Thesis (doctoral)--Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, 2007. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. [xviii]-xxxvii) and index.

Thesis (M.Ed.(Science and Technology Education)) -- University of Pretoria, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-144) Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-109).

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-109). Also available in print.

Univ., Diss.--Berlin, 2008.

Diss.--Universität Köln, 2008/2009. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

Thesis (S.J.D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005.

"September 1999" / Also available via the World Wide Web.

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

This dissertation analyzes public-intellectual work that deploys crisis tropes in its treatment of literacy, arguing that such work provides insight into the influence that intellectual engagement might exert on discourse in the public sphere. From A.S. Hill’s lament that freshman entering Harvard in 1874 could barely construct a legible sentence to Stanley Fish’s charge that millions of college graduates earning degrees in 2005 did so without learning what a sentence was, the relationship between literacy and the communicative skills required of productive citizens has been a constant source of concern. Between these two historical moments, this relationship has been an undertheorized feature of debates surrounding racial uplift, feminist protest, and America’s role as a world power. When interlocutors in such debates minimize the significance of literacy practices, they encourage rhetorical action driven by a coercive conception of social crisis that limits critical engagement on the part of the public. I argue that the public intellectual’s capacity to facilitate rhetorically literate discursive exchange at the level of the mass public can transform the paralysis of crisis into possibility. I reframe well-known debates between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, and Mortimer Adler and Glenn T. Seaborg in terms of the rhetorical models they offer for responsible public-intellectual work.