12.17.08
Posted in Jacob Canon, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia, history at 12:04 pm by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, based on a recent article by Matt Kelly, News Writer with the Office of Public Affairs, we look at former dean of UVa’s College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, Melvyn P. Leffler, who recently was named to receive the American Historical Association’s 2008 George Louis Beer Prize for his book “For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War.”
Melvyn P. Leffler, Professor of History at the University of Virginia, will receive the American Historical Association’s 2008 George Louis Beer Prize for his book “For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War.”
Leffler, named the Randolph Jennings Fellow at the United States Institution for Peace in 2004 and Henry A. Kissinger Fellow in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress in 2004 said he was surprised and deeply gratified by the award, which he will receive in January at the association’s annual meeting in New York City.
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Leffler said he has a passion for the history of foreign relations because international diplomacy involves “some of the most important things — war and peace, life and death…”and he went on to say, “This is the best prize the American Historical Association gives to a writer of history of international relations. It is exhilarating to be able to step down from the deanship and revive one’s scholarly career.”
Published in 2007, Leffler’s book examines four crucial episodes during the Cold War when American and Soviet leaders considered modulating, avoiding or ending hostilities, and asks why they failed. He then illuminates how U.S. and Soviet leaders were able to reconfigure Soviet-American relations after decades of confrontation.”
Interested in why it lasted as long as it did and why it ended when it did, Leffler concluded that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, without losing his faith in communism, transformed many of his ideological views on what was necessary to improve the political and economic systems in Russia. Leffler also credited U.S. President Ronald Reagan with building up the U.S. military and then negotiating from that position of strength.
Leffler said, “The importance of Reagan was that he did want to negotiate with the men who ran the ‘Evil Empire.’”
Duane Osheim, chairman of U.Va.’s history department, said, “Mel is internationally recognized as a scholar of the Cold War and he richly deserves this prize. His book is an important work on United States foreign policy during the Cold War. It is instructive because of the thoughtfulness he gives to the values and the ideology of both sides…”
The Economist, a respected news magazine, praised the book as “a highly relevant and much-needed historical study, one of the best books on the period to have been written.”
Leffler is currently co-editing, with Norwegian scholar Odd Arne Westad, the three-volume Cambridge History of the Cold War, a project that has engaged the pair for the past eight years.
Ann Goldberg, associate professor of history at the University of California-Riverside, who chaired the award committee that selected Leffler’s book, said “The Soul of Mankind” is a “masterful treatment” that will become required reading. Using newly accessible archival sources, Leffler constructs a richly nuanced, empirically rigorous history of the Cold War that avoids the ideological blinkers of past Cold War scholarship”
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. The College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia, WTJU and myself would like to thank you for joining us this past year as we have examined many different people and points of interest concerning UVa and its impact on the world.
Please tune in during the next semester to enjoy our new weekly show brought to you by UVA Today.
Did you miss a show? Then go to www.wtju.net and click on “blogs & pods” or just Google, “The Oscar Show.” Questions about this program; please call WTJU at 434-924-0885 or email at wtju@virginia.edu.
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11.19.08
Posted in Gitmo, Habeas Corpus, Jacob Canon, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia, Virginia Film Festival, history at 12:04 pm by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, adapted from an article written by freelance writer Karen Doss Bowman, we discuss the work of UVa Professor Paul Halliday, and his research of Habeas Corpus, the only specific right enshrined in the US Constitution.
Habeas corpus, the judicial means by which prisoners may demand that their jailer show a valid reason for their detention, is considered a bedrock of personal liberty in U.S. law—and is the only specific right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
Habeas Corpus and Ensuring Constitutional Protections [6:14m]:
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This summer, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its historic affirmation of the right of Guantánamo Bay detainees to challenge their confinement, one University of Virginia history professor’s research was critical to how the justices arrived at their decision. For nearly a decade, Associate Professor of History Paul Halliday has been quietly studying the use of habeas corpus in England and its empire back to the 16th century and earlier.
James Oldham, St. Thomas More Professor of Law and Legal History at Georgetown University Law Center consulted with Halliday about the writ’s history for several amicus briefs written on behalf of the Guantánamo detainees. Oldham said, “Paul is probably the most knowledgeable person on the planet about the historical scope of the writ of habeas corpus and its use in the Anglo-American tradition, and Halliday’s book on the subject (expected in 2010) “will rewrite that history [of habeas corpus] in a fundamental way.”
