Jefferson or Lincoln? It is an important question.

Garry Wills wrote a book Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America. It won a Pulitzer Prize. It is a very stimulating book. Wills argues that Lincoln hijacked the meaning that Thomas Jefferson found in the Declaration of Independence and placed it as the founding document of the American nation; the Constitution is a secondary document, according to Wills's reading of Lincoln, and is only as authentic in so far as the Declaration breathes life into it. Quite a provocative statement particularly because the Constitution is the foundation of American government. The Constitution is also a pro-slavery document that outlines a pro-slavery government. In other words, if the U.S. had not reformed the constitution with the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, the U.S. would probably still have slaves. So Lincoln's Gettysburg Address asks for a new birth of freedom and sets the intellectual argument for the need for the three amendments mentioned above. The real American revolution was not in 1776, nor 1789, but in 1863 at the Gettysburg Address....at least the intellectual revolution. By privileging the Declaration and its idea that all men are created equal, the slavery clauses in the Constitution had to be wiped out.

Constructivists who want to interpret the Constitution as "the founding father's intended" have difficulty with this revolution. Because if the U.S. interprets the Constitution literally, that means that slavery etc. should be part of the American landscape. However, the rub for the constructivists is not the 13th amendment....they are likely to agree with the freeing of slaves....it is the 14th amendment which makes all Americans legal citizens and they have to be treated equally under the law and (here is the rub) any states cannot create laws to violate this amendment. If they do, federal troops will be set in to enforce federal law. In other words, the states right argument is permanently subordinated by this amendment. Radical Republicans from the North (hardly any senators from the South) pushed this amendment through because Southerners, particularly in Mississippi, but throughout the South, had created Black Codes, Jim Crow Laws, and segregationist policies that created a de-facto slave state even though slavery was outlawed. This created quite a legacy for the unfolding of American history because all sorts of issues from integration of schools in the 60s, to abortion policies in the 70s, to separation of church and state are created out of the understanding of the 14th amendment's clause on state's rights government. So Supreme Court nominee Bork, Vice President Cheney, President Bush, etc. have significant problems with the 14th amendment. The thing is, the 14th is intrinsically tied to the 13th and the 15th. So a constructivist interpretation of the Constitution is someone who is willing to view these amendments as problematic. Which is why their argument is problematic. Wills argues that Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is the intellectual beginning of this whole argument. I do not believe that he is on solid ground here historically speaking....but I would say that Lincoln's address is probably the first "official" articulation of this argument. Regardless, it poses difficult problems for someone like President Bush who is trying to practice the spirit of Lincoln in the Middle East but ends up practicing the spirit of Jefferson in domestic America. The irony the President Bush is trying to push a stronger federal government in Iraq (to solve local issues that "the surge" has failed to accomplish) while trying to de-center the federal government in the U.S. with faith-based charities and anti-abortion policies is kind of funny if it wasn't so sad. President Bush faces a split personality when it comes to the Gettysburg Address. That isn't to say that the Democrats are much better as they also feel this split personality. As a nation, do we want to be Jeffersonian, which includes the acceptance of racial hierarchy and even slavery but allows states to do whatever they want or do we want to be Lincolnian which means multi-culturalism, federalism, and equal rights. The implication of this decision in the twenty-first century includes immigration issues and women's rights issues. In America at the moment, interestingly, there is no Equal Rights Amendment, nor is there a fair and just immigration policy. Jefferson did not want to treat women equally nor did he really favor immigration outside of the coerced from Africa (in fact he didn't favor the slave trade nor slavery that much either) and the voluntary by Anglo-Saxons.

I'll stop rambling now. I would be curious to know what people thought considering the Constitution and the Declaration. Which one is the founding document of the U.S.?

I liked the Sopranos ending

I thought it was great!! It was artistic yet simple, provocative yet mundane, and powerful yet boring. I have never been so intense while watching a family gather in a diner to eat onion rings! And they were listening to Journey! I'm an 80s child but that song has lost its cool value long ago. Now all of the sudden it is stuck in my head and it is the coolest song ever! When the screen went to black I jumped off the couch and cursed the satellite company only to feel completely pathetic when the credits rolled and I slowly realized what had just happened. Like it or loathe it, this has to be the most memorable conclusion to a t.v. series ever, with perhaps the exception of MASH--but I think it even tops MASH. The show makes you laugh when you aren't supposed to. Take when they killed Phil at the gas station and the SUV rolled over his head. That is a horrible scene but I laughed hysterically (and ashamedly) when they showed the two babies in the car seats shift when the wheel rolled over Phil's head. That is the beauty of the Sopranos....it is a whole bunch of contradictions and oxymoronic juxtapositions. Like when the crew (sons of Italian-American immigrants) went down to the Columbus statue to beat up Native Americans because they were protesting Columbus Day. The fact that Carmella (and much of the crew) supports President Bush. The idea that Tony plays on the same side as the FBI agent when it comes to terrorism.

I will miss it. I do not think there will be a movie. I do not think Tony died at the end. I think Meadow came into the diner and they all had their onion rings and talked about her 170,000 dollar job. It was a brilliant manipulation of the audience: how many people in America thought their t.v. went out when the screen went black? How many people have ever felt that much tension while watching people eat onion rings in a diner? I thought it was the most interesting thing that I have ever seen on t.v. I hope they do not make a film about because it will ruin the ending for me.

