Farmer. Our goal is to map and interpret the crucial rhetorical moments of Farmer’s life, especially as they relate to the ancient art of debate. Our primary goal during the semester is to create this space as an online research site at the University of Mary Washington for the dissemination of primary source material from Farmer’s life and career as well as student authored commentary on those texts. Seminar participants will plan, design, and create content for this site.
This page has the following sub pages.