Halliday never dreamed he would be doing research on habeas corpus. But while immersed in research of litigation in 16th- and 17th-century English politics at London’s National Archives, he realized that documents concerning more than 11,000 habeas cases from the court of the King’s Bench—the king’s greatest common law court—remained bundled in their original files, most unopened since they were stored away hundreds of years ago. Halliday said, “The more work I did, I realized that what’s in the archive and what’s been written [about habeas corpus] had nothing to do with one another.”
Scribbled on tiny scraps of parchment (1 or 2 inches by 8 to 10 inches) and written in Latin, many writs are rumpled, worm-eaten and soiled with coal dust, dirt or water stains. Halliday has since photographed thousands and noted their contents, which he then analyzes in an intricate computer database that tracks each case.
Halliday said he was surprised to learn that “The writ of habeas corpus was not founded on ideas about liberty.” Instead, it was designed to ensure that individuals imprisoning people in the king’s name upheld the law and did not abuse their authority.
The key in the Supreme Court Guantánamo case (Boumediene v. Bush) was whether non-citizens are entitled to habeas corpus, and if so, whether they must be on American soil to use it.
A recent Virginia Law Review article by Halliday, and UVa Law School’s American legal historian G. Edward White, was cited four times in the decision by attorneys on both sides. They both identified what Founding Fathers understood about habeas corpus and included the “Suspension Clause” in the Constitution, which reads: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended unless, when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety, may require it.”
Since 1789, the writ has been suspended only a few times, always controversially, including by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 allowing U.S. internment of people of Japanese descent.
The article also showed that the English court consistently allowed foreigners access to habeas corpus. In the 1640s, during the English Civil War, justices used habeas corpus to release those imprisoned by military officers. Halliday said, “Place was not the point in habeas litigation. People were.” And went on to say, “What we find in thousands of cases across thousands of miles are patterns revealing principles about habeas corpus.”
Having consulted Halliday about Gauntanamo cases, Jonathan Hafetz of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law said, “Paul’s work sheds light on the original meaning and purpose of the Constitution’s guarantee of habeas corpus. It shows that efforts to deny habeas corpus to detainees today, and to create prisons outside the law, contradicts centuries of history and tradition.”
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will look at MacArthur Fellow, Bill T. Jones, and his discussion of the Struggles for Art in Society.
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10.01.08
Posted in Cognitive Science, Education, Gender Bias, Jacob Canon, Politics, Psychology, Racism, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia, elections, ethics, history at 11:04 am by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, we share comments and reflections from the UVa Faculty Roundtable concerning Race and Gender in Politics.
Last Thursday, the Miller Center of Public Affairs hosted the UVa Faculty Round Table on Race and Gender in Politics. Sponsored by the University of Virginia’s Arts & Sciences Magazine, the forum was moderated by Douglas Blackmon, the Atlanta bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. The panel included UVa faculty members, Paul Freedman, Brian Nosek, Lynn Sanders, Vesla Weaver and Nick Winter.
Moderator, Douglas Blackmon called this point in time “an extraordinary moment in American history and American discourse,” while Associate Politics Professor Paul Freedman referred to this time as “Christmas” for political scientists because of the multicultural base of the presidential candidates.
Reflections on Race and Gender in Politics Forum [7:30m]:
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Freedman said the implicit message in political advertising is the important element of political ads. An example of this was a 2006 Republican ad run in Tennessee, concerning Democrat, Harold Ford, Jr. Freedman said, the ad included “a white woman who claimed to have had met Harold at the Playboy Party and she suggested that he call her, the ad concluded with the text on the screen, Harold Ford…’he’s just not right.’ And many people suggested that the implicit message was, ‘he’s just not white.’” Freedman added this year’s election has seen less of these types of messages.
