Lunch will be provided.

Drawing upon research from the new book Absence of National Feeling: Education Debates in the Reconstruction Congress (University Press of Mississippi, 2025), this talk explores the racial politics that shaped white Southern Democrats' post-Civil War acceptance of public education. Before the Civil War, most Southern Democrats viewed education as a private good for the aristocratic class. During Reconstruction, they resisted Radical Republican efforts to establish states' first school systems and vowed to dismantle those schools upon reclaiming power. Yet after a violent racial backlash swept Democrats into control throughout the South, many party leaders accepted public education as a state commitment. This talk examines the roots of Southern Democrats' educational pivot in debates over the Civil Rights Act of 1875. By portraying school integration as a threat to a sacred institution vital to sectional reconciliation, Democratic legislators identified a potent strategy for resisting broader efforts to promote civil rights. 150 years later, this episode offers insights into the ever-shifting relationship of public education, civil rights, and national identity in the United States.

Michael J. Steudeman, assistant professor of communication arts and sciences, studies the rhetoric of education policy in the United States. His research considers how education discourses reframe social problems, cultivate feelings of national belonging, and adjudicate exclusions from political participation. In his book Absence of National Feeling: Education Debates in the Reconstruction Congress (University Press of Mississippi, forthcoming), Steudeman analyzes these topics by exploring the role schooling played in the idealistic visions and tragic compromises of Reconstruction Era legislators. In addition to studying education discourses, Steudeman also writes about topics of neurodiversity, demagoguery, and presidential rhetoric. His research has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and History of Education Quarterly. He teaches courses on a range of topics, including Landmark Speeches, Argumentation, Rhetorics of Public Policy, and Rhetorical Criticism.