tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77039302024-03-13T10:14:13.554-04:00Mode for CalebAn academic historian on academic history, jazz, politics, culture, and sundries.Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.comBlogger318125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1156992223157101912006-08-30T20:41:00.000-04:002006-08-31T00:03:21.993-04:00Closing timeI've decided that it's time for Mode for Caleb to come to an end.<br /><br />That should come as little surprise to anyone who has stopped by in recent months. This summer my posts dropped precipitously, thanks mainly to the cross-country move. July had one post; June had four paltry ones. I had hoped that I could revive the blog in August, but other time commitments have made it hard even to read blogs, much less to maintain this one.<br /><br />I have very good reasons to think that this pace would not change anytime in the next several months. In the first place, since I'll be teaching full-time for the first time, I'm eager to focus on my new courses and my new students. And there's another even more exciting and important reason why the blog has been slowing to a halt. In just about eight weeks, my wife and I will become first-time parents. The incredible adventure that parenting promises to be has already begun. And I know the ride will only accelerate once the baby arrives, right around the time I'm grading final exams.<br /><br />Of course, it's not that blogging necessarily takes up a lot of time; I've always been an infrequent poster by the standards of most bloggers. But psychologically, with parenthood and the new job on the horizon, lately I've been feeling a need to find <i>something</i> to throw overboard, as it were. Blogging isn't easy to cut loose, even temporarily, but of all the things on my plate right now, it's the least difficult to set aside. And instead of turning the blog into a tedious series of silences, it seems to make more sense to stop blogging altogether--writing and reading--until a new kind of normalcy sets in.<br /><br />But I am not--absolutely not--renouncing blogging altogether. There have been times when I have been tempted to shut down the blog because of <a href="http://paulmusgrave.com/blog/?p=94">blog fatigue</a>. This is not one of those times. There have been other times when, like every junior scholar in the blogosphere, <a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2005/02/blogging-graduate-student.html">I have wondered</a> about how to weigh the professional risks and rewards of blogging. This is not one of those times. In fact, I agree with <a href="http://www.dancohen.org/blog/posts/professors_start_your_blogs">Dan Cohen</a> that it's a great time for academics to start blogging.<br /><br />So I'm certain that my moratorium on blogging will not be indefinite. At the same time, I can't predict right now when it will end. Besides, since the end of this year will find me in such a different place than I was when this blog started, I think it makes sense, whenever I do return, to start a new blog, at another address. Until then, take care and thanks for stopping by. I'm extremely grateful for the exchanges and friendships that Mode for Caleb has made possible for me, and I hope that even an extended sabbatical will not mean that they must come to an end.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1155667824078780782006-08-15T14:43:00.000-04:002006-08-15T14:55:21.393-04:00History Carnival XXXVIIMode for Caleb is pleased to present, for your edification and amusement, the 37th Edition of the World Famous <a href="http://historycarnival.blogsome.com">History Carnival</a>, which features the best recent posts from the history blogosphere.<br /><br />When <a href="http://museum-madness.blogspot.com/2006/08/franz-boas-and-museums.html">S. J. Redman</a> reflected on a prescient 1907 article by Franz Boas, Oneman responded at Savage Minds with some <a href="http://savageminds.org/2006/08/07/boas-and-the-popular-museum/">further</a> <a href="http://savageminds.org/2006/08/10/in-the-flesh-in-the-museum/">thoughts</a> on the history of museums at the turn of the century.<br /><br />Over at <a href="http://civilwarmemory.typepad.com/civil_war_memory/">Civil War Memory</a>, Kevin Levin has been churning out fascinating posts all summer; several of them were nominated, but the most mentioned was "<a href="http://civilwarmemory.typepad.com/civil_war_memory/2006/08/jesse_jackson_j.html">Jesse Jackson Jr.'s Civil War</a>."<br /><br />This month The Little Professor's <a href="http://littleprofessor.typepad.com/the_little_professor/2006/07/how_to_write_a_.html">Madlibs version</a> of a "First Person" essay was picked up by the <i>Chronicle of Higher Education</i>. Which leaves us to wonder, what <i>is</i> the answer to #8? My cat seems as recalcitrant as ever, so it can't be "B" ... The LP also has an interesting <a href="http://littleprofessor.typepad.com/the_little_professor/2006/08/the_reading_nat.html">review</a> of William St. Clair's <i>The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period</i>.<br /><br />At The Rhine River, Nathanael D. Robinson takes issue with Voltaire's famous quip about <a href="http://rhineriver.blogspot.com/2006/08/holy-and-roman-and-yes-empire.html">the Holy Roman Empire</a>.<br /><br />At Revise and Dissent, <a href="http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/29107.html">Alun Salt</a> reviews Hugh Bowden's <i>Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle</i>, and draws some interesting comparisons between the role of religion in Athenian politics and modern-day religious fundamentalism.<br /><br />George McClellan is universally scorned by Civil War historians, yet he was universally loved by his troops. <a href="http://greensleeves.typepad.com/berkshires/2006/08/little_mac_atta.html">Walking the Berkshires</a> suggests that historians should take the troops' opinions more seriously, if only to better understand McClellan's complex personality. (If this is your first time over at the excellent Walking the Berkshires, the author, Tim Abbott, recommends <a href="http://greensleeves.typepad.com/berkshires/2006/06/can_you_spot_th.html">this post</a> on an anachronistic plant at the Gettysburg battlefield site as one of his finest.)<br /><br />Tom Hanks is ... James Madison. The <a href="http://american-presidents.blogspot.com/2006/08/madison-code-i-think-we-need-another.html">American Presidents Blog</a> wonders if it might be coming soon to a theater near you. It's a movie that <a href="http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2006/07/31/james-madison-go-to-guy/">Ed Darrell</a> would probably be happy to see.<br /><br /><a href="http://saltosobrius.blogspot.com/2006/08/lucky-sparrfeldt.html">Martin Rundkvist</a> reports on an exhibit of two 17th-century warships in Stockholm, and adds a strange but true tale about a survivor from one of the ship's battles.<br /><br /><a href="http://itotd.com/articles/586/e-clampus-vitus/">Joe Kissell</a> details the quasi-historical silliness that is <i>E Clampus Vitus</i>.<br /><br />"<a href="http://wahdah.blogspot.com/2006/08/pyramid-in-bosnia.html">A Pyramid? In Bosnia?</a>" The title says it all.<br /><br />The History Carnival is technically meant to spotlight <i>either</i> posts on history, <i>or</i> posts by historians. Derek Catsam's "<a href="http://dcatblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/long-critique-of-silly-article.html">Long Critique of a Silly Article</a>" gets in primarily thanks to the second category. So does Mark Grimsley's impassioned post on the rights of civilians in wartime: "<a href="http://www.hnn.us/blogs/entries/29051.html">The Sacred Oath is Shattered</a>."<br /><br />Sergey Romanov presents more chapters from his ongoing series on <a href="http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2006/08/what-soviets-knew-about-auschwitz-and.html" >what the Soviets knew about Auschwitz--and when</a>--starting with Part IV.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.societaschristiana.com/?p=659">Tim Enloe</a> concludes a series of posts on Protestant historiography.<br /><br />Ever heard of Anthony Hall, "King" of England? I hadn't either, until <a href="http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/28672.html">Mark Brady</a> filled me in.<br /><br />Ned Lamont's primary victory over Joe Lieberman takes <a href="http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/29054.html">Jeffrey Kimball</a> back to 1968 ... <br /><br /><a href="http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/">Tim Burke</a>, who has been live-blogging his library-cataloging, pauses to ruminate on the importance of <a href="http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=247">reputation capital</a> in the hierarchy of academic norms.<br /><br />With a name like Drive By Truckers, it's got to be good. Or so says <a href="http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/28912.html">Scott McLemee</a>.<br /><br />Natalie Bennett takes the blogosphere on a <a href="http://philobiblon.co.uk/?p=1471">cycle tour of the historic architecture in Hastings, Winchelsea and Rye</a>.<br /><br />How can you learn more about a local area's history? <a href="http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_diamondgeezer_archive.html#115438714903580312">Diamond Geezer</a> says the signs are all around you.<br /><br />Roy Booth at <a href="http://roy25booth.blogspot.com/2006/08/another-literary-church.html">Early Modern Whale</a> tours "Another Literary Church."<br /><br />Finally, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Adams_(beer)">certain beer company</a> believes its namesake to be "Samuel Adams: Brewer Patriot." They won't be happy to learn from <a href="http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2006/08/samuel-adams-what-did-sam-publican.html">J. L. Bell</a> that a more accurate slogan would be, "Samuel Adams: Tax Collector."<br /><br />Thus concludes the thirty-seventh edition of the History Carnival. Thanks to all who sent nominations. Check back at the Carnival's <a href="http://historycarnival.blogsome.com/">homepage</a> for information about upcoming editions.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1155260868270795092006-08-10T21:37:00.000-04:002006-08-10T21:47:48.306-04:00Oasis in the CityI've apparently arrived in Denver just in time for the only severe heat wave of the year. But the city offers much to compensate for the heat, most of all <a href="http://www.kuvo.org">KUVO, 89.3 FM</a>, the "Jazz Oasis in the City." If you've read even a couple of my paeans to jazz on this blog, you'll understand why I'm thrilled to be able to listen to the station <a href="http://www.jazztimes.com/columns_and_features/news/detail.cfm?article=10831">Jazz Times magazine recently named the Major Market Jazz Station of the year</a>. It's rare these days to find a 24/7 jazz radio station on the FM dial, and even rarer to find one that will play <i>A Love Supreme</i> during the afternoon rush hour. Don't expect my radio dial to budge anytime soon.<br /><br />Speaking of jazz geekery, <a href="http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/">Doug Ramsey</a> recently linked to a page of <a href="http://tostud2.free.fr/pageindex.html">rare jazz videos</a>, including a clip of the only known collaboration between Stan Getz and John Coltrane, recorded in 1960. That one's well worth checking out, as is the video of Coltrane's Classic Quartet performing "Vigil" in Belgium in 1965. View those videos in succession and you'll have a ready grasp of how rapidly Coltrane's sound changed in the early 1960s. And as an added bonus, you'll get to see Oscar Peterson bouncin', Stan Getz swingin', McCoy Tyner swayin', and Elvin Jones sweatin'.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1155170090719667672006-08-09T20:33:00.000-04:002006-08-09T20:34:50.736-04:00Students of historyAt <i>Slate</i>, <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2147398/">Fred Kaplan</a> notes that Condoleeza Rice often invokes her status as a "student of history" to evade criticisms about the Bush administration's policies. As I've argued <a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2005/12/politicians-and-historians.html">before</a>, Rice is not the only member of the administration who relies on this formula. Both of the president's press secretaries -- as well as the president himself -- have often deferred judgment about the administration's mistakes to some distant day, when future historians will supposedly tell us whether Bush was right or wrong.<br /><br />Kaplan is right to criticize this maneuver as basically evasive. On a deeper level, though, it's incongruous with other aspects of the Bush administration's worldview. When Rice or Bush defer to historians to judge their present actions, they seem to be endorsing a ramshackle version of epistemological and moral relativism. What seems right now, they seem to be saying, may not seem right later. And implicitly, they are also saying more than that. What seems wrong now <i>may</i> be judged right later, which means that what seems wrong now may actually <i>be</i> right.<br /><br />It's a species of argument -- a kind of radical historicism about judgments of value -- that you would expect President Bush and his intellectual affiliates to oppose in the culture wars. In fact, while the administration strikes a skeptical historicist pose about its own shortcomings, it simultaneously makes broad claims about the universal birthrights of all peoples in all ages. But if Rice and Bush were aware of the tension between these two lines of argument, they would find themselves in the same kind of philosophical dilemma that has long bedeviled liberal pragmatists like Richard Rorty. The dilemma is this: if the "right" course of action is defined by nothing more than the consensus of a social group in the present, so that normative judgments can always be revised later just by virtue of it <i>being</i> later, then how does one simultaneously affirm certain values as transcendently valuable, no matter where you live or what year it is? Rice and Bush are willing to allow future historians to judge the wisdom of their policies, but they are unwilling to allow future historians to judge the rightness of their ideals. But you can't have it both ways forever: at some point you have to make an argument for why others -- even future historians -- should share your ideals, and by the same token, at some point you have to defend your attempts to realize those ideals. The fact that historians often reevaluate past decisions cannot justify abstention from judgment in the here and now.<br /><br />Probably, though, I'm reading too much substance into what is basically a form of spin. Still, it's a seductive kind of spin because I think it resonates with the views of many Americans about history. History, in a very common view, "just goes to show you" that "you never know." That's the thesis of many an undergraduate history essay. Once upon a time everyone thought abolitionists were crazy; now they are heroes. Go figure! Once upon a time alchemists were geniuses; now everyone thinks they are crazy. Wild, huh? In other words, the Big Lesson that history teaches is basically banal: things change, time passes, opinions shift. As long as this is the only lesson we're allowed to learn as "students of history," we've really learned nothing except that "you never know." You think I'm crazy now, but maybe one day I'll be considered a genius. You think you're a genius now, but look out! Historians may think you're crazy.<br /><br />I'm drawing a caricature here, of course. In reality there's something to admire even in this caricature. It's true that history should inspire humility about ourselves and a readiness to admit that our own cherished ideas could prove to be wrong. All critical thinking -- not just history -- ought to cultivate those virtues. But those virtues do not vitiate the critical thinking that brought them to fruition. Recognizing our fallibility as thinkers does not render thinking futile.<br /><br />I'm afraid, though, that more than one student walks away from contemporary history courses with the opposite impression. Our job as history teachers is, on some level, to impress our students with how different the past was from the present. And we are happy if they also make the leap to realizing that the present will soon be past, and potentially very different from the future. But as a teacher, I will also have failed if students therefore throw their hands in the air as Rice seems to be doing. If it's possible for highly educated people to still believe that being a "student of history" just means "you never know," then in some sense we are failing as teachers of history.<br /><br />So, in what started off as a piece of political commentary, I'll close by asking for pedagogical suggestions: I think most history teachers are adept at bringing students to a realization of how much things change over time, how different now is from then, and how different the future may be from the now. That's probably the easiest thing for us to do. It's the next step -- teaching students how to use the past to understand or influence the present -- that is harder, pedagogically, to take. But if we're not taking that step, or articulating to our students clearly what we think being a "student of history" is, then we risk creating a future generation of leaders who continue to invoke "history" as little more than a covering exculpation for all their mistakes. So I'll ask you, as someone just beginning a teaching career, do you address the Big Questions about what history teaches in your undergraduate classes? If you do, please share how.<br /><br />(Cross-posted at <a href="http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/29078.html">Cliopatria</a>.)