End of the Semester Issues

It is the end of the semester and students and faculty alike are whining in unison. I appreciate this but, I must say that I cannot place myself in this camp this year. I had a good semester and although I have felt a bit of a letdown over the past week, I am still enjoying my job and the opportunity to interact with faculty and students. Yeah, it is a lot of work doing all the grading and preparing exams and stuff but it has been nice. I have applied for a full time tenure track job. I am getting very nervous about it. It is the first job that I applied for and I have a legitimate shot at it. I think I will get a phone interview and then........ I have a friend who is on the faculty at the place of which I am applying. It has been reassuring as he has given me some pointers but apparently he has said too much as he has now told me that he has been instructed to cease communication with candidates. All of the sudden, I feel all alone and a bit apprehensive about this position. I was going to buy him a victory drink later this week because last week he successfully defended his dissertation....but now I'm not allowed to do that. Secretly I am a little hurt but I also understand that he has to avoid unethical situations as he is also on the search committee. But damn, is the Gestapo so effective as to prevent a victory drink from being consumed?

Sheets and Hoods and Brits, Oh MY!

Saturday night I went to a play at a local playhouse. I was pleasantly surprised at the performance. It is called "The Foreigner" and it is about a UK citizen who goes to Georgia for a weekend away from his hellish life in London. To escape the gaze of the people at the B&B, his friend concocts a story that the foreigner does not speak english. So the Brit learns all the local gossip because people speak their secrets in front of him not realizing that he really does understand what they are saying. This charade ends up invigorating the Brit and replenishing the humanity of the locals. The play was very funny and quite provocative. The most controversial part of the play was when the local bumbling Klansmen came to kill the foreigner as they tried to purge all non-white non-christian influences from the area (they were attacking a Brit for crying out loud...you can't get anymore anglo-saxon in the modern world). During the climatic scene, several players dressed up as klansmen in hoods and sheets. The story re-presented the klan, I would say quite accurately, like ridiculous baffoons who are as intelligent as a "one-way" sign pointing the wrong way. In fact the storyline forced the audience to find great empathy in the foreigner as he proved to be witty, charismatic, and loveable. But I couldn't help but reflect on the image of men dressed in sheets. Being from the North does not mean that one escapes the Klan. Where I grew up in Michigan, klansmen continue to burn crosses (in their own backyards) and march in downtown areas wearing their sheets and hoods. But, I have to say, I think this was the first time that I actually saw a real live person actually wearing a klansmen outfit. I have seen plenty of images on the news and in archives but this was my first eyewitness account. It was sublime, surreal, and scary. Even though the players portrayed the klansmen in a residue of pathetic stupidity, it was quite a moment for me. It was quite provocative because in this part of the country, where I now live, many people want to make English the official language, they want to send immigrants back to their home countries, and they fully support building a wall on the Mexican border (some would support building a wall on the Canadian border too). I am not sure what to make of my first experience of witnessing someone wearing a klan outfit. Although clearly a farce, it struck me profoundly. I was not uncomfortable, in fact, I thought it was a brilliant act of provocative condemnation. But man, I'll tell you, seeing dudes in hoods and sheets....even as farce, it was much more intimidating than I thought it would be.

Late Night Ramblings? I Can't Remember.

I've been thinking about collective memory lately. The idea that we identify with a community because we tap into a shared memory. In other words, how do you know that you are American (or other nationality)? You believe that you are American because you identify yourself with the collective memory of the nation. This is true for any group you identify with: Jewish, feminist, African American, book club member, high school alum, church member, religion, etc. Collective memory is an interesting topic. In 1925 sociologist Maurice Halbwachs pioneered the idea of collective memory. He said, interestingly, that collective memory is a social function used by a group.....not to accurately recall the past, but to interpret the present. Whatever group you identify with and whatever memory the members of that group share, those memories are not reliable to recount the past. For example, Christians tap into the memory of Jesus via the Bible. It is irrelevant whether Jesus actually did anything that the Bible claims. The collective memory becomes powerful enough to form a myth in which a community of Christians reinforce through social interaction and use to help them navigate their current lives.

Another example, my grandfather used to be amish. Thankfully for me, he left that faith before I was ever born. But when I listen to my dad and his brothers recount their childhood as amish kids, I cannot actually count on them to accurately recall what actually happened. When they tell their stories, they are actually using those memories to underscore their present situation as a small group who left the faith and were ostracized by the rest of their family. Perhaps they are trying to legitimize their breakaway from the amish faith, maybe they are trying to demonstrate that they feel the amish are hypocrites and they are not, maybe they are trying to justify their present material pursuits after having lived such an frugal life well into their teenage years. Their stories are interesting and there is some truth to them, but they cannot accurately recount the past. It is not that they are lying or purposely trying to confuse people, it is just how it happens. The next time you listen to someone tell you a story that they remember, consider the group that they identify with and listen very closely; from what they say, you will probably find out more about their present than you will about their past.