Associate Politics Professor Lynn Sanders, spoke to the question, “will Obama lose this election due to race.” Referring to a recent Stanford AP poll and the subsequent media spin that Obama will lose the election by six to fifteen percent simply because he is black, Sanders said, “I think that it is really, really interesting how tied we are to that kind of pessimism. There is an alternative framework that we could be focusing on, which is… that we’re living in a time when we have accomplished such a feat that we can have these different kinds of candidates.” Referring to the Bradley/Wilder effect - when voters tell pollsters they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate, yet, on Election Day, they vote for the white candidate - Sanders said this effect has lessened over the past forty to fifty years and the reverse was observed in the 2006 Tennessee race between Ford and the Republican candidate.
Assistant Politics Professor Nick Winter spoke about the book he is working on, “The Secret History of Gender.” Winter said, looking at data from the last three decades, the Democratic party is associated with stereotypically feminine traits such as being “… compassionate, generous, egalitarian, and so forth and conversely they like the republican party for relatively stereotypically masculine characteristics, it’s efficient, supports the work ethic…” Yet, when it comes to Presidential candidates, he said the electorate tends to feel “… that our ideas about what it makes a good leader are themselves very associated with ideas about men and masculinity.”
Associate Professor of Psychology Brian Nosek’s data suggests that some political choices we make are influenced by “implicit” feelings toward blacks, women or the aged without us even realizing it. Nosek said of people who participate in his online surveys, “… 80% of white Americans who come on and try this task have a stronger association of black with bad, than white with bad, suggesting that they have associations in their minds that are quite distinct from the egalitarian values that they tend to express. Likewise with gender, it’s harder to associate female with leader or female with career than males, even if they will explicitly say, ‘no, I’m egalitarian minded… we don’t necessarily know that these things are happening.”
Mr. Blackmon observed that the research of the panelist had led to potentially opposed ideas of how much race and gender effect the election process.
Answering this question, Assistant Politics Professor Vesla Weaver satirically noted, that this may be the first time that professor Sanders and she had been considered the “racial optimist in a room.” She went on to say, “I’m certainly not saying that there aren’t negative racial attributions that happen. I do think we need to question how much the Bradley Effect has been overstated, how much the negative aspect of race is the thing that makes headlines, and what effect that has on perceptions, on people, on raising sensitivities, on looking for it.” Professor Sanders added that it was interesting “…the way conservative and optimistic, and liberal and pessimistic, are associated. And this is a real consistent theme in this year’s election.” She said that none of the panelist felt that bigotry and racism were no longer issues, yet much had changed in the short time since the 1960’s.
The goals of the panel to open public discussion on these issues were summarized by Professor Weaver’s salient comments concerning what would occur if the topic of race and gender were not brought to the public’s attention. Weaver said, the danger is not only, not having this type of public discourse, but that “it opens up space for a powerful counter narrative to develop on November 5th. And that is the counter narrative that, for blacks, for young voters, for anyone that was mobilized… and saw this as the first time their constituency was being spoken to, the counter narrative would be, if not now, then when.” She added, “it opens up a rift in that powerful American dream logic. It opens a rift in the notion that this is an egalitarian society. That we can move forward together… And so if we don’t have that very public conversation now about race, the public conversation that going to get had when we look in the mirror on November 5th is going to be a conversation that is going to be uglier.”
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will discuss the work of Brad Cox, professor of physics and a principal investigator with the University of Virginia’s High Energy Physics Group and his involvement with the new Large Hadron Collider in Geneva Switzerland.
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09.24.08
Posted in Cognitive Science, Education, Jacob Canon, Politics, Social Psychology, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia, elections, ethics, history, sociology at 11:04 am by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, we introduce the Moderator and UVa Faculty panel participating in the Race and Gender in Politics Forum being held tomorrow evening at 7:00 PM at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, located at 2201 Old Ivy Road, in Charlottesville, VA. This event is free to the public.
With the election season upon us, and the diverse nature of the major candidates, Americans are faced with unique challenges when they go to the polls this November 4th. With the notable exception of Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, the major candidates for the office of President of the United States have been white males. But this election season, both major political parties have offered candidates that begin to explore the multicultural basis of our nation.
Race and Gender in Politics [5:48m]:
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Tomorrow evening, September 25th at 7:00PM, the Miller Center of Public Affairs will be hosting the UVa Faculty Round Table on Race and Gender in Politics. This event is sponsored by the University of Virginia’s Arts & Sciences Magazine will be Moderated by Douglas A Blackmon, the Atlanta bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. This forum will discuss many of the issues that face the electorate this season. The panel will include UVa faculty members, Paul Freedman, Brian Nosek, Lynn Sanders, Vesla Weaver and Nick Winter.
