June 30, 2023: Germany and America: The Lives of Others

[On June 26^th, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in West Berlin. That was just one of many interesting moments that brought the two nations together, so for the speech’s 60^th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy it and other German-American histories!]

[Some SPOILERS in what follows, so if you haven’t seen The Lives of Others yet, go watch it first then come on back!]

On what’s unquestionably distinct about the stunning East German historical drama, and two ways it can still apply to AmericanStudying.

Despite the numerous and important Nazi and American connections I highlighted in yesterday’s post, I do still believe that there’s some validity to Godwin’s Law, the idea that eventually all internet debates feature unnecessary and fraught comparisons to the Holocaust. That genocidal horror was its own thing, and we can and should discuss our own horrors without trying to force them into parallels with it. On a somewhat lesser but still horrific scale, the same should hold for the histories of Stasi surveillance and torture that are the heart of the truly amazing 21^st century German film The Lives of Others (2006). Both those histories and the film’s depictions of them (through mostly fictional but deeply realistic characters and plotlines) are specific, require their own understandings and analysis, and don’t deserve to be reduced to a comparative lens for American histories or issues (nor vice versa). The fact that the film’s lead actor (Ulrich Mühe) had extensive personal experience with those East German histories (and was tragically affected by them, as that hyperlinked obituary makes clear) only amplifies the importance of engaging with them on their own terms.

These things are never either-or, however, and we can do that specific engagement yet still think about what a great work of art can help us see and analyze in our own society, histories, issues, identities, and more. In the case of The Lives of Others, one very obvious and very important such American lesson has to do with how easily and destructively we can let the worst of us become our most powerful figures. Toward the end of the film, one of its heroes, the playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), says to its most buffoonish yet most evil villain, Culture Minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme), “To think that people like you once ruled a country.” It’s difficult to remember back to those halcyon days of 2006 (or whatever year it was when I first got to see this film), but I imagine I thought that the U.S. was fortunate not to have been ruled by cartoonishly (yet all too realistically) evil buffoons like Hempf. And then we went and elected president a man who makes Hempf look like Abraham Lincoln by comparison. The truth is, there’s some part of us—and I mean both a portion of our populace but also a layer to our collective consciousness—that seems to want leaders who represent the very worst of our identities, impulses, ids. We unfortunately don’t need films to show us what happens when we make such figures our leaders, but it doesn’t hurt to have further painful reminders.

That’s one of many depressing layers to this important film. But (without getting into specific spoilers) The Lives of Others is ultimately one of the most moving and inspiring stories I’ve ever encountered, in any medium. A great deal of that is due to its portrayal of what happens when people are able to truly empathize and connect with one another, despite the mechanisms and systems of oppression and prejudice and division and hate that can too often get in the way. But it’s also due to a historical reality that the film’s conclusion features, and about which I wrote in this post: that not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the East German regime, Berlin opened the amazing Stasi Museum, “a place” (as I wrote in that post) “where Germans and visitors alike can engage with and seek to understand one of the darkest eras in that nation’s history.” Since 2006 America has finally, finally begun to construct such places ourselves, with the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice a particularly stunning example. But we’ve got so far to go to truly remember our hardest histories, and seem these days to be regressing instead—so we can still learn a lot from The Lives of Others and the German histories, hardest and most inspiring, it depicts.

June Recap this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? German-American contexts you’d highlight?

June 29, 2023: Germany and America: The German American Bund

[On June 26^th, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in West Berlin. That was just one of many interesting moments that brought the two nations together, so for the speech’s 60^th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy it and other German-American histories!]

On three distinct but complementary ways to contextualize an American Nazi organization.

1)      That Rally: I said a great deal of what I’d want to say about the justifiably infamous February 1939 Madison Square Garden rally in this Saturday Evening Post column (that first, hyperlinked short documentary is well worth your time if you want to learn more about this historic and horrific night). “If George Washington were alive today, he would be friends with Adolf Hitler,” said German American Bund secretary James Wheeler Hill in his introductory remarks. We can find plenty of despicable statements about American ideals across the course of our history, but Hill’s has to be very high on that list.

