A quick addendum to my previous post, remember that it helps everyone if you keep up with the blog, read all of the posts, and comment any questions or impressions that you might have. I will comment on all of your individual posts, but one of the best ways to get additional feedback is for you to provide it for one another.
Also, class time is limited, so any issues or questions that you have in regards to your own or another student's paper topic should go on the blog. I check the blog throughout the week, so I'll comment on any "posts between posts" as needed.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Revised Topic
I apologize for the lateness of my post, I didn't have time to visit Hoover until just yesterday. Here is my original idea, with my additional thoughts after exploring the available sources.
Although my research question and thesis are not set in stone, I am operating under a general idea that hopefully can help me narrow down my focus as my research progresses. Basically, I want to frame the minority wartime experience with the theme of our class, identities. This would break down into two main facets: how are these minority soldiers perceived by those around them (i.e. their commanders and fellow soldiers, their community back home, other minority groups, etc.) and how do they perceive themselves (ties to their original home and culture versus ties to their adopted country, the United States.) What are they fighting for? Narrow concerns such as their family? Fear of being seen as 'un-American?' Unable to find a job, and so chose the army as a last resort? Or do they believe in the cause, believe that defending America and her democratic ideals are reason enough to volunteer? Of course the background of these soldiers would play an important part in my analysis. Are they first or second generation Americans? What was their life like growing up in this country?
After looking into available sources, I may have to adjust my focus towards the home front. Looking in the Hoover archives and the Mexican-American collection, I did find one promising collection about a Cuban-American literary scholar who also served as a Sgt. In World War II. However, the majority of his writings are in Spanish (which I do not speak). I am still interested in my original research questions, but I may need to adjust my focus if I cannot find a primary source documenting a soldier’s experience.
I think I may look closer at the experience of Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles during the war years (1939-1945). I have found a source that focuses on these types of experiences in Southern California. Many of these immigrants were targets for violence, which erupted into the Zoot Suit Riots. I want to examine why such divisive racial tensions existed during the war years and how they affected Mexican-American perceptions of their newly adopted home country as well as their effect on American morale in general.
- Brendan
Although my research question and thesis are not set in stone, I am operating under a general idea that hopefully can help me narrow down my focus as my research progresses. Basically, I want to frame the minority wartime experience with the theme of our class, identities. This would break down into two main facets: how are these minority soldiers perceived by those around them (i.e. their commanders and fellow soldiers, their community back home, other minority groups, etc.) and how do they perceive themselves (ties to their original home and culture versus ties to their adopted country, the United States.) What are they fighting for? Narrow concerns such as their family? Fear of being seen as 'un-American?' Unable to find a job, and so chose the army as a last resort? Or do they believe in the cause, believe that defending America and her democratic ideals are reason enough to volunteer? Of course the background of these soldiers would play an important part in my analysis. Are they first or second generation Americans? What was their life like growing up in this country?
After looking into available sources, I may have to adjust my focus towards the home front. Looking in the Hoover archives and the Mexican-American collection, I did find one promising collection about a Cuban-American literary scholar who also served as a Sgt. In World War II. However, the majority of his writings are in Spanish (which I do not speak). I am still interested in my original research questions, but I may need to adjust my focus if I cannot find a primary source documenting a soldier’s experience.
I think I may look closer at the experience of Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles during the war years (1939-1945). I have found a source that focuses on these types of experiences in Southern California. Many of these immigrants were targets for violence, which erupted into the Zoot Suit Riots. I want to examine why such divisive racial tensions existed during the war years and how they affected Mexican-American perceptions of their newly adopted home country as well as their effect on American morale in general.
- Brendan
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Response to week 4 posts
I was really pleased to read all of your blog posts this week. You've all clearly narrowed down your topics considerably within your larger fields of interest. As you know, tomorrow Ben Stone will be in class and will help all of you individually in locating primary sources based on these posts. Hopefully, this will solve some of the problems cited in the "troubleshooting" portion of the assignment.
In the meantime, a few comments:
Matt--I think that the idea of comparing the rhetoric of people writing in different colonies is a good one though access to sources may be a limiting factor to how extensively this can be done. I'd also caution that you see to be suggesting in your post that the rhetoric of slavery differs from the "true feelings" of revolutionary era writers. This may be so, but don't assume that rhetoric is divorced from private beliefs. Make sure to take the published writing that you read seriously, even where you believe that authors are exaggerating or stretching a metaphor to make a greater impact.
Andrea--It will probably be possible to find some media that contains comedy routines. Audience reaction may be more difficult, but I would worry less about being able to find at least some comedy routines. It will probably be necessary though for you to limit yourself to fewer comedians in order to make the source load more manageable. You might even just pick one or two comedians to work on. Since you mentioned separating male and female comedy, you might think about picking one female comedian or a couple of female comedians and thinking about how gender informs their views on the black family and marriage.
Chris--Since you are focusing at least in part of the earthquake and on cultural matters, you'll probably find a wealth of sources. I don't think it will be much of a hindrance for you to not read Chinese, but as always it entails reading sources carefully and understanding that many of the sources will be not so much about Chinese American culture but about how white people encounter and interpret this culture. Now, part of the question then becomes how this interpretation changes (or doesn't) in response to the dislocations caused by the earthquake. I'll be interested to see in particular what sources you can find at special collections at Stanford given that you've already worked through many of the resources on campus. It could really illustrate what kind of information a new angle or question can reveal even when it seems that you've found almost everything.
Sylvie--It occurred to me while reading your post that the Hoover also has papers of some prominent Jewish conservatives active in the 1960s and 1970s. Although this clearly isn't exactly where you're going, perhaps it would interest you to look through some of these papers to see how they encounter conservativism through the lens of their religious beliefs. Perhaps some of them also published articles in the National Review? Also, both you and Tom should read the book A Time for Choosing by Jonathan Schoenwald.
Tom--See the above book recommendation in Jenni's comments. Focusing on women is a great idea. Though you might not be able to find specific information about the migrations of many of these women, you probably will be able to find organizations or campaigns that were run predominantly by women or that concerned "women's issues." In addition to the above book recommendation, I'd also see Thomas Edsall and Mary Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights and Taxes on American Politics. It has more information on busing and other issues that conservative women took up in large numbers.
Jenni--I won't say much since we spoke about this to some degree already. I'll just reiterate that images of the "new woman" may be both illustrative about what she is and what she is not. Images directed towards older women, who presumably are not "new women," can tell just as much about womanhood and contradictions that resulted from the cultural shift.
Alice--The story of how the Pinkertons became a large private police force in the late 19th century is one that I suspect has a great deal of regional variation. In other words, the history of the Pinkertons in the Bay Area will probably look very different from the history of the Pinkertons on the east coast. That said, I think even looking at once piece of the larger Pinkerton machine tie in to the narrative that you've laid out of the growth of private police action and violence for profit. I believe this has been said already, but I'd also point out that you're right to point out that the ethnicity of the Pinkertons and of the people who were the victims of their attention will be a factor in your analysis given that there may be conflicts between more newly arrived Irish, Italian, Eastern/Southern European and more established whites.
In the meantime, a few comments:
Matt--I think that the idea of comparing the rhetoric of people writing in different colonies is a good one though access to sources may be a limiting factor to how extensively this can be done. I'd also caution that you see to be suggesting in your post that the rhetoric of slavery differs from the "true feelings" of revolutionary era writers. This may be so, but don't assume that rhetoric is divorced from private beliefs. Make sure to take the published writing that you read seriously, even where you believe that authors are exaggerating or stretching a metaphor to make a greater impact.
Andrea--It will probably be possible to find some media that contains comedy routines. Audience reaction may be more difficult, but I would worry less about being able to find at least some comedy routines. It will probably be necessary though for you to limit yourself to fewer comedians in order to make the source load more manageable. You might even just pick one or two comedians to work on. Since you mentioned separating male and female comedy, you might think about picking one female comedian or a couple of female comedians and thinking about how gender informs their views on the black family and marriage.
Chris--Since you are focusing at least in part of the earthquake and on cultural matters, you'll probably find a wealth of sources. I don't think it will be much of a hindrance for you to not read Chinese, but as always it entails reading sources carefully and understanding that many of the sources will be not so much about Chinese American culture but about how white people encounter and interpret this culture. Now, part of the question then becomes how this interpretation changes (or doesn't) in response to the dislocations caused by the earthquake. I'll be interested to see in particular what sources you can find at special collections at Stanford given that you've already worked through many of the resources on campus. It could really illustrate what kind of information a new angle or question can reveal even when it seems that you've found almost everything.
Sylvie--It occurred to me while reading your post that the Hoover also has papers of some prominent Jewish conservatives active in the 1960s and 1970s. Although this clearly isn't exactly where you're going, perhaps it would interest you to look through some of these papers to see how they encounter conservativism through the lens of their religious beliefs. Perhaps some of them also published articles in the National Review? Also, both you and Tom should read the book A Time for Choosing by Jonathan Schoenwald.
Tom--See the above book recommendation in Jenni's comments. Focusing on women is a great idea. Though you might not be able to find specific information about the migrations of many of these women, you probably will be able to find organizations or campaigns that were run predominantly by women or that concerned "women's issues." In addition to the above book recommendation, I'd also see Thomas Edsall and Mary Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights and Taxes on American Politics. It has more information on busing and other issues that conservative women took up in large numbers.
Jenni--I won't say much since we spoke about this to some degree already. I'll just reiterate that images of the "new woman" may be both illustrative about what she is and what she is not. Images directed towards older women, who presumably are not "new women," can tell just as much about womanhood and contradictions that resulted from the cultural shift.
Alice--The story of how the Pinkertons became a large private police force in the late 19th century is one that I suspect has a great deal of regional variation. In other words, the history of the Pinkertons in the Bay Area will probably look very different from the history of the Pinkertons on the east coast. That said, I think even looking at once piece of the larger Pinkerton machine tie in to the narrative that you've laid out of the growth of private police action and violence for profit. I believe this has been said already, but I'd also point out that you're right to point out that the ethnicity of the Pinkertons and of the people who were the victims of their attention will be a factor in your analysis given that there may be conflicts between more newly arrived Irish, Italian, Eastern/Southern European and more established whites.
Revised Research Statement
Sorry this is late - mixed up the due dates.
After a good amount of deliberation, I've decided that the topic I would like to pursue this quarter is my second one: anti-British Propaganda in Colonial America. More specifically, I'd like to engage the contradiction between the rhetoric of “enslavement” to Great Britain utilized by revolutionary forces before the outbreak of the revolutionary war and the practice of economic slavery that was common in the colonies. This is by no means an absolutely unique topic, but the angle with which I plan to tackle it should definitely provide some new insights into how the contradiction was born and thrived.
In a nutshell, here are the questions I want to answer: How much did the anti-British “slavery” rhetoric contrast with the actual philosophical positions of those espousing this rhetoric? How much was genuine, how much was used as a tool of manipulation? In spite of the obvious contradiction, “slavery” rhetoric was prominent in anti-British propaganda. Something about this rhetoric must have resonated strongly with the population that the propagandists were trying to mobilize, but why? Understanding why and how this rhetoric worked so well would provide a unique lens into understanding the psychology and political/moral philosophies of average Americans, the potential foot soldiers of revolution. It would help us understand more fully what truly made the revolution possible.
The primary sources I need to look into are rather obvious – first, I'd be looking at the actual pamphlets that were disseminated by organizations such as Sons of Liberty. I also want to find documents that express revolutionaries' views of economic slavery, and private letters in which they express their true feelings for Great Britain and to what extent the relationship between Great Britain and the United States constituted “slavery.” I haven't gone through a rigorous inventory of secondary sources yet, but I definitely want to look at Bernard Bailyn's Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and other sources that engage the issue of the rhetoric of slavery.
After evaluating my topic further, I feel like I have some good starting points for my research. Prof. Hobbs recommended some fantastic sources I plan on looking in to, and I'm going to talk to my adviser Prof. Rakove some time early next week.
One new idea that I've come up with is doing an analysis of how common "slavery" rhetoric was in from colony to colony. Was it used more in the South than in the North? Was the rhetoric used in a different way? I hope that I can find a variety of sources from different colonies, and also some sources that point to how prevalent slavery was in certain areas so I can see if there's anything to be found here.
I might also want to analyze the rhetoric's change over time, if there is significant change over time. Obviously I can't cover all of this, but I would like to do at least a little bit of research on all of it to see where the most interesting angles lie.
After a good amount of deliberation, I've decided that the topic I would like to pursue this quarter is my second one: anti-British Propaganda in Colonial America. More specifically, I'd like to engage the contradiction between the rhetoric of “enslavement” to Great Britain utilized by revolutionary forces before the outbreak of the revolutionary war and the practice of economic slavery that was common in the colonies. This is by no means an absolutely unique topic, but the angle with which I plan to tackle it should definitely provide some new insights into how the contradiction was born and thrived.
In a nutshell, here are the questions I want to answer: How much did the anti-British “slavery” rhetoric contrast with the actual philosophical positions of those espousing this rhetoric? How much was genuine, how much was used as a tool of manipulation? In spite of the obvious contradiction, “slavery” rhetoric was prominent in anti-British propaganda. Something about this rhetoric must have resonated strongly with the population that the propagandists were trying to mobilize, but why? Understanding why and how this rhetoric worked so well would provide a unique lens into understanding the psychology and political/moral philosophies of average Americans, the potential foot soldiers of revolution. It would help us understand more fully what truly made the revolution possible.
The primary sources I need to look into are rather obvious – first, I'd be looking at the actual pamphlets that were disseminated by organizations such as Sons of Liberty. I also want to find documents that express revolutionaries' views of economic slavery, and private letters in which they express their true feelings for Great Britain and to what extent the relationship between Great Britain and the United States constituted “slavery.” I haven't gone through a rigorous inventory of secondary sources yet, but I definitely want to look at Bernard Bailyn's Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and other sources that engage the issue of the rhetoric of slavery.
After evaluating my topic further, I feel like I have some good starting points for my research. Prof. Hobbs recommended some fantastic sources I plan on looking in to, and I'm going to talk to my adviser Prof. Rakove some time early next week.
One new idea that I've come up with is doing an analysis of how common "slavery" rhetoric was in from colony to colony. Was it used more in the South than in the North? Was the rhetoric used in a different way? I hope that I can find a variety of sources from different colonies, and also some sources that point to how prevalent slavery was in certain areas so I can see if there's anything to be found here.
I might also want to analyze the rhetoric's change over time, if there is significant change over time. Obviously I can't cover all of this, but I would like to do at least a little bit of research on all of it to see where the most interesting angles lie.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
refined research topic - andrea
Sorry for the delay in posting this – my Tuesdays are hectic!
I hope to carve out more on my topic when I meet with Professor Hobbs tomorrow, but here is a more refined look at my ideas, with particular attention on the Troubleshooting section:
What began with a desire to understand the history and crisis of marriage within the black community morphed into an exploration of how black relationship are depicted by performers – specifically black comedians.
