Reading Response for 8 OCT

Waldsteicher, Halttunen, Chauncey: Reading Response

This week’s readings approached the concept of identity in terms of appearance to the outside world. The biggest issue addressed by the articles was the conflict between true identity and projected identity, which have often been at odds with each other in the lives of Americans.

The Waldsteicher reading shows that runaway slaves recognized the fluidity of their own identities, and used that to their advantage in their escape. Even their masters understood the power of such a malleable identity, and wrote runaway slave advertisements that warned of the slave’s cunning ability to transform who they “really” were. Waldsteicher goes on to illustrate that a slave with light skin or a particularly valuable trade had an easier time in shaping a new identity – many slaves did so with great success. In some ways, these types of transformations are the predecessors to “passing” of the early 20th century.

In terms of the structure of his argument, I liked Waldsteicher’s claims that runaway advertisements are evidence of the “cultural hybridization” that runaway slaves often took advantage of. I was, however, disappointed by the author’s failure to draw more connections between slavery and print until late in the paper. So much of the body was dedicated to explaining the cultural aspect of his argument, that it wasn’t until the last few pages when he explains that slavery and print practically supported each other, and that printed advertisements are unique to American slavery. In general, I found this to be a very instructive piece.

The Halttunen article deals with the hypocrisy of Victorian identity. As he notes, Victorians hated hypocrisy more than any other attitude, ironically. I found this to be a difficult article to grapple with – the argument was clear enough, but the execution was long-winded and wandered aimlessly. I feel as if he writes in the form of a fable, or cautionary tale for the reader, setting up various hypothetical situations with “Confidence Men.” I find them less than engaging, and I hate to be critical, but I don’t want to write a paper much like this one!

Chauncey’s paper on gay New York was, to me, the most impressively put together. The introduction is set up clearly and without embellishment, so that the reader understands Chauncey’s argument immediately after turning the first page. By addressing the myths of isolation, invisibility and internalization so explicitly, the author takes a potential confusing topic and puts it in accessible terms for a new reader. Additionally, I was impressed by how he highlights the fact that the paper’s topic is taboo, but also that writing about such a topic is still taboo in the academic world.

The only problems I found with Chauncey’s paper were the following: 1. I wish he had cited more sources in-text. I often found myself wondering where he got certain facts or ideas. 2. I felt that his argument to discredit “invisibility” was at odds with his argument to discredit “isolation.” With “invisibility,” he argues that there was an extensive gay network where community and solidarity were of utmost importance, and they often leaned only on each other. He follows that with the “isolation” argument, where he says gays didn’t isolate themselves, as they frequently interacted with straight people.
I learned a lot from these articles – I especially liked the Waldsteicher and Chauncey selections!

Assignment II: Slightly refined research topic

After meeting with Julie today, I've been able to refine my topic as such:

1. Specifics:

The main 'character' or 'key figure' in my paper is going to be William F. Buckley, Jr. ('WFB' for the sake of time--I'm definitely not official enough to really get to refer to him by a nickname). WFT was the standard-bearer of the modern Conservative movement, founder of the National Review, mentor of Goldwater and Reagan (among many others), and yes, spy novelist. He died in early 2008.

I am inclined to look at Buckley's influence in California politics (thank you to Tom for suggesting 'Suburban Warriors'-- it was also recommended to me by Jonathan Herzog, who I'm guessing you had as a professor? If not, props to you for finding a really good book!). Despite this early inclination, I think I might at least start by looking at Buckely's influence on the East Coast--so more Connecticut than California. He wrote 'God and Man at Yale' when he was only 26, and I think it might be important to go back to his maturation as a political thinker than jump right into his influence (I think I'll understand his influence better if I can map where he was coming from a bit).

That said, I will need to narrow this story down a lot. So I might still look at his early days just enough to be able to write a paper about his later life/work, if that makes sense.

2. Argument:

I'm still working on this, but I think that I want to look at WFB's development of modern 'conservative values' : about religion, marriage, and race (for a time he supported segregation). I don't have a thesis yet because I think I need to start researching before I can decide just exactly where I am going to go with this.