<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1155004201160783952006-08-07T22:24:00.000-04:002006-08-07T22:32:43.783-04:00A Unified Theory of Academic WillpowerCordelia Fine, writing for <i><a href="http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19460829-12332,00.html">The Australian</a></i>, shares the secret of her father's success as an academic philosopher. How is he able to sit in his chair and puzzle through that difficult article? Where does he find the strength of will to finish that manuscript? Simple: he indulges his will in every other arena of life.<br /><blockquote>The secret of his success as an academic, I am now convinced, is to ensure that none of his precious brainpower is wasted on other, less important matters. He feels the urge to sample a delicious luxury chocolate? He pops one in his mouth. Pulling on yesterday's shirt less trouble than finding a clean one? Over his head the stale garment goes. Rather fancies sitting in a comfy armchair instead of taking a brisk jog around the park? Comfy armchair it is. Thanks to its five-star treatment, my father's willpower - rested and restored whenever possible - can take on the search for wisdom with the strength of 10 men.</blockquote>Now if you'll excuse me, there's a chocolate-pecan brownie and a comfy chair calling my name. I could resist, but I need that willpower to write a book review, finish my syllabi, and continue sorting through archive notes from earlier in the summer. And when duty calls in the form of chocolate, I answer. (Hat-tip: <a href="http://www.aldaily.com">AL Daily</a>.)<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1154665045639140772006-08-04T00:04:00.000-04:002006-08-04T00:17:25.723-04:00Call for postsWell, now that I'm ensconced in my Colorado digs, perhaps blogging will resume. I can guarantee at least one post in the near future: I'll be hosting the 37th <a href="http://historycarnival.blogsome.com">History Carnival</a> here on August 15. <br /><br />Nominations for the best history posts published between August 1 and August 15 are welcome. You can either fill out <a href="http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_29.html">the official form</a>, or gmail me at calebmcd. Lately my world is populated more by boxes than by blogs, so please alert me to what I'm missing! <br /><br />Thanks to those who have already gotten the ball rolling with some early submissions. And if you haven't seen it already (I hadn't until yesterday, when I made my first foray back into the blogsophere after my sojourn through the boxosphere), check out the most recent edition of the Carnival at <a href="http://laurajames.typepad.com/clews/2006/08/history_carniva.html">CLEWS</a>.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1152817056664535772006-07-13T14:46:00.000-04:002006-07-13T17:52:46.263-04:00Moving haikusSo how much junk can<br />A rent truck truck if a truck<br />Is twenty-two feet?<br /><br />At the time it seemed<br />That I needed all these books.<br />My back disagrees.<br /><br />John Lennon was wrong:<br />Happiness is'a warm shredder.<br />Be gone, wastepaper!<br /><br />Phone, cable, high-speed:<br />It's a "bundle" deal because<br />It costs a bundle.<br /><br />The cat's view of cars:<br />Me-ow, me-ow, me-ow-owwwww,<br />Me-ow, me-ow-owwwww ...<br /><br />Me-ow, me-ow-owwwww,<br />Me-ow, me-ow, me-ow-owwwww,<br />Me-ow, me-ow-owwwww.<br /><br />Down four flights of stairs,<br />West for sixteen hundred miles:<br />Ten days to prepare.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1151512257933524462006-06-28T11:53:00.000-04:002006-06-28T12:30:58.020-04:00Update, with life-hacksUnlike <a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2006/02/great-blog-silence-of-2006.html">The Great Blog Silence of 2006</a>, my recent lack of posts has not been planned and cannot be traced to a single cause. I've been busy traveling to Denver to find a place to rent (mission thankfully accomplished!). I've been busy visiting some archives around Baltimore that I still want to see before moving 1,700 miles away from them. And right now I'm on vacation, so I'm busy being not busy.<br /><br />My recent archive trips have gone very well, and I've already spoiled myself by using my new digital camera to take pictures of manuscript documents. I was using a Canon Powershot A620 on a small 12-inch tripod with a panning head. Evan Roberts' tips on <a href="http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/046590.html">amateur digitization for historians</a> proved very useful in this regard. I would add a couple of tips to his list that I stumbled upon through trial and error on my first day of full-time digitization:<br /><br />1. Take your photographs at the highest possible resolution, especially if you are working with manuscripts. I was tempted to skimp on resolution the first day in order to keep the file sizes down. But this made some of the images essentially useless and over-pixelated when I zoomed in far enough to be able to read them. You can always resize the images to a smaller resolution once you've transcribed the documents at home, so buy a large memory card and max out the image size while you're in the archive.<br /><br />2. A camera with "remote shooting" capability makes life a lot easier. On my first day in the archive, I found myself getting quite a work out jumping up from my seat for each document in order to frame it in the LCD screen and close the shutter. After that first day, I read a little more about my camera's capabilities online and discovered that it comes packaged with software that allows me to control the camera from my Powerbook. That meant I could stay seated at the table, slide documents under the tripod-mounted camera, frame the image using a viewfinder window on my computer, and then close the shutter using a hotkey on my keyboard. The A620 software is seamless and allows you to control any setting on the camera from the computer. Best of all, it downloads captured images directly to your hard drive using the standard USB cord, bypassing the camera's internal memory card altogether. From the very beginning you can control how the computer will name your files and where it will store them. So if you're in the market for a camera that you want to use in the archives, I'd recommend inquiring about this feature, which seems somewhat rare. (The Canon A610, for instance, doesn't have it, even though the A620 does.)<br /><br />As long as I'm talking gizmos, I also want to recommend a useful website called <a href="http://www.mapbuilder.net/index.php">Map Builder</a>, which lets you easily create your own annotated Google Map and then display it dynamically on a webpage. I found this extremely useful when I was house-hunting a week and a half ago because my wife was unable to join me in Denver. Map Builder enabled me to "flag" rental properties I was looking at along with links to ads. I was also able to take photos of places, upload them to the web, and include links to the images in the map itself. This made it much easier for my wife and I to discuss the properties at the end of each day, with a color-coded map and all the properties in front of us. A similar map might be useful if you're planning a long distance move and want to keep track of where different houses or apartments are.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1149693364880269852006-06-07T10:32:00.000-04:002006-06-07T11:21:43.223-04:00The latest on Emma Dunham Kelley HawkinsEarly in 2005, as you may recall, there was a ripple of press interest in nineteenth-century author Emma Dunham Kelley Hawkins.<br /><br />For years, Hawkins had been considered an African American author, and her novels were spotlighted in the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. But on February 20, 2005, Holly Jackson, a graduate student at Brandeis University, published an <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/02/20/mistaken_identity/">article</a> in the <span style="font-style:italic;">Boston Globe</span> revealing that Hawkins never identified herself as an African American, and was consistently identified as white in contemporary census records.<br /><br />Hawkins' inclusion in the black literary canon now seemed to hinge on a single piece of evidence: a photograph in the frontispiece of her first novel, <span style="font-style:italic;">Megda</span>, in which she appeared to have a dark complexion. Pressured by Jackson's findings, <a href="http://my.brandeis.edu/news/item?news_item_id=103611">Gates readily conceded</a> that a mistake had apparently been made regarding Hawkins' identity:<blockquote>Asked for his guess as to why anyone believed that Kelley-Hawkins was black, Gates offered what seems the simplest explanation. ''I think it was the picture," he said. The two novels show the author's shadowy photograph, which could easily be perceived as that of a light-skinned African-American.<br /><br />''You put that picture up in my barbershop," Gates said, ''and I guarantee the vote would be to make her a sister."</blockquote>When I posted on the Hawkins story <a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2005/03/emma-dunham-kelly-hawkins.html">here</a> and <a href="http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/10590.html">here</a>, I received a <a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2005/03/emma-dunham-kelly-hawkins.html#110989629084988594">comment from Katherine Flynn</a>, an independent researcher who reported that she had the goods on Hawkins before Jackson and was proofreading a peer-reviewed article on the subject when the <span style="font-style:italic;">Boston Globe</span> piece came out. (Flynn's work was also cited by <a href="http://insidehighered.com/news/2005/02/24/author2_24">Scott Jaschik</a> at Inside Higher Ed.) This news made my fellow Cliopatriate <a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2005/03/emma-dunham-kelly-hawkins.html#110996502908495747">Tim Burke</a> "desperate to know what Katherine Flynn's article is going to say when it comes out."<br /><br />We need wait no longer. Dr. Flynn was kind enough to mail me an offprint of her article, "A Case of Mistaken Racial Identity: Finding Emma Dunham (nee Kelley) Hawkins," which appeared in the March 2006 issue of the <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/pubsquarterly.cfm">National Genealogical Society Quarterly</a></span>. Flynn's article is a heroic piece of detective work, which includes all the decisive census data that Jackson cited and much more besides. Flynn has traced more than four generations of Hawkins' family through census, probate, and newspaper records, definitively establishing that there is no evidence to believe that Hawkins ever identified as an African American or had ancestors who did. And in case Professor Gates is still looking for a photograph to test in his "barber shop" experiment, the cover of the Quarterly also features <a href="http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/NGSQ.jpg">another more light-complexioned photograph</a> of Hawkins in Flynn's possession.<br /><br />Flynn also includes her painstaking research into the origins of the idea that Hawkins was an African American author, some of which I'll quote below without Flynn's extensive footnotes:<blockquote>Who first identified Emma as African American and when? The presence of an original copy of <span style="font-style:italic;">Megda</span> in the Schomburg Collection is often noted. [From Flynn's footnote: "The Schomburg Collection was founded by the 1926 donation of the personal collection of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg."]</blockquote>Flynn was unsatisfied by that answer, not only because Schomburg and other "contemporary black bibliophiles" like Alain Locke never mentioned Hawkins in their writings, but also because there is no conclusive evidence that the original Schomburg donation included <span style="font-style:italic;">Megda</span>. Citing correspondence files from the Schomburg's archive and conversations with archivists, Flynn reports the following:<blockquote>The Schomburg's oldest extant catalog is dated 1962 with supplements in 1967, 1972 and 1974. Not until the 1975 update, published in 1976, were <span style="font-style:italic;">Megda</span> and Emma Dunham Kelley indexed with the annotation "Negro author."<br /><br />The Schomburg reported no acquisition record extant for its original copy of <span style="font-style:italic;">Megda</span>, which lacks the distinctive bookplate for Arthur Schomburg's personal collection. The volume bears the bookplate for the "Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture," a name not used until 1972. A bookplate for one of the Schomburg's previous names is not evident.<br /><br />Emma Kelley is also absent from studies of African American literature through 1948. Her earliest appearance in this context is in the 1955 first edition of the landmark chronology, <span style="font-style:italic;">A Century of Fiction by American Negroes 1853-1952: A Descriptive Bibliography</span>, by Maxwell Whiteman. Whiteman's letters to Schomburg Collection curator Jean Blackwell ask for feedback on an early draft of this book. It is highly likely that it was Whiteman who first assigned Emma Kelley to the African American canon after finding the 1892 edition of <span style="font-style:italic;">Megda</span> in 1953. It may be Whiteman's own copy of <span style="font-style:italic;">Megda</span> that is in the Schomburg Collection today. Whiteman's papers at Temple University are sealed and documents by and about [Jean] Blackwell Hutson yield no further clues.<br /><br />Although identified as a black author in 1955, Emma's place in the canon was not secure until <span style="font-style:italic;">Megda</span> was accessioned into the Schomburg Collection in 1976. Emma's second novel, <span style="font-style:italic;">Four Girls at Cottage City</span>, was unknown to African American literature studies until its discovery in 1983 by Henry Louis Gates Jr., and ironically it inspired the compilation of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Schomburg Library of Nineteenth Century Black Women Writers</span>. To scholars the actual setting of the novel was another coded clue to the black heritage claimed for Emma. Cottage City, on Nantucket [according to an enclosed errata strip, this should read "on Martha's Vineyard"], had been a popular resort for the rising black middle class. That demographic shift did not begin until the 1920s, however, more than thirty years after Kelley wrote her novel.</blockquote>There you have it. The idea that Hawkins was a black woman can be traced to one Whiteman.<br /><br />The whole story inspires newfound appreciation for good librarians and archivists, since it shows how damaging an ambiguous accession record can be to scholarship. One mistake is hard to root out of the literature and even harder to root out of popular consciousness. Indeed, despite all the media attention to this story last year, and despite the <a href="http://my.brandeis.edu/news/item?news_item_id=103611">claim of Brandeis University's PR people</a> that Jackson's work had inspired the removal of Hawkins' work from the Schomburg collection, the mistaken identity of Hawkins lingers on the Internet. Flynn's footnotes also alerted me to the fact that the digital edition of the Schomburg Collection still features The Photograph of Hawkins on <a href="http://digital.nypl.org/schomburg/writers_aa19/">its splash page</a>. And the online Collection also still includes <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://digilib.nypl.org/dynaweb/digs/wwm9714/@Generic__BookView">Megda</a></span>. Granted, the webpage reports that the digital collection was copyrighted in 1999, before all this news broke. But it may be time for an update.<br /><br />(Cross-posted at <a href="http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/26410.html">Cliopatria</a>.)<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1149279765859106202006-06-02T15:54:00.000-04:002006-06-02T16:22:46.010-04:00Wherein some advice is offered, and some advice is sought1. Advice offered: <span style="font-style:italic;">You should buy your next briefcase from Lands End</span>. About ten (10) years ago I received a <a href="http://www.landsend.com/cd/fp/prod/0,,1_2_678_64408_69236_47683_5:view=-1,00.html?sid=0416107149732129650&CM_MERCH=SRCH">Lands End Square Rigger Deluxe Attache</a> as a gift. It proved to be the most rugged bag I had ever used; since the canvas for the bag is actually the same material used in sails, it is entirely waterproof and can take quite a licking. The only part of the bag that succumbed to the beating I gave it was the fabric loop that connects the shoulder strap to the bag. In college, that loop broke off while I was crossing a street with the book-laden bag. But this brings me to the reason why you should buy your next bag from Lands End: when they offer a <a href="http://www.landsend.com/cd/fp/help/0,,1_36877_36883_37024_,00.html?sid=0416107149732129650">lifetime guarantee on their products</a>, they mean it. I simply returned my bag in the mail and had it repaired and sent to me quickly by UPS Ground. That repaired loop lasted me about six years, until I broke it again two weeks ago. This time, I was skeptical about the guarantee and called Lands End. But, true to their word, they told me that while they no longer repair luggage, they would accept my old bag for an even exchange with a new one. They weren't lying: after sending them my beat up, ten-year-old, broken bag, a brand spanking new bag arrived today from UPS -- at no charge and with no questions asked. Better yet, the sholder strap loops on the new bag are made of leather, so this one should be even more indestructible than ever.<br /><br />2. Advice sought: I've recently purchased a new digital camera and have been looking into various online photo servers like <a href="http://www.flickr.com">Flickr</a>. I like Flickr a lot, but before shelling out $25/year for the "pro" upgrade, I thought I'd ask whether any of you, gentle readers, think that this upgrade is worth the money. I'm also uncertain whether Flickr is the best service for allowing family members and friends to order prints of my pictures. I know Flickr does have an ordering option, but since I've never used it, I'm curious whether it works well.