A Spring Break Hiatus

While the blog takes a break, have a look at these HS posts on travel, roadside history, holidays, and leisure.

Randall Stephens, "Norway Doorway, pt 4: Way up North and Academic Travel," March 5, 2012

Heather Cox Richardson, "Paean to the Museum of the Fur Trade Quarterly," July 16, 2012

Heather Cox Richardson, "Structured Procrastination," November 14, 2011

Randall Stephens, "'Fourth of July, Bah Humbug!' Says Frederick Marryat," July 3, 2011

Heather Cox Richardson, "A New Old Look at Mother’s Day," May 6, 2011

Randall Stephens, "Tocqueville and Beaumont's Roadtrip" April 21, 2011

Film History at the Guardian

Randall Stephens

For about the last five years the historian Alex von Tunzelmann has composed short pieces at the Guardian on history films.  "Reel History," so reads the description, focuses on "classics of big screen history and prises fact from fiction." Does the plot square with historical realities?  What about the acting? The costumes? Do anachronisms abound? 

Here's a bit from her recent piece on Northwest Passage (1940). Writes Tunzelmann:

The search for a northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific has little to do with what's going on in this film. At the end, Rogers announces his intention to find one. This was supposed to be the sequel, and indeed its own title card announces it as Northwest Passage (Book I - Rogers' Rangers). Though it was a hit with audiences, it had cost too much to make. MGM canned Book II – and, just as in real life, no northwest passage was ever found.

Verdict: It's an impressively rough and tough look at frontier warfare, but Northwest Passage's historical judgment is skewed by its racism.

"Reel History" is definitely worth checking out. See more reviews here.

The Sequester Hits History

Philip White 

When we think about the budget mess in Washington, it’s easy to focus on how it affects what’s now and what’s next. But what’s often overlooked is how budget cuts impact the study of the past. Or, how those cuts might shape history for current and future generations.

Harry S. Truman's farm home in Grandview, Missouri

In the past year, I’ve spent many a Saturday morning at the Harry S. Truman Museum and Library in Independence, Mo., merrily panning for research gold sifting through umpteen boxes and folders. Thankfully the museum and the researcher’s reading room/library will not be closing.

But as of March 24, Truman’s old white-board home in Independence (which he far preferred to the other White House he lived in, dubbing the latter, “the great white jail”) will be closed on national holidays, Sundays and Mondays. The Noland house across the street, which once belonged to Truman’s cousins, is being shuttered for good. And though visitors can still mosey around the grounds of the family farm in Grandview, Missouri, they’ll no longer be able to tour the house.

What Has Changed, and What Hasn’t?

Dan Allosso

Working on the final revisions of An Infidel Body-Snatcher and the Fruits of His Philosophy, I’ve found myself asking, “Okay, so what’s different?” As historians, we’re always making comparisons between the past and the present, even if we disagree about the ways these comparisons ought to be used. I’m writing popular history, so my approach has been that both the differences and the similarities between my subjects in their world, and my readers in ours, should be relevant and meaningful.

First, the differences. Day to day life is so much easier now, that it’s hard for readers to appreciate the sheer work that went into staying alive from year to year in the early 19th century. Ironically, I think this can make it easier for modern readers to identify with elite characters like Thomas Jefferson (who had slaves and employees to do the day to day work of basic survival for him, as we now have technology), than with the 99%. 

Can Small Town America Support Bookstores? An Owner’s Tale

Philip White
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Philip White signing copies of his book,
Our Supreme Task, at Well Read, March 2012

The commonly accepted narrative about bookstores is that they’re doomed. People simply won’t go to bricks-and-mortar spaces to buy hardbacks and softcovers when they can pull up a web browser, click or tap a couple of times, and boom! Either an e-book is on their screen or that supposedly archaic bundle of paper is on its way.

But while certain undeniable facts—the closing of Borders and the rise of Amazon as the alpha dog in the bookselling industry among them—prove this impression to be true-ish, there are other signs that cast doubt on it. Some of these are factual and some anecdotal. In the case of the latter, Half Price Books is always jam packed when I go into one of the four Kansas City locations to buy more books I probably don’t need. Also, I recently read The Atlantic’s feature on Ann Patchett, who is not only bankrolling a bookstore in Nashville but also got a spot on the Colbert Report because of it. (I’m not jealous, honest. OK, yeah I am.) Third, I have spoken in four independent bookstores in the past few months and at all but one of my other events (libraries, community groups, etc.) indies provided the books. 