Recently, many social scientists are considering the depleted number of healthy black marriages a sign of crisis for African Americans. But if we look back to the early 1900s, it becomes clear that this may not be a recent problem – the black family has faced challenges and changed drastically over the 20th century, often for the worse. Especially among the black community, it has become customary to laugh at what causes trouble or suffering. This technique is often employed by comedians with regard to racial situations, but also black love and relationship situations as well. It’s interesting that those topics can be both draw attention to a crisis, while at the same time engaging the audience. Such routines are too often disregarded as simply entertainment to poke fun at the black community’s marriage and relationship predicament. I want to probe further and evaluate if those jokes truly reflected the situation facing the black community at the time of the comedians routines, or whether they were exaggerations, or if they missed the mark.
Because I want my research to cover the bulk of the 20th century, I want to look at the comedic routines and personal lives of comedians throughout recent history, including Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, Moms Mabley, Dick Gregory, Whoopie Goldberg, among others. Secondary source material could include critics’ responses to the comedians’ comments on black relationships.
The way I see my question right now (and it is very malleable if future resources present themselves), it is two pronged:
1. comedic routines
LINGERING QUESTIONS:
- Do I have the time or space to look at this as a comparison to white relationships and how they are depicted by white comedians (or comedians of other races)? As someone mentioned in class – there is not real equivalent to Bill Cosby (a huge black marriage advocate and comedian) in the white community. Then again, is there a need for one?
- Should I consider separating female from male comedians?
- What do the comedians think their audience is taking away from these kinds of routines?
TROUBLESHOOTING:
- I am concerned about finding primary sources other than comedic routines. I’d like to find letters, diaries, or other original materials from these performers, so I’d need some guidance about where to do look first.
- Where can I read and/or hear these routines, from a reliable source?
I hope to carve out more on my topic when I meet with Professor Hobbs tomorrow, but here is a more refined look at my ideas, with particular attention on the Troubleshooting section:
What began with a desire to understand the history and crisis of marriage within the black community morphed into an exploration of how black relationship are depicted by performers – specifically black comedians.
Recently, many social scientists are considering the depleted number of healthy black marriages a sign of crisis for African Americans. But if we look back to the early 1900s, it becomes clear that this may not be a recent problem – the black family has faced challenges and changed drastically over the 20th century, often for the worse. Especially among the black community, it has become customary to laugh at what causes trouble or suffering. This technique is often employed by comedians with regard to racial situations, but also black love and relationship situations as well. It’s interesting that those topics can be both draw attention to a crisis, while at the same time engaging the audience. Such routines are too often disregarded as simply entertainment to poke fun at the black community’s marriage and relationship predicament. I want to probe further and evaluate if those jokes truly reflected the situation facing the black community at the time of the comedians routines, or whether they were exaggerations, or if they missed the mark.
Because I want my research to cover the bulk of the 20th century, I want to look at the comedic routines and personal lives of comedians throughout recent history, including Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, Moms Mabley, Dick Gregory, Whoopie Goldberg, among others. Secondary source material could include critics’ responses to the comedians’ comments on black relationships.
The way I see my question right now (and it is very malleable if future resources present themselves), it is two pronged:
1. comedic routines
LINGERING QUESTIONS:
- Do I have the time or space to look at this as a comparison to white relationships and how they are depicted by white comedians (or comedians of other races)? As someone mentioned in class – there is not real equivalent to Bill Cosby (a huge black marriage advocate and comedian) in the white community. Then again, is there a need for one?
- Should I consider separating female from male comedians?
- What do the comedians think their audience is taking away from these kinds of routines?
TROUBLESHOOTING:
- I am concerned about finding primary sources other than comedic routines. I’d like to find letters, diaries, or other original materials from these performers, so I’d need some guidance about where to do look first.
- Where can I read and/or hear these routines, from a reliable source?
Refined Research Statement
Specifics
In the aftermath of the Chinese immigrant influx and the resultant exclusion acts of the late 1800s, the remaining Chinese would play a major part in every-day life in the formation of early Bay Area history, particularly at Stanford University. Working as servants, cooks and janitors, or running laundries, the early students and residents of the university town would have interacted with the Chinese on a daily basis. How did the cultural interaction play a role in defining the Chinese to the Americans of the time, and vice-versa? Then-Manchu-ruled China dictated aspects of personal presentation and dress, which made the Chinese stand out among any population--sometimes incurring fascination, and other times bringing on ridicule or anger. At a time when many Chinese were discriminated against in big cities such as San Francisco, how did these race-relations play out in the context of the university and the surrounding towns? Based on my former research, the Chinese population declined drastically during the first two decades of the twentieth century, from a height around 1900. What caused this decline? My hypothesis is that the 1906 earthquake was responsible for the major shifts in population at the time, an I'd be interested in finding out if there were also concurrent shifts in perception of the Chinese and cultural interaction.
Significance
The connection between Stanford and the Chinese servants who worked for the senator before the founding of the university was something that didn’t occur to me until encountering some of the primary source documents. The work done by these Chinese immigrants helped start the school, and I think that filling in the background for the cultural aspect of Chinese-American relationships would fill in this gap in early university history. Looking at how the Chinese-American relations shifted during the turn of the century, and with the 1906 earthquake, would be more broadly applicable to race-relations during times of upheaval.
Troubleshooting
Well . . . I can't read Chinese. I'm going to be limited to using English documents, which may either give me a bias for relationships looking Eastward, or limit me to sources that have been translated. Since I'll be looking at American sources, this may not be such a big problem, although the issue of lack of material evidence may itself become a problem. I will also have to deal with small collections at diverse locations, but hopefully telephone and online contact will enable me to narrow down the more likely sources of information.
Sources
I intend to go back to the Census records that I began to look at last time in order to narrow down names and locations of Chinese servants in order to get new ideas of where, or who, to search. I'm also excited to go to the Chinese Historical Society in San Francisco, something I have yet to do during my interest in this subject, since I suspect that a lot of material, even if it doesn’t relate directly to Stanford, will be applicable to Chinese-American experiences of the time. Student letters and memoirs of the early years of Stanford University will also be very important. Green Library has a wealth of second-hand sources regarding the effect of the 1906 earthquake on the Bay Area in general, and since this wasn’t the focus of any of my interests before, this will probably provide quite a bit of information I have yet to see. Historical societies in Menlo Park and Palo Alto, and possibly Portola Valley, will also be valuable.
Refined Research statement - Sylvie
I will be researching William F. Buckley, Jr.'s personal religiosity (he was a devout Catholic). I want to examine the connection between his Catholicism and his creation of the modern conservative movement: how did his faith shape his social and political values that made up this movement? How did the fact that he was Catholic while most others in the modern conservative movement that he was spearheading were Protestant effect his work? Were there conflicts over his religion? Modern conservatism is not a Catholic movement by any means, but many of the values that WFB professed seemed linked in part to his religion. How can we consider the roots of the movement and different camps of Christianity?
I plan to use the Hoover Archive as extensively as possible, though I realize that some of the Buckely papers there are of a financial nature (i.e. are concerned with his book contracts and the like) rather than a personal nature. I think that I will have to look at the papers of Buckley's colleagues and correspondents in order to get primary source material on him at Hoover.
Of course I will also use Buckley's published writings, but am hoping to find some letters and papers that can give me an insight into his personal religiosity a little more. It was suggested to me by our writing fellow, Julie, that I might look at WFB Sr.'s papers to get information on WFB Jr.'s childhood and adolescence I will be researching William F. Buckley, Jr.'s personal religiosity (he was a devout Catholic). I want to examine the connection between his Catholicism and his creation of the modern conservative movement: how did his faith shape his social and political values that made up this movement? How did the fact that he was Catholic while most others in the modern conservative movement that he was spearheading were Protestant effect his work? Were there conflicts over his religion? Modern conservatism is not a Catholic movement by any means, but many of the values that WFB professed seemed linked in part to his religion. How can we consider the roots of the movement and different camps of Christianity?
I plan to use the Hoover Archive as extensively as possible, though I realize that some of the Buckely papers there are of a financial nature (i.e. are concerned with his book contracts and the like) rather than a personal nature. I think that I will have to look at the papers of Buckley's colleagues and correspondents in order to get primary source material on him at Hoover.
Of course I will also use Buckley's published writings, but am hoping to find some letters and papers that can give me an insight into his personal religiosity a little more. It was suggested to me by our writing fellow, Julie, that I might look at WFB Sr.'s papers to get information on WFB Jr.'s childhood and adolescence, and the role of religion in the Buckley family household.
I plan to use the Hoover Archive as extensively as possible, though I realize that some of the Buckely papers there are of a financial nature (i.e. are concerned with his book contracts and the like) rather than a personal nature. I think that I will have to look at the papers of Buckley's colleagues and correspondents in order to get primary source material on him at Hoover.
Of course I will also use Buckley's published writings, but am hoping to find some letters and papers that can give me an insight into his personal religiosity a little more. It was suggested to me by our writing fellow, Julie, that I might look at WFB Sr.'s papers to get information on WFB Jr.'s childhood and adolescence I will be researching William F. Buckley, Jr.'s personal religiosity (he was a devout Catholic). I want to examine the connection between his Catholicism and his creation of the modern conservative movement: how did his faith shape his social and political values that made up this movement? How did the fact that he was Catholic while most others in the modern conservative movement that he was spearheading were Protestant effect his work? Were there conflicts over his religion? Modern conservatism is not a Catholic movement by any means, but many of the values that WFB professed seemed linked in part to his religion. How can we consider the roots of the movement and different camps of Christianity?
I plan to use the Hoover Archive as extensively as possible, though I realize that some of the Buckely papers there are of a financial nature (i.e. are concerned with his book contracts and the like) rather than a personal nature. I think that I will have to look at the papers of Buckley's colleagues and correspondents in order to get primary source material on him at Hoover.
Of course I will also use Buckley's published writings, but am hoping to find some letters and papers that can give me an insight into his personal religiosity a little more. It was suggested to me by our writing fellow, Julie, that I might look at WFB Sr.'s papers to get information on WFB Jr.'s childhood and adolescence, and the role of religion in the Buckley family household.
Further Refined Topic Ideas
My topic is going to be an analysis of the evolution of the American frontier and how it came to embody the American West, specifically California, in the post-WWII era of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The main figures of my argument are going to be the suburban residents of Orange County in the post-war era but I will also bring in some important historiographic figures such as Frederick Jackson Turner and political figures that embody the movement such as Ronald Reagan. I would also like to study some of the major figures in Orange Country during the era but at this point I need to do more research into who exactly those people were and what was their function in the community.
I realize that I can take this foundational idea and go any number of ways. The sources I can uncover and find are going to be instrumental in determining how I proceed. To be more specific about my possible directions, I am going to attempt to frame post-WWII Southern California as the frontier described by Frederick Jackson Turner. Turner laments the death of the American frontier and predicts the end of political innovation and freedom on the frontier, but what happened in post-WWII Southern California was the political change that Turner believed to be no longer possible. I would like to find some key figures, specifically women, who migrated to Southern California from the Midwest following WWII and I would like to analyze their role in the movement and analyze not only how their experience was shaped by their migration, but also how they were able to forge such a movement given their position in the social order.
I am cognizant of the possibility that I won’t find a strong narrative for specific individuals in Southern California, in which case I will attempt to follow political, community and religious groups. I also need to do research into an array of secondary sources that will help me develop the foundation necessary to proceed with any type of detailed argument regarding specific people or groups in Orange County. I have already read Suburban Warriors by Lisa McGirr, but now I need to go back and hopefully I will be able to find some of her sources and also hopefully I can do some looking to find secondary sources that either McGirr relies upon or that have been published more recently and rely heavily on McGirr.
I realize that I can take this foundational idea and go any number of ways. The sources I can uncover and find are going to be instrumental in determining how I proceed. To be more specific about my possible directions, I am going to attempt to frame post-WWII Southern California as the frontier described by Frederick Jackson Turner. Turner laments the death of the American frontier and predicts the end of political innovation and freedom on the frontier, but what happened in post-WWII Southern California was the political change that Turner believed to be no longer possible. I would like to find some key figures, specifically women, who migrated to Southern California from the Midwest following WWII and I would like to analyze their role in the movement and analyze not only how their experience was shaped by their migration, but also how they were able to forge such a movement given their position in the social order.
I am cognizant of the possibility that I won’t find a strong narrative for specific individuals in Southern California, in which case I will attempt to follow political, community and religious groups. I also need to do research into an array of secondary sources that will help me develop the foundation necessary to proceed with any type of detailed argument regarding specific people or groups in Orange County. I have already read Suburban Warriors by Lisa McGirr, but now I need to go back and hopefully I will be able to find some of her sources and also hopefully I can do some looking to find secondary sources that either McGirr relies upon or that have been published more recently and rely heavily on McGirr.
more refined topic - Jenni Ockelmann
Specifics
After the end of World War I, a new era of popular film, and the changing values and behaviors of a group of American women brought to the American scene the image of the flapper. The term was first used in a 1920 film called “The Flapper” starring Olive Thomas, and it quickly began to take on a shape of its own as young, primarily working-class, urban women began to step out of the home and engage in newly public and provocative behaviors, completely breaking down the Victorian propriety of their parents. Some of the things most closely associated with flappers were makeup, particularly “ringed” eyes and dark lips and cheeks, shorter dresses that emphasized the straight, flatness of a woman’s body, and dancing, drinking, and smoking, along with looser sexual behaviors and more male-female contact. Though the era of the flapper was not particularly long – their lavish, playful lifestyle could not survive into the Great Depression – the flapper became America’s definition of a generation of young women. The flapper – and especially the comparison between the image on-screen as well as real life women – will be the focus of my paper.
Argument
While I am not sure exactly where my research will lead me or what I might end up concluding, I would like to focus my search on working towards an answer to the question of whether or not the reality and the image of the 1920s flapper girls helped to lead to a culture in which the expression of female independence and sexuality was acceptable, or if it only reaffirmed stereotypes about uneducated, lower-class, promiscuous women and helped spur a conservative counter-movement that served to silence female expression. I will explore this using a comparison of the “image” of the flapper girl, through films, contemporary articles, and works of fiction, with personal accounts and tales of women who identified as flappers. At the same time, I will be reconstructing the idea of the flapper in her own words
Significance
The idea of the flapper is significant for several reasons. The “sexual revolution” in America did not occur until nearly 40 years after the first women defined as flappers went out to speakeasies and went home with men, and somewhere in between very different images of women became the standard-bearer of memory – images of the sacrificing woman giving up her husband and sons to the war in the 1940s, of the homemade perfection of Mrs. Cleaver. How did the flappers – girls in their late teens and early 20s in the third decade of the 20th century – become the women they would be 20 and 30 years later? What can the comparison between the flappers in popular films such as “The Flapper” and “It” and the flappers who left their family homes to venture out to dance halls and speakeasies show us about how the culture of the flapper evolved?