<br /><br />3. Advice offered and sought: I see <a href="http://historians.blogspot.com/">I'm not the only one</a> trying to plan a move. As Sameer notes, finding a good rental at a distance is difficult--even more so when you'd prefer a house or duplex for rent over an apartment. (I have nothing against apartments, you understand, but my wife and I would like to close the apartment chapter of our lives if we can.) Like Sameer, I've posted ads on Craigslist and the lesser-known <a href="http://www.backpage.com/">Backpage</a>, but I've also found <a href="http://www.rentclicks.com/">Rentclicks</a> to be an extremely useful site, particularly for non-apartment rental properties. Setting up email alerts for particular searches is very easy to do, and the individual property pages have handy links to Google Maps and images. (Downloading <a href="http://earth.google.com">Google Earth</a>, by the way, has been extremely helpful in researching the move. Not only does it give you satellite images of particular addresses like Google Maps, but it also allows you to see what kinds of stores, parks, restaurants, etc., are nearby, which can be helpful for making sense of a neighborhood. You can also measure distances more easily in Google Earth than you can in Maps.)<br /><br />I'm a bit more at a loss when it comes to deciding on a moving company. It's pretty clear that hiring professional movers is out of the question for us, but I'm still trying to decide between renting a truck from Penske and hiring a "You Pack, We Move" service like <a href="http://www.upack.com">ABF U-Pack</a> or <a href="http://www.doortodoor.com/">Door-to-Door</a>. I probably wouldn't be considering these latter options at all if I were not so stunned by the high price of rental trucks these days, which is only compounded by the high price of gas. The prices I've been quoted by Penske and U-Haul are over twice as high as the price I paid to rent a truck when I moved to Baltimore. Still, I'm not sure the "you pack" options are worth the hassle, especially since the price difference seems to be marginal unless you're moving a small amount of stuff. Thoughts?<br /><br />I've discovered, by the way, that <span style="font-style:italic;">where</span> you rent your Penske truck can make a big difference in price. If I rent my truck here in Baltimore, it will cost me upwards of $1600. (If I were renting a truck in College Park, it would cost another $600 more.) But if I'm willing to drive forty-five minutes to York, PA, I can take about $400 off the Baltimore price. If you're willing to veer off the beaten path to pick up your truck, it's worth looking at some of the smaller towns in your area. Mileage on a Penske truck is unlimited and you have eight days to use it, so it won't cost you much to make a short road trip to pick it up.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1149277114825609502006-06-02T15:26:00.000-04:002006-06-02T15:38:34.976-04:00History linksThe latest edition of the History Carnival, <a href="http://www.amystevensonline.com/blog/2006/05/31/carnival-2/">Part I</a>, is up at Aqueduct. Amy Stevens has also posted a <a href="http://www.amystevensonline.com/blog/tag-this/">list of all the nominations</a> for the Carnival ... perhaps with the unintended effect of shaming those of us who have been derelict in our nominating duties, like yours truly.<br /><br />J. L. Bell has started a <a href="http://boston1775.blogspot.com/">new blog</a> on Boston during the Revolutionary War, which promises "history, analysis, and unabashed gossip" on the subject.<br /><br />Last night while poking around in Podcasts on iTunes, I discovered a <a href="http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses/archive.php?seriesid=1906978276">video podcast</a> for "History 7B," the second half of the American history survey at UC-Berkeley. (Subtext: my extremely generous parents bestowed upon me a brand new video iPod for graduation!) <a href="http://crookedtimber.org/2006/06/02/berkeley-webcasts/">Crooked Timber</a> notes the availability of other such podcasts, which come free of charge. <a href="http://chnm.gmu.edu/history/faculty/kelly/blogs/edwired/archives/podcasting/">Mills at Edwired</a> has already noted the iTunesification of higher education and is blogging the revolution.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1148939145129608582006-05-29T17:25:00.000-04:002006-05-29T18:39:51.693-04:00More linksI've been happily busy over the last week, first with walking the stage at the Hopkins commencement ceremony (woo-hoo!) and then with entertaining company. Today I've managed to catch up a bit on blogs, and this list of links is the result:<br /><br />Like many others in the history blogosphere, I'm excited about the debut of a new group blog at HNN: <a href="http://hnn.us/blogs/56.html">Revise and Dissent</a>.<br /><br />Via one of the H-Net mailing lists, I discovered this page of <a href="http://www.forum-network.org/wgbh/forum.php?category=History">online history lectures</a>. It includes a video lecture by <a href="http://www.forum-network.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=3006">Cassandra Pybus</a> and will soon include a lecture by <a href="http://www.forum-network.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=3112">Simon Schama</a>, both of whom were mentioned in <a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2006/05/colored-expatriates-of-american.html">my last post</a>. There are also lectures by <a href="http://www.forum-network.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=3068">Joyce Chaplin</a>, <a href="http://www.forum-network.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=3010">Taylor Branch</a>, and many others. <br /><br />One of the things I've been doing since last Tuesday is playing with <a href="http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_a620-review/index.shtml">my new digital camera</a>. So I was especially interested in Evan Roberts' extensive advice about <a href="http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/046590.html">using a digital camera for archival research</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.adamkotsko.com/weblog/2006/05/on-academic-blogging-diagnosis.html">Adam Kotsko</a> has a provocative piece on the limitations of blogging as an academic medium. Adam recommends this rule of thumb for bloggers: "nothing can exceed the level of rigor of a conversation at the pub after class." One of my blogfathers, <a href="http://www.positiveliberty.com/index.php">Jason Kuznicki</a> (who also walked the stage with me last week), made exactly that recommendation to me when I got started. I think one of the reasons why blogging can sometimes be limited as a medium for academic discourse is its regularity and the pace at which conversations take place. The impulse to post regularly (on which the survival of the blogosphere depends) can sometimes cause bloggers to confuse having something to say with having to say something.<br /><br />I speak here of myself most of all. "More often than not," warned Blaise Pascal, "curiosity is merely vanity. We only want to know something in order to talk about it." That's a bit of an overstatement, but it identifies a pitfall of blogging that can be easy to stumble into.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1148304815856240282006-05-22T09:06:00.000-04:002006-05-22T10:18:53.186-04:00The colored expatriates of the American RevolutionI'm a little behind the curve in linking to this, but Harvard historian <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/critics/content/articles/060508crat_atlarge">Jill Lepore had an interesting review</a> in the <span style="font-style:italic;">New Yorker</span> earlier this month. The two books under review, by <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006053916X/">Simon Schama</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080705514X/">Cassandra Pybus</a>, document the lives of the thousands of enslaved Americans who fled behind British lines during the Revolutionary War. Both books sound well worth the read; I flipped through the Pybus volume at a bookstore recently and would like to read more, especially after <a href="http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/045778.html">Evan's recommendation</a> of Pybus's other work.<br /><br />An early paragraph in Lepore's review also caught my eye. Lepore argues that those slaves who left American shores with the British "also left American history. Or, rather, they have been left out of it. Theirs is not an undocumented story ... it’s just one that has rarely been told, for a raft of interesting, if opposing, reasons."<br /><br />Lepore somewhat overstates her historiographical case here. Sylvia Frey's important book on slave resistance during the Revolutionary War is now 15 years old, and the works of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807846031/">Benjamin Quarles</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0717800059/">Herbert Aptheker</a> on the same subject are even older. (Judging from my quick scan, Pybus acknowledges this long tradition of scholarship even as she revises earlier estimates about how many slaves escaped to British lines.)<br /><br />But Lepore's claim is even more of an overstatement if she intended to say that amnesia about those slaves who joined the British had already set in during the Revolutionary generation. The earliest generations of Americans had the stories of those slaves very much in mind. This was because, in the first place, debates about whether American slaveowners would be compensated for their losses during the War loomed large in the early diplomatic history of the United States. But white Americans also lost plenty of sleep in the early nineteenth century because of the example of flight that Revolutionary slaves had set: perennial fears of war with Britain were always compounded in the antebellum period by fears that such a war would inspire a general slave revolt or a sudden surge of runaways. Twenty-first century Americans may forget about the colored expatriates of the American Revolution, but nineteenth-century Americans could not.<br /><br />But I think what Lepore means is that the story of these expatriates has not, until now, been told in a way that appreciates their dramatic heroism. The reason she gives for this oversight, though, is curious:<blockquote>A major [reason the expatriates' story has not been told] is that nineteenth-century African-American abolitionists decided that they would do better by telling the story of the many blacks who fought on the patriot side during the Revolution, and had therefore earned for their race the right to freedom and full citizenship and an end to Jim Crow. “Not a few of our fathers suffered and bled” in the cause of American independence, Peter Williams, Jr., declared in a Fourth of July oration in New York in 1830. (Williams’s own father, who had joined American troops in defiance of his Loyalist master, later managed to purchase his freedom and went on to help found the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.) When the Boston abolitionist William Cooper Nell published “The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution,” in 1855, Harriet Beecher Stowe supplied an introduction:<br /><br />"The colored race have been generally considered by their enemies, and sometimes even by their friends, as deficient in energy and courage. Their virtues have been supposed to be principally negative ones. This little collection of interesting incidents, made by a colored man, will redeem the character of the race from this misconception."<br /><br />Best not to mention those who fled to the British. Having abandoned the United States, they not only were of no use in redeeming “the character of the race”; they had failed to earn the “passport” to citizenship that Nell believed patriot service conferred.</blockquote>Lepore is right to call attention here to the ways that African American writers often used the patriotic service of black Revolutionary soldiers as arguments for full citizenship. But those arguments should be placed in a larger context. One reason writers like Peter Williams, Jr., needed to stress their loyalty to the United States was because, in the 1820s and 1830s, many ostensibly antislavery Americans were also colonizationists, who wanted to expatriate free African Americans to Liberia or some other distant colony. In the battle with colonizationism, the example of voluntary expatriates during the Revolution was a dangerous card to play. For the same reason, black emigrationists in the 1830s were often excoriated by other African American writers for deserting the pursuit of American citizenship by moving to Africa or elsewhere. (Consider the case of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_Russwurm">John Brown Russwurm</a>.)<br /><br />The influence of colonizationism in the early antislavery movement needs to be remembered here, if only because it indicates that African American historians did not make their choices about what to emphasize in a social vacuum. Their polemical choices were constrained in part by the arguments they were arrayed against. If it was "best not to mention those who fled to the British," it was less because writers like Nell thought that such flight disqualified black persons from full American citizenship and more because it might conceivably strengthen the hand of those who wanted to remove all black people from American shores.<br /><br />What's striking, though, is that even with the liabilities that writers like Nell faced, many African American writers <span style="font-style:italic;">did</span> mention those slaves who fled to the British, despite Lepore's claims to the contrary. In fact, even William Cooper Nell, in his famous "Colored Patriots of the American Revolution," mentioned the colored expatriates too. If you <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/nell/nell.html#nell286">scroll down to page 298 of Nell's work</a>, you'll find an extended discussion of the subject:<blockquote>Many of the slaves who engaged in the battle [of New Orleans, during the War of 1812,] were induced to do so from promises of freedom; but the sequel proved that a false hope had been held out to them, numbers being ordered to the cotton-fields to resume their unrequited toil, for the benefit of those for whom their own lives had been jeoparded on the bloody field of battle. The British took advantage of these violated pledges, and induced many colored Americans, panting for the freedom which, theirs as a birthright, had been confirmed by deeds of valor and patriotism, to accept free homes under the banner of England.<br /><br />ANTHONY GILL was one of the soldiers remanded to work again for his master, when he was accosted by General Packenham, who, learning that he was a slave, told him to put down his hoe, follow him, and become a free man. He did so; and is now undisputed owner of fifty-two acres of free soil, in St. Johns, N. B. His son resides in Boston, Mass.<br /><br />This is but one of numerous instances, of which there are abundant testimonies.<br /><br />"When the British evacuated Charleston, in 1782, (says Ramsay, in his History of South Carolina,) Governor Matthews demanded the restoration of some thousands of negroes who were within their lines. These, however, were but a small part of the whole taken away at the evacuation, but that number is very inconsiderable when compared with the thousands that were lost from the first to the last of the war. It has been computed by good judges, that, between the years 1775 and 1783, the State of South Carolina lost TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND NEGROES." [At least a fifth part of all the slaves in the State at the beginning of the war.]<br /><br />... And the same candid historian, describing the invasion of next year says:--"The slaves a second time flocked to the British Army."<br /><br />Dr. Ramsay, being a native and resident of Charleston, enjoyed every facility for ascertaining the facts in the case; but his testimony does not stand alone; Col. Lee, of Virginia, in his "Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department," confirms the statement.<br /><br />"Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia, (says Burke, in his History of Virginia,) after escaping from Williamsburg, in 1775, to a vessel in James River, offered liberty to those slaves who would join him. It appears, from the history, that one hundred of them were soon after enumerated among his forces. How many more joined him does not appear."<br /><br />Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of State, in a letter to Hammond, Minister of Great Britain, dated Philadelphia, December 15, 1791, says:--"On withdrawing the troops from New York, a large embarkation of negroes, the property of the inhabitants of the United States, took place. A very great number was carried off in private vessels, without admitting the inspection of the American Commissioners."<br /><br />... The same important admission was made in debate, on the floor of Congress, 30th March, 1790, some time after the war, by Mr. Burke, a Representative from South Carolina. "There is not a gentleman," said he, "on this floor, who is a stranger to the feeble situation of our State, when we entered into the war to oppose the British power. We were not only without money, without an army or military stores, but were few in number, and likely to be entangled with our domestics, in case the enemy invaded us."<br /><br />Similar testimony to the weakness engendered by slavery was also borne by Mr. Madison, in debate in Congress. "Every addition," said that distinguished gentleman, "they (Georgia and South Carolina) receive to their number of slaves, tends to weaken them, and render them less capable of self-defence."