The most recent of my bookstore talks was at Well Read in Fulton, Missouri, a two-story brick building on the very parade route that Winston Churchill took hours before he introduced the world to the terms “iron curtain” (he didn’t invent but popularized it) and “special relationship” in March 1946. Until last year, the store was somewhat disorganized, did little to no marketing and didn’t offer a space for reading or book events. All that has changed since Brian and Danielle Warren took over. I grabbed a few minutes with Brian to talk about book curating, the joy of sifting through boxes of old history books, and why two young, intelligent people took over a used bookshop in a small Midwestern town. 

“If We Must Die,” A Poem We All Should Know

Heather Cox Richardson

Claude McKay. Courtesy of the
Beinecke Library, Yale University.

Recently, I found myself telling history students which poems they must know as part of their rock-bottom basic understanding of American history. There is Anne Bradstreet’s “Epitaph for her Mother," exploring what it meant to be a good woman in colonial America; Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in theDooryard Bloom’d," linking Lincoln’s assassination to the natural world; and Claude McKay’s 1919 “If We Must Die."
  

If we must die—let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe!

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Field Trip: A Report from the Bright Side of Fourth-Grade History Education

Chris Beneke

Guided tour at Lowell National Park. 
Photo courtesy of www.nps.gov/lowe

If the experiences of my kids are at all representative, the glum accounts you’ve heard or read about elementary and secondary education in the U.S. have some basis in fact. Public school students move in virtual lock-step with their classmates, get a meager fifteen minutes for recess, and take tests with unsettling regularity. Meanwhile, their hardworking teachers and principals must manage both rigid curriculum standards and large classes.

In light of these oft-repeated concerns, my perspective brightened last week while chaperoning my son’s fourth-grade class trip to the Lowell National Park, the splendid and well-preserved site of the famous textile mills where America’s industrial revolution took off in the 1830s and 1840s. I didn’t come away feeling like a Finnish parent probably feels after accompanying his or her child on a field trip. Still, the experience left me much more optimistic about the trajectory of early history education: the kids arrived well-prepared and the museum’s activities were engaging, hands-on, well-paced, and occasionally revelatory.

Stressed Much? You’re In Good Company

Eric Schultz
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Earlier this month, the American Psychological Association released a study called Stress in America, concluding that Millennials, 18 to 33-year-old

From "Science Nation - Teens and Stress" (NSF)

Americans, along with Gen Xers (34-47), are the most stressed generations in America.  On a scale of 1-10, the average American defines a healthy level of stress as 3.6 but feels a level of 4.9.  Millennials and Gen Xers are at 5.4, a level the study concludes is “far higher than Boomers’ average stress level of 4.7 and Matures’ [67 and over] of 3.7.”

Thirty-nine percent of Millennials say their stress has increased in the last year, while 52 percent report having lain awake at night in the past month due to stress.  “Millennials and Gen Xers are most likely to say that they are stressed by work, money and job stability, while Boomers and Matures are more likely to be concerned with health issues affecting their families and themselves,” the study concluded.

Robert Zieger, 1938-2013

Paul Ortiz

Robert H. Zieger, distinguished professor of history emeritus at the University of Florida, passed away on March 6, 2013.

Professor Zieger was one of the preeminent labor historians of the United States. He was a two-time recipient of the Philip Taft Labor History Book Award for the best book in labor history. He was a prolific writer and authored classic works including, For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865 (University Press of Kentucky, 2007),  The CIO, 1935-1955 (University of North Carolina Press, 1995), and America's Great War: World War I and the American Experience (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).

In addition Bob was a spirited and rigorous historian who introduced countless scholars, students, union members, and community organizers to the field of labor history. He edited several key volumes in southern labor history including Life and Labor in the New New South (University Press of Florida, 2012) which presented some of the best new work in the field of southern labor studies.  Bob also penned essays on baseball for Harper's magazine, on labor race, and gender for Reviews in American History, and on the lessons of the past for Historically Speaking.