From a perspective of history this is really difficult to deal with. In fact you might ask, what, then, is the point of history? Well, the point is not to understand what actually happened but to understand why they group believes what happened, happened. Tricky indeed. I don't know if this translates to personal relationships or not. I have a friend who is an interesting case study. She recalls all sorts of things from her past that no one else recalls. Halbwachs also said that we need to corroborate our memory with other people....if we can't do this, we either go insane or we change our memory. So, my friend is able to corroborate her stories with her siblings but she cannot corroborate them with her parents. For example, my friend says that her mother made her wear saddle shoes in first grade. Her mother denies it but her sisters and brothers say it happened. Did it happen? Who knows? But if my friend was angry at her mother for making her wear saddle shoes, it suggests that she and her siblings have gotten together and agreed that this happened and they use it to explain why their mother behaved the way she did, which leads them to measure their current relationship with their mother. I must say that I remember things from my past and I can't recall whether they happened or not but I feel that they did. In fact, I cannot even remember the larger context of the memory....just the memory. But I have enough context now that I am older to try to project a context on that context-less memory, which helps me explain my current life. Does this mean that you can't believe people when they tell you a story of their past? No, you should believe them, but you should also realize that the context in which they place the story usually is from the present....or at least from the time when they became old enough and aware enough to contextualize the memory, even though the memory happpened at a time before they understood what the memory meant. If you want a pop culture frame of reference for all of this, watch the film Memento.

A Weird Dream

Last night I dreamt, which isn't strange. What is strange is that I remembered it. The dream consisted of me waking up late in the night and hearing this really loud noise. I went outside to see what it was. I was not at my house, I was at my parent's house. The scene was a bit futuristic because something was flying overhead. Imagine a local news station van or SUV with the satellite dish on top and a news crew in the back. This news SUV had wings and was flying over my parent's house and landed in my yard. I tried to talk to them but they hushed me and trained their cameras on the night sky. At first the sky looked like a bunch of stars but as I looked closely their was a war going on in the sky. Apparently the defunct Soviet Union, or North Korea, had attacked the U.S. and we retaliated not with F-16 fighters but with these armed flying SUVs. I couldn't tell if they were fighting in outer space or in the earth's atmosphere. And the U.S. SUVs had a strange fighting formation; they formed a 5-point star formation and moved around fighting the Communist Russian/Koreans. I thought that was a stupid formation in which to fight. It looked like a stalemate. The news crew was very anxious and they told me this was possibly the beginning of nuclear war. But no nukes seemed to be coming, so I sat and watched. The battle went on for hours. I got bored so I went back to sleep. When I awoke the battle was over and the flying battle-scarred SUVs were flying over my house. But I couldn't tell if they were Americans returning or Communists invading. They seemed peaceful. I didn't know who had won. Did the U.S. or the communists? I walked downtown and the whole place was empty except for a Hispanic-looking man who was hanging an American flag on a store front. At first, I thought that the U.S. had won but then I wondered if the Communists had won but was trying to trick all of us so we wouldn't revolt. The news crew was gone and I felt very alone. There are all sorts of motifs in this dream....any thoughts what it all means?

An Interesting Unscientific Poll on Race

So here is something that I don't understand; it befuddles me. I have taken an unscientific poll in my classes for a couple of years now. I have no numbers to relate...it is only qualitative. Quick background: in my classes I require students to participate in a group project. Five students per group and the topics range from Native American reservations to the Great Depression to the Culture Clashes of the 1920s to the Vietnam War. They have to watch a film that I assign specific to each group but more importantly they have to go to assigned websites that have posted primary sources.

One of the group projects is on the Japanese Camps of the 1940s where U.S. citizens and non-citizens of Japanese descent were imprisoned after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. The Library of Congress has an excellent collection of Ansel Adams photographs from Manzanaar. Here is another site that my students are required to use for this project (you have to register for this site but it is free and worth it). In 1988, Congress authorized reparation payments to the survivors of the camps at $20,000/person.

Here is where the informal poll comes into play. Remember my students tend to be fairly conservative suburban and rural students. Almost all of my students agree that reparations should be paid to the Japanese-American survivors, in fact they argue quite demonstrably that $20,000 is not enough and more should be done. So, I try to push them a little further. I ask the students if Jews should be paid reparations for the money stolen by the Nazis during World War II? They reply unanimously that indeed Jews should receive reparations. Then I ask if the United States should use American taxpayer dollars (just as they did for the Japanese-Americans) to pay reparations for stolen land and resources from Native Americans? This is usually not unanimous but an overwhelming majority will say, yes, the U.S. should do this, although they claim that non-pecuniary measures should be included such as free education, health care etc.

Here is where it gets strange to me......I then ask if the U.S. should pay reparations for slavery?

One or two will say yes but the vast majority will say NO! In fact, the students get very restless even angry with me for bringing this up. It is an amazing shift in attitude within 5 seconds. I can feel the disdain from the students when I ask this question. So I then ask, why not? They respond something along the lines of: "it was a long time ago and if we could have paid reparations to the actual freedmen, then that is ok....but my family had nothing to do with slavery and so I owe them nothing. In fact, my family was poor and look at me...I have pulled myself up by my bootstraps, why can't they? They are too reliant on welfare." When I point out that the U.S. actually tried to pay reparations in the 1860s via the Radical Republican agenda of "40 acres and a mule" through the Freedmen's Bureau but southern whites through the Democrat Party actually undermined this process through Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws that established segregation, particularly in the South, I find that they are incapable of processing this. So then I bring up the connection between race and class that hurricane Katrina and New Orleans made so evident, and they have trouble understanding that blacks in New Orleans could not get out of the city....they think that African-Americans CHOSE to stay in the city during and after the hurricane. In other words, they are unwilling to acknowledge that one reason class is tied to race is because when slaves were freed whites made specific laws that were designed to stifle black, but help white economic progress and that legacy is still often felt today....i.e. Hurricane Katrina.