2)      The Great War’s Legacies: There is quite literally no excuse for such statements or attitudes, and I am certainly not going to make any in this space. But individual historical moments don’t happen in a vacuum, and just as the rise of Nazi Germany has to be contextualized with what occurred in that country during and after the Great War, it’s likewise important to recognize that the U.S. featured a great deal of anti-German prejudice and xenophobia during and after that war. Which makes it entirely understandable that in subsequent years German Americans would seek community and solidarity in civic and cultural organizations—it’s just pretty unfortunate that as of the 1930s the largest and most influential such organization was one started by both American and German Nazis.

3)      White Supremacy: In recent years, there’s been a lot of overdue and important attention paid to the way in which Adolf Hitler and the German Nazi Party learned about turning prejudice into policy from Jim Crow and other American systems. At the same time, it’s important to think about a distinct but related trajectory: how communities of white immigrants have, too often, contributed to American white supremacist ideas and ideologies. A main story in my current book project features an Irish American immigrant who became the national face of the anti-Chinese movement, for example. And I think we can see the same process at work with the German American Bund, as exemplified by one more quote from the 1939 rally: in his closing remarks, Bund leader Fritz Julius Kuhn told the audience that “the Bund is open to you, provided you are sincere, of good character, of white gentile stock, and an American citizen imbued with patriotic zeal.”

Last German-American history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? German-American contexts you’d highlight?

June 28, 2023: Germany and America: 19th Century Figures

[On June 26^th, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in West Berlin. That was just one of many interesting moments that brought the two nations together, so for the speech’s 60^th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy it and other German-American histories!]

What four German Americans collectively tell us about the arc of the 19^th century.

1)      John Jacob Astor (1763-1848): Born Johann Jakob Astor, a butcher’s son in the small German town of Walldorf, John Jacob Astor died 85 years later in New York City as America’s first multi-millionaire. Because that fortune he established became a legacy that extended to many subsequent generations (each of them featuring someone named John Jacob Astor as well, including one who died on the Titanic), it’s easy to see Astor’s arc as inevitable or at least a given. But much like the New York City to which Astor moved in the late 1780s (having first immigrating to Baltimore in 1783), Astor’s Revolutionary-era origins were quite humble and his development equally gradual. Moreover, he continued to link both his own status and his adopted city to his German heritage, serving for example in his final decades of life as president of the German Society of the City of New York.

2)      The Roeblings: Another German-born New Yorker, one also named Johann/John, would contribute even more to the city’s landscape (in every sense). Born Johann August Röbling in 1804 Prussia, John Augustus Roebling emigrated to the US with his brother Carl in 1831 and became one of the Early Republic’s leading engineers. He designed multiple bridges, canals, and other engineering projects over the next few decades, but it was the Brooklyn Bridge that would become both his final project (he died of tetanus after an 1869 construction accident) and his most enduring legacy. That was especially true because both his son Washington Roebling and his daughter-in-law Emily Warren Roebling, themselves both engineers as well, took over and completed the project after John’s death. Another and an even more collectively influential multi-generational German American family to be sure!

3)      Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945): The complex and talented turn of the 20^th century American realist and naturalist novelist was a second-generation German American, as his father John Paul Dreiser had immigrated to the US from Prussia. Although Dreiser spent a good bit of his life in New York and set a number of works there, he remained throughout his career more closely associated with Chicago, the city where he got his start as a journalist; that shift from New York to Chicago itself captures some of where American society and imaginations alike went in the last decades of the 19^th century. But I would also say Dreiser consistently captured two key questions facing second-generation immigrants in the late 19^th century as well as every other American in every time period before and since: what does it mean to achieve success, and what does it cost to do so? Each of these individuals and families offers a different set of answers, and together they begin to trace the arc of not just German Americans, but the nation itself in its first century and a half of existence.

Next German-American history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? German-American contexts you’d highlight?

June 27, 2023: Germany and America: Ben Franklin

[On June 26^th, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in West Berlin. That was just one of many interesting moments that brought the two nations together, so for the speech’s 60^th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy it and other German-American histories!]

[NB. This was one of my earliest blog posts, and I’ve decided to repeat it roughly as is, other than adding hyperlinks. Frankly, I wish more had changed between late 2010 and mid-2023.]

I’ve written elsewhere in this space about Emma Lazarus’ impressive sentiments on immigration, as expressed in her sonnet “The New Colossus”; as I wrote there, while she might seem superficially to be simply echoing national ideals about our welcoming nature and melting pot society, I would argue that her emphasis on accepting the “wretched refuse” of other nations puts her ideas in explicit contrast to many of our national anti-immigration narratives and arguments, such as those being articulated in her own era to bolster support for laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act. That is, many such anti-immigration voices have tried to portray themselves as generally in favor of immigration, but opposed in this particular case, when it comes to this particular group, because of the undesirable nature of those who are arriving. The most succinct example of this phenomenon was articulated, not surprisingly, by Lou Dobbs, who once claimed on his CNN show that he isn’t xenophobic, he just doesn’t like other nations dumping their trash on us.

Similarly, many anti-immigrant arguments depend on one version or another of the sentiment that it’s different this time, with this group—that prior generations and communities of immigrants have worked to assimilate, to learn English, to become part of our society, and so on, but that this particular group is not willing to do so, is instead seeking to change our nation to become more like them. Exemplifying such arguments is another text with which I have already grappled in this space, Pat Buchanan’s abhorrent post-Virginia Tech piece, where Buchanan writes of the thirty-six million Asian American immigrants who have arrived—invaded, is his word—since the 1965 Immigration Act that “almost all [came] from countries whose peoples have never fully assimilated in any Western country.” Since Pat is writing about my in-laws and my [now ex-]wife (and half of my boys to boot), it goes without saying that I have one or two problems with this assertion; but leaving aside any personal connections, perhaps the biggest problem with these “it’s different this time, with this group” arguments is that they’ve been made, erroneously, in opposition to various immigrant arrivals and groups for at least two hundred fifty years of American history.

Those making this argument might be deeply ignorant of our history, but they can take solace in the fact that one of the first Americans to make the same ignorant argument was also one of our smartest and most talented national icons. In the midst of his 1751 socio-historical study “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc,” Ben Franklin wondered why his state of Pennsylvania, “founded by the English, [should] become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion.” Anyone who wrote as voluminously as Franklin was bound to be wrong plenty of the time (and I’m not trying to use an individual such instance to downplay his amazing life and successes, nor his generally forward-thinking and tolerant nature), but what’s striking about this moment in retrospect is less the inaccuracy of his prediction and more the silliness of it, and of how much even a visionary like Franklin can become the worst angel of his nature through the influence of xenophobic fears (or maybe just a dislike of bratwurst).

Call me an idealist, but it seems to me that if those making arguments like these about Asian or Hispanic American immigrants could see Franklin’s text and recognize that silliness, it might make them second-guess a bit their own certainty about this time and this particular group and how in their case we had better be afraid of what kind of America they might produce.  At the very least, Franklin’s case can remind us that we have always been this kind of America, a mixed and multi-national and multi-lingual one, driven by the worst kinds of fears yet also, as Lazarus reminds us, the best kinds of hopes. Next German-American history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? German-American contexts you’d highlight?

June 26, 2023: Germany and America: Kennedy in Berlin

[On June 26^th, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in West Berlin. That was just one of many interesting moments that brought the two nations together, so for the speech’s 60^th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy it and other German-American histories!]

On three striking and significant choices in Kennedy’s speech.

1)      I am a Berliner: First things first: that famous line, with which Kennedy both begins and ends his speech, was not translated nor understood, not in the moment and not for many years thereafter, as having anything to do with jelly donuts (the creation of that urban legend, discussed in that hyperlinked article, is an interesting subject in its own right to be sure). It was also not particularly surprising—Kennedy’s entire visit, after all, was about showing solidarity for the West German people, and there was no better way to do that than with such identification. But Kennedy isn’t just expressing his own perspective—he calls it “the proudest boast … in the world of freedom,” a bold and important act of collective identification.

2)      A city and people divided: Kennedy’s speech isn’t just about the rest of the world, of course—it’s at least as much about the specific situation in which the people of West Berlin and West Germany found themselves. Importantly, Kennedy describes those communities as half of a divided whole, rather than separate from East Berlin and East Germany—arguing, as West Berlin’s Mayor Willy Brandt had also done, that this division was “not only an offense against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.” Of course the East German government wanted to define the city and nation as a unified whole as well—but Kennedy’s choice resisted that definition and offered a free alternative.

3)      A collective future: In his moving final paragraphs, Kennedy imagines another, far broader form of unity, one addresses directly to his East German audience: “You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you, as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.” Not sure there’s a more well-constructed and powerful moment in the history of American presidential speeches, nor that I need to say any more about it than that!

Next German-American history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? German-American contexts you’d highlight?