The moderator, Douglas A. Blackmon, has written extensively about the American quandary of race. Many of his stories in The Wall Street Journal have explored the interplay of wealth, corporate conduct and racial segregation.
Associate Politics Professor Paul Freedman, has written about the negative advertising that is present in American politics, and has come to the conclusion that this type of discourse has positive effects in educating the public concerning issues. Freedman found that voters who saw more campaign advertising were more energized and knowledgeable.
Associate Professor of Psychology Brian Nosek’s interest in politics emerged while he was doing research in implicit cognition, which examines thought and feeling outside of awareness and control. His data suggests that some political choices we make may be influenced by “implicit” feelings toward blacks, women or the aged without us even realizing it.
Associate Politics Professor Lynn Sanders, has found another dynamic at work in the American political system. Sanders research has found there are differences in survey data received depending on the race of the interviewer and interviewee. If they are the same race, prejudices are more likely to be revealed. She found this evidenced by the differing results in the public vote of caucus states versus the private vote found in primaries states during the recent Democratic campaign.
Assistant Politics Professor Vesla Weaver’s research has detailed the disparities between the outcomes of whites to darker- and lighter-skinned blacks and Hispanics, including lower incomes, high incarceration rates and higher execution rates for the dark-skinned. Her data appears to show that the gradient of skin tone also appears to have an effect, and that this disparity carries over to politics as well.
Assistant Politics Professor Nick Winter’s book, Dangerous Frames explores the ways that political leaders can mobilize our ideas about race and gender in ways we don’t realize; his current project is exploring the ways that ideas about masculinity and femininity shape political discourse and public opinion.
So, as this multicultural dynamic changes the Presidential debate continues across America, you are invited to the Miller Center tomorrow evening, September 25th at 7:00 PM to hear this panel discuss gender and race and how they effect the political landscape.
The Miller Center address is 2201 Old Ivy Road, Charlottesville, VA. For more information or direction to the event please call 434-243-8974 or email Cristina Martinez de Andino at clm6q@virginia.edu.
For those who can’t attend, you can watch the forum online by going to www.millercenter.org and the link will appear on the home page shortly before the panel starts.
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will follow up this show with comments and reflections from the UVa Faculty Roundtable concerning Race and Gender in Politics.
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07.09.08
Posted in Jacob Canon, Politics, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia, history at 11:04 am by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, written by Brevy Cannon, General Assignments writer for University of Virginia Media Relations, we look at a recent Center for Politics event, “Reconsidering the Presidency” held at the University of Virginia in April 2008.
“The vast and ever-increasing amounts of money spent on U.S. political campaigns are a detriment to our democracy. And, contrary to public opinion, the Electoral College is a quirk of American politics that should not be tampered with…”
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Those two opinions were shared by three former governors, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Lowell Weicker of Connecticut and Virginia’s Doug Wilder, during the Center for Politics event, “Reconsidering the Presidency” in April 2008.
Center director and event host Larry Sabato noted in his introduction that he expected a lively debate from these three political veterans from across the political spectrum, and the trio did not disappoint, offering many diverging suggestions on how to reform U.S. politics and the presidential nomination process.
Sununu, a former three-term governor of New Hampshire, White House chief of staff and co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire” political news show, defended the widely criticized tradition of his home state being the first to hold presidential primaries.
Critics contend that being first gives New Hampshire an outsized influence; that the predominately white population isn’t reflective of the nation; and that voters there get the opportunity to personally meet with each candidate several times, while voters in other states may not even be visited.
Doug Wilder, former governor of Virginia, recalled his own run for president in 1992 and complained that recent presidential candidates haven’t campaigned enough in Virginia. He said, “It’s not right for certain areas of the country to be constantly courted to the degree that the residents there expect it … and others are surprised just to get a handshake or a chance even to be in the room with a presidential candidate.”
Sununu went on to say, “I think people don’t understand that the nominating process should demand from our citizens an equal commitment to the election process as the general election.” If another state goes first instead of New Hampshire, contended Sununu, that state should have some of the same merits as his state: a voter turnout rate near 75 percent, engaged citizens who ask serious questions and a place that doesn’t require lots of money to start being noticed by the public.