Troubleshooting
It might be difficult to balance the “image” of the flapper with the lives of real women, and determine which played more of a role in determining behaviors and sexual mores – that is, answering the question in each situation of whether life imitated art or art imitated life. It might also prove difficult to avoid generalizing across ethnic, class, and geographical lines, if my sources come primarily from only one of those categories. I will probably need to focus my research on white, working class or middle-class women in urban areas, not because the other classes or types of women are insignificant, but because those will be the sources which may be most prolific. Additionally, these women are the types who may most closely identify with the white, middle-class/upper-class type of woman portrayed in popular film, and will be more crucial to my comparison. However, even in choosing this specific focus or type of woman, I will need to be careful not to over-generalize or limit myself in the way I think about women and those who identified as flappers. My major concern right now is narrowing my topic – I am working to find a specific angle or question to answer, but so far my research has not pointed me towards anything that will help me to drastically cut down my topic.
Sources
I have identified several sources that I will use to begin my research. In order to explore the “image” of the flapper in popular film and media, I will be watching “The Flapper”, the Olive Thomas film that first used the term in America, as well as “It”, starring Clara Bow, who was also associated with the flapper image. I will also be reading some biographical information about these women and others in Hollywood to understand their lifestyles and determine if these celebrities had an impact on the lifestyles of average women.
Other primary sources that I have started to find (and hope to find more of) include diaries and letters of young women in the 1920s. Though many of these diaries and letters understandably come from older women, and many others are from married women who do not really comment on the flapper lifestyle, I am searching for a few solid primary texts from young women who may have their own comments about their lifestyle choices or habits.
In order to examine to lives and perceptions of ordinary, non-celebrity flapper women in this time period, I will be doing research beginning with Flapper : a madcap story of sex, style, celebrity, and the women who made America modern by Joshua Zeitz, and Flappers, and the new American woman : perceptions of women from 1918 through the 1920s by Catherine Gourley. One other text that may cross the line between celebrity and ordinary women is Posing a threat : flappers, chorus girls, and other brazen performers of the American 1920s by Angela J. Latham because it concerns both amateur and professional performers, and though this may cause difficulty in determining whether the source of any information is professional or amateur, it may also be a valuable source to delve into that divide. For additional background, I will be looking at some of the short stories from F. Scott Fitzgerald, such as “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”, which concern women in the 1920s.
After the end of World War I, a new era of popular film, and the changing values and behaviors of a group of American women brought to the American scene the image of the flapper. The term was first used in a 1920 film called “The Flapper” starring Olive Thomas, and it quickly began to take on a shape of its own as young, primarily working-class, urban women began to step out of the home and engage in newly public and provocative behaviors, completely breaking down the Victorian propriety of their parents. Some of the things most closely associated with flappers were makeup, particularly “ringed” eyes and dark lips and cheeks, shorter dresses that emphasized the straight, flatness of a woman’s body, and dancing, drinking, and smoking, along with looser sexual behaviors and more male-female contact. Though the era of the flapper was not particularly long – their lavish, playful lifestyle could not survive into the Great Depression – the flapper became America’s definition of a generation of young women. The flapper – and especially the comparison between the image on-screen as well as real life women – will be the focus of my paper.
Argument
While I am not sure exactly where my research will lead me or what I might end up concluding, I would like to focus my search on working towards an answer to the question of whether or not the reality and the image of the 1920s flapper girls helped to lead to a culture in which the expression of female independence and sexuality was acceptable, or if it only reaffirmed stereotypes about uneducated, lower-class, promiscuous women and helped spur a conservative counter-movement that served to silence female expression. I will explore this using a comparison of the “image” of the flapper girl, through films, contemporary articles, and works of fiction, with personal accounts and tales of women who identified as flappers. At the same time, I will be reconstructing the idea of the flapper in her own words
Significance
The idea of the flapper is significant for several reasons. The “sexual revolution” in America did not occur until nearly 40 years after the first women defined as flappers went out to speakeasies and went home with men, and somewhere in between very different images of women became the standard-bearer of memory – images of the sacrificing woman giving up her husband and sons to the war in the 1940s, of the homemade perfection of Mrs. Cleaver. How did the flappers – girls in their late teens and early 20s in the third decade of the 20th century – become the women they would be 20 and 30 years later? What can the comparison between the flappers in popular films such as “The Flapper” and “It” and the flappers who left their family homes to venture out to dance halls and speakeasies show us about how the culture of the flapper evolved?
Troubleshooting
It might be difficult to balance the “image” of the flapper with the lives of real women, and determine which played more of a role in determining behaviors and sexual mores – that is, answering the question in each situation of whether life imitated art or art imitated life. It might also prove difficult to avoid generalizing across ethnic, class, and geographical lines, if my sources come primarily from only one of those categories. I will probably need to focus my research on white, working class or middle-class women in urban areas, not because the other classes or types of women are insignificant, but because those will be the sources which may be most prolific. Additionally, these women are the types who may most closely identify with the white, middle-class/upper-class type of woman portrayed in popular film, and will be more crucial to my comparison. However, even in choosing this specific focus or type of woman, I will need to be careful not to over-generalize or limit myself in the way I think about women and those who identified as flappers. My major concern right now is narrowing my topic – I am working to find a specific angle or question to answer, but so far my research has not pointed me towards anything that will help me to drastically cut down my topic.
Sources
I have identified several sources that I will use to begin my research. In order to explore the “image” of the flapper in popular film and media, I will be watching “The Flapper”, the Olive Thomas film that first used the term in America, as well as “It”, starring Clara Bow, who was also associated with the flapper image. I will also be reading some biographical information about these women and others in Hollywood to understand their lifestyles and determine if these celebrities had an impact on the lifestyles of average women.
Other primary sources that I have started to find (and hope to find more of) include diaries and letters of young women in the 1920s. Though many of these diaries and letters understandably come from older women, and many others are from married women who do not really comment on the flapper lifestyle, I am searching for a few solid primary texts from young women who may have their own comments about their lifestyle choices or habits.
In order to examine to lives and perceptions of ordinary, non-celebrity flapper women in this time period, I will be doing research beginning with Flapper : a madcap story of sex, style, celebrity, and the women who made America modern by Joshua Zeitz, and Flappers, and the new American woman : perceptions of women from 1918 through the 1920s by Catherine Gourley. One other text that may cross the line between celebrity and ordinary women is Posing a threat : flappers, chorus girls, and other brazen performers of the American 1920s by Angela J. Latham because it concerns both amateur and professional performers, and though this may cause difficulty in determining whether the source of any information is professional or amateur, it may also be a valuable source to delve into that divide. For additional background, I will be looking at some of the short stories from F. Scott Fitzgerald, such as “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”, which concern women in the 1920s.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Refined Research Statment, 10/12 (Alice Hu)
Specifics
The Pinkerton Detective Agency came into its own as a private law-enforcement and detective group during the Civil War and the years immediately following. While George B. McClellan commanded the Army of the Potomac, Allan Pinkerton and his small cadre of detectives worked as undercover spies. After McClellan was relieved of command, the Pinkertons withdrew from the Civil War and found a niche apprehending train robbers, counterfeiters, and mail thieves. In all of these cases the Pinkertons preserved a role as undercover agents and spies, infiltrating crime rings and keeping them under surveillance, reporting back to Pinkerton until sufficient charges could be made. Late in the 19th century, the Pinkertons contracted with private corporations to become guards and enforcers for the corporations in labor union strikes or unrest, but Pinkerton involvement continued to consist of either providing guards or going undercover to infiltrate agitating labor groups.
By 1892 the nature of the Pinkertons’ involvement in labor changed drastically. In the case of the labor strike at Andrew Carnegie’s steel mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania, the Carnegie Steel Company locked its striking workers out of the plant. The Pinkertons, whom Carnegie Steel had already contracted as guards, then sent hundreds of Pinkerton agents in via barge, ostensibly to prevent any of the mob of striking workers from entering the plant. The mob refused to let the Pinkertons come ashore: shots were fired, culminating in a bloody battle in which dozens were killed and injured.
I want to examine how this remarkable transition came about: how did the Pinkertons transform from undercover agents to all-out infantry? The nature of the crime that the Pinkertons fought and the rhetoric and motivation behind fighting that crime and how to fight it seems to have undergone a radical shift in these years, and I wish to understand what that shift was and how it came about.
Argument
I think that I have pinpointed the ways, primarily, in which the Pinkertons’ role morphed. Firstly, it became far more violent. In the Civil War, the most dangerous action that Pinkertons engaged in consisted in chasing Confederate spies in the streets. Although one Pinkerton spy was caught and hung by the Confederates, by and large Pinkertons engaged in little violent activity. By the time the Pinkertons arrived at Homestead, they much more resembled a regular standing army: they were prepared to beat their way through a massive blockade of human bodies, even killing some. Secondly, the scope of the Pinkertons’ action drastically increased. Previously a few agents were sent in to infiltrate labor organizations: even in the Civil War only about ten Pinkertons were actively operating. At Homestead, over 300 Pinkertons were sent in, nearly all of whom sustained injuries.
I think that the escalation of violence has to do with the Pinkertons’ experience fighting gangs of robbers in the West: particularly in their brief entanglement with the James Gang, which killed two Pinkerton agents, one gruesomely, violence seemed to escalate both in its scope and brutality. The Pinkertons bombed the James’ mother’s home, seriously maiming her and killing James’ eight-year-old brother. Other entanglements with vigilante groups of townspeople in the West, who either stood to benefit from the bandits’ activity and defended them or wanted to lynch them, may have also contributed to this growing violence. Racial and class factors undoubtedly influence it as well.
As for how the Pinkertons transformed into a mass crime fighting unit, practically an army unit, I am less certain. Crime-fighting for the Pinkertons was previously quite personal: they profiled their targets as meticulously as any psychological profiler today, and, while undercover, they even grew friendly and intimate with the criminals they eventually brought in. Perhaps it is something specific to fighting labor, or perhaps it is a holdover from the Civil War, but in fighting labor at Homestead, the Pinkertons transformed from an elite detective force into infantry.
Significance
I believe that it is always of interest to dissect the reasons why we fight other humans—what drives us to believe that violence is acceptable and even necessary, and the kind of violence we carry out, and against whom. Particularly salient and troubling is violence between people who are, in general, united. Understanding how working men are able to make war on and even kill other working men like themselves is, I think, worth some investigation and reflection.
I also think that labor disputes are particularly informative instances to examine: they are unique in that they are the first instance since the Civil War in which white Americans fought other white Americans. I view the Civil War as a moment of essential redefinition of war and violence in the United States. As the first instance of real “total war,” the Civil War set precedents for the major violent encounters that followed it, and in many ways allowed for the expansion of “total war” in America into spheres not generally considered “war,” including war against specific individuals, such as the James brothers, against fellow white people, against class equals, and against noncombatant laborers—all of which the Pinkertons encapsulated in the late 19th century.
Primary Literature
The Pinkerton Detective Agency (which has now merged with another private security agency, Securitas) still holds extensive archives of its escapades (with the exception of much of its Civil War and pre-Civil War holdings, which were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire). This includes Allan Pinkerton’s correspondence and diaries as well as those of his two sons, Robert and William, who succeeded him. It also includes the reports and correspondence of the undercover agents, who all reported to Pinkerton or his sons. These, I think, will be of the utmost importance to me.
There are also court records that may be of use. The Pinkertons were instrumental in breaking up the terroristic Irish labor group, the Molly Maguires, and in the court cases that followed, the agent who had infiltrated the group testified (which Pinkerton’s Agency prohibits). After the fiasco at Homestead, Congress investigated the matter, and so the records of the hearing are also incredibly important.
Finally, newspapers exhaustively covered many of the incidents in which Pinkertons were involved: chasing gangs in the West, the Molly Maguire case, and the Homestead Strike.
Secondary Literature
It seems that there is very little major recent scholarship on the Pinkertons. Most of my book sources on the Pinkertons are from the 1960s—the most recent is from 1982. My literature on the Homestead Strike is only slightly more recent. This is good news for me, since very little further work has been done with the available archival material, although it seems to be well organized and accessible.
A small selection of articles on the involvement of private law enforcement agencies in labor disputes also complements my books, but most of them focus on the labor disputes themselves, rather than the Pinkertons.
Troubleshooting
For me, there are two primary problems. I think that it will be impossible to get through all of the factors that played into the escalation of Pinkerton violence. I want to narrow it down to a select few: Pinkerton experiences in the West, for instance, and racial or class factors. I am not sure yet, however, which of those will be the most compelling factors, so for now I will have to keep looking into them.
Secondly, I am concerned about getting access to these archives. That might be an insurmountable problem, but one that I will hope doesn’t come up!
The Pinkerton Detective Agency came into its own as a private law-enforcement and detective group during the Civil War and the years immediately following. While George B. McClellan commanded the Army of the Potomac, Allan Pinkerton and his small cadre of detectives worked as undercover spies. After McClellan was relieved of command, the Pinkertons withdrew from the Civil War and found a niche apprehending train robbers, counterfeiters, and mail thieves. In all of these cases the Pinkertons preserved a role as undercover agents and spies, infiltrating crime rings and keeping them under surveillance, reporting back to Pinkerton until sufficient charges could be made. Late in the 19th century, the Pinkertons contracted with private corporations to become guards and enforcers for the corporations in labor union strikes or unrest, but Pinkerton involvement continued to consist of either providing guards or going undercover to infiltrate agitating labor groups.
By 1892 the nature of the Pinkertons’ involvement in labor changed drastically. In the case of the labor strike at Andrew Carnegie’s steel mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania, the Carnegie Steel Company locked its striking workers out of the plant. The Pinkertons, whom Carnegie Steel had already contracted as guards, then sent hundreds of Pinkerton agents in via barge, ostensibly to prevent any of the mob of striking workers from entering the plant. The mob refused to let the Pinkertons come ashore: shots were fired, culminating in a bloody battle in which dozens were killed and injured.
I want to examine how this remarkable transition came about: how did the Pinkertons transform from undercover agents to all-out infantry? The nature of the crime that the Pinkertons fought and the rhetoric and motivation behind fighting that crime and how to fight it seems to have undergone a radical shift in these years, and I wish to understand what that shift was and how it came about.
Argument
I think that I have pinpointed the ways, primarily, in which the Pinkertons’ role morphed. Firstly, it became far more violent. In the Civil War, the most dangerous action that Pinkertons engaged in consisted in chasing Confederate spies in the streets. Although one Pinkerton spy was caught and hung by the Confederates, by and large Pinkertons engaged in little violent activity. By the time the Pinkertons arrived at Homestead, they much more resembled a regular standing army: they were prepared to beat their way through a massive blockade of human bodies, even killing some. Secondly, the scope of the Pinkertons’ action drastically increased. Previously a few agents were sent in to infiltrate labor organizations: even in the Civil War only about ten Pinkertons were actively operating. At Homestead, over 300 Pinkertons were sent in, nearly all of whom sustained injuries.
I think that the escalation of violence has to do with the Pinkertons’ experience fighting gangs of robbers in the West: particularly in their brief entanglement with the James Gang, which killed two Pinkerton agents, one gruesomely, violence seemed to escalate both in its scope and brutality. The Pinkertons bombed the James’ mother’s home, seriously maiming her and killing James’ eight-year-old brother. Other entanglements with vigilante groups of townspeople in the West, who either stood to benefit from the bandits’ activity and defended them or wanted to lynch them, may have also contributed to this growing violence. Racial and class factors undoubtedly influence it as well.
