Samuel Silas Curry

Samuel Silas Curry (November 23, 1847 – December 24, 1921) was an American professor of elocution and vocal expression. He is the namesake of Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts.

Early life and education Born on a small farm in Chatata, Tennessee, he was the son of James Campbell Curry and Nancy Young Curry, and shared kinship with famed frontiersmen Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. Growing up on a frontier farm, he learned what it meant to work hard and gained a love of the natural world which would influence his later work. He was a teenager during the tumultuous years of the American Civil War, and experienced hardships when his family's farm was alternately appropriated by both the Union and Confederate armies.

With no school nearby, his early education was received at home. He would work outdoors all day and study at night, reading late into the evenings by the light of the fireplace. As a young man, he left the farm to attend East Tennessee Wesleyan University (later Grant University), where he proved to be an outstanding scholar, graduating in 1872 with the school's highest honors.

He continued his studies at Boston University, where he concentrated on literature, oratory, and theology. At B.U.'s School of Oratory he studied with Lewis B. Monroe and Alexander Graham Bell, then a professor of physiology at the school. In 1878 he graduated with both a diploma in oratory and a Master of Arts degree, and went on to earn his PhD in 1880. In that same year he also received a diploma from Guilmette's School of Vocal Physiology in Boston. After this extensive study, he had both re-gained his voice and acquired a thorough knowledge of elocution pedagogy. But instead of returning to the pulpit, he chose to become an educator himself. His travels had caused him to realize that he fundamentally disagreed with the prevalent methods of teaching elocution. He was known to say that he “had essayed the systems of forty different teachers, and found them all lacking in different degrees.” Curry “believed that his greatest contributions to students were in his ideas for encouraging positive attitudes toward life and his method for training the mind. He wanted his students to develop a way of thinking that ensured the words, when spoken, would have inner content. Curry saw the art of public reading as superior to acting, based on his belief that understanding the text was crucial to bringing text to life and that the “art of reading...must appeal more than the mind than to the eye.

In 1882 he married Anna Baright, a well-known teacher of elocution and the founder of the School of Expression in Boston. Anna Baright Curry was an educated influential teacher of elocution in her own right, and took rival teacher of elocution Genevieve Stebbins to task in several letters for exploitative and misguided teaching practices which also objectified women's bodies. Samuel and Anna had six children, including the well-known mathematician Haskell Curry.

Samuel Silas Curry died at his home in Boston on December 24, 1921.

He rejected not only the methods, but also the nomenclature of his field. He felt that the word “elocution” denoted artificiality, and preferred the word “expression” instead. Both Curry and his wife, Anna Baright Curry, were vocally opposed to the teachings, philosophy, and methods of instruction made famous by another influential teacher of elocution, Genevieve Stebbins.

Major publications

Classics for Vocal Expression (1888) Province of Expression: A Search for Principles Underlying Adequate Methods of Developing Dramatic and Oratoric Delivery (1891) Lessons in Vocal Expression: Processes of Thinking in the Modulation of the Voice (1895) Imagination and Dramatic Instinct: Some Practical Steps for Their Development (1896) Vocal and Literary Interpretation of the Bible (1903) Foundations of Expression: Studies and Problems for Developing the Voice, Body, and Mind in Reading and Speaking (1907) Browning and the Dramatic Monologue: Nature and Interpretation of an Overlooked Form of Literature (1908) Mind and Voice: Principles and Methods in Vocal Training (1910) Little Classics for Vocal Expression (1912) Spoken English (1913) The Smile (1915) How to Add Ten Years to Your Life (1915)