front cover of Beyond the Archives
Beyond the Archives
Research as a Lived Process
Edited by Gesa E. Kirsch and Liz Rohan Foreword by Lucille M. Schultz
Southern Illinois University Press, 2008

This collection of highly readable essays reveals that research is not restricted to library archives. When researchers pursue information and perspectives from sources beyond the archives—from existing people and places— they are often rewarded with unexpected discoveries that enrich their research and their lives.

Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process presents narratives that demystify and illuminate the research process by showing how personal experiences, family history, and scholarly research intersect. Editors Gesa E. Kirsch and Liz Rohan emphasize how important it is for researchers to tap into their passions, pursuing research subjects that attract their attention with creativity and intuition without limiting themselves to traditional archival sources and research methods.

Eighteen contributors from a number of disciplines detail inspiring research opportunities that led to recently published works, while offering insights on such topics as starting and finishing research projects, using a wide range of types of sources and methods, and taking advantage of unexpected leads, chance encounters and simple clues. In addition, the narratives trace the importance of place in archival research, the parallels between the lives of research subjects and researchers, and explore archives as sites that resurrect personal, cultural, and historical memory.

Beyond the Archives sheds light on the creative, joyful, and serendipitous nature of research, addressing what attracts researchers to their subjects, as well as what inspires them to produce the most thorough, complete, and engaged scholarly work. This timely and essential volume supplements traditional-method textbooks and effectively models concrete practices of retrieving and synthesizing information by professional researchers.

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front cover of Vote and Voice
Vote and Voice
Women's Organizations and Political Literacy, 1915-1930
Wendy B. Sharer
Southern Illinois University Press, 2007
Wendy B. Sharer explores the rhetorical and pedagogical practices through which two prominent postsuffrage organizations—the League of Women Voters and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom—challenged the conventions of male-dominated political discourse and trained women as powerful rhetors.

Vote and Voice is the first book-length study to address the writing and speaking practices of members of women’s political organizations in the decade after the suffrage movement. During those years, women still did not have power within deliberative and administrative organs of politics, despite their recent enfranchisement. Because they were largely absent from diplomatic circles and political parties, post-suffrage women’s organizations developed rhetorical practices of public discourse to push for reform within traditional politics.

Vote and Voice is historically significant as well as pedagogically beneficial for instructors who connect rhetorical education with public participation by integrating writing and speaking skills into a curriculum that aims to prepare educated students and active citizens.
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Working in the Archives
Practical Research Methods for Rhetoric and Composition
Edited by Alexis E. Ramsey, Wendy B. Sharer, Barbara L'Eplattenier, Lisa S. Mastrangelo
Southern Illinois University Press, 2010

Archival research of any magnitude can be daunting. With this in mind, Alexis E. Ramsey, Wendy B. Sharer, Barbara L’Eplattenier, and Lisa Mastrangelo have developed an indispensable volume for the first-time researcher as well as the seasoned scholar. Working in the Archives is a guide to the world of rhetoric and composition archives, from locating an archival source and its materials to establishing one’s own collection of archival materials. This practical volume provides insightful information on a variety of helpful topics, such as basic archival theory, processes, and principles; the use of hidden or digital archives; the intricacies of searching for and using letters and photographs; strategies for addressing the dilemmas of archival organization without damaging the provenance of materials; the benefits of seeking sources outside academia; and the difficult (yet often rewarding) aspects of research on the Internet.

Working in the Archives moves beyond the basics to discuss the more personal and emotional aspects of archival work through the inclusion of interviews with experienced researchers such as Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Peter Mortensen, Kathryn Fitzgerald, Kenneth Lindblom, and David Gold. Each shares his or her personal stories of the joys and challenges that face today’s researchers.          

Packed with useful recommendations, this volume draws on the knowledge and experiences of experts to present a well-rounded guidebook to the often winding paths of academic archival investigation. These in-depth yet user-friendly essays provide crucial answers to the myriad questions facing both fledgling and practiced researchers, making Working in the Archives an essential resource.

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