</blockquote>These passages from Nell's work do double duty: in the first place, they demonstrate the inability of Founding Fathers like Jefferson and Madison to elide the flight of slaves to British lines from the historical record, and in the second place, they belie Lepore's claim that Nell thought it best not to even mention the example of these expatriates. As the context around these passages shows, Nell could use their example to the same argumentative ends for which he used the examples of colored patriots: to highlight the hypocrisy of an American nation that claimed to be a land of freedom while also being a land of slavery. Nell also played on popular fears of slave insurrections and slave disloyalty by warning that slavery was a military liability for the Southern states.<br /><br />To be fair, Lepore is right that these references to the colored expatriates of the American Revolution were probably rarer in the works of black abolitionists than references to the colored patriots. But that discrepancy, I think, deserves some closer examination. To date, historiography on African American abolitionists has tended to erect a false binary: either they claimed the mantle of the American Revolution or they cast it off. The subtler historical story, which still needs to be told, is that black writers alternately identified themselves with the Revolution and rejected it, depending on the argument at hand. David Walker's <i>Appeal</i>, for instance, ends by quoting the Declaration of Independence at length and by staking a claim to its promises. At the same time, though, earlier parts of the <i>Appeal</i> implied that British promises of freedom were more authentic than American ones:<blockquote>The English are the best friends the coloured people have upon earth. Though they have oppressed us a little and have colonies now in the West Indies, which oppress us sorely.--Yet notwithstanding they (the English) have done one hundred times more for the melioration of our condition, than all the other nations of the earth put together. The blacks cannot but respect the English as a nation, notwithstanding they have treated us a little cruel.<br /><br />There is no intelligent black man who knows any thing, but esteems a real Englishman, let him see him in what part of the world he will--for they are the greatest benefactors we have upon earth. We have here and there, in other nations, good friends. But as a nation, the English are our friends. (<i><a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/walker.html">Appeal</a></i>, p. 47)</blockquote>So Lepore's review has gotten me thinking. I think we still need a better understanding than we currently have of the way that African American abolitionists thought about the American Revolution. It is clear, at least, that their thinking was not monolithic or unchanging, but was instead complex and flexible. When it suited their purposes to praise the English as their "greatest benefactors," they did so, while they also emphasized their loyalty to America when it served other purposes (like refuting the arguments of colonizationists). At least in many cases, it seems evident that the first loyalty of writers like Walker and Nell was to the "coloured people." And their portrayals of both the patriots and the expatriates of the Revolution were defined, if not always singularly determined, by that priority.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1147869699582816342006-05-17T08:24:00.000-04:002006-05-17T08:41:39.803-04:00LinksThe latest edition of <a href="http://airminded.org/2006/05/15/history-carnival-31/">the History Carnival</a> is up at Airminded. Buckle your seatbelts!<br /><br />Sepoy has a <a href="http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/univercity/the_polyglot_manifesto_i.html">must-read manifesto for historians</a> at Chapati Mystery. It is an extended riff on an essay by the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051500554.html">recently deceased</a> Jaroslav Pelikan, "<a href="http://www.jstor.org/view/0003049x/ap030545/03a00190/0">The Historian as Polyglot</a>" (JSTOR subscription required; the essay appears in the <i>Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society</i>, vol. 137 [1993]).<br /><br />Pelikan argues that "the historian's ability to move back and forth between past and present is analogous to the ability to handle more than one language, and ... the historian needs to be able to speak both 'past-ese' and 'present-ese.'" He then describes the historian as an interpreter, who tries to make the past "intelligible" to a present-day audience, primarily by enabling them to momentarily suspend their disbelief that our ancestors actually believed the things that they did. My own favorite quote from the Pelikan essay:<br /><br />My own favorite quote from the Pelikan essay:<blockquote>Almost no one, perhaps, is so completely bilingual or polyglot as to have shed every trace of accent in every language. ... So also ... there will still be a trace, or considerably more than a trace, of present-ese in the way any historian speaks past-ese. Pretending that it is not there is the self-delusion of objectivist historians in the past and in the present; but pretending that it vitiates the entire historical enterprise is the self-delusion of a solipsistic existentialism ... which is so turned in upon itself that it is incapable of suspending disbelief ...</blockquote>Finally, <a href="http://dmorgen.blogspot.com/2006/05/is-anyone-surprised.html">Scrivener makes a good point</a> about the apparent indifference of many Americans to President Bush's use of the NSA to keep tabs on their phone calls:<blockquote>Any of the Republicans who're so busy defending the administration on this one and explaining why it's so important for the government to have such completely unchecked power willing to go on record that they believe future Democratic presidents should continue to have the power to spy on every single American citizen, including candidates from the GOP and journalists and CEOs and regular, everyday, law-abiding gun owners?</blockquote>Snark aside, that's a serious question. It's one thing for the administration's defenders to say, "We don't have anything to hide." But what happens when the executive branch decides to change what it's looking for? Suppose a President decides that domestic gun violence is a threat to national security and starts to indiscriminately gather private phone records to trace networks of gun sales. Then, no doubt, some of the people who currently "have nothing to hide" suddenly would. And that's why this is a matter that should rise above partisan politics. This is why civil liberties have to be a matter of principle and procedural justice -- because administrations come and go, and they each bring their own agendas with them. If that agenda includes a desire to stamp out terrorists or guns or [fill in the blank], that's fine: but let the agenda be debated and executed in public view. If an <span style="font-style:italic;">administration</span> has nothing to hide, it won't be so spooked by the scrutiny of its constituents.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1147698149552445882006-05-15T08:28:00.000-04:002006-05-15T09:08:30.966-04:00So long, West WingFor diehard fans of the series, last night's finale was a bit anticlimactic. Instead of featuring the kind of rapid repartee and thoughtful dialogue that made the show great, the episode mostly featured swelling theme music and lingering close-ups. I'm willing to bet it was one of the shortest screenplays in the history of the series, so sparse was the dialogue.<br /><br />So let me just get off my chest what every diehard fan of <i>West Wing</i> is thinking this morning: "Boooooooo, NBC. Booooooo. Not only have you pulled the plug on one of the best shows on television; you didn't have the decency to let the show's fans say goodbye." Apparently NBC cancelled plans for a one-hour retrospective because it didn't want to pay the actors to participate. So instead the series finale was preceded by a rerun of the pilot episode. Our <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/bal-ae.eye14may14,0,6264007.story?coll=bal-artslife-tv">local television critic</a> pretty much nailed it: "A rerun is no way to send off a series that has brought such honor to a network for seven years." To add insult to injury, the show was followed by a two-hour <i>season</i> finale to the third-tier <i>Law and Order</i> franchise, <i>Criminal Intent</i>.<br /><br />I'll miss <i>West Wing</i>, and not just for the usually stated reasons that it elevated the tone of political discourse and wasn't embarrassed by its intelligence. (One of the television reporters portrayed in last night's episode actually used the word "eschew.") I have to say I'll also miss its unabashed utopianism. I'm aware that the show was often criticized for presenting a naively idealistic vision of White House politics and for populating the West Wing with leftist fantasies. (Case in point: in the final episode, as White House staffers are packing up the Oval Office, the camera reveals that President Bartlett has a copy of a book by Michel Foucault on his bookshelf. It's fantastic enough to imagine that a book by a Frenchman would even be on the grounds of the present White House, much less a book in the Oval Office and <i>much</i> less a book by Foucault.)<br /><br />But we <i>need</i> fantasies. We need utopias to show us what kinds of alternative realities are possible, especially when most of what we get on the airwaves these days falls under the rubric of "reality" television. <a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2004/07/tempest-island.html">Survivor island is a paltry substitute for Gonzalo's</a>. Yes, the <i>West Wing</i> writers knew they were idealists, but that's why they didn't have to start every episode with a disclaimer about how the characters and storylines are all fictional, as many episodes of <i>Law and Order</i> do. The writers had no problem with the fact that they were writing fiction, and so they just concentrated on doing a fine job of writing fiction. And at their best, the fictions they constructed helped Americans visualize different possible worlds. Yes, it was utopian for newly elected Democratic President Matthew Santos to offer a cabinet-level position to his opponent, Republican Senator Arnold Vinick. (And yes, it was even more utopian for Vinick to accept.) But that's the function that <i>West Wing</i> served: it articulated the wildest dreams of its audience and then showed how those dreams, if actualized, wouldn't be so bad.<br /><br />I'm not praising the utopianism of the <i>West Wing</i> just because it happened to be a liberal utopianism. (And to be honest, there were aspects of President Bartlett's presidency with which even a leftist could quibble mightily, especially his Clintonian eagerness to use air strikes to solve international crises.) I'm confident that the show would have served the same important function if the White House had been held by a Democrat for the last six years. And according to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/arts/television/10wing.html?ex=1302321600&en=0ceadfbe2b4341ce&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">this column</a>, the writers were actually planning to elevate Vinick, the John McCain-like Republican candidate, to the presidency if the show had not been cancelled. That would have been a fascinating transition, and I guarantee I would have kept tuning in. Our current political culture suffers not only from a lack of utopianism, but also from the fact that any utopian vision is immediately branded as the fevered dream of a present-day partisan. <i>West Wing</i>, for the most part, gave us well-realized utopias without shoe-horning them into our current political categories.<br /><br />One of the good pieces of dialogue from last night's episode was between Santos and his wife just after they had attended an Inauguration Day mass. Pictured inside their limousine, Helen Santos turns to the President-Elect and says that the priest was pushing "that swords into ploughshares" thing pretty hard. Without missing a beat, Santos says, "That's what we need," or something to that effect. It might as well have been a bit of dialogue between an NBC executive and a <i>West Wing</i> writer. Utopian visions of swords turning into ploughshares may not <i>sell</i> shares, but they are definitely what we need.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1147461355631694642006-05-12T15:10:00.000-04:002006-05-12T15:15:55.703-04:00Friday shuffle1. "I Want to be Happy," by Monk, from <i>Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins</i><br />2. "My Ship," by Roland Kirk, from <i>I Talk to the Spirits</i><br />3. "Little One," by Herbie Hancock, from <i>Maiden Voyage</i><br />4. "Blues Changes," by Ray Bryant<br />5. "Summer Night," by Keith Jarrett, from <i>Tokyo '96</i><br />6. "Just One of Those Things," by Billie Holiday, from <i>Songs for Distingue Lovers</i><br />7. "Equinox," by John Coltrane, from <i>Coltrane's Sound</i><br />8. "Mingus Fingus No. 2," by Charles Mingus, from <i>Pre-Bird</i><br />9. "Airegin," by Miles Davis, from <i>Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quintet</i><br />10. "My Sin," by Hank Mobley, from <i>The Turnaround</i><br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1147459756632609272006-05-12T14:32:00.000-04:002006-05-12T14:50:11.240-04:00Transnational history postsI recently discovered, thanks to my <a href="http://www.statcounter.com">Statcounter</a>, that Mode for Caleb pops up as the top hit for "transnational history" both in <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=transnational+history">Google</a> and in <a href="http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=transnational+history">Yahoo</a>. To be honest, I'm a little horrified by the prospect that searchers might stumble over here looking for authoritative ruminations on the subject, especially since the Number One hit was my earliest and sketchiest post on the subject.<br /><br />This is the way it often happens with blog posts: the ones you hammer out quickly end up rising in the search engines for various reasons, at which point you wish you had spent more time on them in the first place. Supportive as I am of academic blogging, this is one reason why I'm not as keen on blogs as an ultimate replacement for journals, books, and the like. The capital investment required for such traditional publications doesn't automatically or necessarily make them better than the work you can find online, but it certainly makes the production of them more deliberate.<br /><br />At any rate, in case future surfers come here for information and commentary on transnational history, I thought it would be helpful at least to collect a list of my posts on the subject, partly so that no single one of them is taken as my final word and partly to underline the lengthy stretch of time that separates them. In chronological order, here they are:<br /><br />September-October 2004<br /><a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2004/09/transnational-history.html">Transnational history<br /></a><a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2004/10/globalization-versus-globalization.html">Globalization versus "globalization"</a><br /><br />April 2006<br /><a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2006/04/transnational-political-history.html">Transnational political history</a><br /><a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2006/04/more-on-transnational-history.html">More on transnational history</a><br /><a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2006/04/avoiding-bends.html">Avoiding the bends</a><br />(Also, see the Cliopatria <a href="http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/24073.html">symposium on transnational history</a>.)<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1147445186902318272006-05-12T10:46:00.000-04:002006-05-12T10:49:13.976-04:00The cult of informationMost modern Americans place an extraordinary amount of trust in the executive branch to wield an extraordinary amount of power. And in many cases, I suspect, that trust is predicated on a basic presumption: that the government has more <i>information</i> than civilians do, and is therefore in a better position to make informed decisions about national security.<br /><br />I suspect that Americans have silenced countless niggling doubts about the Bush administration's policies by appealing to that presumption: "I don't really see what Secretary Powell sees in that picture of trailers, but he probably has more information than he's able to share with the public." "Sure, the UN's inspectors haven't found any WMD in Iraq, but the President would not be pushing for war unless he <i>knew</i> something that we don't." "It makes me nervous that people are being held indefinitely at Gauntanamo Bay, but the government has information that points to their guilt." "I'm not worried about my phone being wiretapped because I have nothing to hide, and the government already knows who it needs to listen to."<br /><br />To be fair, these arguments are not unreasonable on their face. The government <i>does</i> possess information that is not public, and Americans have long grown accustomed to accepting what our early nineteenth-century forbears could never accept: that it is sometimes a good thing for the government to be opaque, that sometimes decision-makers must act on information that cannot be disclosed to people at large. (Try convincing an antebellum Anti-Mason of that.)<br /><br />But the problem with the above rationalizations starts to show when we learn more about <i>how</i> the government gets its information, when we start to see the sausages being made. For example, we start to find out about wrongful renditions of terrorist suspects that were based on an intelligence official's "hunch" rather than on indisputable information. Even more unsettling, it starts to become clear that even when a government official puts aside her hunches and chooses to act on the information she has, mistakes can <i>still</i> be made: a person is wrongfully arrested, for instance, because his name matches one on a list of terrorist suspects, or because it looks <i>awfully</i> like a name on the list. (Remember <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/03/AR2005120301476.html">this</a>?)