So this has got me in a quandry. Obviously they are not being intellectually honest....or intellectually aware of their own argument. Native American land was stolen over a hundred years ago and the Native Americans living on reservations today are not the ones whose land was stolen during Indian removal policies of the 1830s-1890s. To me, this distinction of time, reference to slavery reparations, makes no sense at all. Why are they willing to support reparations for Native Americans but not African Americans? I don't consider 95% of them to be racist (after all, they support reparations for other racial/ethnic groups) but I can't quite figure out why most of them think about race in this particular way: there seems to be a disconnect on the issues of race. Is it because we as historians still have a huge task in front of us in dismantling the historical myths written by southern historians from 1865-1964? This was truly a case of the losers writing the history books; am I still seeing the fruits of this in 2007? Or has Reaganomics and conservative-cowboy-rugged-individualism so gripped these students that they are not able to see that a free market does not actually exist in the United States......that democracy in America has, for the most part, meant democracy for whites and (until recently) disenfranchisement for blacks both politically and economically? Or is it an expression of white guilt coupled with a resentment of defeatism and colonialism in the South? At least I got them to admit that Native Americans should receive compensation of some sort.....I count that as a victory.

The President is no Visionary.

One thing I can't figure out is why President Bush is seen as a visionary. He claims that we need to go to Mars and go back to the moon; his supporters claim him to be the next John Kennedy. He invades Iraq and his allies claim he is Reaganesque....confronting Islam like Reagan confronted the Soviet Union. But the President is not a visionary, he is really using strategies and ideas from 100 years ago, dusting them off, and re-presenting them to the American people.

A preface...President Clinton was no FDR democrat. The last New Deal democrat was Jimmy Carter. Clinton was, at best, a progressive in the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt. Clinton pushed through free trade agreements and pursued moderate welfare reform but never staunchly defended the New Deal policies of the 1930s. Theodore Roosevelt, similarly, was a progressive reformer, but not always very liberal. TR was responding to the excess of the so-called Gilded Age and laissez-faire capitalism of the William McKinley presidency. McKinley was an imperialist, a capitalist, and in the back pocket of big business. Things had gotten so out of hand at the time of McKinley's assassination in 1901 that Roosevelt was able to bring many moderate reforms....reforms that mirror the Clinton administration closer than Teddy's cousin Franklin's. George Bush is a sort of reincarnation of William McKinley, except instead of the progressive responding to the laissez-faire-ist of the nineteenth century, Bush is responding to the progressivism of Clinton (of course President Bush would love to roll back the New Deal including Social Security too). Bush is rolling back union labor rights and giving big business lucrative business opportunities. He is removing the regulations of a progressive economy and going back to the economy of the 1890s. We are living in a second gilded age and also an age of imperialism.

Take for example what the President said in 2003. President Bush announced that democracy in Iraq and the larger Middle East would be based on the model of democracy in the Philippines. For a concise criticism of the Philippine model of democracy click here. The problem with this is that nobody really knew what the President meant. The Philippines? Yes, the Philippines, which was given its independence by the U.S. in 1946 after it demonstrated that Filipinos had successfully "learned" the practice of democracy. The reason hardly anybody knew what the President was talking about was because we, as a nation, had forgotten the Philippines and the Philippine/American War 1899-1913. I hope you knew that the U.S. fought a war in the Philippines against Filipinos who had declared their independence from Spain in 1898 under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo. If you don't, don't be too hard on yourself, few people are aware of this. We have forgotten about this because it is America's dirty little secret. Aguinaldo engaged in guerilla war to get the Americans out of the Philippines. The U.S., however, engaged in successful anti-guerilla tactics that eventually defeated these "freedom fighters." For example, the U.S. used a scorched earth policy of burning whole villages, imprisoned civilians in concentration camps, and used torture methods such as "water boarding." Between 250,000 and 1 million Filipinos died due to war, disease, and starvation brought on directly and indirectly by this conflict. Yes, the hostilities quieted around 1913 and the U.S. eventually granted the Philippines independence in 1946. Is this the cost of democracy that President Bush is talking about? Why did the U.S. get involved in the Philippines? To spread democracy/civilization (the white man's burden) and to create a lucrative marketplace for American big business to tap into Asia. The Philippines proved very lucrative....should the U.S. succeed in Iraq (which is increasingly doubtful, unless the U.S. fights a dirty war similar to the Philippines), American businesses stand to gain vast profits in the Middle East as well as continuing to crack the Chinese market.

President Bush and the neo-cons have taken a play out of the McKinley book. McKinley never declared war against the Philippines, he sent in 126,000 troops, he declared that Emilio Aguinaldo (a friend of the U.S. a year earlier) was a "bandit." The parallels between the Philippines and Iraq are striking. In fact, the entire Presidency of George W. Bush has been largely informed by the last great laissez-faire, big-business, imperialist President of the 1890s much more than the conservative President of the 1980s or the Presidency of his own father. President Bush is no visionary in the likes of JFK or Reagan. He is not looking forward, but backward to William McKinley. President Bush's ideas are over 100 years old, obsolete, and anti-republican (as in republicanism, such as Jeffersonian or Jacksonian republicanism). Old ideas applied to new problems are like new wine placed in old wineskins....even Jesus knew this didn't work.