As for how the Pinkertons transformed into a mass crime fighting unit, practically an army unit, I am less certain. Crime-fighting for the Pinkertons was previously quite personal: they profiled their targets as meticulously as any psychological profiler today, and, while undercover, they even grew friendly and intimate with the criminals they eventually brought in. Perhaps it is something specific to fighting labor, or perhaps it is a holdover from the Civil War, but in fighting labor at Homestead, the Pinkertons transformed from an elite detective force into infantry.
Significance
I believe that it is always of interest to dissect the reasons why we fight other humans—what drives us to believe that violence is acceptable and even necessary, and the kind of violence we carry out, and against whom. Particularly salient and troubling is violence between people who are, in general, united. Understanding how working men are able to make war on and even kill other working men like themselves is, I think, worth some investigation and reflection.
I also think that labor disputes are particularly informative instances to examine: they are unique in that they are the first instance since the Civil War in which white Americans fought other white Americans. I view the Civil War as a moment of essential redefinition of war and violence in the United States. As the first instance of real “total war,” the Civil War set precedents for the major violent encounters that followed it, and in many ways allowed for the expansion of “total war” in America into spheres not generally considered “war,” including war against specific individuals, such as the James brothers, against fellow white people, against class equals, and against noncombatant laborers—all of which the Pinkertons encapsulated in the late 19th century.
Primary Literature
The Pinkerton Detective Agency (which has now merged with another private security agency, Securitas) still holds extensive archives of its escapades (with the exception of much of its Civil War and pre-Civil War holdings, which were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire). This includes Allan Pinkerton’s correspondence and diaries as well as those of his two sons, Robert and William, who succeeded him. It also includes the reports and correspondence of the undercover agents, who all reported to Pinkerton or his sons. These, I think, will be of the utmost importance to me.
There are also court records that may be of use. The Pinkertons were instrumental in breaking up the terroristic Irish labor group, the Molly Maguires, and in the court cases that followed, the agent who had infiltrated the group testified (which Pinkerton’s Agency prohibits). After the fiasco at Homestead, Congress investigated the matter, and so the records of the hearing are also incredibly important.
Finally, newspapers exhaustively covered many of the incidents in which Pinkertons were involved: chasing gangs in the West, the Molly Maguire case, and the Homestead Strike.
Secondary Literature
It seems that there is very little major recent scholarship on the Pinkertons. Most of my book sources on the Pinkertons are from the 1960s—the most recent is from 1982. My literature on the Homestead Strike is only slightly more recent. This is good news for me, since very little further work has been done with the available archival material, although it seems to be well organized and accessible.
A small selection of articles on the involvement of private law enforcement agencies in labor disputes also complements my books, but most of them focus on the labor disputes themselves, rather than the Pinkertons.
Troubleshooting
For me, there are two primary problems. I think that it will be impossible to get through all of the factors that played into the escalation of Pinkerton violence. I want to narrow it down to a select few: Pinkerton experiences in the West, for instance, and racial or class factors. I am not sure yet, however, which of those will be the most compelling factors, so for now I will have to keep looking into them.
Secondly, I am concerned about getting access to these archives. That might be an insurmountable problem, but one that I will hope doesn’t come up!
Response to more refined topics, part II
I hope that this weekend many of you had a chance to review the note cards with questions from your classmates and think about how you would answer some of the questions posed about your research. Even if the question was posed during class, how would you answer it today, given a few more days of reading and thinking? If you haven't, it might be fruitful for you to sit down and think about the questions as you're formulating your posts for Tuesday in anticipation of the library trip on Thursday.
For those of you who posted after Thursday morning, a few comments:
Jenni--In addition to the books and movies that you identified, you might want to read the novel Breadgivers by Anzia Yezierska. It's a good point/counterpoint to 1920s images of the working class women and the glamor of independence. It's also a pretty fast read. More importantly, now that you've identified a theme, you should start thinking about what your archival sources should be. Maybe you could look at the papers of a reform group that targeted working class women, a union (a strike?), or an individual woman who ties together some of the themes that interest you. Start looking around online or at Stanford for collections to further refine the topic.
Brendan--We talked Thursday, so I'll just remind you that you should also check the collections at the Bancroft.
Matt--Last week, you indicated that you were going to talk to Professor Rakove about your project. I wonder if you've done so? He might be a good resource for finding archival material that you can use from the colonial period around the Bay area. I'm aware as well that there is a limited amount of material here at special collections. You should check and see what if available, personal papers as well as newspapers and other printed materials.
For those of you who posted after Thursday morning, a few comments:
Jenni--In addition to the books and movies that you identified, you might want to read the novel Breadgivers by Anzia Yezierska. It's a good point/counterpoint to 1920s images of the working class women and the glamor of independence. It's also a pretty fast read. More importantly, now that you've identified a theme, you should start thinking about what your archival sources should be. Maybe you could look at the papers of a reform group that targeted working class women, a union (a strike?), or an individual woman who ties together some of the themes that interest you. Start looking around online or at Stanford for collections to further refine the topic.
Brendan--We talked Thursday, so I'll just remind you that you should also check the collections at the Bancroft.
Matt--Last week, you indicated that you were going to talk to Professor Rakove about your project. I wonder if you've done so? He might be a good resource for finding archival material that you can use from the colonial period around the Bay area. I'm aware as well that there is a limited amount of material here at special collections. You should check and see what if available, personal papers as well as newspapers and other printed materials.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
After some initial research, I have chosen to pursue the topic of flapper girls in the 1920s. After the end of World War I, a new era of popular film, and the changing values and behaviors of a group of American women brought to the American scene the image of the flapper. Though first used in a 1920 film called “The Flapper” starring Olive Thomas, the term quickly began to take on a shape of its own as young, primarily working-class, urban women began to step out of the home and engage in behaviors that they never had before – smoking, drinking, wild dancing, dating, and casual sex among others. Though the era of the flapper was not particularly long – their lavish, playful lifestyle could not survive into the Great Depression – the flapper defined a generation of young women. The flapper – and especially the comparison between the image on-screen as well as real life women – will be the focus of my paper.
The idea of the flapper is significant for several reasons. The “sexual revolution” in America did not occur until nearly 40 years after the first flappers went out to speakeasies and went home with men, and somewhere in between very different images of women became the standard-bearer of memory – images of the sacrificing woman giving up her husband and sons to the war in the 1940s, of the homemade perfection of Mrs. Cleaver. How did the flappers – girls in their late teens and early 20s in the third decade of the 20th century – become the women they would be 20 and 30 years later? What can the comparison between the flappers in popular films such as “The Flapper” and “It” and the flappers who ventured out to dance halls and speakeasies show us about how the culture of the flapper evolved, and what happened to it after the 20s ended?
While I am not sure exactly where my research will lead me or what I might end up concluding, at this point I would like to focus my search on working towards an answer to the question of whether or not the reality and the image of the 1920s flapper girls helped to lead to a culture in which the expression of female independence and sexuality was acceptable, or if it only reaffirmed stereotypes about uneducated, lower-class, promiscuous women and helped spur a conservative counter-movement that served to silence female expression. I will explore this using a comparison of the “image” of the flapper girl, through films and contemporary articles and criticisms, with personal accounts and more working-class views of women who identified as flappers.
One issue that may cause me trouble over the course of my research is narrowing my topic and, specifically, determining which sources are important and valid and which are not. It will also be difficult to balance the “image” of the flapper with the lives of real women, and determine which played more of a role in determining sexual mores and what later generations thought of 1920s women. It will might also prove difficult to avoid generalizing across ethnic, class, and geographical lines, if my sources come primarily from only one of those categories. In the end, I will probably need to focus my research on white, working class or middle-class women in urban areas, not because the other classes or types of women are insignificant, but because those will be the sources which are most prolific and most similar to the “image” of flappers in films.
I have identified several sources that I will use to begin my research. First, in order to explore the “image” of the flapper in popular film and media, I will be watching “The Flapper”, the Olive Thomas film that first used the term in America, as well as “It”, starring Clara Bow, who also became known widely as a flapper. I will also be reading some biographical information about these women and others in Hollywood to understand their lifestyles and determine if these celebrities had an impact on the lifestyles of average women. In order to examine to lives and perceptions of ordinary, non-celebrity flapper women in this time period, I will be doing research beginning with Flapper : a madcap story of sex, style, celebrity, and the women who made America modern by Joshua Zeitz, and Flappers, and the new American woman : perceptions of women from 1918 through the 1920s by Catherine Gourley. One other text that may cross the line between celebrity and ordinary women is Posing a threat : flappers, chorus girls, and other brazen performers of the American 1920s by Angela J. Latham because it concerns both amateur and professional performers, and though this may cause difficulty in determining whether the source of any information is professional or amateur, it may also be a valuable source to delve into that divide. For additional background, I will be looking at some of the short stories from F. Scott Fitzgerald, such as “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”, which concern women in the 1920s.
The idea of the flapper is significant for several reasons. The “sexual revolution” in America did not occur until nearly 40 years after the first flappers went out to speakeasies and went home with men, and somewhere in between very different images of women became the standard-bearer of memory – images of the sacrificing woman giving up her husband and sons to the war in the 1940s, of the homemade perfection of Mrs. Cleaver. How did the flappers – girls in their late teens and early 20s in the third decade of the 20th century – become the women they would be 20 and 30 years later? What can the comparison between the flappers in popular films such as “The Flapper” and “It” and the flappers who ventured out to dance halls and speakeasies show us about how the culture of the flapper evolved, and what happened to it after the 20s ended?
While I am not sure exactly where my research will lead me or what I might end up concluding, at this point I would like to focus my search on working towards an answer to the question of whether or not the reality and the image of the 1920s flapper girls helped to lead to a culture in which the expression of female independence and sexuality was acceptable, or if it only reaffirmed stereotypes about uneducated, lower-class, promiscuous women and helped spur a conservative counter-movement that served to silence female expression. I will explore this using a comparison of the “image” of the flapper girl, through films and contemporary articles and criticisms, with personal accounts and more working-class views of women who identified as flappers.
One issue that may cause me trouble over the course of my research is narrowing my topic and, specifically, determining which sources are important and valid and which are not. It will also be difficult to balance the “image” of the flapper with the lives of real women, and determine which played more of a role in determining sexual mores and what later generations thought of 1920s women. It will might also prove difficult to avoid generalizing across ethnic, class, and geographical lines, if my sources come primarily from only one of those categories. In the end, I will probably need to focus my research on white, working class or middle-class women in urban areas, not because the other classes or types of women are insignificant, but because those will be the sources which are most prolific and most similar to the “image” of flappers in films.
I have identified several sources that I will use to begin my research. First, in order to explore the “image” of the flapper in popular film and media, I will be watching “The Flapper”, the Olive Thomas film that first used the term in America, as well as “It”, starring Clara Bow, who also became known widely as a flapper. I will also be reading some biographical information about these women and others in Hollywood to understand their lifestyles and determine if these celebrities had an impact on the lifestyles of average women. In order to examine to lives and perceptions of ordinary, non-celebrity flapper women in this time period, I will be doing research beginning with Flapper : a madcap story of sex, style, celebrity, and the women who made America modern by Joshua Zeitz, and Flappers, and the new American woman : perceptions of women from 1918 through the 1920s by Catherine Gourley. One other text that may cross the line between celebrity and ordinary women is Posing a threat : flappers, chorus girls, and other brazen performers of the American 1920s by Angela J. Latham because it concerns both amateur and professional performers, and though this may cause difficulty in determining whether the source of any information is professional or amateur, it may also be a valuable source to delve into that divide. For additional background, I will be looking at some of the short stories from F. Scott Fitzgerald, such as “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”, which concern women in the 1920s.
All three tales of identity involve the subject manipulating the perceptions of others in order to achieve an important goal. The 3 authors, however, go about presenting these diverse identities in different ways using different sources. David Waldstreicher’s analysis of 18th-century slave runaways employs primarily ads placed by those runaways’ owners in newspapers. This type of source is fascinating – and informative for his goals – because he manages to tease out the various characteristics and identities of their slave that the owners either preferred to project, or, in some cases, were forced reluctantly to acknowledge. Waldstreicher also explored the depths of the runaway’s alternate identities – often as free men – and explained how they used various signals, such as literacy, language use, and advanced skills to pass as people who were free. The very idea of passing brings up extremely interesting questions about identity – if someone can change their identity at will, how can one account for identity at all?
One of the most important lessons to be learned from all of these articles is the importance of recognizing the many layers of identity that one person may consider part of himself or herself, or that one source may acknowledge. In Gay New York, for example, one of the crucial takeaway points concerns the fact that what may look like one group – in this case, gay men in New York in the pre-WWII era – may in fact be made up of people who identify in very different ways. George Chauncey’s exploration of the lives that gay men led in New York served to tear down several myths of gay life in this period and show that though there were many types and identities of gay men, there was a strong, vibrant and often visible community even within the intolerant atmosphere of the pre-war period.
Chauncey spent a lot of time focusing on distinctions between different identities that gay men took on – as “queers” or “fairies” in particular – as well as the different characteristics that each of these groups took on, as well as the intersection between their gay identities and the “straight” lives that some of them also lived. Chauncey’s most interesting and informative sources were the first-hand accounts and stories he had from gay men who had lived in New York during this era, and he often used police records, news articles, and some testimony from “normal” people in New York as a backdrop to these primary sources.
In her book on Confidence Men in the 19th century, Karen Halttunen uses the writings of a particular set of people – primarily advice books from the leaders of American society – to account for the changing identities associated with young men, and all of America, in the time of the confidence man. More important than any individual identities, Halttunen’s study of confidence men and the boys they preyed upon reveal the changing identity of America. The identity of young men, leaving home and community for the first time to join urban life, was changing drastically, and the writers of advice books was blaming these changes on confidence men. Halttunen uses her sources to suggest that these changes were not merely the doing of these confidence men, but were part of the changing fabric of America and American identity. Halttunen’s sources may not have covered every aspect of the identity of these confidence men, as she did not include anything written by any self-proclaimed confidence man or by any young man entering urban life. The advice books written had a very clear slant that Halttunen uses in her explanations – the authors were often some of the leaders of society and worried that their leadership would soon be ignored. Though it would have been interesting to read some accounts from confidence men themselves, they probably would have been very difficult, if even possible, to obtain based on the fact that confidence men were not open about their motives or intentions
One of the most important lessons to be learned from all of these articles is the importance of recognizing the many layers of identity that one person may consider part of himself or herself, or that one source may acknowledge. In Gay New York, for example, one of the crucial takeaway points concerns the fact that what may look like one group – in this case, gay men in New York in the pre-WWII era – may in fact be made up of people who identify in very different ways. George Chauncey’s exploration of the lives that gay men led in New York served to tear down several myths of gay life in this period and show that though there were many types and identities of gay men, there was a strong, vibrant and often visible community even within the intolerant atmosphere of the pre-war period.
Chauncey spent a lot of time focusing on distinctions between different identities that gay men took on – as “queers” or “fairies” in particular – as well as the different characteristics that each of these groups took on, as well as the intersection between their gay identities and the “straight” lives that some of them also lived. Chauncey’s most interesting and informative sources were the first-hand accounts and stories he had from gay men who had lived in New York during this era, and he often used police records, news articles, and some testimony from “normal” people in New York as a backdrop to these primary sources.
