Announcement: Dr. Julia Mickenberg Comments on Civil Rights History in Life and Letters
Today we are happy to share some words from our very own Dr. Julia Mickenberg, who recently commented in an article in Life & Letters, the College of Liberal Arts Magazine, on a pivotal moment in civil rights history.
Dr. Mickenberg writes,
People don’t usually think about Louise Bryant, the radical bohemian journalist made famous in Warren Beatty’s film about the Russian Revolution, Reds, as a fighter for women’s rights. But, in fact, she was.When she returned from Russia in 1918, after writing the sketches that would be published as Six Red Months in Russia, she stayed for several weeks at the National Woman’s Party (NWP) headquarters in Washington, DC. She got arrested and went to prison with several other NWP members for burning an effigy of President Woodrow Wilson, who had been a vocal opponent of women’s rights. Later, she spoke about the Russian Revolution at an event that other NWP members organized. Anti-suffragists, (known as the “antis”), who had for some time been insisting that woman suffrage was a Communist conspiracy, had a field day, announcing “Bolsheviki Meetings Arranged by Suffragists!”Does this mean that the anti-suffragists were right? Was woman suffrage a communist conspiracy? No, but the fact that women got the vote in “darkest Russia” before they did in the United States was a real spur to passage of the woman suffrage amendment, especially during a war in which democracy was at stake (the amendment finally passed after the war had ended, but Wilson wound up endorsing it earlier as a “war measure”). In Overman committee hearings – a 1919 red scare version of the more famous McCarthy hearing – Bryant emphasized the specifically feminist reasons why she found revolutionary Russia so appealing: “I have never been in a country where women were as free as they are in Russia and where they are treated not as females but as human beings…It is a very healthy country for a suffragist to go into.”Those who promote significant social changes often are radicals. They ruffle feathers and they even make mistakes. Louise Bryant was mistaken in her romantic image of the “new Russia.” But she was right about woman suffrage as an essential basis for making women full human beings in the eyes of the state.
Check out the full article here, which also features comments from Jeremi Suri (History, LBJ School of Public Affairs), Terri E. Givens (Government), King Davis (African and African Diaspora Studies, Director of the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis), and John Hoberman (Germanic Studies).
Alumni Voices: Siva Vaidhyanathan Writes on Academia in the Neoliberal Age
Today, we offer to you a must-read about the value of academia in a neoliberal age. UT American Studies Ph.D. alumnus Siva Vaidhyanathan writes on his entry into higher education and "the calling" of education. We've pasted an excerpt below but be sure to read the whole piece here.
I explained that I was back in school to figure out how I could learn to write books. I had bigger and different questions in my head than my current writing outlet would accommodate. And while I had no interest in being a professor—it was the family business, and I had been running from it for years—I had also spent weeks making use of the office hours of professors who had written books I admired, like Stott. I needed a road map.
“Why don’t you apply to graduate school in American studies?” Stott suggested. I listed all my excuses. But Randy Newman’s piano seemed to taunt my objections as soon as I voiced them, rendering them harmless; what chance did a mundane litany of half-formed career complaints really stand against the day’s unlikely sound track of ordinary American strivers triumphing against formidable odds? I didn’t know it at the moment, but I had answered the calling.
Announcement: Julia Alvarez Speaks at UT Tonight!
Today! Acclaimed novelist, poet, and essayist Julia Alvarez will speak about her life and work with University of Texas at Austin professor, Dr. Jennifer M. Wilks, at 7:00 p.m. in Jessen Auditorium at Homer Rainey Hall. A book signing and reception will follow at the Harry Ransom Center. The event is sponsored by the Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies (TILTS) as part of their "Reading Race in Literature and Film" series. It is also sponsored by the Harry Ransom Center, where Alvarez’s archive resides.
Here is a little more about Alvarez from TILTS:
Alvarez was born in New York City but raised in the Dominican Republic until she was 10. In 1960 her family was forced to flee the Dominican Republic when it was discovered that her father was involved in a plot to overthrow dictator Rafael Trujillo. Much of Alvarez's work is considered semi-autobiographical, drawing on her experiences as an immigrant and her bicultural identity. Alvarez's unique experiences have shaped and infused her writing—from such award-winning novels as How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies to her poetry.
Seating is limited, so get there early! Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Foodways TX: Dispatches from the Annual Foodways TX Symposium
Last week, College Station played host to Foodways Texas's Annual Symposium, centering on the theme "Farm to Market 2014." In case you missed it - and we hope that this will serve as a call for you folks to attend the next! - enjoy this fascinating and detailed write-up of the symposium from Kelly Yandell. We've pasted an excerpt below that explains what the symposium offers; the full post detailing some of the conversations that occurred (and some more of her wonderful photos) can be found here.
We meet yearly in support of a greater academic archiving project run through the University of Texas to document the diverse cultures of Texas. In fact, Foodways Texas just became a permanent part of UT’s American Studies Department. The panels, talks, and discussions this year were centered on the topic of agriculture at the aptly titled Farm to Market 2014: 4th Annual Foodways Texas Symposium. This alone would have been enough to hold my attention for two days. And, the meals at the symposium would have been enough to justify the cost of admission had there been no discussions at all.But the enduring draw of this event is the fascinating group of people that it brings together. We are scholars, writers, farmers, ranchers, chefs, food lovers, entrepreneurs, photographers, scientists, and all manner of other professionals and people who simply love Texas, Texas food and foodways, and Texas history and cultures. This is not to say by any means that we all share the same point of view on some of these thorny agricultural topics. In fact, with a group this diverse it is virtually guaranteed that our interests, backgrounds, and opinions will diverge. But the very convivial nature of the gathering ensures that we all seek each other out and use it as an opportunity to think, more so than to merely form opinions. The time limitations and the number of topics covered mean that we barely scratch the surface of the topics we approach; however, for many of us it is the first time we have ever considered the lives and businesses of some of our peers.