Does anybody know who Bruce Springsteen is?

Next week my u.s. history class is to read Jim Cullen's Born in the U.S.A.: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition. But I have come to realize that the majority of the students in my class don't know really who Bruce Springsteen is. This is quite traumatic for me...almost as bad as the day that I came to realize that many students in my class had never seen Star Wars. It will be interesting to see how the class discussion goes. I anticipate that many will resist this book because Springsteen bucked his traditional political stance in the last presidential election by coming out to endorse the democrat candidate John Kerry. He even gave a concert in Madison, Wisconsin during his campaign. This, in light of the infamous George Will/Ronald Reagan fiasco of trying to co-opt "Born in the U.S.A." as a purely Republican Party themes song in the early 80s makes me think that the students in my class will resist Springsteen. But I also think that they will be forced to like "the Boss" after they read the way Cullen depicts him. The musician is an inheritor of the American tradition that descended from Emerson, Whitman, Guthrie, and Dylan, argues Cullen. They are all focused on representative government or republicanism as the expression of American ideas. Thus they key on people who are "plowman" but who, through individualism and a commitment to the community, become more than actors of republicanism, but professors of republicanism. Who can argue with this message? We'll see if my famous "Communist Fascist" student has something to say. If W.E.B. DuBois is a Communist Fascist, what does that make Springsteen?

A May Day Conversation

The wind blows through the trees.
The leaves speak to the wind
and I hear their conversation.
To be so free, to fly so high,
like a bird or a kite,
but this is all a cliche.
I'm not interested in flying, I'm interested in listening.
And what I hear are allegations.

The leaves fear that they will be silenced;
the wind is afraid that its voice will not be heard.
They accuse each other; instead of recognizing
that in each other their vulnerbilities are erased.
And so the wind blows harder and the leaves shake louder.
This shouting competition, driven by a need to be heard, to be validated,
ends up in silence. As the autumn moves to winter,
leaves change their color,
and the wind knocks them to the ground.
The wind stops speaking when the leaves are all gone.
No more poetry, no more music, no more discourse; a muted cupid.

A young girl at home in a suburban nation,
listens to the soft steady rain fall on the jungle pavement.
Each drop, a note in a symphony that plays in her head.
But this masterpiece will never be heard;
her parents, her sisters, her brothers have all gone to work
and she slowly goes crazy because the suburban silence is deafening;
until the silence makes her wish the rain drops would turn into bombs.
Her symphony has turned into war.

Like a solider from world war one,
she went over the top with her gun.
She smelled the tear gas; heard the shelling,
but she couldn't hear herself yelling.
She was lost in no man's land;
a place where no man should land.
Like ghosts of the damned,
whisping across the sky searching for tranquility;
she ran across the scarred countryside--jumping from crater to crater--
searching for serenity.
The guns finally stopped, but there were no more trees and no more leaves.
And the wind moved silent through the sky,
like a blank stare in a suburban girl's eye.
I ask the wind, can one speak if there is no one to listen?

A young boy visits his father's grave
and listens for a voice to stave
off the pain of an entire past of emptiness.
He falls to his knees asking for an answer,
but a hush from heaven echoes the silence from his father.
He hears the wind blow because new leaves have grown.
but alas, anew allegations are sown.
They whisper: you will suffocate my chorus; you will kill me.
And the boy thinks about his father's legacy:
a taciturn gesture, a reticent embrace, a suffocated love.
All these lead to accusations and accusations lead to silence.
The silence of a boy standing on a dead man's grave.
I ask the leaves, can one listen if there is no one to speak?

A mundane revolutionary act; to speak, to listen, without contention.
The wind blows through the trees.
The leaves speak to the wind
and I hear their conversation, without allegation;
it brings me peace.

5 Interview Questions from Dr. Brazen Hussy

Thanks to Dr. Brazen Hussy for making the effort to come up with these questions. I had fun answering them. Check out her blog if you want to learn about martini etiquette and all sorts of other interesting information about the ivory tower of academia and life in general.

1. Why did you decide to start blogging?

Cartharsis. I needed an outlet to voice my frustrations with the academic world and I wanted to remain anonymous. I have since tried to put my thoughts down in very random patterns. I enjoy reading other blogs more than writing. For the things that I have written, I am hoping for some constructive criticism and validation.

2. How are you liking the South?

The South is a strange place. I simultaneously love it and hate it. People in the South are very nice but very superficial. The weather is great but the cities are not efficient. I have run into quite a few "klansmen" and uber-conservatives but I have also run into quite a few thoughtful people on all sides of the political spectrum. When I moved down here, I thought I was born in the wrong place....that I was a southerner at heart. But since being here, I have realized that I was mistaken. I am not southern nor do I want to be. Southerners seem to be fighting a legacy (sometimes real, sometimes imagined) of colonialism and defeatism. Racial tension is prevalent under the surface. Many northerners are moving to the region and the southerners often resent this. Although southerners portray themselves to be very carefree, hospitable, and easygoing, I think they are really afraid, anxious, and conflicted. It is very difficult to walk into a classroom when students know you are from the North. They stereotype northerners as much as northerners stereotype southerners. The South has nice sweet tea though.