June 24-25, 2023: Crowd-sourced Beach Reads

[The arrival of summer means a lot of good things, but high on the list for this AmericanStudier is the chance to read for pleasure, preferably on a beach blanket with a view of the crashing surf. For this year’s annual Beach Reads series, I’ve highlighted recent or forthcoming books by colleagues and friends. Leading up to this crowd-sourced post featuring the suggestions of fellow BeachReaders—add yours in comments, please!]

Tuesday’s subject Katy Covino writes, “The Thursday Murder Club mystery series are an absolute delight. I’ve read and reread them too many times. Each is a good cozy-ish mystery, but also offers so much in terms of tight, intricate plots and authentic, relatable characters and relationships. They are irresistible.”

Wednesday’s subject, my friend Ian Williams, recommends Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto, as a great Beach Read.

Olivia Lucier writes, “Finally finishing up the Chronicles of Narnia series. Most of us have read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe but the others in the series are must reads too!”

Tim McCaffrey shares, “The Martian by Andy Weir is a fun read.”

LaTonya Sadler Hamilton goes with Book Lovers by Emily Henry, and Paige Wallace agrees, “I was going to suggest that too! It’s my favorite of hers.”

Veronica Hendrick says, “Don’t know if it is a Beach Read because it is quite long, but am loving Pachinko.” [BEN: Oh no, having to spend more time on the beach to read it? Curses!] Nicole Bjorklund agrees, writing, “I just started this one and I’m loving it, too!”

Nicole Bjorklund adds “The Measure by Nikki Erlick was really great. It made me wish I was in a book club because it would make a phenomenal book club book! Happy Place by Emily Henry, I really feel like all of her books are great traditional beach-reads while still having a decent amount of depth to them. And Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.”

Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello highlights Lessons in Chemistry, The Awakening, and The German Wife.

Natalie Chase writes that ”Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver is next up on my TBR. Can’t wait!”

Anne Holub nominates “the latest greatest essays from Samantha Irby, Quietly Hostile.”

Jessica Blouin shares “Mindsight by Dr. Daniel J. Siegel. It’s a fascinating read that ties the objective physiology of the brain to this subjective experience we call the mind. It’s really changed the way I think about my life—what’s happened in the past and in the present too.”

My favorite podcaster Kelly Therese Pollock writes, “I just finished I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai and couldn’t put it down.”

AnneMarie Donahue goes with Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered, When You Look like Us, and Hollywood Wives.

Shayne Simahk highlights The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl and How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix.

Guest Poster and Guest Post-curator par excellence Robin Field nominates “Sonora Jha’s campus novel The Laughter. So good!”

And longtime friend of the blog Jeff Renye likewise shares a pair of nominations: Louis Sachar’s excellent YA novel Holes and Adam Nevill’s The Ritual.

Finally, Shirley Wagner, one of the great leaders in Fitchburg State University history, emailed to share a list of Beach Read nominations: Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes, Joe Ide’s IQ, Laura Schenone’s The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken, Anne Hillerman’s The Way of the Bear, and Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Beach Reads you’d nominate?

PPS. Adding a suggestion from Friday's subject Lara Schwartz, Tim Cope's On the Trail of Genghis Khan! 

June 23, 2023: Beach Reads: Forthcoming (for Next Summer, Natch)

[The arrival of summer means a lot of good things, but high on the list for this AmericanStudier is the chance to read for pleasure, preferably on a beach blanket with a view of the crashing surf. For this year’s annual Beach Reads series, I’ll highlight recent or forthcoming books by colleagues and friends. Add your Beach Read ideas and nominations for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll always keep toes in the sand!]

Not every great book is gonna be out in time for this summer’s beach reading, but that just means we can start planning next year’s beach bag as well! Here are three, all like the rest of the week’s titles authored by colleagues and friends, that you’ll definitely want in there alongside the sunscreen and Goldfish crackers:

1)      Kate Jewell’s Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio (December 2023)

2)      Lara Schwartz’s Try to Love the Questions: From Debate to Dialogue in Classrooms and Life (TBD; I believe this is now the title, rather than the one listed there, but it’ll be the same great book either way)

3)      Jessica Maffetore’s debut novel Eleanora (also TBD, but looks like very soon and I’ll update this post and space when I know more!)

Crowd-sourced post this weekend,

Ben

PS. So one more time: what do you think? Beach Reads you’d nominate?