Wilder, who became the first African-American governor in U.S. history when elected in 1989, suggested that primary election rules could be “modernized” by having a longer timeframe, such as two weeks, in which to cast ballots, rather than just one day.
Weicker was elected governor of Connecticut in 1990 as an independent after serving three terms in the U.S. Senate as a Republican. He drew attention to the “extra hoops” that those outside the “two-party duopoly” must contend with in order to run for office. He proposed a constitutional amendment that would standardize the requirements for a presidential candidate to qualify to be on the ballot in any given state, replacing the widely varying requirements that inhibit independent candidates.
According to opinion polls cited by Sabato, contrary to the view of 70 percent of Americans who would like to do away with the Electoral College, all three governors felt it should stay. Weicker and Sununu both said that the current system (wherein a candidate wins all or none of the electors representing each state) makes candidates campaign in all 50 states.
All three panelists condemned what they all termed the “obscene” amounts of money involved in today’s politics, with Weicker going so far as to declare, “I think money is destroying politics in the United States.”
Only Wilder offered a substantive suggestion of how to address that issue. He said, “Copy a little bit from the British system, shortening it and saying the campaign will start on such and such a date and end on such and such a date… rather than as soon as George Bush took his hand down from swearing… taking his oath as president, this campaign started. That doesn’t make any sense at all, we got to shorten that.”
Sununu also decried how today’s media have “poisoned the minds of the public” with flawed coverage of political issues like the Florida recounts in the 2000 presidential election. While one questioner defended the role of the media as “the fourth branch of government,” no participants even entertained the idea that political advertising might benefit the political process, such as by increasing voter knowledge and participation, as recent research from U.Va. politics professor Paul Freedman has found.
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we look at the annual Walter A. Ridley Distinguished Lecture at the University of Virginia, held recently in the Rotunda’s Dome Room.
For more information about scholarship, creativity and research, please visit www.oscar.virginia.edu. Did you miss a show? Then go to www.wtju.net and click on “blogs & pods” or visit www.cvillepodcast.com. Question about this program; please call WTJU at 434-924-0885 or email at wtju@virginia.edu.
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06.11.08
Posted in Jacob Canon, Skinner, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia, history, restoration at 12:04 pm by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, written by Jane Ford, Senior News Officer for the UVa News Department, we celebrate the one hundred-year anniversary of the E.M. Skinner Organ, which was installed in UVa’s Cabell Hall in 1907.
Skinner Organ [6:39m]:
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AUDIO SLIDE SHOW: E.M. Skinner Organ Celebrates 100 Years
On March 29th, 2008, UVa celebrated the 100th anniversary of the E.M. Skinner Organ, an iconic fixture of the University of Virginia since its installation at Cabell Hall in 1907. At the turn of the 20th century, pipe organs were models of cutting-edge technology and American engineering, an organ expert told an audience celebrating the 100th anniversary of the E.M. Skinner organ.
Laurence Libin, research curator emeritus of musical instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, said, “I have come to congratulate the University of Virginia… This is really a monument. The organ here is a benchmark of American taste and ingenuity.” He added that there could be no better place to have the instrument than at a University, where engineering, architecture, music and other disciplines could play a role in the “wider scope of inquiry” and “create benchmarks for future evaluation of the state of the organ. At 100 years it has a lot to teach us.”
The March 29 tribute included organ historian Barbara Owen, who said, “The organ was a gift to the University from Andrew Carnegie, the man who built a steel empire and spent his later years as a philanthropist. Valued at $7,000 at the time, it is estimated that to replace it today with an organ of that complexity and workmanship would cost in excess of $600,000.”
The session was concluded with U.Va. associate professor emeritus of music Donald Loach presenting a history of Skinner’s organ at the University. Loach shared details about the 1907 dedication recitals, at which University President Edwin A. Alderman and Skinner gave brief remarks before Samuel L. Baldwin, organist of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn, N.Y. performed musical selections chosen to highlight the organ’s special features. Loach delighted the audience with recordings from the rededication concert held in 1983 and from a second rededication concert in 2000.