3. What are your plans for the weekend?

Last weekend I was in D.C. to do research at the Library of Congress. This weekend I plan to attack the copious amount of weeds in my backyard and watch the NCAA tournament. I think I will buy a new pair of sunglasses too.

4. When did you first realize you wanted to get a Ph.D. in history, and why?

I spent a year as a missionary of sorts in Jordan during my third year in undergrad. While there, I realized that everything I understood was uncertain and mythologized. The western indoctrination was shown to be a farce when I confronted Islam. When I returned, I realized that history was a way for me to challenge American myths and western dogma. As far as the Ph.D. is concerned, I got into it for all the wrong reasons. I pursued a Ph.D. to show-off. I wanted to prove to everyone that I was better than them or that I could do what people told me I could not do. I have suffered for this. But I really enjoy learning about and teaching history, it is very satifying and I believe myself to be chipping away at the establishment concocted by those who have gone before me. So, I find that my path has some rewards to it. But I have no idea why I am trying to join a club made up of people who I really do not like. (No offense to any Ph.D.s reading this).

5. What country would you most like to visit?

Russia. I am a cold war kid and in high school it was forbidden for us to visit the Soviet Union and East Berlin. My imagination of these places have had a huge influence on my life. I have been so indoctrinated in the "othering" of Russian people, yet I have always felt that the people, the landscape, the weather of Russia could not be that much different from America and Americans. I am very curious to see Russia, Berlin, and Cuba.

Thoughts About D.C.

People in Washington D.C. do not seem very happy. I don't understand why. They seem to work very strict 36-40 hours per week. It was amazing how the government buildings emptied precisely at 4:57 every evening. There is no litter on the sidewalks nor the streets; one has to search to find a cigarette butt in the seams of the sidewalk. For an entire week, noboday smiled and I didn't see anybody...male or female....who I would consider attractive. It seemed that everyone just moped around and existed. Is this because everyone habitating in the capital is embroiled in cynicism and sarcasm? There was a protest march on the mall while I was there, so it seems that there is activism; the cynics have not reached everyone yet. All the government workers were dressed exactly the same: black suits and gray ties for men, black or gray suits for women. It seems that style was significantly lacking in this city. People were "northern nice" in that they didn't smile or say hi but they didn't cuss you out either. So it was a bit strange after living in the South for several years now. D.C. is a southern/northern hybrid city as President Kennedy famously quipped about D.C. having all the efficiency of a southern city and all the charm of northern cities. I found this sarcasm quite applicable. The only ones who seemed to be happy were the tourists and the protestors. Of course this is just the description of the federal square. Venture outside the square and few communities like Georgetown exist. There seems to be a lot of poverty through much of the city and perhaps the grandeur of the federal square juxtaposed so closely with the poverty of most Washingtonians only exacerbates the seeming hypocrisy of a capital that is out of touch with the rest of the world. Is this why people in D.C. did not seem happy? Are they fatigued from participating in a space that obviously shows the disparity of wealth within a few miles. Do people who work in the federal square live in poorer parts of the city and so are always reminded of their poverty compared to the wealth of the nation? I don't know but something sure was making Washingtoninans less vibrant than what I expected.

New Rules

For those of the fascistic persuasion who would like to make English the national language for the United States (what?--you mean we don't speak American in America?). New Rule: you must be able to correctly use the English language before you can criticise people (immigrants????) whose first language is not English. I mean, Come on!!!! I overheard the following in a McDonald's yesterday as I was returning home from my research trip (I have an unhealthy fascination with bacon egg and cheese biscuits....McDonald's bastards!). A man who looked to be of of Indian (as in India, not Native American) descent was taking orders. A woman who was a senior citizen and impatient received the incorrect food. When she complained, the employee quickly and politely, replaced her order and made it correct. But she continued to gripe because she specifically stated that she wanted her egg mcmuffin "plain." A senior citizen man standing next to her stated for everyone to hear....."we should make 'em learn English."

Now, the employee was using English.....it was just that the place was packed and he made a mistake. So, obviously, this man was referring to the fact that the employee had darker skin than he did. The older lady left and the arrogant older man stepped up and placed his order. He wanted two coffees 3 and 3. (Apparently McDonald's now places cream and sugar in your coffee for you and he wanted three creams and three sugars in each). They employee, who heard what the man had earlier said about learning English, responded, "1 Coke and 1 Coffee." The old man then said, "I don't want no Coke. I didn't order no Coke. I want coffee and I want YOU to put the cream and sugar in the coffee." It is my understanding that a double negative in the English language equals a positive. So, this man, who supports English as the official language of the United States, could not actually communicate using the English language. Unfortunately for the old man, the cream and sugar machine was broke, so he had to add it himself.

My Dissertation Abstract

Dissertation Title: “The National Way of Death: Funerals, Gravesites, and Monuments in American Public Culture from the Gilded Aged to the Great Depression.”