<br /><br />These kinds of revelations not only reveal that the government's decisions are not always made in a context of information surplus. They also expose the fact that information alone does not make fallible human beings somehow infallible. If my wife sends me to the grocery store with a list that includes a request for a frozen Stauffer's macaroni and cheese meal, because said meals are on sale this week, one could reasonably suppose that I am armed with all the information I need to make the correct purchase. Yet I could still come home with the wrong meal if I reached into the freezer case with the sale sign and picked up the "family size" package, instead of the individually sized meal that my wife wanted to take in her lunch to work. (If this story sounds a little too realistic to be a hypothetical scenario, that's because it isn't.) Was I informed? Yes. I was certainly in a better position to purchase what my wife wanted than you would have been if you were told to go into the store without the list I had. But did that information make me infallible? No. At the risk of making a crude analogy, just because the government has a really long list of information, annotated in incredible detail, does not mean they will always grab the right thing when they reach into the freezer.<br /><br />There is another reason, however, why the "appeal to information" is a flawed justification for some kinds of government behavior. Even if we were to accept that some government actions can be justified on the basis of better information, we can't appeal to the government's superior information to justify the means it uses to <i>gather</i> information. You can't simply dismiss random data mining like the NSA's phone number database by saying that the people behind the program <i>know</i> more than we do, because the data mining is the process <i>by which</i> they come to know more. The government is casting its nets this wide not because it has more information than we do, but precisely because its information is so incomplete.<br /><br />Likewise, you can't simply justify the indefinite incarceration of Guantanamo inmates by saying that the government <i>has</i> more information, when at the same time the government's defense for their incarceration is that it <i>needs</i> more information. The NSA's mining of phone records, the alleged secret raids into Iran to scout for evidence of WMDs, the CIA's secret rendition of countless suspects--these kinds of things are uncomfortable reminders of the government's <i>own</i> information deficit. Yet I suspect they are routinely, subconsciously justified by the presumption that the government has more information than we do. The reasoning, stripped to its barest logic, starts to look like a paradox: the government can use any means to get information because of the information it has.<br /><br />All of this reflection has put me in a speculative mood: <i>Why</i> is the popular faith in the government's better "information" so powerful as to be almost incorrigible? Perhaps some answers can be found by thinking about broader cultural trends. The most-watched dramas on TV--<i>C.S.I.</i>, <i>Law and Order</i>, <i>24</i>, etc.--all reinforce the popular idea that the relevant experts have easy access to staggering amounts of information. Hollywood helps us construct our fantasy of the rooms that exist behind the closed doors: in those rooms, we fantasize, there are banks of gleaming computers whose screens practically radiate data. (They never look exactly like our computers, of course; the computers in those rooms are already a generation ahead of the ones we have.) There are tools that allow medical examiners to solve a murder on the merest of forensic clues. When President Bartlett enters the Situation Room and sits down, he is immediately bombarded by a stream of information, by <i>everything he needs</i> to make a decision.<br /><br />Before you read further, let me remind you that I'm already in a speculative mood. But as long as I'm speculating, I sometimes wonder what future historians will identify as our generation's "cult." The antebellum period had its "cult of domesticity"; the late nineteenth century its "cult of masculinity." The cultural habits and discourses of earlier generations were shot through, we now understand, with hundreds of unspoken rules and assumptions that their contemporaries only dimly perceived.<br /><br />I wonder if our age is shaped by a similar "cult of information." I wonder if future historians will be more aware than we are of the blindspots that our faith in the seemingly benign power of information produces. Our forbears waxed poetic about the sublime powers of steel and steam, about the progress ushered in by an industrial age. We can see in retrospect, as some visionaries saw at the time, that the Age of Industry (for all its real advances) had its darker aspects. And perhaps, when future historians are trying to understand the justifications that have been offered for the Bush administration's grasp at executive power, they will see those justifications partly as the detritus of our culture's sanguine hopes in the power of Information Technology.<br /><br />We rave of the power of the Internet to put information at our fingertips, for example, of the ability of computers and reports and new media to surround us in a protective mantle of information. But is there not a dark side to this Information Age? Isn't there a sense in which the culture itself (and not just the Bush administration in particular) is responsible for making access to information seem like a summum bonum, like an end that justifies any means? For all the good that modern empiricism has brought into the world, this is one of its potentially poisoned fruits: the idea that we can ultimately use information to build an impregnable bulwark against error. And when that false idea is joined with our post-industrial faith in technology, the result is a faith that information technology is the surest path to security.<br /><br />Perhaps the only way to unsettle the "appeal to information" that justifies all kinds of illicit government behavior is to unsettle, more fundamentally, the "appeal to information" itself, which serves in many ways as the defining appeal of our age. In earlier days, conversations could be settled just by appealing to the divine right of kings, or the separate spheres in which men and women belonged. You mentioned certain values--like obedience to established authority, or to the preservation of feminine virtue--and arguments came to an end, not because those values were logically invincible but because they were taken for granted as the ultimate sources from which certain ethical and moral decisions flowed. It was the very ability of these things to serve as conversation stoppers that makes it reasonable for historians to speak of the cult of absolutism or the cult of domesticity.<br /><br />Are we living in an age when conversations can be similarly settled, just by appealing to the beneficent ideal of total information awareness? And given the incantatory odes that many of us sing to the all-seeing eyes of Google Earth, or the transformative power of RSS, or <a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2005/05/keyword-revolution.html">the keyword revolution</a>, should we be surprised when those same incantations are mouthed, in slightly different forms, to cover a multitude of sins?<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1147278628450038612006-05-10T12:24:00.000-04:002006-05-10T12:30:28.463-04:00Interpreter neededI'm a big fan of <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.pastemagazine.com/">Paste Magazine</a></span>, particularly because of its excellent monthly sampler CDs. Thanks to those CDs, it's easy to be introduced to marvelous music like Neko Case's single, "Star Witness," off of her new album, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000CS4L1E/sr=1-1/qid=1147278176/ref=sr_1_1/104-9314722-4879157?%5Fencoding=UTF8">Fox Confessor Brings the Flood</a></i>.<br /><br />But every so often, one of the <i>Paste</i> reviewers starts speaking in strange tongues. Here, for instance, is William Bowers' review of Case's new album, pulled from the April/May issue:<blockquote>In the same way Liam Neeson functions in the film world as gravitas-for-hire, the guest list for Neko Case's new album reads like a receipt from the tumbleweed-skiffle department of a Tuscon-area Rent-A-Cred; gracing this project are locals Howe Gelb, and Calexico, plus out-of-towners Kelly Hogan, Dexter Romweber and Garth Hudson, to name a few. Case, of course, still approximates a Northwestern Patsy Cline with a graduate degree, and while the stories she tells are mournful, her delivery remains buoyant. If an odd spiritual ("John Saw That Number") didn't reveal her hand, you couldn't be blamed for thinking Case was working to establish a new kind of magical-realist gospel, or Optimism Gothic. Despite the risk-avoidant, "for-grown-ups" tone of the arrangements, wrenching tunes such as "Dirty Knife" and "Lion's Jaws" easily teleport the listener to a mystical denim prom with a very dusty welcome mat and decorations inspired by an outsider artist's personal, widow-clogged Narnia.</blockquote>Huh?<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1147267329075829812006-05-10T09:19:00.000-04:002006-05-10T09:22:09.086-04:00Karon on IranI can't remember who it was, but someone in my corner of the blogosphere recently introduced me to <a href="http://tonykaron.com/">Rootless Cosmopolitan</a>, the blog of South African journalist Tony Karon. Over the last week, Karon has had some really interesting commentary on Iran-U.S. relations--<a href="http://tonykaron.com/2006/04/25/does-the-new-york-times-know-who-rules-iran/">here</a>, <a href="http://tonykaron.com/2006/05/07/irans-girls-of-summer/">there</a>, <a href="http://tonykaron.com/2006/05/09/behind-ahmedinajads-letter/">everywhere.</a> <br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1147217191765183392006-05-09T19:18:00.000-04:002006-05-09T22:11:48.370-04:00Nineteenth-century American historyLately I've been working on planning the courses I'll be teaching in the fall. One of them -- a survey of United States history in the nineteenth century -- has been fun to think about because the periodization of the course is slightly different from the usual U. S. survey.<br /><br />The bookends for a typical survey course tend to be the Revolution or the colonization of North America, on the one hand, and the Civil War or Reconstruction on the other. You start circa 1600 or circa 1776 and end in 1865 or 1877. That periodization, needless to say, helps select the kinds of themes that come to the fore: the entrenchment and eventual abolition of slavery, the simultaneous growth of nationalism and sectionalism, the transformation of the United States from an agrarian republic into a modern industrial nation, to name only a few. But what themes might come to the fore in a course that confines itself to the nineteenth century? What happens to a nineteenth-century course if you try to <i>span</i> the Civil War Era instead of stopping or beginning with it?<br /><br />That's the question I've been puzzling over for the past several days, and asking it has been fruitful and fun. Mostly I've been thinking about what the "bookends" for the nineteenth century <i>proper</i> would be if we were to suspend the normal impulse to start with the Revolution and end with the Civil War. Then I've been thinking about how the major themes of a survey course might change if these unconventional bookends were substituted for the usual suspects. Here are the two most intriguing sets of bookends I've come up with:<br /><ul><li>The Louisiana Purchase (1803) and the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (1898-1913). Starting and ending with these events underlines that the nineteenth century was the greatest period of territorial expansion in American history. In 1800, the total area of the nation amounted to a mere 891,364 square miles. By 1900, the total area had quadrupled to 3,618,770 square miles, and the United States found itself in the possession not only of a continent but of overseas colonies. (See the first table on this <a href="http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/hiscendata.html">very helpful census page</a>.)</li></ul><ul><li>The Revolution of 1800 (the election of Thomas Jefferson as president, which sparked the rise of political democratization and the rapid decline of the Federalists and the deferential politics they preferred) and the disfranchisement of African Americans throughout the South by 1900. The line that connects these two dots does not slope as clearly as the one that tracks the territorial growth of the United States. On the one hand, the nineteenth century was a period of revolutionary democratization, first witnessing the triumph of universal white manhood suffrage and then, with the Fifteenth Amendment, the triumph of universal manhood suffrage irrespective of race. (Incidentally, ending a course with 1865 or 1877 would essentially stop the trajectory of democracy's rise there--with its apogee instead of its nadir.) On the other hand, by the end of the century women still lacked equal political rights. The political rights of African Americans in the South had been systematically curtailed after the end of Reconstruction. And the establishment of a white herrenvolk republic in the Jacksonian period had taken place simultaneously with the violent and legal expulsion of Native Americans from the national community--an expulsion that continued to have ramifications well into the fourth quarter of the century.</li></ul>With these bookends in mind, I've been sketching out a course that would focus on two related themes: (1) the expansion and growth of the American nation-state, and (2) struggles over the expansion and contraction of the national community.<br /><br />These themes are, of course, intimately related to one another: expansion into the West provoked political debates about whether Native Americans could be assimilated into the nation, and the aggressive expansionism that underwrote the Mexican-American War set in motion the fateful debates about slavery and the political status of African Americans that would result in Civil War. Moreover, it was often the expansion of the territorial nation-state (frequently through military conflicts like the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War) that raised questions for white Americans about whether new populations of people (Mexicans, Filipinos, and Chinese, for instance) could or should be included in the nation. I've been thinking about books to assign that might spotlight the intersections between these two themes, and I've come up with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674016742/">at</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080148846X/">least</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060964316/">four</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300085540/">possibilities</a>. (If I choose this particular quartet of books, they would also help bring out a third theme for the course: the relationship between politics and culture.)<br /><br />Of course, there are major themes in nineteenth-century history not directly addressed by the two narrative foci that I'm thinking of. But many of them can be usefully folded into these larger themes. It's impossible to consider the continental expansion of the United States without considering industrialization and the cultural and political debates they unleashed about urbanization, immigration, and labor. (Consider, for example, the complex relationship between "Free Soil" ideology and "Free Labor" ideology in the antebellum period. And it's also worth noting that industrialization helped mark off the distance between Jeffersonian ideas about expansion and the imperialism of Mahan and Roosevelt at the end of the century: whereas Jefferson saw the Louisiana Purchase as a golden opportunity for the expansion of an agrarian republic, end-of-the-century expansionists had steel and steam-power on the brain.) At the same time, it's impossible to consider industrialization apart from debates about who would be included within the national community. (Consider, for example, the dense relationship between anti-labor views and nativist xenophobia, particularly in the wake of the Haymarket riots, or the roots of the democratizing Populist movement in the social and political dislocations caused by industrialization.)<br /><br />So I think the major themes that would need to be covered in a nineteenth century course can be dealt with under the rubric of themes I'm describing. The interesting thing about pushing these themes forward is the way it would encourage students (and myself) to think about whether the Civil War was a full-stop caesura in the rhythms of nineteenth-century America. The War was, of course, the major event of the century; the course would not contest that. But it's also worth exploring the things that the War did not permanently change or only changed momentarily (like the political disempowerment of African Americans in the South), the processes that the War accelerated instead of arresting (like industrialization in the North), and the unintended consequences of the War's emancipatory effects (like the mantle of legitimacy it gave to late-nineteenth-century imperialists convinced that American civilization would be a blessing to the benighted world).