August 7, 2015: Virginia Connections: Writing Deafness

[If it’s August, it must be time for my annual pilgrimage to my Virginia homeland with my boys—and my annual series AmericanStudying the Old Dominion. Leading up to a special weekend post on the people who really signify “Virginia” to me!]

On the seminal scholarly book that helped usher in one discipline, and broadened many others.

During my last visit to Virginia, I finally had the chance to read a book I’ve been meaning to look at for a good while: Christopher Krentz’s Writing Deafness: The Hearing Line in 19^th-Century American Literature (UNC, 2007). In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that Krentz worked on his dissertation with my Dad, Stephen Railton, and has since been hired as a colleague of my Dad’s in the University of Virginia English Department; he also helped create the university’s American Sign Language (ASL) program. But while those facts reflect the development of Krentz’s ideas and project, as well as their clear significance to broader academic communities like UVa, they don’t have anything to do with how impressed I am by his book—that’s entirely due to what it offers to AmericanStudies conversations, both evolving and longstanding.

Most obviously, Krentz’s book represents a pioneering entry in the evolving academic discipline of Deaf Studies (sometimes but not always defined as a sub-category of Disability Studies). Indeed, when taken in tandem with Krentz’s edited anthology A Mighty Change: An Anthology of Deaf American Writing 1816-1864 (Gallaudet, 2000), Krentz’s work in Writing Deafness offers a foundational template for an American Deaf Studies, a discipline that analyzes representations and realities of deafness, hearing, and related issues across the scope of American literature, culture, and society. That is, this discipline, as exemplified by Krentz’s complementary and interconnected projects, is not the slightest bit contained to deaf authors or characters (or the like)—instead, it touches on themes and histories, identities and stories, that span a wide range of texts, communities, and time periods. As Krentz himself makes clear, other scholars have also contributed significantly to the creation of that new discipline—but his book and his work are vital parts of those efforts to be sure.

As with all of the best scholarly work, however, Krentz’s book also offers valuable insights into conversations and disciplines well beyond its specific focus. The “hearing line” of Krentz’s subtitle is a purposeful echo of W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of the “color line” in American culture and society, and Krentz likewise positions his book as a parallel to Toni Morrison’s groundbreaking Playing in the Dark (arguing that deafness and hearing have functioned not at all unlike black and white in the American imagination and psyche). It’s a hugely bold comparison, and Krentz acknowledges the many differences and complexities within and across the concepts in play—but it also works very well, not only to develop Krentz’s readings of deafness and hearing in culture and literature but also to help us think about the presence and role of such dualities more broadly in our conversations and histories. As is so often the case with great scholarship, that is, Krentz’s book enters into and participates in many other disciplinary conversations, not because it does not sufficiently develop its own focus but rather precisely because that new, well-researched and -grounded, and compelling focus has a great deal to offer many other perspectives as well. I can’t recommend the book highly enough, and I look forward to seeing what’s next for Krentz’s work and career.

Special post this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think?

August 6, 2015: Virginia Connections: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum

[If it’s August, it must be time for my annual pilgrimage to my Virginia homeland with my boys—and my annual series AmericanStudying the Old Dominion. Leading up to a special weekend post on the people who really signify “Virginia” to me!]

Three telling exhibits and pieces from Williamsburg’s amazing folk art museum.

1)      An exhibition of quilts: Through December 6^th, the museum’s McCarl Gallery will feature “A Celebration of Quilts,” an exhibition featuring 12 noteworthy American quilts from the 18^th through the 20^th centuries. The exhibit includes pieces by African American, Hawaiian, and Amish quiltmakers (among other artisans), and likewise runs the gamut of techniques and styles. Serving as both utilitarian household item and artistic products, as both material and artistic culture, quilts are a perfect example of the complexity and value of folk art (compared to the more obvious “fine arts”).

2)      Pueblo jewelry: Through September 5^th, 2016, the museum’s Peebles Gallery will feature “Thunderbirds: Jewelry of the Santo Domingo Pueblo,” an exhibition that highlights a particular, Depression-era jewelry style from a New Mexico pueblo with a longstanding artistic tradition. Mass-produced (compared to the pueblo’s norms, at least) in response to the Depression’s economic exigencies, and using any and all available materials for the same reason, these jewelry pieces are thus both distinct from the pueblo’s traditions and yet represent a stage and evolution of those histories—and are vital American folk art in any case.

3)      Baby in Red Chair: And then there’s that baby, one of the perennial representations of the museum’s collections and spirit. Currently exhibited as part of an American folk portraits collection in the Clark Foundation Gallery, the baby embodies the practice and appeal of folk art—simple yet eloquent, anonymous yet enduring, everyday yet reflecting our reality in the way that only the arts can. There’s a reason why the baby has been one of the museum’s most popular pieces, and it’s the same reason why the museum has been so successful—because folk art is a vibrant and vital part of our national community and identity.

Last Virginia connection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?

August 5, 2015: Virginia Connections: Confederate Memorials

[If it’s August, it must be time for my annual pilgrimage to my Virginia homeland with my boys—and my annual series AmericanStudying the Old Dominion. Leading up to a special weekend post on the people who really signify “Virginia” to me!]

On two obvious Confederate commemorations in Charlottesville, and one less obvious and more telling one.

On the other side of the University of Virginia Cemetery from the African American burial site about which I wrote yesterday is an even more complicated historic site: a Confederate Monument and Cemetery. Dedicated in 1893 by the Ladies’ Confederate Memorial Association (a predecessor of the Daughters of the Confederacy), and featuring a statue that pays tribute to nearly 2000 Confederate soldiers who lost their lives while at Charlottesville’s hospital, the Confederate cemetery is considered part of the larger university cemetery and is thus maintained by staff and money from the university. That’s a complex and in some ways unsettling reality, for a 21^st century public university to support the upkeep of a Confederate memorial—but in truth the university, like the city and the rest of the South, was entirely intertwined with the Confederacy during the war, and the cemetery reflects and asks us to engage with those interconnections.

It’s far from the only Charlottesville space that does so, of course. Surrounding the city’s historic Downtown Mall are three prominent Confederate commemorations: two parks dedicated to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson respectively (with accompanying statues of each general on horseback), and an overarching memorial to the Confederacy located in front of the city’s historic courthouse. These sites are no different from the parks, statues, and memorials in numerous other Southern cities and towns, of course, and the point lies precisely in their commonality: to grow up in a Southern city in the late 20^th century, as I did in Charlottesville, was to be surrounded by such commemorations of the Confederacy, to see this attitude toward the pasts of slavery and Civil War as a matter of accepted, shared routine. It’s only recently that we have seen prominent, public pushback on such memorials, which in Charlottesville has taken the form both of a City Councilor’s proposal to remove the statues and of a graffiti addition to the Lee statue in the aftermath of the Charleston shooting.

I don’t believe that Confederate statues and memorials should be removed or vandalized—I understand the impulses, and do believe that the signage on most could use some additions; but I’m with Kevin Levin and others who argue that it’s important for us to remember the histories, both of the Confederacy and of the efforts to commemorate it, and that memorials offer a particularly clear way to engage with both. Yet the truth, of the memorials and the city and the histories, is far deeper than statues and cemeteries, and in Charlottesville it can be linked to one Paul G. McIntire. McIntire, a Charlottesville native (born in 1860, no less) who made a fortune on the Stock Exchange and gave much of it back to his hometown, is known as one of the city’s most prominent and beloved citizens. But when we look further into McIntire’s goals, his emphasis on Confederate memorials (he donated both the Lee and Jackson statues) becomes clearer and uglier: in donating the land for the public green space still known as McIntire Park, McIntire stipulated that it would be “held and used in perpetuity … for a public park and play ground for the white people of the City of Charlottesville.” Which is to say, Confederate memorials are never simply about heritage or history—they are always caught up in histories of race and racism, the racist cause for which the Confederacy fought and that far too often embodied in its commemorations. That’s a truth as unavoidable in Charlottesville as it is everywhere.

Next Virginia connection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?