In recent years, scholars have emphasized the importance of collective memory in the making of national identity. Where does death fit into the memory of the United States, particularly in the economic and social chaos of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? How did death shape the collective memory of American national identity in the midst of a pluralism brought on by immigration, civil and labor rights, and a transforming culture? On the one hand, the commemorations of public figures such as Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt constructed an identity based on Anglo-Saxonism, American imperialism, and the “Strenuous Life.” This was reflected in the burial of American soldiers of the Spanish American and Philippine American wars and the First World War. On the other hand, the commemoration of Booker T. Washington, Susan B. Anthony, and the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and of lynching created opportunities to both critique and appropriate definitions of national identity. Through a series of case studies, my dissertation brings together cultural and political history to explore the (re)production and (trans)formation of American identity from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression. I am particularly interested in the way people used funerals and monuments as tools to produce official and vernacular memory. I argue that both official and subaltern forms of commemoration can help historians understand the social and political tensions of creating national identity in a burgeoning industrial and multicultural society.

Research Trip

The internet has completly changed the way scholars research. I have heard stories about the ancien regime researchers who used card catalogs and typewriters to write dissertations. Of course, one typing error meant starting the whole page over. And apparently many ph.d. candidates would store their manuscripts in the ice box/freezer because it was the only thing in the house that was fireproof; they were too poor to buy a safe. And of course conducting research in the archives was a painstaking task of locating information. It was almost easier to go to the stacks and sift through every document until one found what one was looking for.

Today it is different. I can sit here at home and access the online catalogs of thousands of libraries and archives around the world. Many of these institutions have put their collections online. I am planning on going to the Library of Congress (LOC) next week for research. I have just received word from one of the librarians that the Frederick Douglas papers are completly available online. This is an amazing prospect. I can access them from my computer at home. I wonder if this will change the way funding of projects are awarded. Until now people had to write grants for money so that they could afford a trip to the archives. Of course, this usually means that ivy league graduate students get most of the money while the rest of us have to get the scraps. The internet was supposed to bring down the communist regime in China, I wonder if it will also bring down the dominance that elite schools hold over the rest of us.

Of course trips to the archives will still be made. The internet does not make archives obsolete, although, if google gets its way, this may become a reality in the future. Realistically students need to go to the archives because not all the papers are digitalized. Major collections might be posted to the web but minor collections will remain in the stacks in the forseeable future. Still, it seems that access to sources are becoming democratized and this is a good thing because I can't afford to make multiple trips to the LOC.

New Rules

Why do I feel like Bill Maher?

New Rule: When trying to make a point about American interaction with Native Americans you CANNOT use Disney cartoons as a legitimate source in which to cite "historical facts." University students across America.....beware....you have been warned. Oh yeah, and when the Sons of Liberty threw the shipload of tea into Boston Harbor.....no, it did not turn the harbor into a "big pot o' tea."

The Pilgrimage

I'm a pilgrim but I have no holy place as my destination.
My pilgrimage is wandering these streets with the company of my own isolation.
I'm a postmodern pilgrim; I'll sign no Mayflower Compact,
my holy sites are the pub, Jerusalem, Thunder Road, and Mecca,
and my iTunes religion is debated among sacred prophets drinking Stella.

But I don't like those prophets anymore.
So I jumped in my chariot; running from the lumpenproletariat.
My biggest fear was that I was really one of them.
But who can tell the difference between reality and simulcra?
A summer's day like winter; the cold burns my soul like the snow burns my skin.
Every night is like the streets of old Jerusalem: ancient, winding, endless streets,
I lost my vision in the very midst of the Holy Land.

I was born to run but I never found thunder road,
just another conjured myth celebrated by iPod prophets.
The Holy Grail for which only lost souls would search,
and I was really one of them.
But I'm no Sir Gawain; this pilgrim grows tired,
and the Green Knight's head has been permanently severed.

Who can tell the difference between simulcra and reality?
And do we need a holy grail to preserve our sanity?
Yea tho' I walk through the streets of the lonely,
I will feel no evil, for you are not with me,
the silence, the solace, the surreal, they comfort me.

There is no Jerusalem and there is no Mecca.
The pilgrim has finally come home.

A Communist Fascist?

I lecture at a rural southern school and sometimes my experiences should be videotaped and presented on the surreal life t.v. show. It is unbelievable what some of the students at this very conservative school come up with. Last week I lectured on Reconstruction and the "Romance of Reunion." Historian Eric Foner criticizes Ken Burns and his civil war documentary because it does not consider the legacy of reconstruction or racial justice. I spent a whole hour and 15 minutes discussing Foner and Burns and concluded that the south "won" the peace because after Reconstruction southern and northern whites "reunified" at the expense of racial justice and black civil rights. As evidence: the southern states elected ex-confederate/neo-democrat politicians to congress who actively worked to oppress freedmen. Georgia, for example, elected Alexander Stephens....the vp of the csa. One of my students asked why this was a problem? He further commented that if the federal government refused to recognize the senator from georgia, then the federal government would be trampling on democracy for refusing to accept the democratically elected representative. When I pointed out that the people of georgia trampled on democracy by refusing to allow blacks the right to vote, the grumbling began.

