In Culture, Genre, and Literary Vocation, Michael Davitt Bell charts the important and often overlooked connection between literary culture and authors' careers. Bell's influential essays on nineteenth-century American writers—originally written for such landmark projects as The Columbia Literary History of the United States and The Cambridge History of American Literature—are gathered here with a major new essay on Richard Wright. Throughout, Bell revisits issues of genre with an eye toward the unexpected details of authors' lives, and (...) invites us to reconsider the hidden functions that terms such as "romanticism" and "realism" served for authors and their critics. Whether tracing the demands of the market or the expectations of readers, Bell examines the intimate relationship between literary production and culture; each essay closely links the milieu in which American writers worked with the trajectory of their storied careers. (shrink)

“[Niebuhr] is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away [from his works] the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away... the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard.”—President Barack Obama Forged during the tumultuous but triumphant postwar years when America (...) came of age as a world power, The Irony of American History is more relevant now than ever before. Cited by politicians as diverse as Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Niebuhr’s masterpiece on the incongruity between personal ideals and political reality is both an indictment of American moral complacency and a warning against the arrogance of virtue. Impassioned, eloquent, and deeply perceptive, Niebuhr’s wisdom will cause readers to rethink their assumptions about right and wrong, war and peace. “The supreme American theologian of the twentieth century.”—Arthur Schlesinger Jr., New York Times “Niebuhr is important for the left today precisely because he warned about America’s tendency—including the left’s tendency—to do bad things in the name of idealism. His thought offers a much better understanding of where the Bush administration went wrong in Iraq.”—Kevin Mattson, The Good Society “Irony provides the master key to understanding the myths and delusions that underpin American statecraft.... The most important book ever written on US foreign policy.”—Andrew J. Bacevich, from the Introduction. (shrink)

American History X (hereafter AHX) has been accused by numerous critics of a morally dangerous cinematic seduction: using stylish cinematography, editing, and sound, the film manipulates the viewer through glamorizing an immoral and hate-filled neo-nazi protagonist. In addition, there’s the disturbing fact that the film seems to accomplish this manipulation through methods commonly grouped under the category of “fascist aesthetics.” More specifically, AHX promotes its neo-nazi hero through the use of several filmic techniques made famous by Nazi propagandist (...) Leni Riefenstahl. Now most critics admit that, in the end, the film claims to denounce racism and attempts to show us the conversion of the protagonist to the path of righteousness, but they complain that nonetheless the film (perhaps unintentionally) ends up implicitly promoting the immoral worldview it rather superficially professes to reject in its final act. This charge of hypocrisy is connected to another worry: the moral conversion in the film is said to fall flat because the intellectual resources on display to support the character’s racism are not counterbalanced by equally explicit (but superior) arguments for the anti-racist position ultimately embraced by the character. In other words, just as the devil is said to get all the good lines in Milton’s Paradise Lost, in AHX the racists get all the arguments. This has been taken to be a morally problematic flaw of the film. Critics lament that Derek’s conversion seems to result not from relevant logical inferences and valid rational argumentation but from overly simplistic and arguably egoistic insights (e.g., “has anything you've done made your life better?”) combined, perhaps, with a hackneyed cliché (in prison, one of his best friends is a black person!) In this paper I’ll attempt to rebut these charges and defend the film as a powerful, and powerfully moral, work of art. I’ll be suggesting that the seductive techniques employed allow for many viewers a degree of sympathy towards the protagonist that is crucial, both for making that character’s more horrific actions especially unsettling, and also for making his eventual conversion plausible and ultimately compelling. I’ll also argue that the manner in which his conversion is presented is in fact subtler than many critics have allowed: Derek’s transformation is not artificial or implausible but is depicted as resulting from a cumulative series of emotionally powerful life events and personal engagements. It is certainly true that it is not represented in the way some would seemingly have preferred, i.e. as straightforwardly resulting from a process of gradual intellectual improvement in Derek’s reasoning on questions of race and politics. However, I’ll argue that the decidedly emotional basis of his moral evolution is both refreshingly realistic and no hindrance to accepting his conversion as rational. Finally, properly understanding the legitimacy of the emotional foundations of much moral thought will also allow us to appreciate the ways in which our initial worries about this film’s (not insignificant) ability to persuade viewers through the engagement of emotions need not, in itself, be seen as a barrier to endorsing the film as a morally praiseworthy work. (shrink)