In her book on Confidence Men in the 19th century, Karen Halttunen uses the writings of a particular set of people – primarily advice books from the leaders of American society – to account for the changing identities associated with young men, and all of America, in the time of the confidence man. More important than any individual identities, Halttunen’s study of confidence men and the boys they preyed upon reveal the changing identity of America. The identity of young men, leaving home and community for the first time to join urban life, was changing drastically, and the writers of advice books was blaming these changes on confidence men. Halttunen uses her sources to suggest that these changes were not merely the doing of these confidence men, but were part of the changing fabric of America and American identity. Halttunen’s sources may not have covered every aspect of the identity of these confidence men, as she did not include anything written by any self-proclaimed confidence man or by any young man entering urban life. The advice books written had a very clear slant that Halttunen uses in her explanations – the authors were often some of the leaders of society and worried that their leadership would soon be ignored. Though it would have been interesting to read some accounts from confidence men themselves, they probably would have been very difficult, if even possible, to obtain based on the fact that confidence men were not open about their motives or intentions
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Reading response week 3
Readings: David Waldstreicher's “Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic,” Karen Halttunen's “Confidence Men and Painted Ladies: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America,” and George Chauncey's “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940”
Waldstreicher’s central argument highlights the paradox presented by slavery (specifically slave runaways) and the establishment that ought to contain them. He highlights the fact that the skills used by slaves to successfully pass as free men were what made them effective slaves in the first place. He goes on the in article to discuss the nature of “cultural hybridization” used by runaway slaves – the adoption of what they saw as acceptable social norms that would allow them to pass for free men in the North and Mid-Atlantic. The extensive use of primary sources lends authenticity to his argument. However, the most remarkable aspect of Waldsteicher’s article is that he is able to weave these sources together into a compelling narrative. Something I really took away from this piece is that it is important to remember that primary documents tell a story, and recreating that story should be one of the main objectives of an historical article. In many cases it is easy to become overwhelmed by a large amount of material. When that happens the writing tends to come off as disjointed, like a series of smaller analyses of different historical evidence. Waldstreicher finds the connections and parallels between his different sources and presents an overall thesis that is both clear and well supported.
Halttunen also talks about the power of identity as a concept. In this case, however, she discusses the fear associated with not knowing someone’s ‘true’ identity. This argument draws its evidence from a specific context: the rise of confidence men in the newly emerging urban environment in middle-class America during the 1800s. Her narrative also draws much of its backing from firsthand accounts found in pamphlets warning of confidence men. Halttunen uses the analysis of secondary sources more frequently than Waldstricher. For her the secondary sources become a sort of corroboration of her thesis. The drawback to this is that it leaves little room for original analysis by the author.
- Brendan
Reading Response II
The readings this week were united by the common theme of appearances in society, and often their deviance from the class or culture expectations of what those appearances suggest. George Chauncy , in his research on homosexual communities within New York, draws an important distinction regarding the idea of a united “Gay New York”— while pointing out that there was a less limited view of what it meant to be Gay only within a specific community, a “world” rather than a “closet,” he also makes a case for not a single gay world, but rather multiple communities made up along lines of class and culture. Drawing both from investigative reports of the time, during which homosexuality was still classified as a psychological disorder, as well as anecdotes of individual’s experiences, often from memoirs, Chauncy creates an effective image of “forgotten” communities. Chauncy also takes on a bigger picture, something that adds depth to his research: the use of terminology, in this case “normal” versus “queer” or “gay,” and what the repetition of that terminology implicates. This is as relevant now as it was sixty years ago, applicable outside the realm of sexual orientation when dealing with how any cultural group is compared with a supposed societal norm, often a standard set by a smaller group than the word “normal” should imply. Chauncy’s discussions of homosexual “passing” recalls race and class situations outside of the context of sexual orientation.
A different aspect of this “passing” as something while feeling or being different applies to the subject of the other two papers we read this week—both Karen Hulttunen and David Waldstreicher’s exploration of “Confidence Men,” the wily charlatans who took advantage of the naïve and new-comers to the emerging cities of 18th and 19th century America. Reading about these characters reminded me instantly of the Artful Dodger or the Duke and the Dauphin, literary characters who share traits with the confidence men described in the 19th century reports. Though obviously a character-type of young America, I found it interesting, and somewhat weakening to the essay, that the descriptions of confidence men in Hulttunen’s article were limited to contemporary warnings against such figures, rather than anecdotes about real situations that occurred. This may be due to the embarrassment of reporting those situations at the time—I don’t know if such anecdotes exist in abundance—but their absence without qualification made me wonder on what the warnings were actually founded. Waldstreicher’s article used the most primary sources of any of the three, with multiple examples of the escaped slaves and their masters about whom he wrote. I enjoyed being able to look at hard numbers and tables, particularly after feeling these lacking in the previous article, and this makes me want to incorporate such evidence into my own paper when I write. I also found his explanation for lack of even greater evidence, the fact that the subject of confidence men itself deals with deception and tracing it would have been intentionally difficult, to be convincing and a good explanation for the lack of evidence used in Hulttunen’s article. From a material perspective, which I enjoy and hope to incorporate because of my interest in archaeology, I found the author’s attention to clothing and the way that it would have been used to manipulate identity expectations to be fascinating, and again, something applicable to today down to the way we present ourselves in interviews or before family versus interaction with peers, the latter of which was itself an increasing phenomenon of the 19th century reorganization of daily interaction—a peer-group emphasis, in which appearance is more easily manipulated, versus a hierarchy in which appearance is dictated or dismissed.
Overall, I enjoyed the writing style of Chauncy, which I found to read more like a book than a paper, but I found Waldstreicher’s use and presentation of evidence to be appealing. All three build their subjects into something that is relevant today, something I hope to do as well.
After much deliberation, I have decided to pursue my topic about minority soldiers' experiences during World War II. Logistically, it would very difficult to pursue a paper on Robert McNamara simply because his papers are located at the LBJ Library.
The only way I can answer the questions designed to refine my topic is to actually explore the archives available to me and see what materials I have to work with. Something I plan to do this weekend is look at what primary sources are actually available here at Stanford. My goal is to find a diary detailing a soldier's experiences, ideally including the periods before, during, and after the war. I thought I would start in the Mexican-American section of the Hoover Archives. Julie also pointed me towards another great resource: the African-American Mueseum and Library in Oakland. Between the two I hope to find enough primary material to work with.
Although my research question and thesis are not set in stone, I am operating under a general idea that hopefully can help me narrow down my focus as my research progresses. Basically, I want to frame the minority wartime experience with the theme of our class, identities. This would break down into two main facets: how are these minority soldiers perceived by those around them (i.e. their commanders and fellow soldiers, their community back home, other minority groups, etc.) and how do they percieve themselves (ties to their original home and culture versus ties to their adopted country, the United States.) What are they fighitng for? Narrow concerns such as their family? Fear of being seen as 'un-American?' Unable to find a job, and so chose the army as a last resort? Or do they believe in the cause, believe that defending America and her democratic ideals are reason enough to volunteer? Of course the background of these soldiers would play an imortant part in my analysis. Are they first or second generation Americans? What was their life like growing up in this country?
I need to work backwards a little bit and tailor my paper to what sources are actually available, but hopefully this gives you guys an idea of what I'm going for.
- Brendan
Expanded research topic
After a good amount of deliberation, I've decided that the topic I would like to pursue this quarter is my second one: anti-British Propaganda in Colonial America. More specifically, I'd like to engage the contradiction between the rhetoric of “enslavement” to Great Britain utilized by revolutionary forces before the outbreak of the revolutionary war and the practice of economic slavery that was common in the colonies. This is by no means an absolutely unique topic, but the angle with which I plan to tackle it should definitely provide some new insights into how the contradiction was born and thrived.
In a nutshell, here are the questions I want to answer: How much did the anti-British “slavery” rhetoric contrast with the actual philosophical positions of those espousing this rhetoric? How much was genuine, how much was used as a tool of manipulation? In spite of the obvious contradiction, “slavery” rhetoric was prominent in anti-British propaganda. Something about this rhetoric must have resonated strongly with the population that the propagandists were trying to mobilize, but why? Understanding why and how this rhetoric worked so well would provide a unique lens into understanding the psychology and political/moral philosophies of average Americans, the potential foot soldiers of revolution. It would help us understand more fully what truly made the revolution possible.
The primary sources I need to look into are rather obvious – first, I'd be looking at the actual pamphlets that were disseminated by organizations such as Sons of Liberty. I also want to find documents that express revolutionaries' views of economic slavery, and private letters in which they express their true feelings for Great Britain and to what extent the relationship between Great Britain and the United States constituted “slavery.” I haven't gone through a rigorous inventory of secondary sources yet, but I definitely want to look at Bernard Bailyn's Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and other sources that engage the issue of the rhetoric of slavery.
In a nutshell, here are the questions I want to answer: How much did the anti-British “slavery” rhetoric contrast with the actual philosophical positions of those espousing this rhetoric? How much was genuine, how much was used as a tool of manipulation? In spite of the obvious contradiction, “slavery” rhetoric was prominent in anti-British propaganda. Something about this rhetoric must have resonated strongly with the population that the propagandists were trying to mobilize, but why? Understanding why and how this rhetoric worked so well would provide a unique lens into understanding the psychology and political/moral philosophies of average Americans, the potential foot soldiers of revolution. It would help us understand more fully what truly made the revolution possible.
The primary sources I need to look into are rather obvious – first, I'd be looking at the actual pamphlets that were disseminated by organizations such as Sons of Liberty. I also want to find documents that express revolutionaries' views of economic slavery, and private letters in which they express their true feelings for Great Britain and to what extent the relationship between Great Britain and the United States constituted “slavery.” I haven't gone through a rigorous inventory of secondary sources yet, but I definitely want to look at Bernard Bailyn's Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and other sources that engage the issue of the rhetoric of slavery.
Identity Fashioning Analysis
Sorry this is late: I thought it was due before class. My bad!
All three of this week's readings: David Waldstreicher's “Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic,” Karen Halttunen's “Confidence Men and Painted Ladies: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America,” and George Chauncey's “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940” engage the issues of identity and identity transformation as a means of interpreting the societies in which the papers' respective identities engaged with.
Waldstreicher's article seeks to reflect a more nuanced construction of mid 18th century mid-Atlantic society by analyzing the way in which runaway slave advertisements' attitudes engaged with the emerging role of runaways as “confidence men.” The introduction is well formed and states the purpose of the article quite clearly” to “[use runaway advertisements to analyze the acts of cultural hybridization black and racially mixed people committed...and to evaluate the owners' use of print to counter the mobility of the unfree...” Unfortunately, this structure fails to carry throughout the bulk of the article, which further complicates the argumentation of the main body. Making matters more difficult for the reader, the body simultaneously argues two strains of thought: how these “confidence men” operated, and how print responded. More explicit structure could have really helped this article get its point across more clearly. That having been said, the sources used are very effective at bolstering the argument. The heavy reliance and citation of primary sources lends the argument a sense of authenticity, and though other historical arguments are not explicitly engaged with any degree of frequency, the secondary sources used do reinforce the argumentation. I feel like the most important lesson one can take out of this paper is how to center a unique, creative argument around primary sources.
The section from Halttunen's book reads more like a narrative than an argument at times, which works to the book's advantage by maintaining the reader's interest. Like Waldstreicher, Halttunen does a phenomenal job engaging primary sources, explicitly breaking down the rhetoric and frequency of common themes in passages from early 19th century guides for young men. I found the core of her argument – the connection between fear of the “confidence man” and the necessity of “republican virtue” to maintain the republic – to be both bold and fascinating. The structure of the work is very sound – the first part of the paper gives us all we need to know about attitudes towards confidence men, and then the more solid argumentative section in the latter part of the paper looks for explanations for the previously described attitudes. My only issue with this work is that the argument could have been outlined or framed better at the beginning of the chapter. However, we must keep in mind that this is an excerpt from a book, not an article, and without reading the entire book it is impossible to completely understand the function of the first chapter in relation to the work as a whole.
We run into the same type of issue with the section Chauncey's book, Gay New York, but, like the Halttunen excerpt, the selected section succeeds on its own merits. The two sections have two different arguments: the first, that Gay culture thrived, though in a different way than it does today, in pre-WWII New York, the second, that “fairies” provide a mechanism with which to understand the Gay culture of the time. I think that the strongest part of Chauncey's writing is his engagement with other historical theories and “myths” about pre-WWII Gay culture. He does not discount the merits of the arguments, but systematically debunks their logic or command of the facts. There isn't as much hard evidence from primary sources in this selection as the previous two, but the primary source citations that are used are used masterfully. Like Halttunen's work, Chauncey's work combines argumentation with narrative, but in a way that is structured more soundly and makes more sense to the reader. From the introduction onward, we as readers know exactly what direction the work is going to go in, making the argumentation much more easy and enjoyable to process.
Ultimately, there are things to take from from each of these works. Depending on the style of the paper one is trying to write, any of these three could serve as a sufficient primary model with which to take structural insights from.
All three of this week's readings: David Waldstreicher's “Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic,” Karen Halttunen's “Confidence Men and Painted Ladies: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America,” and George Chauncey's “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940” engage the issues of identity and identity transformation as a means of interpreting the societies in which the papers' respective identities engaged with.
Waldstreicher's article seeks to reflect a more nuanced construction of mid 18th century mid-Atlantic society by analyzing the way in which runaway slave advertisements' attitudes engaged with the emerging role of runaways as “confidence men.” The introduction is well formed and states the purpose of the article quite clearly” to “[use runaway advertisements to analyze the acts of cultural hybridization black and racially mixed people committed...and to evaluate the owners' use of print to counter the mobility of the unfree...” Unfortunately, this structure fails to carry throughout the bulk of the article, which further complicates the argumentation of the main body. Making matters more difficult for the reader, the body simultaneously argues two strains of thought: how these “confidence men” operated, and how print responded. More explicit structure could have really helped this article get its point across more clearly. That having been said, the sources used are very effective at bolstering the argument. The heavy reliance and citation of primary sources lends the argument a sense of authenticity, and though other historical arguments are not explicitly engaged with any degree of frequency, the secondary sources used do reinforce the argumentation. I feel like the most important lesson one can take out of this paper is how to center a unique, creative argument around primary sources.
The section from Halttunen's book reads more like a narrative than an argument at times, which works to the book's advantage by maintaining the reader's interest. Like Waldstreicher, Halttunen does a phenomenal job engaging primary sources, explicitly breaking down the rhetoric and frequency of common themes in passages from early 19th century guides for young men. I found the core of her argument – the connection between fear of the “confidence man” and the necessity of “republican virtue” to maintain the republic – to be both bold and fascinating. The structure of the work is very sound – the first part of the paper gives us all we need to know about attitudes towards confidence men, and then the more solid argumentative section in the latter part of the paper looks for explanations for the previously described attitudes. My only issue with this work is that the argument could have been outlined or framed better at the beginning of the chapter. However, we must keep in mind that this is an excerpt from a book, not an article, and without reading the entire book it is impossible to completely understand the function of the first chapter in relation to the work as a whole.