<br /><br />Choosing 1800 and 1900 as the rough endpoints for the course is, of course, somewhat arbitrary. Thinking in terms of centuries at all is arbitrary. (I could interpret "century" more loosely and make the course's subject the "long" nineteenth century, from the Revolution to World War I, but that would require my being able to change the 10-week fall quarter into the "long" fall quarter.) But I don't mind students seeing that the periodization of history is open to question, that all historical narratives have to start and stop somewhere even though the processes they narrate spill over the boundaries of the story. (This is a point I've tried to stress before in <a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2005/08/first-twenty-minutes.html">this first-day exercise</a>.) Ideally, the course could encourage a conversation about whether my "endpoints" are the right ones for the stories we'll be discussing, about what subjects get left out of a narrative organized in this way, and about whether the nineteenth century coheres as a historical period or instead <i>should</i> be carved up into smaller analytical chunks like the early national period, the antebellum period, the postbellum period, and the turn of the century.<br /><br />Obviously, though, my thoughts about the course are still embryonic (particularly regarding the possible readings) and any feedback would be welcome.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1146835858390809842006-05-05T09:13:00.000-04:002006-05-05T09:40:21.636-04:00Friday shuffle1. "Bud on Bach," by Bud Powell, from <i>Bud!</i><br />2. "Off Minor," by Thelonious Monk, from <i>Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane</i><br />3. "Stolen Moments," by Oliver Nelson, from <i>The Blues and the Abstract Truth</i><br />4. "After the Rain," by Duke Pearson, from <i>Sweet Honey Bee</i><br />5. "Walkin' in Music," by Gary Burton, from <i>Next Generation</i><br />6. "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," by Sonny Rollins, from <i>Without a Song</i><br />7. "Knives Out," by Brad Mehldau Trio, from <i>Day is Done</i><br />8. "Gypsy Blue," by Freddie Hubbard, from <i>Open Sesame</i><br />9. "You Stepped Out of a Dream," by Dexter Gordon, from <i>A Swingin' Affair</i><br />10. "Mildama," by Clifford Brown and Max Roach, from <i>Brown and Roach, Inc.</i><br /><br />Two new-ish albums showed up in this shuffle: <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB0007XBMGQ%2Fsr%3D8-2%2Fqid%3D1146834992%2Fref%3Dsr_1_2%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8">Next Generation</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i> by Gary Burton and <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=redirect%3Flink_code%3Dur2%26tag%3Dmodeforcaleb-20%26camp%3D1789%26creative%3D9325%26path%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.amazon.com%252Fgp%252Fproduct%252FB0007XBMGQ%252Fsr%253D8-2%252Fqid%253D1146834992%252Fref%253Dsr_1_2%253F%25255Fencoding%253DUTF8%22%3ENext%20Generation%3C%2Fa%3E%26%2360%3Bimg%20src%3D%26%2334%3Bhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.assoc-amazon.com%2Fe%2Fir%3Ft%3Dmodeforcaleb-20%26amp%3Bl%3Dur2%26amp%3Bo%3D1%26%2334%3B%20width%3D%26%2334%3B1%26%2334%3B%20height%3D%26%2334%3B1%26%2334%3B%20border%3D%26%2334%3B0%26%2334%3B%20alt%3D%26%2334%3B%26%2334%3B%20style%3D%26%2334%3Bborder%3Anone%20%21important%3B%20margin%3A0px%20%21important%3B%26%2334%3B%20%2F%26%2362%3B">Day is Done</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i> by Brad Mehldau. Both are easy to recommend.<br /><br />Burton is a vibraphonist whose 1998 album, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB00000DGXN%2Fref%3Dpd_sim_m_2%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26v%3Dglance%26n%3D5174">Like Minds</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>, is one of my favorite albums from recent years. That album featured Burton alongside titanic sidemen like Chick Corea and Roy Haynes -- players who needed no introduction. But <i>Next Generation</i> introduces Burton with an extremely young band of players who are just getting started. It's saying a lot, therefore, to say that this album compares in quality with <i>Like Minds</i>.<br /><br />Brad Mehldau is routinely touted in the jazz media as this generation's Bill Evans or Keith Jarrett. It shouldn't be too much longer before he's simply this generation's Brad Mehldau. One reason he is frequently compared to Evans and Jarrett is his penchant for reinventing popular songs and standards. But whereas Evans and Jarrett liked to mine Broadway and Tin Pan Alley for ballads to jazz up, Mehldau prefers to turn to the repertoire of Radiohead. "Knives Out," the song that appears in this shuffle, is Mehldau's interesting take on one of the creepiest tracks on Radiohead's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB00005B4GU%2Fqid%3D1146835530%2Fsr%3D2-1%2Fref%3Dpd_bbs_b_2_1%3Fs%3Dmusic%26v%3Dglance%26n%3D5174">Amnesiac</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>. On one of his other recent albums -- a solo record made <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=tg%2Fdetail%2F-%2FB0002M5TCU%2Fqid%3D1146835647%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3Fv%3Dglance%26s%3Dmusic">Live in Tokyo</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i> -- Mehldau plays an epic version of "Paranoid Android," one of the singles from Radiohead's masterpiece, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=tg%2Fdetail%2F-%2FB000002UJQ%2Fqid%3D1146835653%2Fsr%3D2-1%2Fref%3Dpd_bbs_b_2_1%3Fv%3Dglance%26s%3Dmusic">OK Computer</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>.<br /><br />Mehldau also likes to cover Nick Drake, but he can handle Gershwin too: the Tokyo album features a Jarrett-esque version of "Someone to Watch Over Me" with a beautiful introduction by Mehldau. Playing around with introductions to standards hearkens back to Bill Evans, whose famous composition, "Peace Piece," started off as an improvised introduction to "Some Other Time."<br /><br />Argh! Now <i>I've</i> spent half of a post comparing Mehldau to Jarrett and Evans too! Trust me, though: he doesn't need the comparisons to warrant a listen.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1146580649624939842006-05-02T10:35:00.000-04:002006-05-02T10:37:29.626-04:00History CarnivalIt's hard to believe that the History Carnival is already thirty episodes old. It just keeps getting better, though. Check out the <a href="http://clioweb.org/archive/2006/05/01/history-carnival-number-30/">latest Carnival</a>, hosted by Jeremy at <a href="http://clioweb.org/">Clioweb</a>.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1146242728734709612006-04-28T11:52:00.000-04:002006-05-02T10:46:25.186-04:00Jazz primerA friend recently emailed me to ask about which ten or fifteen jazz albums I would recommend to get his collection started. Actually, he asked me to list "the classics," but if I tried to make a list like that, I'd never finish it. So I'm interpreting the request much more narrowly. Instead of thinking about which albums a collection would have to include, I started to think a bit about which albums I heard early on. If these albums drew me in, then maybe they would work the same way for someone else.<br /><br />Not necessarily, though. Tastes are different, and I suspect every jazz fan charts a different path into the music. My own entry points clustered around particular decades (the 1950s and the 1960s) and I initially neglected classic big band leaders like Duke Ellington and Count Basie. It also took me a while to branch into more recent artists and more avant-garde music. But I think a lot of people come to jazz through rock-jazz fusion artists like Weather Report or Pat Metheny and then work backwards to the period where I began. Others get introduced to Ellington, Louis Armstrong and the like and work forward to the kinds of albums I've listed below.<br /><br />Nonetheless, having cleared my throat and aired some qualifiers, here are ten albums that I think serve as a reasonably good Jazz Primer (or at least a reasonably good recollection of some of my earliest finds). It's not a primer in the sense of providing an elementary survey; more of a primer in the sense that it might ignite interest in other albums. (I've cheated a little bit by grafting some of those other albums onto the main ten.) It's lengthy, yes, but let this be a lesson: don't ask a jazz fan to pontificate on jazz unless you want an earful!<br /><br /><center><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=modeforcaleb-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B0000046NH&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe> <iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=modeforcaleb-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B000EGDAI4&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe></center><br /><br /><i>At Basin Street / Clifford Brown and Max Roach (Emarcy)</i> - The band that recorded this album (with Brown on trumpet, Roach on drums, and Sonny Rollins on tenor saxophone) is a perfect guide to the 1950s, a transitional decade in jazz history. It bridged the genres of bebop and hard bop. In general, the boundaries between "bebop" and "bop" are blurry, but this is an album that at least gives some pretty clear examples from both sides of the divide. For example, if you like tracks such as "What is This Thing Called Love?" and "I'll Remember April," then you're probably going to like classic bepop -- a style pioneered by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie that placed a premium on virtuosity, blistering tempos, and technical variations on a standard set of chord changes. On the other hand, tracks like "Step Lightly (Junior's Arrival)" and "Powell's Prances" look ahead to the hard bop of groups like Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and artists like Bud Powell (for whom "Powell's Prances" is named). Incidentally, Powell's trio album, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB0000BV211%2Fsr%3D8-2%2Fqid%3D1146240579%2Fref%3Dsr_1_2%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8">The Scene Changes</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>, was also one of my first jazz albums. Hard bop is hard to define: one of those "know it when you hear it" kind of things. Two characteristics leap to mind, though: hard-swinging rhythms (I find myself voluntarily tapping my feet or nodding my head) that often stop and change on a dime, and more complicated harmonies. In other words, <i>groovy</i>.<br /><br /><i>Saxophone Colossus / Sonny Rollins (Prestige)</i> - An album in the same vein as the first. (Rollins appears on both.) As the title of the album suggests, the man is a giant on tenor saxophone. You can't really go wrong with anything he recorded. (It was hard to choose between this and <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB000000Y45%2Fsr%3D8-2%2Fqid%3D1146240726%2Fref%3Dsr_1_2%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8">Freedom Suite</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>, one of the earliest albums I owned.) Rollins is generally renowned for being able to improvise for very long stretches without becoming redundant or losing the melody. "St. Thomas" is also an important track because it mixes Caribbean and Afro-Cuban sounds with traditional jazz instrumentation, thus anticipating Latin Jazz before it had really arrived. (If you like this, you might move on to Joe Henderson's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB00000IL25%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1146240772%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">Page One</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>.)<br /><br /><center><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=modeforcaleb-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B000002ADT&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe> <iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=modeforcaleb-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B0000A5A0T&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe></center><br /><br /><i>Kind of Blue / Miles Davis (Columbia)</i> - You'll find this album near or at the top of almost every list of Greatest Jazz Albums Ever, but even after listening to it for years, you'll have a hard time quibbling with that choice. It's one of the first widely successful examples of "modal jazz." From what I can gather, with my limited amount of musical training, this means that on each song Miles simply gave his band members a few unconventional chords within which to improvise and set them loose. The result, to an untrained ear like mine, might more appropriately be called "mood-al jazz," since it sets the bar for ambient music and can be a perfect remedy when your mood is "kind of blue." The album also represents a move away from bebop that was fundamentally different from "hard bop." <i>Kind of Blue</i>, in common parlance, is an early example of "post-bop," a style that more radically deconstructs the rhythms and harmonies of swing and bebop music than hard bop did. Whatever you call it, it is luminous, beautiful, and deeply poignant music. (Although <i>Kind of Blue</i> represented a departure for Miles from the band he had been recording with in the early 1950s, the albums produced for Prestige by that earlier quintet are also must haves, especially <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB000000YAL%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1146240894%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">Relaxin'</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB000000YGI%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1146240862%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">Workin'</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>, and <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB000000Y7F%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1146240939%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">Cookin'</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>. I also highly recommend <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB00004SCH8%2Fsr%3D1-2%2Fqid%3D1146241000%2Fref%3Dsr_1_2%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">this box set</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> that collects all of the music recorded for Columbia by Miles and Coltrane together, including <i>Kind of Blue</i>. I would also be deemed a heretic in some circles for saying this, but I think Cannonball Adderley's alto sax fits better on the <i>Kind of Blue</i> session than Coltrane's tenor sax, and <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB00000I41J%2Fsr%3D1-2%2Fqid%3D1146241150%2Fref%3Dsr_1_2%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">Somethin' Else</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>, another collaboration between Adderley and Davis, is something else you should hear.)<br /><br /><i>Blue Train / John Coltrane (Blue Note) </i> - This is Coltrane's first and only recording as a leader for Blue Note Records (although he appears as a side-man on many other albums for this legendary label). If the Brown / Roach band straddled the bebop and hard bop divide, this is an album that dances around the boundaries between hard bop and "post bop." It is an especially excellent example of Coltrane's early use of a technique he would later become famous (and, to some critics, infamous) for using -- an approach to solo-ing that tried to create cascading "sheets of sound" instead of sticking to a linear melody. Like the best bop albums, <i>Blue Train</i> is drenched in the blues and never stops swinging. [NB: As Dacoit points out in the comments below, I could have listed Coltrane's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB000002I4S%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fqid%3D1146580839%2Fref%3Dpd_bbs_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8">Giant Steps</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i> here instead. <i>Giant Steps</i> was one of several great albums that Coltrane recorded as leader for Atlantic Records, and if you like it, I'd also recommend <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB000002I5I%2Fsr%3D8-2%2Fqid%3D1146580913%2Fref%3Dsr_1_2%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8">Coltrane's Sound</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i> and <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB000002I5E%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fqid%3D1146580975%2Fref%3Dpd_bbs_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8">Coltrane Plays the Blues</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>.]<br /><br /><center><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=modeforcaleb-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B0000047G1&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe> <iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=modeforcaleb-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B00000IL27&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe></center><br /><br /><i>Songs for Distingue Lovers / Billie Holiday (Verve)</i> - It's nearly impossible to recommend a single album by Billie Holiday without recommending the whole oeuvre. But if you can find it, this underrated album is as good an introduction as any single CD. It also features musicians like Roy Eldridge and Ben Webster who were the heroes of the swing era before bebop exploded on the scene. So the album is a good way to whet your appetite for classic Ellington and Basie albums. It doesn't really include Bille Holiday's most legendary performances (on songs like "God Bless the Child" and "Strange Fruit"), but there are numerous "greatest hits" albums that collect tracks like these. The best that I've found, if you have the money to spend, is the two-disc <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB0007X9U2Y%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1146241325%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">Ultimate Billie Holiday Collection</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>, which also includes a DVD of live performances and radio interviews with Lady Day.