Purpose: A poetic work of fiction haunts the base of the Statue of Liberty. The act overshadowed the original tribute to the Civil War victory and the Emancipation Proclamation. Abraham Lincoln's praises of the Black American military fell silent. Eurocentrists shrouded centuries of genius and scaled-down Black American mastery. Sagas of barrier-breaking Olympians, military heroes, Wild West pioneers, and inventors ended as forgotten footnotes. Today, countries around the world fetishize Black American history and culture to the (...) point of ethnocide. The real-time case study of Woni Spotts explores the phenomenon. Until ancient traditions evolve with authenticity, global cultures will wither and die. The presented research chronicles over half a millennium of archives. Lists with names, dates, and genealogies seal the Black American legacy in stone. Methodology: The presented research for case studies draws from archival data, dated events, news articles, and an interview with Woni Spotts. The case studies generated three lists. Fifty sports and competitions were dated and cataloged. The athletes were analyzed by a genealogist. Forty music and dance genres were cataloged by publishing or recording dates. The artists were analyzed by a genealogist. Copyright infringements were noted. Inventors were researched for U.S. patents. NASA astronauts and inventors were analyzed by a genealogist. Findings: The presented research showed centuries of untold, reframed, stigmatized, and fetishized Black American history and culture. In the case studies, foreigners of African descent (Africans, Caribbeans, Central Americans, and South Americans) practiced ethnocidal behavior in concert with European descendants. Prolific abolitionists, patriots, politicians, and inventors were written out of history. Superstar athletes were obstructed or outshined by fictional Recommendations: Case studies showed centuries of fragmented narratives created biases and distortions. Black Americans were written out of history, reframed as background characters, stigmatized with skewed statistics, and fetishized globally to the point of ethnocide. The presented research stands as a vital resource for preservationists. Music and dance genre architects were solidified by publishing and recording dates. Athletic events, inventions, and NASA scientists were recorded. (shrink)

Historians around the world have sought to move beyond national history. In doing so, they often conflate ethical and methodological arguments against national history. This essay, first, draws a clear line between the ethical and the methodological arguments concerning national history. It then offers a rationale for the continued writing of national history in general, and American history in particular, in today’s global age.The essay makes two main points. First, it argues that nationalism, and (...) thus the national histories that sustain national identities, are vital to liberal democratic societies because they ensure the social bonds necessary to enable democratic citizens to sacrifice their immediate interests for the common good. The essay then argues that new methodological and historical work on the history of nations and nationalism has proven that nations are as real as any other historical group. Rejecting national history on critics’ terms would require rejecting the history of all groups. Instead, new methods of studying nations and nationalism have reinforced rather than undermined the legitimacy of national history within the discipline. (shrink)

Pragmatic Revolt in American History: Carl Becker and Charles Beard by Cushing Strout: ONE of the most striking characteristics of the modern mind, has been its preoccupation with history. In earlier times the historical sense was neither sophisticated nor pervasive, but now even science and religion, long-revered guardians of timeless truths, are approached historically. "To regard all things in their historical setting appears, indeed," as Carl Becker has said, "to be an instructive procedure of the modern mind. (...) We do it without thinking, because we can scarcely think at all without doing it." This relatively new intellectual awareness of the historical dimension of life has been paralleled by the modern tendency toward secularization, the acceptance of the concrete world of human history as the source of ultimate values and fulfillment. The modern mind has looked to history not only as a mode of understanding but also as a final destiny. It has been primarily concerned with the secular problems posed by the workings of the historical process, and it has had the confidence to believe that those problems could be solved in and through the very process which generated them. LIBERALISM, among modern historical forces, has characteristically expressed this secular commitment to control of the historical process, though, paradoxically, its confidence has been based less on the development of historical thought than on the new powers, which natural science and technology have produced. Because man has learned to control nature, liberals have believed that men could achieve progress in history. (shrink)