The Society for US Intellectual History: An Interview

Randall Stephens

Since 2007 the US Intellectual History (S-USIH) blog has nurtured a lively community of historians. Since then that virtual group has morphed into a series of annual conferences and the Society for US Intellectual History. The revamped S-USIH site is a real model for digital humanities and shows how best to foster conversations within a field. The blog features book reviews, op-eds, think pieces, and essays that frequently spark heated debates in the comments section. (Like many U.S. historians I’ve watched all this with real interest—reading, lurking, and occasionally commenting on posts.)

To find out a little bit more about how the website has led to a vibrant Society and what the group does, I recently caught up with key members and founders: Andrew Hartman (Illinois State University), Tim Lacy (Loyola University), Benjamin Alpers (University of Oklahoma), and Ray Haberski (Marian University).

Randall Stephens: The US Intellectual History blog started in 2007. Why did you and others launch it?

Andrew Hartman: Tim [Lacy] got the ball rolling by issuing a call to the H-Ideaslistserv. I answered that call, which was to form a community of U.S. intellectual historians in some fashion, because I felt like I had few people to talk to about my work and about the type of history I was most interested in doing. I was in my first year as an assistant professor, and was already missing my graduate school community, and was looking for some way to replicate that. I don't exactly remember why we decided a blog was the best way to build community—at that time, I didn't even read academic blogs—but in retrospect it was a great decision.

The Seduction of Two Innocents: Comic Book Readers and Policy Makers

Heather Cox Richardson

In 1938 Superman sped into this galaxy from the planet Krypton to save humanity.  He and his superhero friends oversaw the chaos of the late 1940s, as America first fought World War II and then struggled to adjust to demobilization. Superman and his friends then swept through the skies as the U.S. armed for the Cold War. While Superman matured, the late 1940s and early 1950s brought chilling fear to Americans that the nation was slipping, losing ground to the Russians, falling apart.

So many children—and adults—were reading comics that critics carped that comics themselves were part of America’s moral decline. In 1953, 6.5 comics were sold for every one person in the country. More than 90% of children admitted to reading them.

In 1954 the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham published The Seduction of the Innocent, detailing how comic books dragged impressionable youths into crime, violence, and homosexuality. The book used anecdotes to prove that Batman, for example, promoted a gay lifestyle. The Seduction of the Innocent was such a sensation that Wertham became the go-to man for information about the danger of comics, and the industry itself, which scorned Wertham, felt obliged to bow to pressure from his acolytes. To preempt government censorship, the Comics Magazine Association of America developed the Comics Code Authority, which banned violence, sex, and disrespect for authority in comic books. Under the Comics Code, good must always triumph over evil, and any treatment of sexuality had to emphasize the sanctity of marriage.

Wertham died in 1981, and his archives opened to researchers in 2010. Carol Tilley, a scholar of library science at the University of Illinois, dug immediately into Wertham’s files on The Seduction of the Innocent. She found that Wertham had comprehensively fudged his data.

Wertham used no citations, and excised from his notes the full portraits of the children he claimed were victimized by comics. His 13-year-old “Dorothy” refused to go regularly to school because she admired Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and crime comics. In fact, Dorothy had other attributes that undoubtedly affected her school attendance: she was a sexually active runaway with a reading disability who belonged to a gang. Another 13-year-old—a boy this time—admired Batman for what he and Robin might be doing in their spare time; in fact, the boy had been sexually assaulted and preferred Superman and war comics to Batman. The list goes on and on.

The seduction of the innocent, indeed.

Mapping the Past Roundup

Maureen McGavin, "Digital project focuses on Lincoln-based sermons," Emory News Center, February 22, 2013

The route of Lincoln's funeral train

A group of graduate students at Emory University specializing in digital research in the humanities have created a new website that uses digital tools to analyze and compare the text of sermons delivered after Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

Their project uses various digital text tools to map geographic and thematic patterns in the collection of 57 sermons, which reside in the Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library of Emory's Robert W. Woodruff Library. The scholars are calling their project "Lincoln Logarithms: Finding Meaning in Sermons" and they hope it will become a model for the next wave of research in the humanities.>>>

Max Fisher, "A surprising map of the world’s national holidays (only two countries have no national day)," Washington Post, February 26, 2013

This map, inspired by a Reddit thread with a similar map, shows the national days of the world’s countries. As you can see, the world is mostly divided between countries that celebrate a national independence day and countries that celebrate a national unification or revolution day. The outliers are a tiny minority, and only two countries have no formal national day at all.>>>