3. Significance:

Why does this matter?

Obama is in office. What does this mean for American conservatives? How are they mounting a comeback? Is Sarah Palin really the answer? If so, how does that even remotely fit in to Buckley's ideals of conservatism-- if at all? Is the 'Republican base' conservative in the way that WFB helped mold it to be in earlier decades, or is it now light-years away? Coming changes and current re-vamping of the Republican party are closely connected to changes in the conservative movement (is it coming back? Did it ever really go away?)

4. Primary Literature and some Troubleshooting:

I plan to use the Buckley Papers at the Hoover Archive, but since this collection is no where near as extensive as Yale's (where most of his papers--more than seven tons--were donated upon his death), I think I am going to have to go some other routes as well. I plan to look into finding correspondences between WFB and politicians which might be held at Hoover, as well as into correspondences between him and Hoover fellows themselves. Looking at the Reagan Archives, which I believe I can find online, may be helpful as well. Looking at some of WFB's books (maybe not the spy novels though..!) will also be key, as well as examining recordings of his long-running television program, Firing Line.

5. Secondary Literature and some Troubleshooting:

There have been lots and lots of books written about Buckley, his life and ideas, so I feel like I will have a wealth of secondary sources. I can also look into scholarly/academic articles written about the conservative movement that cite Buckley and his ideas.

Troubleshooting: there is so much out there...narrowing down might prove difficult. I really need to start looking into some basic sources to get an idea of my thesis, so I don't get swamped in literature.

Thanks for reading! Hope everyone's week is going well,

Sylvie

Reading Response

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and Elsa Barkley Brown both tackle the meaning of race in the context of gender and class relationships. In both essays, African Americans are the specific focus of these relationships, and while some of what both authors write can be applied to other racial situations, much of it is quite specific. Higginbotham examines the way that language and attitudes have built up to reinforce stereotypes or the treatment of others: categorizations that sweep across demographics, racial, sex-based, or class-based, can all be dangerous; "perceived as "natural" and "appropriate," such racial categories are strategically necessary for the functioning of power" (Higginbotham). However, Higginbotham makes many assumptions about her subject and her reader, both. While she writes that "welfare immediately conjures up images of black female-headed families," I was puzzled; given the context in which I've grown up, which while probably not that of an average American might well be that of an average journal-reader, I had no such stereotype in my mind before reading it here. This made me pause to consider the source of multiple examples in Higginbotham's article, such as her conclusion that "race came to life primarily as the signifier of the master/slave relation." I think this statement needs to be better qualified in order for me to follow her argument. In another class today, discussion of the slave trade in early American colonies came up, and Dr. Winterer commented that the debate about race relations before or after the slave trade was volatile among scholars, which made me feel better about questioning what I felt were assumptions within the Higginbotham article. While I disagreed with some of them, I did agree with what I took away as the main point of the article, which was that "a monolithic 'black community,' 'black experience,' and 'voice of the Negro' was non-existent, just as a monolithic feminist or class-based voice does not exist. While I found the beginning of her article difficult to follow in terms of background sources, one she brought in case studies such as those made by Jacqueline Jones, who points out that  "larger society deemed it 'unnatural,' in fact an 'evil,' for black married women 'to play the lady,'", and later the example of Congressman Mitchell and his being removed from his train car, I was able to better understand, and agree with, her argument. I also found it very interesting to read about how physicians "reinforced the image of syphilis as a 'black problem,'" something that seems both horrible and terribly relevant to our modern society, which is still trying to break free of the assumptions of judgment and intolerance surrounding the rise of AIDS and its long-popular and just as prejudice-founded association with homosexual activity.

While Higginbotham warns against sweeping conclusions about a demographic, I think one of Brown's most important arguments is her warning against the normalization of history around the basis of the white male, or in her specific examples focusing on women, the white female. This tendency to look at white women as an example of the norm, the rest as a minority, Brown argues, "tends to forestall resolution of problems of gender, class, and sexual orientation internal to black communities." Being an archaeology student, I also appreciated her warning that historians must not isolate their examinations, tempting as it may be, but rather consider as much as we can of their contexts, the things to with which others are bound. Brown points out that "White women and women of color not only live different lives but white women live the lives they do in large part because women of color live the ones they do." I had never considered this paradox before; I myself had an African American housekeeper who would look after me for short periods of time, as well as a nanny who would take are of me while my mom worked (my nanny, as it happens, was elderly, white, and Scottish . . .). However, the basis of my mother being able to work so much even while at home was that our house was regularly cleaned by our African American housekeeper, and thus my mom's high paying job was in part maintained by the probably more menial work done by our housekeeper . . . all of a sudden, given something to relate to personally, I was much more inclined to buy Brown's article than I was Higginbotham's, but is that fair? I'm looking forward to discussion shortly.

The claim that Ma Rainey explored and illuminated so many aspects of African American women's experiences—"discrimination, racism, newfound personal and sexual freedoms, migration, self-pride and assertion, and sorrow,"—seems as if it would be a tall order. However, this paper does a good job supporting its thesis. Beginning with examples of more "normal" blues singers, who "perpetuated and played into Hine’s 'culture of dissemblance' by keeping silent about the struggles of black women," the author contrasts some fairly mundane lyrics with some particularly powerful ones from Ma Rainey. Ma Rainey's lyrics are, indeed, far more gritty and difficult than those used by the other early women blues singers in the examples given by the author. I'm unfamiliar with the content, with blues in general, so I must judge the unusual quality of Ma Rainey's lyrics based solely on the paper, but the author is convincing. Despite some examples of her difficult themes, such as alcoholism and adultery, the author successfully introduces Ma Rainey's talents as an empowered woman and the representation she garnered for black women in general through her appearance traveling with Paramount. While I found the content both new and convincing, my critique would focus on the writing style: for serious papers such as this, I would be inclined to use a shorter introduction on the focus of the paper, and a greater amount of background on Ma Rainey herself. This style could have been used due to the author and the expected reader's previous knowledge of a subject I don’t have a background in, but I think the paper would be more accessible, and less blocky at the beginning, were this change in style made. I also think that re-ordering some of the paragraphs would have strengthened the author's argument: while I found the content of the essay fascinating and well composed, I found myself wondering, until close to the end, why Ma Rainey had been considered important in her own time; if the paragraph that begins "Why so popular?" had been moved closer to the beginning, I wouldn't have been kept wondering. Overall, I enjoyed, and admire, the paper. 

Reading Response

Each of these articles lament the lack of differentiation within women’s and feminist studies; more specifically they talk about how racial differences are all but ignored in most studies. However, both authors come to different conclusions about the best way to address this problem, highlighting what they see as the most important aspects of racial and gender identity.

Higginbotham looks at race not as something that stands alone, but as something inexorably intertwined with other social constructs. Therefore, she finds it impossible to get a complete picture of racial identity without looking at its effect on “the construction and representation of other social and power relations, namely, gender, class, and sexuality.” (252) She asserts that current white feminist studies fail to recognize the subtle interactions of these forces, thus creating the deficiencies in current theory and scholarship. Her point is well made; lumping all women into one category tends to over-generalize their thoughts and experiences, losing the unique perspective that women from a different class/race might have to offer. Instead, Higginbotham highlights the profound effects race has historically had in defining not only gender relationships, but social and sexual ones as well. Her methodical analysis is further bolstered by her strategic use of credible sources like W.E.B. DuBois and E. Frances White.

Brown agrees with the principle that the different aspects of social history cannot stand alone. She identifies the problem not with feminist scholarship specifically, but with the tendencies of historians in general: “As historians we try isolate one conversation and to explore it, but the trick is to put that conversation in a context which makes evident its dialogue with so many others – how to make this one lyric stand alone and at the same time be in connection with all the other lyrics being sung. (298) I particularly liked this analogy likening social history to song lyrics: each piece stands alone, but can only be fully understood in the context of the whole song, the same way conversations about gender, class, etc. require each other to paint the entire historical picture. The problem with Brown’s essay, however, is that it is too informal and conversational. I understand that she is trying to engage a complicated topic in a simple way, but found that her paper lacks a clear structure. After bouncing between various metaphors and case studies, I only found myself recalling a few half-completed points about racial and gender segregation between white and black women.