From the early days of European settlement in North America, Christianity has had a profound impact on American law and culture. This volume profiles nineteen of America's most influential Christian jurists from the early colonial era to the present day. Anyone interested in American legal history and jurisprudence, the role Christianity has played throughout the nation's history, and the relationship between faith and law will enjoy this worthy and unique study. The jurists covered in this collection (...) were pious men and women, but that does not mean they agreed on how faith should inform law. From Roger Williams and John Cotton to Antonin Scalia and Mary Ann Glendon, America's great Christian jurists have brought their faith to bear on the practice of law in different ways and to different effects. (shrink)

Historian Richard Hofstadter’s observations about American cold-war politics are used to contextualize Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and argue that substantive claims about the nature of scientific knowledge and scientific change found in Structure were adopted from this cold-war political culture.

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of American history among adolescent Mexican Americans at the eight-grade level in a mid-west town's middle school. This qualitative study shows that multiple contexts influenced the process of teaching and learning history between and among a white teacher and adolescent Mexican Americans at Atkinson Middle School. Those overlapping contexts (the context of the education of minority language students, the context of social studies education, and the school's culture) (...) created a unique totality responsible for shaping the experiences of learning American history by Mexican-American students. These experiences were detrimental for the appreciation by Mexican-American students of American history's potential meanings and significance. (shrink)

Van Zandt finds that the theoretical structures upon which the study of American history have been based are no longer adequate to explain America's role in our complex and organically unified Western society. This theoretical structure has been rarely consciously held or critically examined because it asserts itself as a fact rather than as a theory and maintains that the facts may be ascertained irrespective of any theoretical construction. This anti-theoretical attitude was inherent in the idea of the (...) American Revolution, which sought to restore the "natural" order of society--a multiplicity of independent societies--freed from the political and theoretical encrustations of the centuries. A large part of the book is devoted to Jefferson's role in crystalizing this "anti-theoretical" theoretical structure which remains dominant even today. A fresh venture written in a style not quite fully articulate or sufficiently concise.--L. S. F. (shrink)

A groundbreaking new look at the story of America At the heart of the nation's spiritual history are audacious and often violent scenes. But the Puritans and the shining city on the hill give us just one way to understand the United States. Rather than recite American history from a Christian vantage point, Peter Manseau proves that what really happened is worth a close, fresh look. Thomas Jefferson himself collected books on all religions and required that the (...) brand new Library of Congress take his books, since Americans needed to consider the "twenty gods or no god" he famously noted were revered by his neighbors. Looking at the Americans who believed in these gods, Manseau fills in America's story of itself, from the persecuted "witches" at Salem and who they really were, to the persecuted Buddhists in WWII California, from spirituality and cults in the '60s to the recent presidential election where both candidates were for the first time non-traditional Christians. One Nation, Under Gods shows how much more there is to the history we tell ourselves, right back to the country's earliest days. Dazzling in its scope and sweep, it is an American history unlike any you've read. (shrink)

Pragmatism, Feminism, and Democracy is James Livingston's virtuoso reflection on the period between 1890 and 1930, a primal scene of American history during which a wave of intellectual currents came together--and fell apart--to reorient society. Tying in critical insights on corporate capitalism, consumer culture, populism, and the American Left, Livingston analyzes the intersections and similarities of pragmatism and feminism to yield an original, provocative blend of historiography, feminist theory, and American intellectual history.

This book presents Latin American Perspectives on women philosophers, comprising selected articles from the First International Conference of Women in Modern Philosophy that took place in Rio de Janeiro City, Brazil, Latin America, in June of 2019. The conference brought together over twenty national, transnational, and international philosophers from seven countries, whose work combines historical and analytical insight to recover the philosophical legacy of women philosophers. Historical and analytical work on women’s philosophical thought constitute efforts to re-conceptualize what counts (...) as philosophical knowledge and re-appraise the epistemic relevance of written material that women thinkers produced for most of history. This collection and the conference that gave origin to it are testimony to the enduring power of multinational and multicultural philosophical collaboration. (shrink)