June 22, 2023: Beach Reads: Illmatic Consequences

[The arrival of summer means a lot of good things, but high on the list for this AmericanStudier is the chance to read for pleasure, preferably on a beach blanket with a view of the crashing surf. For this year’s annual Beach Reads series, I’ll highlight recent or forthcoming books by colleagues and friends. Add your Beach Read ideas and nominations for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll always keep toes in the sand!]

The first three authors I’ve highlighted in this week’s series are folks I got to know in person, as Fitchburg State colleagues (past and present) and friends. But one of the most amazing things about the 21^st century is how many colleagues and friends I’ve never met in person, but have connected with through the intertubes (Twitter especially). One of my most inspiring such connections is to Walter D. Greason, a Professor at Macalester College and a leading voice in History, African American Studies, African Studies, and many more disciplines and communities. And through that connection I’ve had a front-row seat to the creation and publication of the vital new anthology Illmatic Consequences: The Clapback to Opponents of ‘Critical Race Theory’ (2023), co-edited by Greason and Danian Darrell Jerry and with illustrations by Stacey Robinson. Want to be the most badass as well as the best-informed person on your beach of choice? Then make sure to pack Illmatic Consequences in your bag!

Last Beach Reads tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Beach Reads you’d nominate?

June 21, 2023: Beach Reads: Ian Williams’ Latest

[The arrival of summer means a lot of good things, but high on the list for this AmericanStudier is the chance to read for pleasure, preferably on a beach blanket with a view of the crashing surf. For this year’s annual Beach Reads series, I’ll highlight recent or forthcoming books by colleagues and friends. Add your Beach Read ideas and nominations for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll always keep toes in the sand!]

I wrote about my then-FSU colleague Ian Williams and his inspiring teaching in a state prison in one of my earliest posts, and have gone on to feature two different books of his (one poetry and one fiction, because as I mentioned in Monday’s post Ian is another creative writer who truly excels in both genres) in prior Beach Reads series. But as long as Ian continues to put out excellent new books in his still-blossoming (and already hugely successful) career, I’ll continue to share them here, and this time I’ve got two recent publications to nominate for your beach bag: his most recent poetry collection, 2021’s Word Problems; and another 2021 release (what can I say, the man is prolific), the essay collection Disorientation: Being Black in the World. I’m truly honored to call this man a former colleague and a lifelong friend, and to be able to read each and every piece of that evolving and deepening literary career—on the beach and everywhere else!

Next Beach Reads tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Beach Reads you’d nominate?

June 20, 2023: Beach Reads: Katharine Covino’s Books

[The arrival of summer means a lot of good things, but high on the list for this AmericanStudier is the chance to read for pleasure, preferably on a beach blanket with a view of the crashing surf. For this year’s annual Beach Reads series, I’ll highlight recent or forthcoming books by colleagues and friends. Add your Beach Read ideas and nominations for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll always keep toes in the sand!]

Look, young adults can’t boogie-board or suntan all summer long; they need great Beach Reads too. So do their parents, their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, all those who might be seeking to better understand and support the young adults in their lives. Fortunately, my awesome FSU colleague Katharine Covino has co-written (with Elizabeth Englander and an illustrator) a series of perfect such books: The Insanely Awesome Pandemic Playbook: A Humorous Mental Health Guide for Kids (2020); The Insanely Awesome POST Pandemic Playbook: A Humorous Mental Health Guide for Kids (2021); and their newest collaboration, You Got a Phone! (Now Read This Book) (2022). Those books are such great resources that they might make said young adult get off the beach blanket and head out on further adventures—but that just means they’ll return to regale the beach party with all the summertime fun details!

Next Beach Reads tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Beach Reads you’d nominate?

June 19, 2023: Beach Reads: New to Liberty

[The arrival of summer means a lot of good things, but high on the list for this AmericanStudier is the chance to read for pleasure, preferably on a beach blanket with a view of the crashing surf. For this year’s annual Beach Reads series, I’ll highlight recent or forthcoming books by colleagues and friends. Add your Beach Read ideas and nominations for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll always keep toes in the sand!]