<br /><br /><i>Song for My Father / Horace Silver (Blue Note)</i> - Another of the earliest albums I owned, this is a hard bop classic that showcases Joe Henderson on tenor sax. Silver is an infectious pianist, and I could easily have listed his other quintet albums for Blue Note here, especially <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB00000I41H%2Fsr%3D1-5%2Fqid%3D1146241406%2Fref%3Dsr_1_5%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">Blowin' the Blues Away</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i> and <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB00007KMNQ%2Fsr%3D1-3%2Fqid%3D1146241406%2Fref%3Dsr_1_3%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">Finger Poppin'</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>. If you like one of these three albums, you'll like them all.<br /><br /><center><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=modeforcaleb-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B00000IL26&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe> <iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=modeforcaleb-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B000000Y87&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe></center><br /><br /><i>The Sidewinder / Lee Morgan (Blue Note)</i> - Not generally listed as one of the classic hard bop albums, but it makes the list again because it is one of the earliest jazz albums I owned. Again, it features Joe Henderson (if the title of my blog didn't clue you in, I'm a big fan) and also a young Billy Higgins, one of my favorite drummers. A Blue Note album with Lee Morgan on trumpet is pretty much a safe bet anytime, and if you like this album, then you'll want to start exploring Morgan's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=external-search%3Fsearch-type=ss%26index=music%26keyword=lee%20morgan">larger body of work</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />, along with similar albums recorded by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers(especially <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB0009X77DQ%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1146241603%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">The Big Beat</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i> and <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB00000I8UF%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1146241639%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">Moanin'</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>) or <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=external-search%3Fsearch-type=ss%26index=music%26keyword=hank%20mobley">Hank Mobley</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=external-search%3Fsearch-type=ss%26index=music%26keyword=dexter%20gordon">Dexter Gordon</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />, each of whom recorded a string of classic bop albums for Blue Note in the 1950s and 1960s.<br /><br /><i>Sunday at the Village Vanguard / Bill Evans (Riverside)</i> - This is the first half of a two-album recording of a classic live concert by Evans' trio at the Village Vanguard. (The other is the equally excellent <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB000000YBQ%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1146241888%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">Waltz for Debby</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>.) Evans was the moody, melancholy pianist who helped make <i>Kind of Blue</i> a classic (and also contributed to the more obscure but also wonderful Oliver Nelson album, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB000003N7E%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1146241924%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">The Blues and the Abstract Truth</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>, which was cast in a similar mold). But in my mind, Evans is at his best in a trio setting, and particular with this trio of Paul Motian on drums and Scott LeFaro on bass. LeFaro was killed in a tragic car accident shortly after this album was made, and IMHO, Evans never found a better trio, although he recorded some excellent albums in the 1970s and 1980s. LeFaro's bass work is <i>sui generis</i> in many ways, and these albums are worth having just to hear his interaction with Evans' piano.<br /><br /><center><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=modeforcaleb-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B000003N8R&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe> <iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=modeforcaleb-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B00000DCH1&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe></center><br /><br /><i>Crescent / John Coltrane (Impulse)</i> - One of the albums recorded by Coltrane with the trinity of McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Jimmy Garrison -- the Classic Quartet. <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB0000A118M%2Fref%3Dpd_sxp_elt_l1%3Fn%3D5174">A Love Supreme</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i> is rightly regarded as this group's masterpiece, but I actually like <i>Crescent</i>, which was recorded just before <i>Love Supreme</i>, nearly as much. I heard them in the order they were recorded, and in some ways I also think <i>Crescent</i> is more accessible at first listen then <i>Love Supreme</i> because so many of the tracks are grounded in the blues. The middle three songs alone would stand together as a better album than many other artists could ever hope to record. Coltrane's late body of work, which was inaugurated by his albums with this quartet, is controversial and tends to inspire either love or hate. But <i>Crescent</i> is a good litmus test, I think, for whether you'll be interested in hearing more.<br /><br /><i>Miles Smiles / Miles Davis (Columbia)</i> - Post-bop par excellence. Davis is generally thought to have recorded with two great quintets -- the one featuring John Coltrane that recorded the albums leading up to <i>Kind of Blue</i>, and the one that recorded this album, with Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, Tony Williams on drums, and Wayne Shorter as tenor saxophonist. The quintet is highly regarded partly because it had, in Hancock and Shorter, two of the most intriguing composers of their generation. The presence of Tony Williams also proved to be fateful for Miles, since Tony's influence interested Miles in the intersection between jazz and rock and roll. Their collaboration paved the way for the next phase of Davis's career, which experimented with electronic instruments and rock-like rhythms. (Exhibit A: <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB00006GO9Q%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1146242114%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">In a Silent Way</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>.) <i>Miles Smiles</i> is one of a quartet of albums that really go together: I could just as easily have listed <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB00000DCH2%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1146242146%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">E.S.P.</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB00000DCGZ%2Fsr%3D1-2%2Fqid%3D1146242177%2Fref%3Dsr_1_2%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">Sorceror</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i> or <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB00000DCH0%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1146242226%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">Nefertiti</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i>. This band also launched Hancock, Shorter, and Carter into spectacular solo careers. Two of my "what would you take to a desert island?" albums are probably <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB00000IL29%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1146242263%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">Maiden Voyage</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i> by Hancock and <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB00000I8UH%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1146242296%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic">Speak No Evil</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i> by Shorter.<br /><br />Well, it's a start, even though I'm horrified by some of the omissions here -- Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk to name only two. But there's much, much more advice for new jazz listeners on <a href="http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=15795">this page</a> at <a href="http://www.allaboutjazz.com">All About Jazz</a>. After making my list, I checked it against some of the lists and guides over there and think mine stands up reasonably well.<br /><br />I'd also add two pieces of buying advice for starting a collection, based on my experience rather than on any expertise. First, one of my surefire habits early on was to acquire albums released in the <a href="http://www.bluenote.com/rvg">Rudy Van Gelder Series</a> by Blue Note. (The albums are prominently marked "RVG" on the cover and spine.) Van Gelder was a legendary recording engineer who manned the booth for the label's most famous albums, and this series (which is remastered, very reasonably priced, and often on sale at places like Borders) is a veritable hall of fame. I would recommend, in general, starting with the albums released early in the series, since Blue Note made sure to start with the truly great albums. Lately, they seem to be scraping the back of the vault, and whereas RVG releases used to be marketed as a kind of Blue Ribbon series, now the series includes virtually every re-release by Blue Note. Second, early on I often consulted <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=modeforcaleb-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F0141014164%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fqid%3D1146242481%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8">The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=modeforcaleb-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></i> before buying albums. The authors can be pretty stingy with stars for albums that I love, and they also bestow a lot of praise on some albums that I don't. But in general, their advice can help steer someone just starting a collection, particularly because they mark a handful of especially essential albums with a "crown" symbol. <a href="http://www.allmusic.com">All Music Guide</a> is also generally reliable for jazz reviews.<br /><br />Happy listening!<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7703930.post-1146063366342402992006-04-26T10:35:00.000-04:002006-04-26T10:56:06.476-04:00The case for abolishing nuclear weaponsMy <a href="http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2006/04/half-way-house.html">recent post</a> on abolishing nuclear weapons prompted a <a href="http://hnn.us/blogs/comments/24361.html#comment">long exchange over on Cliopatria</a> with Alan Allport, who convinced me that I needed to make a clearer and more convincing case for the abolitionist position. So here goes.<br /><br />I start with the premise that the use of a nuclear weapon is never morally justified. Some disagree with that premise, most notably those who believe that dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped end World War II and prevented the casualties that would have been suffered by an invasion force in Japan. That justification, however, relies solely on consequentialist moral reasoning -- that the results of an action are the only things that bear on its justification. And at best, consequentialism merely postpones moral deliberation to a later stage (since we would now only find ourselves asking, not which <i>acts</i> are morally good, but which <i>results</i> are). Besides, it is possible to acknowledge that some evils are averted by other evils, without conceding that either evil was morally justified itself.<br /><br />My premise about nuclear weapons is easy to accept if you already accept the premise that violence is more often unjustified than not. Human societies have not always accepted that premise, but it has been esteemed one of the marks of civilization that we should seek to resolve conflicts peacefully. Even those who stop short of a pacifist position tend to believe that violence must be used as a last resort -- that there is such a thing, for instance, as a just war and an unjust war, or a murder and an act of manslaughter committed in self-defense. We take for granted that violence has to be justified carefully to be tolerable. Moreover, all of our society's justifications for violence depend on the assumption that violence can be controlled and directed, proportionately and precisely, at a particular person or group of people -- the invading army, for instance, or the aggressor who induces our violent act of self-defense.<br /><br />The use of nuclear weapons, however, could never be justified by the kinds of calculus that justify, say, a defensive war or a citizen arrest, because the violence they unleash is necessarily uncontrolled, disproportionate, and imprecise. A nuclear weapon is incapable of discriminating between combatant or noncombatant (a crucial distinction in any just war theory), as it also incapable of discriminating between guilty or innocent. This is not only because the yield of even a small nuclear weapon is so explosive that it is impossible to direct, but also because the technology itself involves the release of harmful radioactive materials whose patterns of dispersion cannot even be predicted with great accuracy. I believe that the indiscriminate nature of nuclear violence undermines any attempt to justify its use.<br /><br />To that point can be added other strikes against nuclear weapons. In addition to believing that violence can only be justified when its victim is deemed somehow "deserving," our society tends to believe that even justified violence must stay within limits of scale and kind. We believe, for instance, that certain kinds of punishment are cruel and unusual, and that certain amounts of force are excessive. By any reasonable definition, I believe, a nuclear weapon would have to be classified as a cruel and unusual form of weapon that unleashes excessive amounts of force. Nor is the destructive power of a nuclear weapon limited to the fatalities and casualties it would immediately cause; it also wreaks unjustifiable harm on the ecological landscape, making its use not only homicidal but also indirectly suicidal.<br /><br />One could argue, of course, that all kinds of military weapons wreak ecological harm, and that war cannot avoid being cruel and unusual, that accepting war means "collateral damage" to civilian and ecological life. Those points are some of the reasons why I incline strongly towards pacifism. But suppose you don't incline the way I do. You still believe that militaries should take steps to minimize such collateral damage. And even from my point of view, with my strong inclination towards pacifism, I can acknowledge with real and sincere gratitude the steps that the U. S. military in particular takes in this regard. I do believe that most commanders in the field try to clear aerial targets of civilians, for instance. And while I am suspicious of claims that evidence of torture at places like Abu Ghraib point simply to a "few bad apples," I also believe that American servicemen and servicewomen are not in the habit of torturing people, since I know some of them personally. A non-pacifist should and does see the honorable restraint shown by soldiers in not torturing combatants or harming civilians as morally praiseworthy. But for that very reason, even a non-pacifist can reject the justified use of nuclear weapons: the casualties such weapons inflict on survivors cannot be described as anything but torturous, and once again, whereas in the case of most weapons, steps might be taken to limit harm to civilians, in the case of nuclear weapons such steps are not only improbable but would also be strategically counterproductive.<br /><br />If it is impossible for the use of a nuclear weapon ever to be justified, that seems to me a strong prima facie reason for abolishing nuclear weapons. How many other artificial things do we keep around or cover with legal protection even when we know there is <i>no</i> conceivable scenario in which those things could be justifiably used? (Seriously, I tried to think of an example of such a thing and could not.) On the other hand, we routinely pass laws that criminalize the possession of materials (like certain biochemical agents, for instance, or explosive devices, or backyard superconductors) whose imaginable range of justified uses is extremely small. Those considerations, to me, add up to a strong presumption against the very possession of nuclear weapons being morally justified. There may be a moral distinction between the possession and use of nuclear weapons, such that we could describe the user of them as somehow incurring "more guilt" than mere possessors, but this is a slender distinction on which to hang an argument against abolition.<br /><br />One might draw a less slender distinction between agents who can be trusted with nuclear weapons and those who cannot. Analogously, for example, our society generally recognizes that a person of a certain age and criminal record can be trusted to own a gun, while other persons cannot. But that analogy breaks down in the case of nuclear weapons, because when we speak of those who can be trusted with guns, we mean those who can be trusted only to use the weapon <i>justifiably</i>. And it is because we can imagine such scales of trust that we accept the possession of guns as morally feasible. Those scales of trust, however, depend fundamentally on there being an accepted range of justifications for the use of guns. Since there is no justifiable use for nuclear weapons, what do we mean when we refer to an agent who can be <i>trusted</i> with such weapons? In this case we actually mean those who can be trusted <i>never</i> to use the weapons, not someone who can be trusted to use them "in the right way" or "at the right time," since there is no such way or time.