From the Geil Archive (8)—Orator

Click here for the "From the Geil Archive" Resource Center
To learn more about Geil, click here for the Accidental Ethnographer Resource Center
A year ago on Round and Square (23 August 2012)—The New Yorker and the World: Course Description (b)

Two years ago on Round and Square (23 August 2011)—Displays of Authenticity: Sacred Objects

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Please Note: All photographs marked "DHS" are with permission of the Doylestown Historical Society. All marked "RL" are my own pictures. None of these may not be reused without permission (e-mail me about mine, and I will put you in touch with DHS if you need to contact them). Photographs marked "RF" are "royalty free."

[a] Big Tent DHS

Click here for other posts in the Round and Square series "From the Geil Archive":

               Introduction                          1-Southern Mountain Museum             2-Sacred Mountain Map           

               3-Hat and Cattle                   4-Seeking Anthropology                       5-Curly Fives
               6-How to Write the Book      7-Mortarboard Man                               8-Orator

If it seems that I have been a little hard on ol' William Edgar Geil, you would not be mistaken. I have struggled to understand him for three years now, and am often exasperated by his smug confidence that his winning charm would lay low the linguistic and interpretive obstacles in his path(s). Yes, I have been a little hard on him, but no more so than my students in two successive historical methodology courses that deal with his archive. And that is why I am posting this as the last (for now) tidbit from the Geil archive.

Whenever I, or my students, get a little too rough, or laugh aloud at a particularly wincing text (yesterday's fits the bill well), I remind us that this was also a person who was an absolutely spellbinding lecturer and preacher. "Roll your eyes all you want," I say to them (and myself), "but how many of us have ever lectured to eight thousand people?" And it was not just once, even in one day. Geil packed churches and lecture halls from New Jersey to Australia and on to central Africa.

We must not forget this, even as we (legitimately) test the fiber of his learning in other dimensions. Geil was an orator. Like him, I love to lecture. I can only dream of having audiences as large, or as rapt. This is a point of real respect. Let's give the explorer his due on this count.

The guy(l) knew how to talk, and there is a compelling angle here as we (my students and I) try to understand him better. He was endlessly self-promotional, to be sure, but few people have backed it up with quite as much verbal firepower as William Edgar Geil.

Click here for other posts in the Round and Square series "From the Geil Archive":

                Introduction                          1-Southern Mountain Museum             2-Sacred Mountain Map           

               3-Hat and Cattle                   4-Seeking Anthropology                       5-Curly Fives
               6-How to Write the Book      7-Mortarboard Man                               8-Orator

[c] Verbal DHS