It’s pretty rare to find a creative writer who is genuinely equally adept at both poetry and fiction—not just at writing them, that is, but at producing stunning works in both genres. Which makes it pretty cool that I’ve had the chance to work in the Fitchburg State University English Studies Department with two such multitalented writers: my past colleague Ian Williams, on whom more in a couple days; and my current colleague DeMisty D. Bellinger. DeMisty’s first two poetry collections, Rubbing Elbows (2017) and Peculiar Heritage (2021), were quite different from each other, and already reflected a writer and voice that could take readers on multilayered journeys across history, culture, identity, and more. But her most recent book, her debut novel New to Liberty (2022), represents another striking and significant step in this evolving and inspiring career. You won’t better a better book to bring in your book bag this summer, I promise!

Next Beach Reads tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Beach Reads you’d nominate?

June 17-18, 2023: Women in War: Tanya Roth’s Guest Post

[June 12^th marks the 75^th anniversary of the passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, an important step toward a more inclusive America on multiple levels. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied that Act and other histories of women in war, leading up to this Guest Post from one of the best scholars of those histories and issues!]

[NB. This is a repeat of Tanya’s wonderful Guest Post from September 2021.]

Excerpt from Her Cold War: Women in the U.S. Military, 1945-1980] by Tanya L. Roth

 

Chapter 2: The Real Miss America: Recruiting Womanpower 

 

Four years after the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act passed, someone in recruiting decided that the first all-out campaign for womanpower should take place with the 1952 Miss America pageant. It must have seemed like the perfect pairing: the pageant highlighted the best young American women from around the nation, perfectly poised, beautiful, talented, and educated. Recruiters dreamed of signing just these types of young ladies for service in the armed forces. Military publicity officers secured a presence for servicewomen throughout the pageant, ensuring visibility whenever possible. The goal was simple: get Americans to associate servicewomen with the excellent reputation Miss America contestants had at that time and to impart a sense of glamour into Americans’ ideas of women in uniform...

From the beginning...concerns about appearances framed woman power recruiting efforts. Recruiters followed the philosophy that familiarity and femininity would be the most practical and effective ways to entice women to military careers. Military service became advertised as an avenue by which women could become not just ideal American women, but respectable ladies. This approach helped make women’s service acceptable to Americans both inside and outside the armed forces. If military service— especially in wartime—could transform boys into men, then military service could also turn girls into proper ladies. Women belonged in national defense in part because military and government officials saw them as partners in service with men, doing things women did best and capitalizing on their identities as women to do so. In these regards, staging the women’s recruiting drive in conjunction with the 1952 Miss America pageant made sense. The pageant was about thirty years old, and community service was— and still is—an important element of holding the title “Miss America.”  During World War II, the crowned Miss Americas all performed war service activities such as visiting troops and selling war bonds, their version  of supporting national defense.⁵ Scholar Mary Anne Schofield argues that  during wartime, such efforts “supported the propaganda machine that said  that femininity and war work went together.” In the process, the pageant itself solidified the image of Miss America as “the ideal American woman.” By 1952, if military leaders wanted a venue that would showcase servicewomen as the very best of American womanhood and service, the Miss America pageant was the place to be.

[Beach Reads series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other stories or histories you’d highlight?]

June 16, 2023: Women in War: Miyoko Hikiji

[June 12^th marks the 75^th anniversary of the passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, an important step toward a more inclusive America on multiple levels. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that Act and other histories of women in war, leading up to a Guest Post from one of the best scholars of those histories and issues!]

On the book and author that can help bring our conversations about veterans into the 21^st century.

There’s no doubt that our narratives about veterans have evolved a lot in the last half-century (the post-Vietnam era, we could call it). Thanks to a number of topics about which I’ve written in this space—controversial activist efforts like Vietnam Veterans Against the War, greater awareness of issues like PTSD, the stories and voices of prominent social and cultural figures like Tim O’Brien and Pat Tillman—the very concept of a veteran now includes many more elements and angles than, I would argue, at any prior point in our history. But on the other hand, it seems likely to me that there’s a certain identity that is still most strongly associated with the concept—the identity of a white male, to put it bluntly—and that quite simply doesn’t align with the realities of our veterans.

