Week 10 Discussion — Engine of Reform, or a Told Life? — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

Sojourner Truth's life story begins with a line that is not quite in her own voice: it says she was "born, as near as she can now calculate, between the years 1797 and 1800". The narrative appeared in 1850, told by Truth and written by Olive Gilbert, in decades when revivals swept the country and reformers organized against drinking, for free schools, for better asylums, and against slavery. Who told the story, who wrote it, and when are not in question; what careful readers still argue about is how to weigh the forces behind reform, and whose voice a told life carries.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: The course describes the Second Great Awakening as feeding the reform movements of these decades: temperance, schooling, asylum reform, abolition, and women's rights. Yet some reformers came to their causes by other roads, among them a Quaker family's conscience in Waterloo and Black Americans' own long fight against slavery, which a white editor like Garrison learned from. Is the Second Great Awakening best read as the main engine of reform in these decades, or as one force among several? Take a position, support it with at least one thing this week's evidence shows (a camp meeting, a reform society, an abolitionist, or the Seneca Falls Convention), and state the strongest case for the other reading as fairly as its best defender would. Your argument is about what drove reform, not about whether any belief was true.

Option B: The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850) was told by Sojourner Truth and written by Olive Gilbert, and it speaks of Truth in the third person. Is it best read as Sojourner Truth's own testimony, or as Olive Gilbert's book about Truth? Take a position, ground it in sourcing and close reading of the pinned fragment "born, as near as she can now calculate, between the years 1797 and 1800", and state the strongest opposing reading fairly.

Neither option asks who wrote the narrative or when; the course states those facts plainly, and the narrative's 1827 stays the year of the broken promise of free papers, apart from the State's action it places in 1828. Each option asks a question that careful readers of the same evidence still answer differently. Keep both options in the decades before 1850: neither is a question about a present-day cause, movement, or politics, and neither asks you to judge any religious belief. Pick the option you care about, and make your case.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, say how you weigh the Second Great Awakening against the other roads to reform, support it with one thing this week's evidence shows, and state the strongest case for the other reading; for Option B, say how you read the narrative's voice, ground it in sourcing and the pinned fragment, and state the strongest opposing reading.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (Second Great Awakening, camp meeting, benevolent society, temperance, common school, immediate abolition, Black abolitionists, dictated narrative, teller, writer, Declaration of Sentiments) correctly.
• Quote only the course's pinned fragments, word for word, with the document and its date.
• End with one plain sentence that names what your evidence shows and what it does not.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.
• Write from your own reasoning, in your own words, and keep present-day causes, politicians, and controversies out of your examples.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: state a stronger version of the reading the poster argued against, point to a place where the poster cited the narrative as Truth's own writing or merged its two dates, or ask what the poster's claim would need from the evidence that this week's sources do not supply. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option B and read the narrative as Truth's testimony carried in Gilbert's words, closer to testimony than to Gilbert's own book. It is a dictated narrative of 1850, told by Sojourner Truth and written by Olive Gilbert, and the Avalon Project keeps it. Its opening says she was "born, as near as she can now calculate, between the years 1797 and 1800", and the word she shows that the sentence is Gilbert's. A reader on the other side would say Gilbert chose every word and the order of the story, and I concede that we cannot separate her comments from Truth's memories line by line. In one plain sentence: the narrative shows how Truth's life was told through Gilbert's pen, not a text in Truth's own written words.

Notice how it sources the narrative by teller, writer, date, and host, quotes the pinned fragment word for word, concedes part of the other side, keeps the claim inside what the narrative shows, and ends in one plain sentence. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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