Anglo-American theories of criminal responsibility require scholars to grapple with, inter alia, the relationship between the formal rule of law and the powers of the lay jury as well as two inherent ideas of freedom: freedom of the will and political liberty. Here, by way of canvassing my past work and prefiguring future work, I sketch some elements of the history of the Anglo-American jury and offer some glimpses of commentary on the interplay between the jury—particularly its (...) application of conventional morality to criminal judgments—and the formal rule of law of the state. My central intent is to pose questions for further study regarding the historical behavior of the jury, the jury’s role in reinforcing notions of political liberty and free will, and, primarily, how scholarly conceptions of the jury’s role and behavior have informed elite theory regarding the justifications for imposing criminal responsibility. (shrink)

This essay addresses the first century of English colonization of the North American mainland. Rather than narrate a familiar story of events--migration, settlement, the creation of viable Anglophone cultures amid hardship and danger--it pursues a less familiar track by examining the terms upon which English adventurers and their contemporaries understood the world they inhabited, the process of transatlantic expansion upon which they were engaged, and, in particular, the justifications they espoused for their appropriations of space from its existing inhabitants. (...) My examination concentrates in particular on the conjoined discourses, literary and legal, in which the meanings of those terms are most clearly displayed. Through analysis of Shakespeare's early play Titus Andronicus, I demonstrate the salience of Tudor political economy--principally of sovereign power and invasion, of land and inhabitation, and of the city and barbarism--to the discourse of early-modern English colonizing. I show how the same complex of ideas animated the founding legal texts of English "settlement," revealed in the jurisdictional structures created and spaces occupied by the projectors of colonies. Finally, through reference to another foundational text, not of colonizing but of modern American legal history, I show the cardinal importance to contemporary America's historical self-construction of a refusal to acknowledge America's historical origins in a political economy of "colonization" and its violence, and its preference for a narrative of "energy" and "freedom" and their occlusion of violence. (shrink)

In challenging Marxist theorists to confront the radical rebirth at the core of the fascist revolution, Roger Griffin has carried fascist studies to a new and valuable plateau. Likewise, David D. Roberts’s elaboration of Griffin’s model offers a provocative and fruitful avenue to rethink fascist political culture. This article seeks to advance the dialogue to the next level by considering what an international approach can add to these primarily nationalist interpretations of generic fascism. Drawing on examples from the history (...) of the United States, I argue that fascism is a fundamentally cosmopolitan process and that it needs to be placed on a broader continuum with the histories of slavery, racism and nationalism. (shrink)

At the beginning of the 1950s, Reinhold Niebuhr used the Christian concept of ‘irony’ to explain the difficult condition of the United States in the international system. In The Irony of American History the protestant theologian analyzed the ambiguity of American foreign policy during the first years of the Cold War. According to Niebuhr, the United States was involved in an ironic confutation of its sense of virtue, strength, security and wisdom. This confutation was due not only (...) to its lack of (Christian) realism but also to its false claim to dominate history. After the Fall of the Berlin Wall, when America became the most powerful nation of the international system, the irony of its history did not disappear. Even in a totally different situation for structure and distribution of power, compared to the one of sixty years ago, the ambiguous situation the United States is dealing with, can be spelt out trough irony again. This article discusses the lasting validity of the concept of ‘irony’ used to explain American present and, perhaps, future. (shrink)

In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. — Ecclesiastes.

In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.—Ecclesiastes.

ABSTRACT Socioeconomic disparities between whites and blacks are pervasive in American society. Structuring of the discussion of these disproportions is the liberal race relations paradigm. According to Racial Liberalism, racial inequalities are an impermanent feature of American society because they are due primarily to race prejudice and discriminatory practices, which are continuously diminishing among whites. Challenging this view is Racial Realism. Racial Realism attributes the persistence of racial inequality to institutional privileges whites retain and refuse to relinquish whether (...) or not they are conscious of them. I argue that Racial Realism, with some qualification, is the better explanation for the persistence of racial inequality. Racial inequalities will persist, because American society and its entrenched institutions continue to affirm, white supremacy. (shrink)

Contests the validity of Marxist and poststructuralist theory in a review of the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln.