My Dissertation
—Wings to Their Heels— Self-Expression & Health and the Rise of the New Woman
My dissertation investigates the development and influence of elocution pedagogy during the Reconstruction Era, a period when many U.S. citizens recognized the precarity and possibility of creating equitable opportunities for self-expression.
In particular, it examines the embodied politics of American Delsartism, a repertoire of psycho-physical exercises designed to ease nervousness and cultivate confidence.
By evaluating the gendered and racial messaging of this curriculum, Wings to Their Heels establishes American Delsartism’s prominent role in shaping cultural ideas about whose voices mattered and where and how they should be heard.
Students of Atlanta University, c. 1900. Library of Congress.
—Exhibiting (Scientific) Grace— American Delsartism, Black Citizenship, and the Staging of the New South
included in The Articulate Body: Dance and Science in the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Lynn Matluck Brooks and Sariel Golomb, University of Florida Press (under advanced contract)
—Breathing Power and Poise— Black Women’s Movement’s for Self-Expression and Health, 1880s-1900s
Australasian Journal of American Studies, 12/2020
Editor’s note by Dr. France M. Clarke & Dr. Lucas Thompson about this essay:
“In “Breathing Power and Poise,” Carrie Streeter takes us back to another period of intense racial strife—the Jim Crow era—to show how Black women took up the practice of Delsartism to cultivate their minds, bodies, and voices while attacking racial prejudice. In a year that saw the #BLM movement spread across the globe, Streeter’s work reminds us of the long history of Black women forging community and caring for one another."
“A Class in Physical Culture,” Indianapolis Recorder, April 19, 1902