Dr. Carly Woods at Popular Knowledge, Public Stage Conference

Dr. Carly Woods, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies, was an invited speaker at the conference on Popular Knowledge, Public Stage: Cultures of Lecturing and Learning in the Long Nineteenth Century, at the Alexandria Virginia Lyceum. 

She discussed, “A Tale of Two Lucys: Remembering Oberlin’s Early Orators.” She examined the dynamics of race and gender in the story of the first known U.S. college women's debating society at Oberlin College. She argued that public memory about the club should be expanded beyond well-known reformer Lucy Stone to include Lucy Stanton Day Sessions, an early member and the first African American woman to complete a college course of study. This interdisciplinary conference focused on how popular, public interactions shaped the character of knowledge in the long nineteenth century (roughly 1790–1910), as the way people thought and learned together was transformed by speakers and listeners, writers and readers.