<br /><br />In addition to the prima facie reasons for abolition, such a step also makes sense in light of principles that, again, we already acknowledge in more quotidian spheres. There is, for example, our sense that a person who endangers a child's well-being is to some extent morally culpable, even if that person does not actually abuse the child. Given the destructive power of nuclear weapons, a power that would be just as destructive if unleashed accidentally as intentionally, I think a case can be made that their mere possession is a culpable form of reckless endangerment.<br /><br /><center>*</center><br /><br />There is a compelling objection, however, to this last conclusion, and a compelling alternative to nuclear abolitionism. One could argue, as Alan has, that (a) whereas nuclear weapons can never be justifiably used, and (b) whereas it is impossible to abolish the technical know-how that makes nuclear weapons possible, therefore (c) the best thing for a state to do is possess a nuclear arsenal as a deterrent to their use by other states.<br /><br />This case was made most forthrightly, of course, by the architects of American and Russian nuclear strategies in the Cold War. The theory is that a balance of nuclear power between two states will prevent either state from launching a nuclear strike. The mutually assured destruction (MAD) that would result from such a strike checks the impulse of either to pull the trigger. Even the proponents of this doctrine have to admit there's a degree of lunacy to it, since it requires both sides to made credible threats that they will do the very thing that their nuclear policy is supposed to prevent -- that is, launch a first strike. The Cuban missile crisis showed just how dangerous and ultimately unsustainable that high-stakes game of "chicken" can be. Nonetheless, the case can be made that in a nuclear age, nuclear policies that take MAD as their starting point are the best we can hope for. If so, building nuclear arsenals is not reckless endangerment, but a rational safeguard. And that possibility has to be taken seriously by the abolitionist, since it also begins with the presumption that the actual use of nuclear weapons is unjustifiable and must be prevented at all costs. As I will argue below, however, I believe a nuclear policy of balancing arsenals is more likely, not less, than abolition to result in their eventual use, especially in our post-Cold War world. (And in making that case, I'll be following closely some of the persuasive arguments for nuclear abolitionism made by Jonathan Schell in his book, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805044574/sr=8-1/qid=1146061845/ref=sr_1_1/104-9314722-4879157?%5Fencoding=UTF8">The Unconquerable World</a></i>.)<br /><br />Before I argue for that conclusion, though, it's worth noting a slightly tangential debate in the discussion over at Cliopatria, where Alan has raised the possibility that nuclear weapons not only act as checks against their own use, but also help to deter nuclear powers from waging conventional wars with each other. <a href="http://hnn.us/comments/87791.html">Alan writes</a>:<blockquote>Would a world without nuclear weapons be necessarily 'better' than the one we have? Frightening as the implications of MAD may be, it is arguable that the risk of truly catastrophic retaliation has proven rather more successful in keeping the Great Powers in check than the much lower risk of conventional retaliation ever did. If the A-Bomb had never been invented would the US and the USSR have been as likely to refrain from open warfare during the late 1940s onwards? One might not look back on the Cold War that we actually got with unalloyed nostalgia, yet still accept that there were much less desirable alternative outcomes.</blockquote>My initial response was that while the Cold War prevented conventional war between the Great Powers, it also facilitated indirect wars between the Powers in places like Vietnam, Korea, and Latin America. (And, I might add here, that in defining the priorities of American and Russian foreign policy for decades, the Cold War also contributed to the world's neglect of regions, like Africa, which were deemed as off the board in the chess game between democracy and communism. I may be going out on a limb here, but I think a fair assessment of the consequences of the Cold War would have to include a wrestling with the genocidal and devastating hot wars that have taken place over the past several decades in places like the Congo and the former Yugoslavia.)<br /><br />Alan replied that, as bad as these hot wars were, their horror would have paled in comparison to an outright conventional war between the Soviet Union and the United States. Perhaps that is so: debates about counterfactuals know no end. But I'm not sure I see the utility of drawing up a balance sheet of fatalities, with one column for the number of those who died in the "hot" Cold War and with one column for estimates about the number of those who would have died in a war between the Great Powers. For however much the A-bomb contributed to maintaining peace between Russia and the United States, surely all can agree that it was an intolerable kind of peace. It was a peace founded less on true peace -- an absence of conflict combined with friendly cooperation -- than on the cultivation of mass terror. There was a lack of conventional war, yes, but that did not constitute peace. At least, it's not the kind of peace that I want to bequeath to my children as the legacy of this generation.<br /><br />But let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that a balance of nuclear terror <i>does</i> help prevent both nuclear and conventional wars because it maintains an unstable armistice between nuclear powers. If this line of argument is correct, then doesn't it lead inevitably to the conclusion that the <i>proliferation</i> of nuclear weapons, far from something to be feared, is a positive good? If the Cold War was (in some sense) a success story, then should we encourage the reproduction of its conditions in other conflict situations? Does the possession of nuclear weapons by both India and Pakistan, for instance, prevent war between the two just as it did between Russia and the United States? Instead of making the destruction promised by nuclear weapons less <i>assured</i>, shouldn't we go about making the assured destruction more <i>mutual</i>, so that MAD can do its psychological and political work more effectively?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805044574/sr=8-1/qid=1146061845/ref=sr_1_1/104-9314722-4879157?%5Fencoding=UTF8">Jonathan Schell</a> makes the case against this kind of pro-proliferation reasoning more concisely than I could, so I'll simply cite some of his reasons for rejecting it. First, the logic behind creating a "balance of terror" assumes a bipolar, Great Powers world in which we no longer live. It is conceivable, I suppose, for two states to try to match each other in an arms race, but it is hard to imagine how eight or ten or twenty states could calibrate the balance of nuclear power among them so that the doctrine of MAD would be effective. Moreover, it should be underlined that the geographical distance between Russia and the United States was one of the only reasons why MAD made sense to strategists, since it meant that both states could develop "launch on warning" missiles that would activate before a first strike by either arrived. Even then (and, I should add, even <i>now</i>), the amount of warning each state could have was terrifyingly short -- each head of state could count on one hand the number of minutes he had to decide whether to launch after being informed of a first launch. But further proliferation would make even that amount of warning impossible: in the case of India and Pakistan, for instance, a first strike would likely be the only strike, which is perhaps one reason why nuclear weapons on the subcontinent have not perceptibly lessened the likelihood of conventional war.<br /><br />Encouraging proliferation, thirdly, would make controlling proliferation virtually impossible. If arms control treaties have been difficult to negotiate between the two great powers, negotiating multilateral reduction treaties between multiple powers is nearly inconceivable. The alternatives we have here are not between abolition and a carefully regulated proliferation coupled with the reduction of present arsenals, but between abolition and untrammeled proliferation. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the proliferation of more nuclear weapons merely increases the risk of those weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, for whom non-proliferation and reduction treaties mean nothing.<br /><br />The reality of global terrorism is the most decisive reason why the potential lessons of the Cold War have little, if any, applicability in the twenty-first century. MAD depended not only on the presence of identifiable Great Powers who could stare at each other seriously across the table while also making reduction deals under it. But it hardly needs to be said that the kinds of terrorists who are the most eager to obtain nuclear weapons have no apparent fear of their own destruction. Once you run up against an enemy for whom suicide is not only <i>not</i> an evil, but a consummation devoutly to be wished, the logic of MAD dissolves. Keeping nuclear weapons out of such hands therefore has to be a priority of any foreign policy in the present age, and seriously advocating further proliferation would only undermine that task.<br /><br />Of course, in that last paragraph I might as well be quoting from a Bush administration official. The Bush administration, like the Clinton administration before it, perceives the threat of nuclearized terrorists, working in conjunction with nuclearized "rogue states," as the most pressing danger we face. But both administrations have also believed it possible to pursue diplomatic agreement for non-proliferation without embracing nuclear abolitionism, and that is where our views part ways. The Bush administration, in particular, believes that the only way to prevent the further proliferation of nuclear weapons is, ultimately, to launch preemptive, conventional strikes on states close to acquiring them. But that strategy has numerous diplomatic and strategic pitfalls. Diplomatically, it weakens cooperative relationships even with our allies because it asserts our right to military hegemony, exercised unilaterally at moments of our choosing. And it also creates a diplomatic double standard whereby some states are allowed to develop nuclear weapons (indeed, are even, like Pakistan, welcomed into our diplomatic embrace for doing so) while others are denied them, even when they can make a case that possessing them is the only way to offset imbalances of nuclear power with their enemies.<br /><br />Strategically, preemptive wars also encourage the very thing they are designed to prevent, since they give non-nuclear states an incentive to develop nuclear weapons more quickly and more secretively than before. Despite the administration's spin on Libya's apparent pliability after the fall of Baghdad, the lesson that our enemies learned from the Second Gulf War was that actually possessing weapons of mass destruction is the only way to avoid such invasions. And it is simply not possible to pursue multiple invasions and state-building projects at once, so that we can effectively be sure that we are preempting all our enemies from developing nuclear weapons -- especially since, diplomatically, our aggressive assertion of the right of preemption is causing our enemies to proliferate.<br /><br />We come again, therefore, to the case for abolishing nuclear weapons as the only way to prevent their proliferation and use. Indeed, the global community has already recognized, in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Non-Proliferation_Treaty#Second_pillar:_disarmament">Non-Proliferation Treaty</a>, that abolition is the other side of non-proliferation. The NPT, which the United States signed but has been interpreting very selectively ever since, included the promise of non-nuclear states not to develop nuclear weapons in exchange for the commitment of nuclear states to disarm. There is no reason why that kind of multilateral, negotiated disarmament treaty, combined with an international inspection regime that would verify the compliance of all parties, might not accomplish abolition -- if, that is, the United States has not already gone so far down the path of preemption (which the NPT acknowledges as a breach of its rules) as to undo the diplomatic work that has already been done.<br /><br />The primary objection of nuclear states to disarmament is that inspections do not work, that "rogue states" will acquire nuclear weapons anyway and then supply them to terrorists who do not fear to use them. It's worth noting, though, that this objection admits, implicitly, that our own possession of nuclear weapons does not give us any solace any longer. If our fear is that terrorists will acquire nuclear weapons and target us with them, then our fear is based on the knowledge that the doctrine of MAD provides us with no security against stateless enemies. It's hard to see, then, why the fear of terrorists nuclearizing should count as a reason to delay our own disarmament, since that delay is doing nothing to prevent the efforts of our enemies to arm. Moreover, our claim that inspections do not work leaves much to be desired in the way of credibility. Another lesson from Iraq that we seem not to have learned yet is that for all of Saddam's bluffing, the inspection regime did its job well and prevented him from acquiring weapons of mass destruction in secret.<br /><br />There is, however, a final reason that might be advanced against the abolition of nuclear weapons: that it is chimerical. Now that nuclear power has been discovered, it will be impossible to put the evil genie back in the bottle, and futile to try to do so. As <a href="http://hnn.us/comments/87804.html">Alan put it in the thread at Cliopatria</a>:<blockquote>The only end point of disarmament that would really ensure a lasting non-nuclear world would be the destruction of the knowledge of how to build a nuclear device at all. Since that seems to me not simply impractical but logically impossible at this stage then it hardly seems worth arguing about; it's a bit like saying that having discovered the New World the Europeans should have pretended that they didn't know it was there. The A-Bomb is "going to be around" forever whether I or you or anyone else likes it or not. Its existence is not a matter for worthwhile dispute; what is is whether we can create a situation where the likelihood of its use is kept to an absolute minimum.</blockquote>Much like the argument that a world with the bomb may be better than one without, this argument accomplishes more than it wants to, for if the mere technical knowledge of a nuclear device makes it futile to pursue disarmament, it makes it equally futile to pursue non-proliferation or reduction of any kind. The argument from futility cannot be directed solely at the nuclear abolitionist; it amounts to an argument against action of any kind.<br /><br />But it also simply doesn't follow that because the knowledge of how to build the "A-Bomb" will always be with us, the "A-Bomb" must therefore always be with us too. If that did follow, then it would be impossible to argue for the abolition of anything -- including slavery, or lynching, or abortion, or capital punishment -- since if something is around to be abolished, that means the knowledge of how to do it will always exist. We can't go back to a time in which the New World was not discovered and then forcibly populated with African slaves, but thankfully we live in a time when slavery has been abolished throughout the New World, even though the knowledge have how it was done is becoming more robust and detailed every day. I hope for a world in which nuclear weapons will be similarly slated for abolition.<br /><br />Abolition, of course, does not mean extinction. Alan is right that even if all nuclear states fully disarmed -- not just by removing their weapons from deployment but by actually dismantling them -- the possibility of recreating and reassembling nuclear weapons will always remain with us. We cannot go back to a non-nuclear or pre-nuclear world. But, and this is a point that Schell also makes brilliantly, that knowledge itself would serve the same deterrent function that the weapons themselves are alleged to serve by the opponents of abolition. If the fear of MAD prevents nuclear weapons from being used, the same fear would operate (in a post-abolition world) against their redevelopment and redeployment. By abolishing nuclear weapons, we would not be extinguishing the possibility of nuclear weapons but would merely be stepping as far away from the brink as is conceivably possible in a post-Hiroshima world.<br /><br />We already realize that we are too close to the brink, since even the Bush administration holds the belief (despite its contradictory support for the development of "tactical" nuclear weapons) that our nuclear arsenal does not need to be as large as it is to serve its much ballyhooed deterrent purposes. Neither does the arsenal need to be on hair-trigger alert, according to a <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm">nuclear posture review</a> drafted by the Department of Defense. But if a nuclear weapons does not need to be on hair-trigger alert to be deterrent, then why does it need to be assembled? And if it does not need to be assembled, why do its parts need to be manufactured? If our goal really is, as Alan says, to keep the likelihood of a nuclear launch to an "absolute minimum," surely abolition is as absolute a minimum as we can conceive.<br><br>Caleb McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07868821086354563705noreply@blogger.com13