Hungry Heroines and Tragic Mulattos

After our rather critical discussions of Helga Crane in class, Zoey identified her with a literary type: the tragic mulatto.  Now I'm reading a collection of essays about Norwegian-American women (Norwegian American Women: Migration, Communities and Identities, eds. Bergland and Lahlum) that includes one on another literary type: the hungry heroine.  Ingrid Urberg explains that the type is found first in European folklore and then represented in immigrant fiction, more specifically works by and about Norwegian-American women.  Then she explores the translation of this fairy-tale type in several novels considering how these female protagonists move from their "lack" through a "quest" and achieve a "reward" in a new home.

In part her purpose is to counteract the common impression that Beret, in Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth, is the prototypical Norwegian immigrant woman: reluctant, depressive, and yet strong.  In some aspects a tragic type.  As I read Urberg's essay I was reminded that no single fictional character can adequately portray the wide range of human experience and response to common situations.  I wondered once again about what might be learned by considering  Quicksand both as a novel of the Harlem Renaissance and as an immigrant novel.  I'm not at all sure that this would change our response to Helga, but the larger field of comparison might yield useful insights about the intertwining of race, ethnicity, and gender in the early 20th century.

Norton on the Fair

 











 "The great Fair was indeed a superb and appropriate symbol of our great nation, in its noble general design and in the inequalities of its execution; in its unexampled display of industrial energy and practical capacity; in the absence of the higher works of creative imagination; in its incongruities, its mingling of noble realities and ignoble pretenses, in its refinements check-by-jowl with vulgarities, in its order and its confusion--in its heterogeneousness and its unity."

This comment by Harvard President Charles Eliot Norton, an official of the Columbian Exposition, gives evidence that at least some of those involved in its planning and execution were well aware of the ideological issues being played out there.  While scholars and other observers today often suggest that the White City represented an effort by an emerging elite to impose their largely middle class values and the Midway provided an alternative popular culture, perhaps the Fair also could be seen as an effort to find a way for multiple cultures to exist alongside, even over-lapping, one another.

Optimism, pessimism, dissatisfaction, hope

As we come back to these attitudes, again and again, this from theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether seems appropriate:

"If we are 'optimistic,' it suggests that change is inevitable and will happen in the 'natural' course of things, and so we need not make much effort ourselves. Someone else will take care of it. If we are 'pessimistic,' change is impossible, and therefore it is useless to try. In either case we have the luxury, as critical but comfortable elites in the United States, to question the present system without being responsible for it. What we need is neither optimism nor pessimism, in these terms, but committed love." - Rosemary Radford Ruether

Making visible

THIS from the October 23, 2011 Mpls Strib, an op-ed about poverty and children.  I could not get access to the article she mentions in which there are photos of kids in designer clothes.  She attempts to counter those images of children whose middle-class parents spent significant money on their soon-to-be-outgrown "luxe" outfits with statistics about the increasing number of Twin Cities kids whose parents' income is so low that they qualify for free lunch (35%) and others numbers about the dire situation of children living in poverty whom the rest of us are unlikely to notice.  She suggests that we are unlike to notice them because our daily lives do not intersect: we live and move in different parts of the city.  And, we don't notice them because the media we do see shows us those other kids in fancy, expensive clothing.

We talked about this in class from a couple of angles:
1) How does the situation she describes compare to that documented by Jacob Riis' photos and Hull House reports?

2) How effective is her op-ed in comparison to Riis' photos and Hull House reports?

A very important response to the first required us to move beyond the easy generalization that "the poor you have with you always."  We needed to consider both the degree of economic stratification in the USA at a given time and the actual conditions in which children in those various "classes" lived.  A parallel can be drawn to statistics about literacy.  In that case we must ask both what constitutes literacy and how many people achieve it.  What counted a century and a half ago would not count as literacy today. And today we'd probably need to add consideration of access to information technology to assessment of the ability to read.

Our response to the second seemed, at first, to assume that visibility is necessary if the general public is to respond to the situation of the poor.  We noted that a person or group of people can be invisible because there is no portrayal of their situation or because that portrayal is lost in the blizzard of information.  A variation on the second is that the viewer becomes numb to the images.  The Hull House strategy included both providing decision makers with many reports with many facts and taking up residence in those "congested areas."  At its best this strategy encouraged the residents to consider real people who were neither reduced to aggregated statistics nor to two-dimensional images.  Thus their neighbors were both visible and known in 3-dimensions.