We run into the same type of issue with the section Chauncey's book, Gay New York, but, like the Halttunen excerpt, the selected section succeeds on its own merits. The two sections have two different arguments: the first, that Gay culture thrived, though in a different way than it does today, in pre-WWII New York, the second, that “fairies” provide a mechanism with which to understand the Gay culture of the time. I think that the strongest part of Chauncey's writing is his engagement with other historical theories and “myths” about pre-WWII Gay culture. He does not discount the merits of the arguments, but systematically debunks their logic or command of the facts. There isn't as much hard evidence from primary sources in this selection as the previous two, but the primary source citations that are used are used masterfully. Like Halttunen's work, Chauncey's work combines argumentation with narrative, but in a way that is structured more soundly and makes more sense to the reader. From the introduction onward, we as readers know exactly what direction the work is going to go in, making the argumentation much more easy and enjoyable to process.
Ultimately, there are things to take from from each of these works. Depending on the style of the paper one is trying to write, any of these three could serve as a sufficient primary model with which to take structural insights from.
Comments on refined paper topics.
I'm glad to find that most of you have been thinking about your topics and making some choices about what it is that really interests you within the broader themes that you identified last week. Today in class we will be talking more about your topics, and you will have a chance to reflect on your classmates' posts. I will make a few brief comments though in anticipation of what we hope will be a much more in depth discussion this afternoon:
Tom--Using McGirr's book as inspiration is a great idea as I think that she picks up many of the themes that interest you. You might want to look through McGirr and see which figures or organizations mentioned have papers at the Hoover (or elsewhere in the Bay). Just keep in mind that people who worked exclusively in Orange County are as likely as not to have repositories of papers at UC Irvine, so you might find that you're hitting on people, organizations, campaigns, lobbies etc. that had more of a state-wide influence, rather than a focus on one particular county.
Alice--I'm glad you've been thinking of strikes that might fit your project, but Homestead might be a tough one as far as finding primary source material in the area. I'd talk with a librarian at Green and search the OAC asap. It's probably going to be easier though if you start looking around to see if there are any local strikes that might be interesting to you, since then you could more easily use the SF Public Library's archives. Maybe a strike with Pinkerton involvement? Have you thought also about doing a project that's more focused on Pinkerton activity in San Francisco?
Andrea--The idea of using comedy is a great idea though you're right to think that the major problem might be in finding archival material on black comedy or comedians. That said, the Oakland African American Museum and Library might have a great deal of material. I also wonder if there isn't another good media collection around that you might use. You'll have to do some research in to media collections in the area that have materials related to black comedy.
Chris--Since you're topic is already quite refined, I'll just reemphasize that I hope you visit the Chinese American Historical Society as soon as possible and get started. Even if you don't go in the next few days, you should start to contact the archivists today or tomorrow so that they can start to help you identify materials. Also, to follow up on our discussion Tuesday, we had mentioned trying to find permits and other records for Chinese (owned) restaurants in Palo Alto. I don't know if you've found other types of businesses, but while you're there, you should make sure to do a broader search so that you don't miss other businesses like laundries etc.
Sylvie--I noticed that you did not mention Catholicism in your post. Even though you might have to drop it in the final paper, there's a good possibility that you will be able to find a great deal of information on the subject through papers at the Hoover (other than WFB's). Also, do you know where William Buckley Sr.'s papers are? I'd bet the answer is Yale, but it might be interesting to look at family papers if they're around.
Also, remember that even though you will have a chance to discuss topics with each other in class, we encourage you to comment on the blog. Last week we had some great feedback coming in on most of the posts, and I hope you'll continue to engage with your colleagues through the medium of the blog.
Tom--Using McGirr's book as inspiration is a great idea as I think that she picks up many of the themes that interest you. You might want to look through McGirr and see which figures or organizations mentioned have papers at the Hoover (or elsewhere in the Bay). Just keep in mind that people who worked exclusively in Orange County are as likely as not to have repositories of papers at UC Irvine, so you might find that you're hitting on people, organizations, campaigns, lobbies etc. that had more of a state-wide influence, rather than a focus on one particular county.
Alice--I'm glad you've been thinking of strikes that might fit your project, but Homestead might be a tough one as far as finding primary source material in the area. I'd talk with a librarian at Green and search the OAC asap. It's probably going to be easier though if you start looking around to see if there are any local strikes that might be interesting to you, since then you could more easily use the SF Public Library's archives. Maybe a strike with Pinkerton involvement? Have you thought also about doing a project that's more focused on Pinkerton activity in San Francisco?
Andrea--The idea of using comedy is a great idea though you're right to think that the major problem might be in finding archival material on black comedy or comedians. That said, the Oakland African American Museum and Library might have a great deal of material. I also wonder if there isn't another good media collection around that you might use. You'll have to do some research in to media collections in the area that have materials related to black comedy.
Chris--Since you're topic is already quite refined, I'll just reemphasize that I hope you visit the Chinese American Historical Society as soon as possible and get started. Even if you don't go in the next few days, you should start to contact the archivists today or tomorrow so that they can start to help you identify materials. Also, to follow up on our discussion Tuesday, we had mentioned trying to find permits and other records for Chinese (owned) restaurants in Palo Alto. I don't know if you've found other types of businesses, but while you're there, you should make sure to do a broader search so that you don't miss other businesses like laundries etc.
Sylvie--I noticed that you did not mention Catholicism in your post. Even though you might have to drop it in the final paper, there's a good possibility that you will be able to find a great deal of information on the subject through papers at the Hoover (other than WFB's). Also, do you know where William Buckley Sr.'s papers are? I'd bet the answer is Yale, but it might be interesting to look at family papers if they're around.
Also, remember that even though you will have a chance to discuss topics with each other in class, we encourage you to comment on the blog. Last week we had some great feedback coming in on most of the posts, and I hope you'll continue to engage with your colleagues through the medium of the blog.
Refined Paper Idea -- Tom
My topic is going to be an analysis of the evolution of the American frontier and how it came to embody the American West, specifically California, in the post-WWII era of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The main figures of my argument are going to be the suburban residents of Orange County in the post-war era but I will also bring in some important historiographic figures such as Frederick Jackson Turner and political figures that embody the movement such as Ronald Reagan. I would also like to study some of the major figures in Orange Country during the era but at this point I need to do more research into who exactly those people were and what was their function in the community.
I am expecting to argue that the American west became symbolic of the frontier in the sense of economic development and political change during the post-war era. I want to show how the west coast, particularly California, took on the image of the untamed west in the form of someone such as Ronald Reagan, who embodied this sentiment. This argument is important in understanding the progress of the American frontier and the effects of migration and political change in the American narrative. I am expecting to use many primary resources such as news paper articles and local records and journals in the Hoover Institute to make this argument. I plan to use Lisa McGirr’s Suburban Warriors along with other secondary sources that I plan to find in the course of my research. I foresee a little issue with regards to tying this theme to my greater societal argument but I believe I can effectively use secondary sources to construct a bridge to larger societal
I am expecting to argue that the American west became symbolic of the frontier in the sense of economic development and political change during the post-war era. I want to show how the west coast, particularly California, took on the image of the untamed west in the form of someone such as Ronald Reagan, who embodied this sentiment. This argument is important in understanding the progress of the American frontier and the effects of migration and political change in the American narrative. I am expecting to use many primary resources such as news paper articles and local records and journals in the Hoover Institute to make this argument. I plan to use Lisa McGirr’s Suburban Warriors along with other secondary sources that I plan to find in the course of my research. I foresee a little issue with regards to tying this theme to my greater societal argument but I believe I can effectively use secondary sources to construct a bridge to larger societal
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Week 3 Reading Response -- Tom Grey
Proceeding in the order in which the readings appear in the reader, I will start with the David Waldstreicher piece. “Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic” discusses the ability (or inability) of escaped slaves to refashion their identity in order to “pass” as free men. While the piece discusses at length the ability of escaped slaves to refashion their identity, the main argument of the article lies in the print advertisements for runaway slaves; the workings of print to recapture escaped slaves epitomized the slave system “that depended on the very movement, linguistic skill, and improvisation it sought to contain.” That is to say that the advertisements often highlighted and showed slaves capacity for linguistic skill and improvisation and it was these skills that in turn also made them valuable slaves.
Waldstreicher draws much of his argument from the use of primary sources in the form of print advertisements in newspapers, diaries, and some state records. These sources are effective at proving his point but it is difficult to fully prove such a complex social argument without extensive records of all newspapers in separate geographic regions. Waldstreicher does not geographically contain his argument (except to regions that allowed slavery) and in this regard he perhaps goes too far in equating slavery all regions, without sufficient proof. As far as his engagement in secondary sources, Waldstreicher tends to shy away from directly engaging other historians and instead tends to use other works to support his historic view of eighteenth-century slavery. He references recent works to lay foundation and remove the burden of proof of certain aspects of his historic narrative. The main lesson I take out of this piece is with regards to the use of secondary sources because Waldsteicher is able to proceed to the heart of his argument rather quickly due to his use of secondary sources to support potentially contentious assumptions.
Karen Halttunen in “Confidence Men and Painted Women: A study of Middle-class culture in America, 1830-1870” discusses a similar role of identity in America but in a very different context. Halttunen discusses the role of confidence men in the new urban environment and the sources of societal fear of confidence men. She argues that the fear of confidence men arose out of a powerful anxiety “of nineteenth-century middle-class Americans concerning the problem of hypocrisy in an open, urban society.” The problem lies in the new theoretical boundless potential of each individual in society within the framework of a “’world of strangers’ that was the antebellum city.” She propels this argument through first hand accounts but also through directly engaging other historians’ work. She uses first hand accounts and the pamphlets to extrapolate information regarding the fear of confidence men, but to give context to her fear she relies upon secondary sources. This use of secondary sources is more central to Halttunen’s argument than were Waldsteicher’s secondary sources because here Halttunen is making generally larger societal claims that must be supported by not only primary evidence but also by sociological theory. She brings in some work of Nancy F. Cott regarding the growing importance of women’s friendships during the 1780 to 1835 period to show that peer relationships were budding and are evidence of a more horizontal, rather than vertical, society. A horizontal society is the crux of Halttunen’s argument because it is the development of horizontal society, she argues, that creates the opportunity for confidence men to take advantage of their peers in society. The fear of confidence men is a response to the newly horizontal society.
Finally, the George Chauncey piece, “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940” follows, again, the story of how individuals were able to refashion their identity within a societal framework. This work chronicles the evolution of the gay community throughout the 1890-1940 time period, but in doing so argues that our modern notions of “gayness” are in fact mid-twentieth-century creations and that this change in attitude “demonstrates that sexual desire itself was regarded as fundamentally gendered in the early twentieth century.” In the section that we read, the Introduction and first chapter, Chauncey primarily relies upon primary sources to paint a picture of gay life in New York. He focuses in particular on the accounts of a few men in New York of differing social classes and tells their accounts of the gay community and then puts these accounts in the context of his own argument. The strongest part of Chauncey’s argument, in my opinion, is in his use of “trades” and how the association of any homosexual act with “gayness” led men to no longer call themselves trades or engage in homosexual acts because of the clearly defined division between the normal and the other. Chauncey used secondary sources in much the same way as Waldstreicher in that he cites historians, such as Richard White, to support his general historical claims that would otherwise take pages (at least) to justify. All of these pieces offer a great model for how to use secondary sources to prop up the more controversial assumptions of your argument while the use of primary sources shores up the original arguments that are being built on top of these stip
Waldstreicher draws much of his argument from the use of primary sources in the form of print advertisements in newspapers, diaries, and some state records. These sources are effective at proving his point but it is difficult to fully prove such a complex social argument without extensive records of all newspapers in separate geographic regions. Waldstreicher does not geographically contain his argument (except to regions that allowed slavery) and in this regard he perhaps goes too far in equating slavery all regions, without sufficient proof. As far as his engagement in secondary sources, Waldstreicher tends to shy away from directly engaging other historians and instead tends to use other works to support his historic view of eighteenth-century slavery. He references recent works to lay foundation and remove the burden of proof of certain aspects of his historic narrative. The main lesson I take out of this piece is with regards to the use of secondary sources because Waldsteicher is able to proceed to the heart of his argument rather quickly due to his use of secondary sources to support potentially contentious assumptions.
Karen Halttunen in “Confidence Men and Painted Women: A study of Middle-class culture in America, 1830-1870” discusses a similar role of identity in America but in a very different context. Halttunen discusses the role of confidence men in the new urban environment and the sources of societal fear of confidence men. She argues that the fear of confidence men arose out of a powerful anxiety “of nineteenth-century middle-class Americans concerning the problem of hypocrisy in an open, urban society.” The problem lies in the new theoretical boundless potential of each individual in society within the framework of a “’world of strangers’ that was the antebellum city.” She propels this argument through first hand accounts but also through directly engaging other historians’ work. She uses first hand accounts and the pamphlets to extrapolate information regarding the fear of confidence men, but to give context to her fear she relies upon secondary sources. This use of secondary sources is more central to Halttunen’s argument than were Waldsteicher’s secondary sources because here Halttunen is making generally larger societal claims that must be supported by not only primary evidence but also by sociological theory. She brings in some work of Nancy F. Cott regarding the growing importance of women’s friendships during the 1780 to 1835 period to show that peer relationships were budding and are evidence of a more horizontal, rather than vertical, society. A horizontal society is the crux of Halttunen’s argument because it is the development of horizontal society, she argues, that creates the opportunity for confidence men to take advantage of their peers in society. The fear of confidence men is a response to the newly horizontal society.
Finally, the George Chauncey piece, “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940” follows, again, the story of how individuals were able to refashion their identity within a societal framework. This work chronicles the evolution of the gay community throughout the 1890-1940 time period, but in doing so argues that our modern notions of “gayness” are in fact mid-twentieth-century creations and that this change in attitude “demonstrates that sexual desire itself was regarded as fundamentally gendered in the early twentieth century.” In the section that we read, the Introduction and first chapter, Chauncey primarily relies upon primary sources to paint a picture of gay life in New York. He focuses in particular on the accounts of a few men in New York of differing social classes and tells their accounts of the gay community and then puts these accounts in the context of his own argument. The strongest part of Chauncey’s argument, in my opinion, is in his use of “trades” and how the association of any homosexual act with “gayness” led men to no longer call themselves trades or engage in homosexual acts because of the clearly defined division between the normal and the other. Chauncey used secondary sources in much the same way as Waldstreicher in that he cites historians, such as Richard White, to support his general historical claims that would otherwise take pages (at least) to justify. All of these pieces offer a great model for how to use secondary sources to prop up the more controversial assumptions of your argument while the use of primary sources shores up the original arguments that are being built on top of these stip
Week Three reading response
David Waldstreicher’s article seeks a new way to personify runaway slaves: as confidence men, on the lam. In order to escape their masters, runaway slaves used the same strategies, says Waldstreicher, as did 18th century con men—disguising themselves, using linguistic skills, manipulating goods and people, capitalizing on the grey area between black and white that allowed for passing, and “changed their identities [to] gain at least a measure of freedom.” Waldstreicher identifies the genre of newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves as an important way to analyze the role newspaper publishers had in reinforcing the institution of slavery (and vice versa: runaway slaves created a market for newspaper writers). He also calls these advertisements the “first slave narratives,” as they are some of the first written stories about slaves.