As the long history of African American veterans or William Apess’s War of 1812 service remind us, that stereotypical image of veterans has never been sufficient. On a more recent note, better remembering the service and tragic death of Danny Chen would help us broaden our naratives of 21^st century veterans (Chen’s death means he did not serve in a war, but his story demands inclusion in those narratives nevertheless). But alongside those important issues of race and ethnicity, shifting our images of contemporary veterans to include gender and sexuality will be equally meaningful, and especially salient in this 21^st century moment that includes a move toward women in combat roles, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and other such evolutions. And I don’t know of a better voice and book through which to better include and engage with those aspects of identity in our images of veterans than Miyoko Hikiji and her autobiographical and activist book All I Could Be: My Story as a Woman Warrior in Iraq (2013).

Hikiji’s story, as an Asian American young woman from Iowa whose army service took her to the heart of the Iraq War, represents 21^st century American life in a number of distinct but interconnected ways, and she tells that story—along with many stories of both her fellow soldiers and the Iraqis they encountered—with grit, humor, and power. But to my mind, even more telling and significant have been her activisms and advocacies on the home front—on a number of important issues, but especially her work to raise awareness of, and demand responses to, the widespread presence of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) among our armed forces and veterans. I’ve written a good deal in this space about histories and stories that unite veterans, and of course MST is the opposite, an issue and history that not only reveal conflicts within our military, but also have the potential to divide both our veterans’ communities and our national perspectives on them. But as I argued in my fourth book, ignoring such dark histories is neither possible nor effective—we must instead engage with them if we hope to move forward, and Hikiji’s voice and work can most definitely help us do just that.

Guest Post this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other stories or histories you’d highlight?

June 15, 2023: Women in War: World War II

[June 12^th marks the 75^th anniversary of the passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, an important step toward a more inclusive America on multiple levels. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that Act and other histories of women in war, leading up to a Guest Post from one of the best scholars of those histories and issues!]

On three groundbreaking organizations that together helped turn the tide of history.

1)      The Women’s Army Corps (WAC): Without question the more than 150,000 women who served in the Women’s Army Corps (which began as the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in 1942 and then was converted to the WAC a year later) were the single most significant step toward the postwar Women’s Armed Services Integration Act. Many of these women were deployed to the European and Pacific theaters, serving in crucial roles in the war’s difficult final years. Moreover, this was a truly multicultural community, including the all-African American 6888^th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the more than 200 Puerto Rican women who served in the WAC, and the 50 Japanese and Chinese American women recruited as translators. The WAC thus served as a powerful and influential argument for the integration of the armed forces in terms of both gender and race.

2)      The Marine Corps Women’s Reserve (MCWR): The Army might have featured the war’s most prominent roles for women, but the other branches of the armed forces likewise created their own influential such communities. Created in 1943, the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve was defined by some of the most inspiring women in American history, such as Minnie Spotted-Wolf, a Blackfoot woman from Montana who became the first Native American woman in the Marines when she enlisted. Or Lucille McClarren, the stenographer whose March 1943 enlistment made her the organization’s first private. Or Ruth Cheney Streeter, the clothing designer and mother of four who in January 1943 was commissioned as major and made director of the MCWR for the duration of the war.

3)      The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs): Even the women who served in more fully civilian roles did so in courageous and groundbreaking ways, as reflected by the more than 1000 pilots who became the first women to fly American military aircraft. Organized into the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) and the Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD), these skilled pilots helped move vital aircraft throughout the United States; and in this still-early era of flight they did so at considerable risk, as 38 WASPs died in accidents in the course of the war. Like all the women who served in World War 2, these pilots didn’t just help change the culture of the American military; they contributed to ongoing changes in every layer of American society that would only accelerate in the postwar decades.

Last war women tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other stories or histories you’d highlight?

June 14, 2023: Women in War: The Civil War

[June 12^th marks the 75^th anniversary of the passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, an important step toward a more inclusive America on multiple levels. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that Act and other histories of women in war, leading up to a Guest Post from one of the best scholars of those histories and issues!]

First and foremost, I highly recommend archivist and historian DeAnne Blanton’s three-part article “Women Soldiers of the Civil War” from the National Archives’ Prologue Magazine. I’m not going to repeat everything that’s there, so will instead just highlight interesting AmericanStudies contexts for three of the women about whom Blanton writes:

1)      Frances Clayton: As this University of Virginia Special Collections blog post on Clayton (sometimes spelled Clalin) indicates, there are significant ambiguities and uncertainties surrounding her Civil War service. But even if Clayton did not serve in the military and/or see combat as she claimed repeatedly throughout her postwar life, the justifiably famous photograph of her in a U.S. Army uniform reflects an important element of every one of these figures and stories: their refusal to conform to gender norms, in ways that in the 21^st century might connect to identities like nonbinary or transgender. Women in war have always pushed the envelope on such conversations, and whatever the exact details of her experiences Clayton was no exception.