Out in Chicago: History Museum Exhibit

Link to exhibit

After our reading of Gay New York this exhibit from the Chicago History Museum is of interest now that we're concentrating on that midwestern City.  The linked page includes photos of some items in the exhibit, both historical and contemporary.  These recall themes we have encountered before.  There is a photo from Bronzeville, Chicago's African-American neighborhood on the near southside, recalling the intersection of New York's "gay world" and Harlem.  The page also notes events including a walking tour of the Andersonville neighborhood, home to Ann Sather's Scandinavian restaurant and Women and Children First, a venerable feminist bookstore.  The first is a legacy of the neighborhood's history as a Scandinavian immigrant community; likely the second signals the influx of lesbian residents in the 1980s.

photographic past poem

In the Olden Days

by Richard Newman

The world held no color but sepia.
Our bedside tables creaked beneath the weight
of daily hardships, buffered only by doilies.
We did without, did things by hand. We got more
snow. Our Mickey Mouse was far from cute.
We specialized in quaint and quirky phrases
like "23 Skidoo." Our songs rang dark
with forced joy and naiveté: "Aint We Got Fun?"
Staring from family photographs, we look
older than we are. Even as children, our faces
are shadowed with doubt and parental disappointment,
as if to say to those looking years from now:
We persist. We persevere. We do this for you.
"In the Olden Days" by Richard Newman, from Borrowed Towns. © Word Press, 2005. 

After looking at those Jacob Riis photos on Friday, I was struck by this poem's suggestion that the people in photos speak from their time to contemporary viewers.  And I wished that our exercise had been slightly different.  Instead of writing captions for the photos we might have written speeches for the people in them: 1) what would this child holding the baby have said to Riis's viewers and 2) what does she say to us.

more on tableware

Once more about the tools for eating and what they reveal about values and customs. This time we consider the flatware of the the early 20th century.


If 'everyone' can own a fork or two, then how will the elite demonstrate their refinement?  Multiply the kinds of forks and knives and spoons.  That increases the cost of owning a full set.  It requires a larger table to set a larger, more elaborate meal to eat from it with the utensils, and introduces special knowledge about which utensil to use to each each dish.  Thus, even if I have enough money to buy all those pieces and a cook to plan and prepare the meal, I still could betray my non-elite origins by eating my fish with a dessert fork.

on the joys and aches of global perspective

THIS lovely reflection from Monte Smith (Paracollege, 2000) about coming "home" from Hong Kong and how she feels about being here while also not being there.  She reminds me that our happy encouragement of global perspective is only part of the story.  Opening one's heart up to the world includes being open to its sorrows and to the smaller sadness of always being divided between where one is and the place and people who are elsewhere.

after fall break.....

We enter fall break with some expectation that there will be catching up.  Here's my confession, I came back more behind than I was before.  My office looks more and more like this.  even if the books, and piles of papers, are not moving, not spinning like those plates we contemplated last fall, I'm feeling something like a person with too many plates spinning.

"domestic" spaces and politics

Occupy Wall Street, or Boston, or Minneapolis:  All of these encampments are examples of protesters taking up residence in a public space in order to express their political views.  While the particular point of protest is specific to now, the strategy is not.

Last spring we read about Egyptians living in a central square within view of the world famous Egyptian Museum, the Nile Hilton, and the Nile River itself. For years British women occupied Greenham Commons, a peace camp near a nuclear facility.  Perhaps a closer parallel can be drawn to the "Hoovervilles" where out-of-work Ameriacns lived during the Great Depression.  The link leads you to a small PBS article about these in New York City, including the largest one in Central Park.

These examples of appropriating public space by turning it into ones' own private, "domestic" living space in order to make a public statement interest me because of our ongoing discussion of the boundaries between public and private space; because the desire for (and expectation that one will have) a house and home secure from invasion is a central characteristic of the middle class about whom we are reading in the Gilbert book; and because Riis's photos show quite another reality in an effort to sway public opinion.

Democracy in Boston

Last year we spent the fall preoccupied with the TeaParty, both the historical event in colonial Boston and the contemporary political movement.  Then in the spring, as we turned our attention to  democracy and the 19th century we were presented with outbreaks of popular protests in Madison, WI and across North Africa.  Now, as we consider the re-making of America, urbanization, and the like, the Occupy Wall Street protest is spreading across the nation and its Boston expression presents an opportunity to think about democracy, social movements, and re-making of America in today's cities.

This NPR (WBUR) story about the Boston Occupation (LINK TO STORY) was playing as I drove to work.  It describes the ground-level organization of a "village" within the city and toward a re-imagining of democracy as something closer to ancient Athens than to the modern voting booth.  Maybe this encampment is a sort of "city on a hill" in a park, an effort to demonstrate a Utopian vision in which tweets bring in a blizzard of dry socks and news of each evening's general assembly is carried by word-of-mouth.  One of the interviewees, or perhaps the commentator, observed that this sort of democracy is slow and time-consuming.  Lots of meetings and conversations are needed before concrete goals emerge with consolidated support.  Nonetheless, there is something hopeful and encouraging about this aspect of the movement, a belief in "government by, for, and of the people."

