For Journal #10: Write a Q-C-Q that connects at least two of our three readings for the day. For example, you might think about how Byrd’s article and subsequent interview with Gutkin highlight the scholarly writing practice Harris describes of framing an argument so as to create space for one’s own project. What is the gap Byrd observes and how does he fill it? What interests you about their discussion about how writers come up with their ideas? Or you might further connect Byrd’s project to Newstok’s observations in “Of Freedom.”

Response:

Quotation’s: 

“The emancipatory artes liberales were crafts of freedom: the highest level of thinking suitable to a free citizen- the bane of every despot. Such an educational program presumes that freedom is fragile, demanding vigilant, endless exertion (Newstok, 149).

&

“A work of African American intellectual history may not look that distinct from a work from name-your-discipline outside of history. African American intellectual history is driven by an ethics of freedom: freedom of exploring new methodologies, of exploring new sources, of exploring what intellectual histories can look like” (Gutkin, 5)

Comment:

Bryd’s discussion of his paper in the interview with Gutkin was very interesting and in particular his response to the question of intellectual history and how what we know of history is created by looking at additional fields of study. Intellectual history as Bryd describes is created from those other disciplines such as the influence of philosophers and political scientists, not just those focused in historical events. There is a freedom in crafting that intellectual history that allows for it to not be limited or contain only one side of the story. As Newstok points out the liberal arts were  originally the crafts of freedom that contained the highest level of thinking from every discipline. In Bryds essay he hopes to examine exactly how African American Intellectual history with its own origins, objectives, and methods has been crafted as it disconnected itself from the traditional US and global intellectual history. In his essay he also includes the ideas of Earl E. Thorpe he defined intellectual history simply as the history of ideas themselves and the process of tracing and analyzing those ideas and their origins. Again this is the idea that an intellectual history is more than just the physical events in time that have occurred, there is more in addition to those. 

Question:

When considering Newstok and his ideas on freedom in being fragile, how does this connect to Bryds process of identifying the African American Intellectual History? What does Bryd mean by the intellectual history being driven by an ethics of freedom?