2)      Sarah Edmonds (Seelye): While some of the individual stories of Sarah Edmonds’ Civil War action are likewise ambiguous, there’s less overall doubt that she was part of the Union Army for many battles and campaigns, both in and out of disguise as a man. The difference depended in large part on whether she was fulfilling her official role as a nurse or her more unofficial but certainly still vital ones as spy, messenger, and the like. Those are of course quite distinct, and most Civil War nurses did not, as far as any of us know, moonlight as secret agents (although obviously Walt Whitman did). But Edmonds nonetheless reminds us that countless women served in the Civil War, and honestly that the line between combatant and non-combatant was never as clear-cut as gender norms might make it seem.

3)      Albert D.J. Cashier: Despite the uncertainties, both Clayton and Edmonds were relatively well-known in their own lifetimes; the same cannot really be said for Albert D.J. Cashier, since he did not entirely exist. Or perhaps the exact opposite is true, since Irish immigrant Jennie Irene Hodgers lived as Cashier and thus as a man for more than half a century, long after their Civil War service and up until their 1915 death. Since that second life seems to have begun with that Civil War service, it’s possible to see Cashier as profoundly representative of this complex community of Civil War women soldiers; since it was so extended and secretive, it’s possible to see Cashier as quite different from any of their peers. But however we see Cashier, they’re just one of these many compelling and important American stories and histories.

Next war women tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other stories or histories you’d highlight?

June 13, 2023: Women in War: Molly Pitcher

[June 12^th marks the 75^th anniversary of the passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, an important step toward a more inclusive America on multiple levels. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that Act and other histories of women in war, leading up to a Guest Post from one of the best scholars of those histories and issues!]

On the iconic war hero who might or might not have existed, and why she matters in any case.

I can think of few more AmericanStudies ways to analyze popular memory and prominence than through the eleven rest stops on the New Jersey turnpike—and by that measure, Molly Pitcher and Clara Barton are the two most famous women in New Jersey history and culture (if that last phrase isn’t an oxymoron—I kid, Jerseyites, I kid). Pitcher’s is also the only one of the eleven rest stop referents that wasn’t an actual name, and that might not even link to an individual figure—some historians believe that the name does refer to one woman, Mary Ludwig Hays, who followed her husband and the Continental Army to the Battle of Monmouth and found herself not only serving water to the soldiers but even taking over her wounded husband’s artillery job; but others have linked the name to a number of other Revolutionary-era women who performed one or another of those roles (camp followers, water carriers, and so on), including Margaret Corbin.

So Molly Pitcher is as much a folkloric as a historical figure, one not unlike Paul Bunyan, John Henry, or, perhaps more accurately, Johnny Appleseed. Because like Appleseed’s inspiration John Chapman (about whom see that hyperlinked, wonderful Guest Post by William Kerrigan), women like Hays and Corbin most definitely existed; the details of their lives and experiences are as partial and uncertain as most any 18^th century histories, even those of the Revolution’s most prominent leaders, but there’s plenty of information out there, such as at the various stories linked in my first paragraph’s closing sentences, and the Molly Pitcher legend provides an excellent starting point for researching and learning about these historical figures. Even absent such research, any collective memory of “Molly Pitcher” itself adds women to our narratives of these Revolutionary war battles and histories, producing a more full and accurate picture of those histories as a result.

I’d take that argument one step further, however. I’ve written on multiple occasions, including in this post on Judith Sargent Murray and this one on John and Abigail Adams, about the striking cultural, social, and political voices and roles of Revolutionary-era American women (including not only Murray and Adams but also Phillis Wheatley, Annis Boudinot Stockton, and others). Indeed, it’s fair to say that such women help us to see the era’s possibilities for gender and society as likewise revolutionary, and as foreshadowing and influencing the 19^th century women’s movement. That some of these women, including Adams and Stockton, achieved such success in relationship to their husbands’ lives and work—just as, that is, Hays and Corbin did in relationship to their husband’s wartime efforts—reflects some of the era’s limitations and obstacles; limitations and obstacles that all these women, like Molly Pitcher, pushed well beyond.

Next war women tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other stories or histories you’d highlight?