Link to a long blog post about democracy in the Boston encampment.

Ragtime: the musical @ ParkSquare in February

Our own Gary Gissleman is directing the musical in St. Paul.
Shall we go?
It is NOT the script used in the film.

(Ultimate) Team = Social Capital?

Steph's AmCon Commonplace Blog: Team = Social Capital?: I played in an ultimate frisbee tournament this weekend; as usual, it was super fun and made me super tired! But, at the end of the day, th...

I had not seen Steph's post before I wrote mine.  Looks like we were thinking along compatible lines.

Who decides: some observations about Ultimate Frisbee

Since my son invited me, I went to watch him play ultimate frisbee.  Although I've had several students who play, this was the first time I'd watched or learned much about this game.  What I saw was influenced by the discussion we've been having in Am Con about who decides what behaviors are acceptable in public and by my on-going musing about how human beings learn.

1)  There are no referees in ultimate.  If there is an infringement of the rules, the players have to work it out between themselves.  Now, this is not to way that there are no rules.  Nonetheless, there is something deeply democratic and attractive about a game that encourages opponents to figure out how to play well together.

2) The three teams I saw play all seemed to have a player on the sidelines watching each player in the game.  Then, when the players turned over the observer did a little coaching, suggesting how to improve the game.  What a great model for collaborative learning.  I think this is similar to what we hope will happen with peer editing.

Drawing lines

Some lines divide, some connect dots.  Some are solid, bold, difficult to miss, others are thin or broken.  We've been talking, at least indirectly, about drawing lines: lines to divide the members of social classes from each other, lines that define the difference between one race and another, lines that mark the physical boundaries of neighborhoods and the social boundaries of communities.

We have posed, if not plumbed, the issue of who has authority to draw the lines that give definition to social identities and relationships.

Yesterday we had a moment of facing the line between private space and public space and the behaviors deemed acceptable in each.  Of course this line is related to even having the concept of privacy.  Like these other concepts, privacy has a history.  With in the household, space and specialized use of it is a prerequisite of privacy.  Without those, members of the household may seek out other spaces in which to conduct their private business.

Also underlying the notion of private and public space is the conviction that not all spaces are the same.  If that distinction is not granted, then there is no possibility of designated some spaces private suitable for intimate, familial, or other activities suitable for public, civic, or other activities.  Beyond our discussion of this relative to gay male activities in 1930s New York, I'm interested in how Americans think about these issues today and how influences the ways behave and are perceived in other nations.

I have observed Americans in other nations treating public spaces such a museum lobbies and hotel restaurants as if they were in their own homes despite the more restrained behaviors of local residents.  I have wondered if this parallel to or even informed by the shifting notions of privacy fueled by internet use.  I'm pondering . . . .

Generations: How Millennial Are You?

Generational analysis has long been part of the study of immigrant groups.  The classic analysis of 19th and early 20th century groups posited a three generation scheme and contrasted second generational desire to blend in with mainstream American society to the third generation's effort to retriever what their parents' rejected: language, food ways, etc.  More recently we've heard (and said) so much about 20th century generations shaped by shared formative events.  the "greatest" generation shaped by WWII, the "Boomers" in the boom years on the mid-20th century, etc.

In the midst of our class discussion of gender, race, ethnicity, and class generation was introduced both as useful for identifying Doctrow's themes and for understanding our selves.  "Which generation are we?" my students asked?  Well . . . . this link takes you to the Pew Research Center quiz "How Millennial Are You?"  Fourteen quick questions.  Your score is displayed both in general and relative to others in your age bracket.   I scored higher than I expected.

Case studies and the history of sexuality

By the mid-20th century cultural and social historians were deep into the case study approach to history.  Rather than trying to research the whole history of huge topics and write comprehensive accounts, they focused their attention on more limited manifestations in order to go deeper.  Rather than everything about women and the Second Great Awakening, in her book Cradle of the Middle Class, Mary Ryan wrote about The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865.  This approach is especially important in a new field of study; it functions as sort of sample and gives direction to later work.  Of course, questions must be asked about the typicality of a study focused on one locality.  Is the case representative of other places in the same time period?  To what degree can it be generalized?  

These questions have surfaced in our discussions of Gay New York.  We know that this was a ground breaking study.  We know that New York is a major metropolis.  We wonder if similar developments were taking place in Chicago and Los Angeles.  We note that Chauncey tells us that he set out to study the male gay world and that while he suspects that some similar dynamics were at work among lesbians, he also was unwilling to simply generalize in a way that obscured significant differences.


Now Chauncey has returned to teach at Yale and he directs a project on the history of sexuality which is expanding the base of our knowledge.  See what is currently in process.

History of Sexuality project at Yale: Dissertations in Process