Fong’s paper starts with a clear introduction, outlining its objective and putting a context around Ma Rainey, which I found very useful as a reader who had never heard of her and have very little knowledge about the history of jazz music in general. Her central question – what allowed Ma Rainey to break the racial and gender constraints of the “culture of dissemblance” – is both simple enough to be looked at thoroughly in a paper of this length, and also complex enough to provide an interesting analysis that will keep the reader interested. The problem with the paper is that this central question is never fully explored. Fong does give very elegant descriptions of Rainey and the world that she lived in, which make the paper less a theoretical discussion and more a case study that gives the reader a firsthand look at the period. There is nothing wrong with this, as long as the analysis is complete as well. There are a number of tantalizing hints towards the answer to the main question, especially the discussion of Rainey’s break from “breezy hopefulness” to create entirely new style of blues realism, singing about poverty and hardship and highlighting the struggle of black women at a time when such cries were normally silenced. However, Fong doesn’t fully tie together these different aspects of Rainey’s life and how they overcame the “culture of dissemblance.” A more flushed out analysis would turn this paper from a good one into a great one.

- Brendan

Comments on posts

Hello, all. This is Julie, the writing fellow for this class. You'll all meet me in person tomorrow in class, but I just want to respond briefly to your posts regarding possible paper topics.

First of all, I'd like to say that you're all off to a good start. Some of you clearly have more refined topics than others, but that's to be expected at this stage in the writing process. I would recommend that all of you start making some tentative steps in the next few days towards locating sources that might match your interests. We will go to the library in week 4 and do some more refined searching, but there's no harm in starting now. I'd start with the accessible: Socrates and the online databases available through the library website. Also try the California Digital Library. It has links to Melvyl, the UC system's online catalog and to the Online Archive of California. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the OAC, it allows you to search by name, topic etc. and see holdings in most of the major archives of California. Worldcat.org can also be useful, but the OAC will give you more local materials.

I'd also like to make a few very brief comments though we'll talk about this more in the next week, so don't worry about the fortune cookie nature of the comments bellow:

Chris--The idea of doing a project of Chinatowns in the South Bay, perhaps at Stanford, sounds good. As one of your colleagues has already mentioned, this might be fruitfully combined with the issues of culture and identity that you mentioned in your third possibility. I'd like to hear more about any work you've done in the University archives at Stanford and previous work you've done in this area.
Andrea--It seems like you're most interested in cultural representations of the black family. Perhaps this could be combined with your interest in the Gilded Age, which would perhaps lead to you examine images of the black family from that period. If you do want to keep your focus in the 20th century though, I'd start looking at the holdings of the African American Museum and Library at the Oakland Public Library. You should also remember that if you locate your topic too close to the present, it might be harder to find archival sources. Also, on a related note, I have an image of a bus ad that I snapped in D.C. that I think you'd love.
Brendan--I think that the idea of using diaries could be quite fruitful. I'd start looking around to see what sorts of materials exist in the area. If you could find a couple of different diaries in the same time period, you might be able to do something a bit different from what you've done in your previous work. Doing a paper on McNamara might be significantly harder because his papers are at Library of Congress and the LBJ library, but you could search around and see if there's a specific episode you might explore.
Jenni--Given that the first topic listed is the most specific, you might want to start looking for sources around it, keeping in mind that you might have to shift the time period closer to the present to get a critical mass of usable sources. Also, you should check out Kathy Peiss' article "Charity Girls and City Pleasures: Historical Notes on Working Class Sexuality, 1880-1920." It should be available on jstor.org.
Alice--Have you thought about perhaps looking in to strikes that occurred during the Civil War? Perhaps this is a good way to marry together your main interests. There's plenty to look at for the North. I'm not as clear on the history of Southern strikes, but you could start looking around to see if there are sources around here for either.
Matt--If you haven't already, you should read Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. I hate to recommend a shelf full of books, but you also might be interested in Nathan Hatch's The Democratization of American Christianity.
Tom--If you're interest is in the Great Depression and ethnic identities, you could probably fold this in to a project about San Francisco, say about a particular enclave, neighborhood, group. There are plenty of ways you could slice it, depending on your interests. Also, I'd recommend Thomas Sugrue's The Origins of Urban Crisis. It's about Detroit, but it might help you think about issues in your own work.
Sylvie--As I'm sure you're aware, Buckley's papers are at the Hoover, as are the papers of a number of other conservative leaders and thinkers. If you haven't done so already, you should search through and try to identify others that might give you a window in to their religious thinking at the Hoover.