Waldstreicher sites one particular example of an advert from the Pennsylvania Gazette (from an edition between 1728-90) to demonstrate the con men tactics of a runaway slave: this man, Tom, intended to disguise his true identity by cutting his hair, making stockings, and using a blanket to complete his look as an Indian—an identity he would try to assume. Waldstreicher asks to what extent slaves were capable of fashioning their own identities. Without the newspaper advert, we would most likely know nothing about Tom (but with it, he may have been caught).
The topics of identity, role-playing (and role-breaking), storytelling, and the commoditization of persons are the themes that Waldstreicher examines through the lens of newspaper advertisements for confidence men-like runaways. He heavily cites and annotates the work of other authors who have studied runaways, passing, identity-morphing, and newspaper advertisements of this era. His main primary source, of course, is the newspaper adverts themselves and numerical data on ad sales.
What most interested me in terms of Waldstreicher’s research material was how he used the data he found – the advertisements – to create his thesis, not the other way around. He did not draft a thesis and then use primary sources to support it, but rather needed the evidence to make the argument.
Halttunen's article asks why nineteenth-century Americans so feared the 'hypocricy' of confidence men and painted women? She seeks to examine the "crisis of social identity" in a fluid America: as people moved from place to place, as America changed in the 19th century, how did their identities change? Why did this transience inspire such fear?
Confidence men and painted women were seen as trying falsely 'pass', according to Halttunen. She explores the "era of the confidence man" and the problems of hypocrisy that he personified as well as how both the confidence man and the painted lady fit into the the idea of sentimental culture in America. Confidence men and painted women were an easy and tangible target to foist the fears of (American's own person) hypocrisy upon.
Halttunen describes changes in America in the nineteenth century -- the rise of 'peer pressure', changes in the workplace and at home, transience, the Panic of 1837, etc. -- in order to trace this rising hypocrisy and rising fears. Hers is really a study of middle-class culture (as she says in her title) rather than one very specific aspect of American culture (as in Waldstriecher's piece). Her footnotes are not included in the piece as Waldstreicher's are, and she seems to refer more to past historians' work rather than primary documents such as runaway slaves newspaper advertisements. She does, however, examine many writings-of-the-time (such as Calvin Colton's in 1844).
George Chauncey traces the development of a male gay community in New York city between the end of the 1800's and the beginning of World War II. Chauncey argues that this world has been largely forgotten and ignored by historians -- this is a result of the myths of isolation, invisibility and isolation born from anti-gay hostility.
Chauncey examines the gay subculture in New York by comparing the lives of drag queens and "fairies" to gay men who hid themselves and their true identities. Why did some men flaunt their sexuality while others internalized it (myth of isolation)? He explores this world through the metaphor of "the closet". This suggests isolation, solitude--but who made up this metaphor? The straight population or the gay? Gay men in the 1930s used a more encompassing metaphor: the gay world rather than gay closet.
The main argument that Chauncey promotes is that despite the Whiggish notion supported by historians D'Emilio, Berube and Faderman, he believes that there was not progressive change that moved toward freedom for the gay community. Chauncey argues that life become more difficult , more closeted, more segregated and less tolerated. He believes that there was more tolerance pre-war, and seeks to explain why (the straight world did not seem to notice this gay subculture as much).
In constructing this argument, Chauncey draws on sources such as city maps and photographs to create a topography of the gay world in New York before the Second World War. Two particularly interesting uses of primary sources were a cartoon published in a New York tabloid that illustrated gay men as fairies (Swish!) as well as a "certificate" of "pansiness" from the 1930's. Chauncey used these to explore gay stereotyping in this period. He also examines letters written between men to give light to the situtation of the times.
All three authors use an admiral mix of evidence to bolster (and in Waldstreicher's case, to fully make) their arguments. Chauncey and Waldstreicher seek to uncover the unknown and analyze primary sources to tell their stories, while Halttunen gives more of an overview of a time period, tracing themes throughout. The excitement of new evidence is what made Chauncey and Waldstreicher's articles most compelling for me.
Waldstreicher sites one particular example of an advert from the Pennsylvania Gazette (from an edition between 1728-90) to demonstrate the con men tactics of a runaway slave: this man, Tom, intended to disguise his true identity by cutting his hair, making stockings, and using a blanket to complete his look as an Indian—an identity he would try to assume. Waldstreicher asks to what extent slaves were capable of fashioning their own identities. Without the newspaper advert, we would most likely know nothing about Tom (but with it, he may have been caught).
The topics of identity, role-playing (and role-breaking), storytelling, and the commoditization of persons are the themes that Waldstreicher examines through the lens of newspaper advertisements for confidence men-like runaways. He heavily cites and annotates the work of other authors who have studied runaways, passing, identity-morphing, and newspaper advertisements of this era. His main primary source, of course, is the newspaper adverts themselves and numerical data on ad sales.
What most interested me in terms of Waldstreicher’s research material was how he used the data he found – the advertisements – to create his thesis, not the other way around. He did not draft a thesis and then use primary sources to support it, but rather needed the evidence to make the argument.
Halttunen's article asks why nineteenth-century Americans so feared the 'hypocricy' of confidence men and painted women? She seeks to examine the "crisis of social identity" in a fluid America: as people moved from place to place, as America changed in the 19th century, how did their identities change? Why did this transience inspire such fear?
Confidence men and painted women were seen as trying falsely 'pass', according to Halttunen. She explores the "era of the confidence man" and the problems of hypocrisy that he personified as well as how both the confidence man and the painted lady fit into the the idea of sentimental culture in America. Confidence men and painted women were an easy and tangible target to foist the fears of (American's own person) hypocrisy upon.
Halttunen describes changes in America in the nineteenth century -- the rise of 'peer pressure', changes in the workplace and at home, transience, the Panic of 1837, etc. -- in order to trace this rising hypocrisy and rising fears. Hers is really a study of middle-class culture (as she says in her title) rather than one very specific aspect of American culture (as in Waldstriecher's piece). Her footnotes are not included in the piece as Waldstreicher's are, and she seems to refer more to past historians' work rather than primary documents such as runaway slaves newspaper advertisements. She does, however, examine many writings-of-the-time (such as Calvin Colton's in 1844).
George Chauncey traces the development of a male gay community in New York city between the end of the 1800's and the beginning of World War II. Chauncey argues that this world has been largely forgotten and ignored by historians -- this is a result of the myths of isolation, invisibility and isolation born from anti-gay hostility.
Chauncey examines the gay subculture in New York by comparing the lives of drag queens and "fairies" to gay men who hid themselves and their true identities. Why did some men flaunt their sexuality while others internalized it (myth of isolation)? He explores this world through the metaphor of "the closet". This suggests isolation, solitude--but who made up this metaphor? The straight population or the gay? Gay men in the 1930s used a more encompassing metaphor: the gay world rather than gay closet.
The main argument that Chauncey promotes is that despite the Whiggish notion supported by historians D'Emilio, Berube and Faderman, he believes that there was not progressive change that moved toward freedom for the gay community. Chauncey argues that life become more difficult , more closeted, more segregated and less tolerated. He believes that there was more tolerance pre-war, and seeks to explain why (the straight world did not seem to notice this gay subculture as much).
In constructing this argument, Chauncey draws on sources such as city maps and photographs to create a topography of the gay world in New York before the Second World War. Two particularly interesting uses of primary sources were a cartoon published in a New York tabloid that illustrated gay men as fairies (Swish!) as well as a "certificate" of "pansiness" from the 1930's. Chauncey used these to explore gay stereotyping in this period. He also examines letters written between men to give light to the situtation of the times.
All three authors use an admiral mix of evidence to bolster (and in Waldstreicher's case, to fully make) their arguments. Chauncey and Waldstreicher seek to uncover the unknown and analyze primary sources to tell their stories, while Halttunen gives more of an overview of a time period, tracing themes throughout. The excitement of new evidence is what made Chauncey and Waldstreicher's articles most compelling for me.
Response Papers for 10/8 (Alice Hu)
Waldstreicher, “Reading the Runaways;” Halttunen, Confidence Men and painted Ladies; and Chauncey, Gay New York
It is the tendency of modern perceptions of the past to assume that identities, racial, sexual, or otherwise, were much more hamstrung and confined than they are today—we see moments in history such as the Civil Rights Movement or women’s liberation or gay liberation as pivotal moments that freed minorities or subcultures from their previous oppressed status. But, as George Chauncey points out in his Introduction to his book Gay New York, to assume so is to subscribe to “the Whiggish notion that change is always ‘progressive’ and that gay history in particular consists of a steady movement toward freedom” (9). But in many cases, as both David Waldstreicher and Chauncey argue, the groups that we think of as having only just been liberated in fact enjoyed a period of considerable freedom long before they were, as Chauncey says, escorted to the closet.
Identities, as both Waldstreicher and Chauncey suggest, in many cases seemed much more fluid in earlier times. Where even now modern perceptions struggle with a dichotomy between “black” and “white,” these identities were certainly fluid enough for numerous runaway slaves or servants to “pass” as white; furthermore, many black Americans did not even need to “pass” for anything—the identity of “black” was in the early history of the United States not synonymous with that of “slave,” while many European immigrants were hardly considered “white” at all, and in many cases were indentured servants. In the same way, sexual identity for homosexual men in New York in the beginning of the 20th century was not a dichotomy between “gay” and “straight:” rather, it existed as a spectrum, ranging from female gender identification to sexual preference for men. It is not until external forces pressured society to “closet” these groups: only when the American economy exploded did it come to rely almost solely on black slaves, especially in the South, and only in the wake of Prohibition was homosexuality seriously marginalized and stigmatized.
Karen Halttunen presents a slightly different argument: she does not propose to revise anything. Instead she rather traditionally traces the development of certain stereotypes—that of the confidence man—in relation to the changing face of the American family and city throughout the 19th century. As the influence of families and local clergy fell away, and as more men ventured out alone into cities at younger ages, the insidious image of the confidence man developed as both a cautionary tale for these young men, as well as a way of attempting to guide these young men in a transitional stage to leading a wholesome life.
It is true that Waldstreicher and Chauncey engage much more with the historiographical tradition in their fields than does Halttunen—which is more fitting to their purposes. Both authors intend to argue with an overwhelming misconception that the forward progression of history means progress towards greater liberty and acceptance for minorities and subcultures. Both Waldstreicher and Chauncey fight with something of a phantom general public whom they seek to disabuse of this “Whiggish notion:” while they do not overtly refer to any group or particular people who subscribe to this view, they make it clear that these views are by and large prevalent, even without citing much actual evidence for it. While Waldstreicher relies almost exclusively on his primary evidence to speak his case, Chauncey very openly credits those historians before him who have laid the groundwork for his own research. But all three authors engage with their primary sources in much the same way: they rely on firsthand accounts and extracts from writings of the period to establish the identities that they discuss, whether that is the identity of free black workers in the early nineteenth century, confidence men, or openly homosexual men in New York. Their archival work is admirable, but runs the risk of privileging the under-represented groups too much. For instance, Waldstreicher bases his conclusions largely on the writings of slave masters about their runaway slave, and so he is reconstructing slaves’ identities through a number of refractions. In the same way, Halttunen reconstructs the identity of confidence men through the wildly exaggerated speeches of the clergy—although she tempers this reconstruction with some very well-placed police reports that corroborate the clergy.
These articles offer both refreshing takes on the traditional historiographical approaches to subcultures and engaging work with primary sources. Waldstreicher and Chauncey, particularly, seek to subvert not only popular misconceptions about certain groups, but also seek to explode an entire conception of history and progress, which I find particularly admirable and inspiring, although, at the same time, they do so on sometimes tenuous evidence. Halltunen, while she does not share such revolutionary aims, equally admirably uses well-rounded evidence tempered both by secondary account and concrete primary evidence to reconstruct a comprehensive and possibly more accurate identity.
It is the tendency of modern perceptions of the past to assume that identities, racial, sexual, or otherwise, were much more hamstrung and confined than they are today—we see moments in history such as the Civil Rights Movement or women’s liberation or gay liberation as pivotal moments that freed minorities or subcultures from their previous oppressed status. But, as George Chauncey points out in his Introduction to his book Gay New York, to assume so is to subscribe to “the Whiggish notion that change is always ‘progressive’ and that gay history in particular consists of a steady movement toward freedom” (9). But in many cases, as both David Waldstreicher and Chauncey argue, the groups that we think of as having only just been liberated in fact enjoyed a period of considerable freedom long before they were, as Chauncey says, escorted to the closet.
Identities, as both Waldstreicher and Chauncey suggest, in many cases seemed much more fluid in earlier times. Where even now modern perceptions struggle with a dichotomy between “black” and “white,” these identities were certainly fluid enough for numerous runaway slaves or servants to “pass” as white; furthermore, many black Americans did not even need to “pass” for anything—the identity of “black” was in the early history of the United States not synonymous with that of “slave,” while many European immigrants were hardly considered “white” at all, and in many cases were indentured servants. In the same way, sexual identity for homosexual men in New York in the beginning of the 20th century was not a dichotomy between “gay” and “straight:” rather, it existed as a spectrum, ranging from female gender identification to sexual preference for men. It is not until external forces pressured society to “closet” these groups: only when the American economy exploded did it come to rely almost solely on black slaves, especially in the South, and only in the wake of Prohibition was homosexuality seriously marginalized and stigmatized.
Karen Halttunen presents a slightly different argument: she does not propose to revise anything. Instead she rather traditionally traces the development of certain stereotypes—that of the confidence man—in relation to the changing face of the American family and city throughout the 19th century. As the influence of families and local clergy fell away, and as more men ventured out alone into cities at younger ages, the insidious image of the confidence man developed as both a cautionary tale for these young men, as well as a way of attempting to guide these young men in a transitional stage to leading a wholesome life.
It is true that Waldstreicher and Chauncey engage much more with the historiographical tradition in their fields than does Halttunen—which is more fitting to their purposes. Both authors intend to argue with an overwhelming misconception that the forward progression of history means progress towards greater liberty and acceptance for minorities and subcultures. Both Waldstreicher and Chauncey fight with something of a phantom general public whom they seek to disabuse of this “Whiggish notion:” while they do not overtly refer to any group or particular people who subscribe to this view, they make it clear that these views are by and large prevalent, even without citing much actual evidence for it. While Waldstreicher relies almost exclusively on his primary evidence to speak his case, Chauncey very openly credits those historians before him who have laid the groundwork for his own research. But all three authors engage with their primary sources in much the same way: they rely on firsthand accounts and extracts from writings of the period to establish the identities that they discuss, whether that is the identity of free black workers in the early nineteenth century, confidence men, or openly homosexual men in New York. Their archival work is admirable, but runs the risk of privileging the under-represented groups too much. For instance, Waldstreicher bases his conclusions largely on the writings of slave masters about their runaway slave, and so he is reconstructing slaves’ identities through a number of refractions. In the same way, Halttunen reconstructs the identity of confidence men through the wildly exaggerated speeches of the clergy—although she tempers this reconstruction with some very well-placed police reports that corroborate the clergy.