Today I was lecturing on W.E.B. DuBois and The Souls of Black Folk. I was pointing out the criticism that DuBois had made in regards to Booker T. Washington's materialism thesis and the compromise in his famous Atlanta speech of 1906 in which Washington exchanged access to the marketplace at the expense of pursuing civil rights, political rights, and education for black youths. DuBois claimed that a Talented Tenth of liberal arts trained blacks should train themselves to lead a progressive gradual march to civil rights because materialism in and of itself simply did not work. A student commented that DuBois was wrong because "every economist in the world" knows that a vertical economy (capitalism) will integrate lower class people into an expanding middle class. When I pointed out that DuBois claimed that this could not happen because the economic capitalist system was dominated by whites and the whites had made laws that prohibted black upward socio-economic mobility, the student resorted to slander. He called DuBois a "Communist and a Fascist who supported Hitler, anti-semitism, and the Holocaust in Germany." My jaw dropped. I responded, firstly communists and fascists are two different things. I continued to say that DuBois never supported anti-semitism or the holocaust or fascism. The student claimed that he had documents to prove DuBois was anti-semitic....he failed to produce them. Anyway it turns out that DuBois had made two sterotypical remarks toward two jewish individuals earlier in his career but condemned anti-semitic behavior consistently throughout his career. He used Jewish intellectualism found in the Zionist movement to craft a pan-African ideology and he chastized nazi germany for its treatment of the Jews. He even commemorated the warsaw ghetto uprising and compared the struggle of the Jewish people to the struggle of African Americans in the United States. When I reminded the student that any vertical economic system...particularly capitalism.....always places someone at the bottom....and in the United States those at the bottom have been African Americans while whites created laws to keep them there throughout the centuries, the student finally ceased his onslaught of DuBois. I never even got to present to the students that both DuBois and Washington's models completely failed. DuBois became so disillusioned with the failure of progressivism and civil rights that he became a communist and moved to Ghana where he died in 1963.

What the hell? Where do these kids get these ideas? How the hell can you be a Communist Fascist? I am guessing that the student has been indoctrinated by the economics department at this school which is infamously ultra-conservative (and word on the street is that much of the faculty are also closet racists). This would explain where this student got his ideas. It was beyond belief and really quite distressing. Is this an example of how the academic world is moving away from criticism and in the direction of farce? Students are not only using the Patriot Act to legitimize internment camps for Japanese-Americans they now are using economic theory to impose an economic prison on those at the bottom of the vertical scale? I am sure that this university is anything but representative of the larger population but these ideas based on hyperbolic fiction presented as fact is becomeing way to common.

Flickr Photo History Assignment

I am creating a new assignment this semester. It is a sort of annotated bibliography but done with photos. My students must find photos of historical interest (really, it could be almost anything)....cemeteries, architecture, family immigration photos, even scanned images from newspapers, books, etc. They then have to talk about each photo and place each in an historical context using scholarly texts (JSTOR articles and books from the library). They must "annotate" each photo with its historical context using a minimum of 200 words. They must also use proper citation style. They will load 10 photos to a flickr group that I have established. I will then grade each student's 10 photos. I am grading on historical context, artistry, and technical aspects (tags, geotags, etc). Each student will also be allowed to post their single best photo in a second top 20 group. The best 20 photographs will get 20 extra credit points.

This will take some time to grade I'm afraid. But it will be interesting grading. I think the students will like it, but I have no idea if they actually will. The idea of this project is to make history relevant to each individual student by getting them to place their personal and family photos into historical context through scholarly research. I am trying to come up with an assignment that would require them to start a blog but I don't know if that would be as interesting. For the photo history group, I am very interested to see how it turns out. Details to follow later this semester.

My favorite class

I developed a lecture last year for my survey history classes and it has proven to be effective every time so far. It consists of a lecture and discussion of Industrialization. This can be used in a class size ranging 4-50 students and takes about an hour to do. It can be used in either a world history, u.s. history, labor history, cultural history, or urban history class. The goal is to get the students to realize the abuses of industrialization in the free market/laissez-faire capitalist world system.

Task number one is a brief lecture on pre-industrialization society and a description of guilds and guild halls. We discuss the social and economic status of skilled journeymen and apprentices. Then I have the class simulate the guild hall experience. I ask for a volunteer (someone artistic) to draw a automobile on the board. The drawing must be detailed and of high quality. Then I ask the class to take out a piece of paper and duplicate the drawing. The volunteer artist acts as the master craftsman and goes around the class evaluating the work of the journeymen and apprentices. If the student does not duplicate perfectly the drawing of the car, the master craftsman crumples the paper and asks the student to start again. Once everyone completes the drawing, we count how many we made. Then we discuss the simulated experience. The class should articulate the social liberty of the guild hall, the eased pressure of performance, and the high quality/high cost of their products.

Then I lecture briefly about the factory system and the pre-Fordist assembley line. How this transformed the social dynamic of the workplace and how the factory system successfully de-skilled labor. Then I talk about Fordism and Taylorism and how this de-humanized labor. After this, we simulate the factory system under the guise of fordism and taylorism. I take rows of students and form them into assembly lines. I draw a crude car on the board and they set about producing drawn cars as fast as possible. I act as foreman and I try to keep everybody quiet and I try to speed the assembly line up as best I can. Then I take my digital camera and photograph each assembly line. Afterwards we count how many cars we produced. Of course the quantity has dramatically increased but the quality has signficantly decreased. I then project the photos onto the screen and we evaluate how, through taylorist ideas, each assembly line could improve their movements to maximise efficiency on the line. The class should articulate that social oppression, the intense pressure to perform, the low wages and low cost of mass production. I then lecture on the early abuses of the factory system.....child labor, union busting, low wages, etc. The whole purpose of this is to get the students to realize how much social chaos industrialization caused, particularly among the working classes. It is amazing how many students become supporters of unionization and liberal regulation of the economy after they experience this exercise. It seems to work very well so far.