Also, I'm pleased to see that some of you are responding to each others posts on the blog. Keep it up!

--Julie

Research Ideas

1. I'd like to look at the influence made by the Chinese servants in Palo Alto at the turn of the 20^th century. While Leland Stanford's servants were some of the first to come to the area, they later took up positions as cooks and janitors on the University campus starting in 1891; more servants accompanied incoming faculty, and still more arrived with the boom of Palo Alto and neighboring Mayfield. By 1900, there was a full-fledged Chinatown on El Camino, not far from where Stanford Avenue connects to it today. However, due to many Palo Alto residents objections against the Chinese, the "shanty town" was demolished not long after, and by 1910 even the number of employed servants in Palo Alto had dropped significantly. And few were left at all by 1920. I'd like to continue to research this more fully, and maybe concentrate on race relations rather than looking just at what the Chinese servants were doing and where they worked.
2. I'd also be interested in looking at the movement of Chinese servants and residents in San Francisco leading up to and immediately following the San Francisco earthquake. This subject came up peripherally to my research last year, but I was interested to find out more about the forging of immigration documents, or the claim that they were "destroyed in the fire" in 1906, and the creation of "Paper Sons" or "Paper Daughters"—illegal immigrants who were able to stay based on these false documents and the pity or confusion following the earthquake.
3. (You'll notice a theme among these topics . . .) I'm very interested at the artificial creation of China that took place in Chinatowns, particularly in San Francisco or San José (which was destroyed by fire and only recently excavated as an archaeological project through Stanford). My conception of China as a little kid was influenced heavily by what I saw in Chinatown, and its only relatively recently that I discovered many of my conceptions were based on hold-overs from the 19^th century, during which time China was under Manchu, rather than Han Chinese, rule. I'd like to look specifically at those hold-overs, whether through architecture, food, spoken language or origin among Chinatown residents, and the surrounding neighborhood's reaction or conceptions of them.

 

See you all in class tomorrow!

Research Paper possibilities...

I’m exploring a bunch of options for my research paper… and each one could be narrowed down too!

1. Recently, there has been a lot of attention around what has happened to the “black marriage” – an enduring marriage between two black individuals. Certain statistics show that 42% of black women will never get married, and those that do often end up divorced (as a living example, of the 3 sisters in my mom’s family and the 3 sisters in my father’s family, my mom is the only woman still married to a black man). Some critics blame the culture surrounding black women, or negative attention around black men, among other cultural issues. First, I’d hope to focus on historical traditions of the “black family” and “black marriage,” with sources such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Then I’d want to see how black marriage has changed throughout history, culminating with the Obama family effect. Finally, maybe I’d provide a glimpse of how some black writers and performers are reinventing hope in the black marriage (ex, the movie Diary of a Mad Black Woman) while others are encouraging black women to start considering the possibility of relationships with white men (ex, the movie Something New)… open to suggestions on this one

2. African-American entrepreneurs of the Gilded Age – still need to do some poking around on this one...

3. The Transcontinental Railroad – I’ve always been interested in this railroad’s effect on California’s growth in the mid-1800s. And Leland Stanford Sr was one of the “Big Four” barons that built the railroad!

Clearly it looks like I’ve spent more time thinking about the first one, but I definitely haven’t settled on it, so I’m open to feedback on all of them!