These articles offer both refreshing takes on the traditional historiographical approaches to subcultures and engaging work with primary sources. Waldstreicher and Chauncey, particularly, seek to subvert not only popular misconceptions about certain groups, but also seek to explode an entire conception of history and progress, which I find particularly admirable and inspiring, although, at the same time, they do so on sometimes tenuous evidence. Halltunen, while she does not share such revolutionary aims, equally admirably uses well-rounded evidence tempered both by secondary account and concrete primary evidence to reconstruct a comprehensive and possibly more accurate identity.
Refined Research Topic Statement
Specifics
I’m planning to focus on the nature of and rhetoric behind violence in the Pinkertons’ involvement in putting down the Homestead Strike in Pennsylvania 1892, and particularly would like to contrast the Pinkertons’ involvement in putting down labor union strikes with their involvement in the Civil War. The violent suppression of labor union strikes seems to me to be the next major example after the Civil War of Americans fighting other white Americans. While it is highly unlikely that the Pinkertons or Pinkerton forerunners who participated in Civil War espionage campaigns were also around to take part in putting down the Homestead Strike, it strikes me that organizationally and rhetorically, there may be some carry-over from Civil War involvement to putting down strikes. What may be the case is that soldiers at large who fought in the Civil War may have gone on to become Pinkertons (if I find this, then I have hit paydirt), or that at least, as I’ve said before, there is some kind of overlap, given that the Civil War was a pivotal moment in shaping Americans’ understanding of doing violence to other white Americans.
Argument
While I’m really nowhere near ready to make a prediction about the course my argument will take based on my evidence, I do expect that there will be some serious similarity behind the rhetoric that soldiers, for instance, use to justify their fighting and that of Pinkertons and workers fighting in labor strikes. Because of the jarring similarities between the two combatants in the Civil War, soldiers in many cases looked to other defining characteristics in order to justify fighting other American, to define themselves, and to distance themselves from the enemy. Pinkertons and workers seem to me to be in the same situation, and I suspect that this kind of distancing of self from enemy is perhaps a skill perfected in the Civil War, and perhaps even one that Pinkertons who infiltrated enemy camp in the Civil War may have capitalized on.
Significance
I believe that it is always of interest to dissect the reasons why we fight other humans—what drives us to believe that violence is acceptable and even necessary, and the kind of violence we carry out, and against whom. Particularly salient and troubling is violence between people who are, in general, united. Understanding how working men are able to make war on and even kill other working men like themselves is, I think, worth some investigation and reflection.
More specifically, however, I view the Civil War as an essential redefinition of war and violence in the United States. As the first instance of real “total war,” the Civil War set precedents for the major violent encounters that followed it, particularly the wars against Native American peoples in the West and, quite possibly, the violent labor strikes in the latter half of the 19th century. I believe that the Civil War revolutionized the face of violent conflict in the United States, and that the effect of the emergence of total war in America is not limited to what we traditionally consider “war,” but may even manifest itself in domestic conflicts like labor disputes.
Primary Literature
For primary accounts of both Civil War experience and labor dispute experience, I expect that I can look into memoirs and correspondence of those involved—the Valley of the Shadow Project, for instance, is one place I might start looking for Civil War correspondence and diaries. Some accounts of labor disputes, particularly the Homestead Strike, occur in newspaper articles about the strike, and I would like to follow up on those leads and see if I can find memoirs and correspondence from the same people. Other primary accounts could include the contracts with which Andrew Carnegie hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency, or internal documents pertaining to the Pinkertons. I know that William T. Sherman’s memoirs and correspondence, for instance, are available, and I am considering using them as a way of examining the changing face of warfare in the US, particularly during his “March to the Sea.” Other memoirs that deal with Sherman’s March are also available, and they could complement the Valley of the Shadow Project well.
Secondary Literature
I have a fantastic and huge stack of secondary literature. Some of it is as general as histories—particularly telling the story of Sherman’s March to the Sea or the Homestead Strike. I also have some histories of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, so I can construct a narrative of its involvement both in the Civil War and in labor disputes. Once I’ve established enough of a background narrative, I have an arsenal of articles dealing with more recent scholarship—analyzing, for instance, the role of the Pinkertons in labor disputes as revolutionizing domestic security enforcement and the implications of using security agencies to put down labor strikes. I also have some articles dealing with the phenomenon of Sherman’s March to the Sea as an instance of total war, and the revolutionary implications of this kind of warfare. As of yet, however, I don’t think anyone has synthesized these two areas—plenty of research has been done on labor disputes and their suppression, and even more has been done on the Civil War and the transition to total war, but I think that I’m somewhat unique in drawing parallels between the two, and hopefully that is not because there is nothing there to draw.
Troubleshooting
Of course the major issue will be time and scope. I hope to narrow things down to a small collection of memoirs and correspondence that demonstrates the development of rhetoric behind violence both in the Civil War (quite possibly Sherman’s March to the Sea) and the Homestead Strike. It is possible, however, that I might just limit myself to tracing the role of the Pinkertons in American violence, from understanding their role as spies in the Civil War to all-out infantry forces in the Homestead Strike. While it is my dream that I can find some memoirs or letters or diaries of a soldier who went on to be a Pinkerton, I recognize that that may be a pipe dream, and that I will probably be working with primary sources from different generations of authors who have very different experiences, and that I must be careful to recognize the limits of parallels I can draw from such disparate sources. I also fear that I may rely too strongly on secondary sources, given the fact that most of my primary source will probably not be located in California. However, they are source pertaining to very well known and much written about events, and so I hope that will make accessing them easy.
I’m planning to focus on the nature of and rhetoric behind violence in the Pinkertons’ involvement in putting down the Homestead Strike in Pennsylvania 1892, and particularly would like to contrast the Pinkertons’ involvement in putting down labor union strikes with their involvement in the Civil War. The violent suppression of labor union strikes seems to me to be the next major example after the Civil War of Americans fighting other white Americans. While it is highly unlikely that the Pinkertons or Pinkerton forerunners who participated in Civil War espionage campaigns were also around to take part in putting down the Homestead Strike, it strikes me that organizationally and rhetorically, there may be some carry-over from Civil War involvement to putting down strikes. What may be the case is that soldiers at large who fought in the Civil War may have gone on to become Pinkertons (if I find this, then I have hit paydirt), or that at least, as I’ve said before, there is some kind of overlap, given that the Civil War was a pivotal moment in shaping Americans’ understanding of doing violence to other white Americans.
Argument
While I’m really nowhere near ready to make a prediction about the course my argument will take based on my evidence, I do expect that there will be some serious similarity behind the rhetoric that soldiers, for instance, use to justify their fighting and that of Pinkertons and workers fighting in labor strikes. Because of the jarring similarities between the two combatants in the Civil War, soldiers in many cases looked to other defining characteristics in order to justify fighting other American, to define themselves, and to distance themselves from the enemy. Pinkertons and workers seem to me to be in the same situation, and I suspect that this kind of distancing of self from enemy is perhaps a skill perfected in the Civil War, and perhaps even one that Pinkertons who infiltrated enemy camp in the Civil War may have capitalized on.
Significance
I believe that it is always of interest to dissect the reasons why we fight other humans—what drives us to believe that violence is acceptable and even necessary, and the kind of violence we carry out, and against whom. Particularly salient and troubling is violence between people who are, in general, united. Understanding how working men are able to make war on and even kill other working men like themselves is, I think, worth some investigation and reflection.
More specifically, however, I view the Civil War as an essential redefinition of war and violence in the United States. As the first instance of real “total war,” the Civil War set precedents for the major violent encounters that followed it, particularly the wars against Native American peoples in the West and, quite possibly, the violent labor strikes in the latter half of the 19th century. I believe that the Civil War revolutionized the face of violent conflict in the United States, and that the effect of the emergence of total war in America is not limited to what we traditionally consider “war,” but may even manifest itself in domestic conflicts like labor disputes.
Primary Literature
For primary accounts of both Civil War experience and labor dispute experience, I expect that I can look into memoirs and correspondence of those involved—the Valley of the Shadow Project, for instance, is one place I might start looking for Civil War correspondence and diaries. Some accounts of labor disputes, particularly the Homestead Strike, occur in newspaper articles about the strike, and I would like to follow up on those leads and see if I can find memoirs and correspondence from the same people. Other primary accounts could include the contracts with which Andrew Carnegie hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency, or internal documents pertaining to the Pinkertons. I know that William T. Sherman’s memoirs and correspondence, for instance, are available, and I am considering using them as a way of examining the changing face of warfare in the US, particularly during his “March to the Sea.” Other memoirs that deal with Sherman’s March are also available, and they could complement the Valley of the Shadow Project well.
Secondary Literature
I have a fantastic and huge stack of secondary literature. Some of it is as general as histories—particularly telling the story of Sherman’s March to the Sea or the Homestead Strike. I also have some histories of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, so I can construct a narrative of its involvement both in the Civil War and in labor disputes. Once I’ve established enough of a background narrative, I have an arsenal of articles dealing with more recent scholarship—analyzing, for instance, the role of the Pinkertons in labor disputes as revolutionizing domestic security enforcement and the implications of using security agencies to put down labor strikes. I also have some articles dealing with the phenomenon of Sherman’s March to the Sea as an instance of total war, and the revolutionary implications of this kind of warfare. As of yet, however, I don’t think anyone has synthesized these two areas—plenty of research has been done on labor disputes and their suppression, and even more has been done on the Civil War and the transition to total war, but I think that I’m somewhat unique in drawing parallels between the two, and hopefully that is not because there is nothing there to draw.
Troubleshooting
Of course the major issue will be time and scope. I hope to narrow things down to a small collection of memoirs and correspondence that demonstrates the development of rhetoric behind violence both in the Civil War (quite possibly Sherman’s March to the Sea) and the Homestead Strike. It is possible, however, that I might just limit myself to tracing the role of the Pinkertons in American violence, from understanding their role as spies in the Civil War to all-out infantry forces in the Homestead Strike. While it is my dream that I can find some memoirs or letters or diaries of a soldier who went on to be a Pinkerton, I recognize that that may be a pipe dream, and that I will probably be working with primary sources from different generations of authors who have very different experiences, and that I must be careful to recognize the limits of parallels I can draw from such disparate sources. I also fear that I may rely too strongly on secondary sources, given the fact that most of my primary source will probably not be located in California. However, they are source pertaining to very well known and much written about events, and so I hope that will make accessing them easy.
Research topic... revisited
Changing perceptions of black marriage in the 20th century
(please excuse that this is not as fleshed-out as I might like… it’s all starting to come to me – a little late in the night!)
As I mentioned before, I’m interested in writing about “black marriage” or “black love,” and the prevalence (or lack thereof) of committed black couples. I realized I needed to refine this topic since tackling “black marriage” throughout all of US history is simply daunting. Additionally, I was nervous about finding sufficient primary material to work with. So finally I turned to an art medium that is often a frank (if at times exaggerated) reflection of love and marriage – comedy.
Specifics and (budding) argument: Using black comedians’ routines and personal lives, I want to explore how accurately their comedy reflected the state of black marriage at different points in 20th century America. Comedians whose work I’m considering analyzing are Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, Moms Mabley, Dick Gregory, Whoopie Goldberg, among others
Significance: As I mentioned before, many people worry that traditional black marriages and families have disintegrated as the 20th century has progressed – the point that 42% of black women never get married. While exploring this phenomenon through comedy might not offer an explanation as to why, it could offer a reflection of the climate around which these changes in black relationships were happening, and perhaps offer a better understanding of how entrenched these issues were in black society.
Primary literature: Comedic routines and audience reactions to them. Also, any diaries or letters discussing black relationships that may have influenced the comedians
Secondary literature: Critic’s responses to the comedians’ comments on black relationships. Impact of the routines.
Troubleshooting: Really, I think I just need to narrow this into a solid argument, because right now I have more of a concept than a thesis. I feel like this will develop as I begin to dig into the research… I also want to highlight the fact that the comments made in many comedic routines are caricatures of what is actually happening in society – and I’d like to explore how much we can trust these jokes about black relationships as a true reflection of reality, and how much is for entertainment?
(please excuse that this is not as fleshed-out as I might like… it’s all starting to come to me – a little late in the night!)
As I mentioned before, I’m interested in writing about “black marriage” or “black love,” and the prevalence (or lack thereof) of committed black couples. I realized I needed to refine this topic since tackling “black marriage” throughout all of US history is simply daunting. Additionally, I was nervous about finding sufficient primary material to work with. So finally I turned to an art medium that is often a frank (if at times exaggerated) reflection of love and marriage – comedy.
Specifics and (budding) argument: Using black comedians’ routines and personal lives, I want to explore how accurately their comedy reflected the state of black marriage at different points in 20th century America. Comedians whose work I’m considering analyzing are Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, Moms Mabley, Dick Gregory, Whoopie Goldberg, among others
Significance: As I mentioned before, many people worry that traditional black marriages and families have disintegrated as the 20th century has progressed – the point that 42% of black women never get married. While exploring this phenomenon through comedy might not offer an explanation as to why, it could offer a reflection of the climate around which these changes in black relationships were happening, and perhaps offer a better understanding of how entrenched these issues were in black society.
Primary literature: Comedic routines and audience reactions to them. Also, any diaries or letters discussing black relationships that may have influenced the comedians
Secondary literature: Critic’s responses to the comedians’ comments on black relationships. Impact of the routines.
Troubleshooting: Really, I think I just need to narrow this into a solid argument, because right now I have more of a concept than a thesis. I feel like this will develop as I begin to dig into the research… I also want to highlight the fact that the comments made in many comedic routines are caricatures of what is actually happening in society – and I’d like to explore how much we can trust these jokes about black relationships as a true reflection of reality, and how much is for entertainment?
Refined Research Topic
Research Topic: Chinese at Stanford between 1890 and 1910
Specifics: Key figures include the cooks, janitors, house servants and other immigrant populations who worked and occasionally attended Stanford, as well as their contemporaries who experienced contact with Chinese culture in their day-to-day lives by interactions with these immigrants.
Argument: I hope to write about the turn-of-the-century American experience of Chinese culture through Stanford-specific examples—how did people view the Chinese at the time, vice-versa, and how did they interact?
Significance: While my thesis pertains to Stanford's history, it's also a crucial time in the history of California in the aftermath of the Chinese influx and then exclusion during the late 1800s. Relatives of these first Chinese immigrants may still be alive, and in general I think this aspect of the University's early history has been forgotten.
Primary literature: Student letters, early faculty memoirs, pay-roll records, census records.
Secondary literature: Campus histories, Chinatown histories, Chinatown archives, Palo Alto and neighboring city archives.
Troubleshooting: Since this is a project I've already begun working on, I want to make sure that my work is fresh, as well as go back and look again at sources I've already found and find things I may have missed. I also need to be creative with new sources and research methods, I'm looking forward to finding more in Menlo Park and going to Chinatown in San Francisco.
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