Following the symposium, evening concertgoers were entertained with a recital by organist Ken Cowan of Westminster Choir College, who played music contemporary with the time of its installation that showcased the instrument’s unique features.
Paul Walker, who teaches organ at the university said, “Ken Cowan’s recital was amazing. The music he played was most appropriate to the organ and the time when it was installed, and his program brought out the organ’s obvious strengths: a deep, rich tone and colorful solo stops. Most impressive to me was Cowan’s own transcription of the Mephisto Waltz #1 of Franz Liszt, a technical tour-de-force which made dazzling use of the organ’s resources. The audience particularly responded to Cowan’s encore, a piece by George Thalben-Ball played almost entirely by the feet.”
The U.Va. organ, although built in the early years of Skinner’s long career of organ-building, incorporates unique innovations that he continued to pursue throughout his career. It boasts a movable console of the rare “batwing type” as well as more than 1,500 pipes, ranging from three-quarters of an inch to 16 feet in length; a piston system with combinations set by Skinner and features one of the first examples of his famous “Erzahler” stops, said Owen. The Erzahler is his first foray into creating tonal color by adding the sounds of orchestral instruments, such as French and English horns, oboes, clarinets, strings and flutes.
Loach, who played a major role in preserving the Skinner organ, noted that while it was primarily used at ceremonial occasions such as baccalaureate ceremonies, it was included in several musical performances and served as a practice instrument for budding student organists. Occasionally, after a full rehearsal of the Glee Club in the auditorium, he would play a few pieces on the organ which “the boys seemed to really enjoy,” he said.
Only a few years later, one of those students, William R. Piper, class of 1977, offered funds to restore it. The two-year project was completed in 1983. Loach oversaw the work conducted by the A. Thompson-Allen Organ Company of New Haven, Conn. The goal was “not to improve or alter the tonal or mechanical character of the instrument.” Leather membranes were replaced, new valves were installed and springs and pipes were cleaned and refinished.
After a remodeling of Cabell Hall in the 1990s a new restoration was instigated by Marita McClymonds, acting chairman of the Music Department, and begun in 1998 by Xaver A. Wilhelmy of Satunton, Va. A second rededication on Sept. 15, 2000 featured organist Peggy Kelley Reinburg. The organ continues to be played occasionally for concerts.
Libin said, “The organ here is irreplaceable and historical. Skinner’s vision was in the vanguard a century ago. Organs like this just aren’t built any more.”
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we look at a University of Virginia study, which indicates that air pollution from power plants and automobiles is destroying the fragrance of flowers and thereby possibly inhibiting the ability of pollinating insects to locate flowers, and may partially explain why certain populations of these pollinators are on the decline.
For more information about scholarship, creativity and research, please visit www.oscar.virginia.edu. Did you miss a show? Then go to www.wtju.net and click on “blogs & pods” or visit www.cvillepodcast.com. Question about this program; please call WTJU at 434-924-0885 or email at wtju@virginia.edu.
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05.14.08
Posted in The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia, history, sociology at 11:04 am by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, adapted from an article published on the Oscar Web site written by Margaret Grundy, we look at be the research of Richard Handler, UVa professor of anthropology, and how the popularized story of colonial Williamsburg, upon reexamination reveals different side of tale.
Is Candor Best [6:23m]:
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When Americans visit Colonial Williamsburg, they come to celebrate their nation’s history, to learn about the ways of the past and to experience firsthand the ideals and idealism of the Founding Fathers. They come to try on hoopskirts and three-cornered hats; to make their own candles and to take carriage rides down Duke of Gloucester Street. They come, in short, to have a good time.
Yet the story of Colonial Williamsburg is not entirely pleasant. While remembered for asserting the fundamental rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, colonial America was also a place of inequality, oppression and disenfranchisement. For Richard Handler, professor of anthropology and associate dean for undergraduate academic programs in the College of Arts & Sciences, Williamsburg was begging to be reexamined.
In 1989, Handler, alongside anthropologist Eric Gable, a PhD in Anthropology from the class of 1990, embarked on a major study of Colonial Williamsburg. They began their research guided by one overarching question: “How do you tell the story of the American revolution in a way that honors the founding fathers while still telling the story of slavery?
Although it was a complicated pursuit, Colonial Williamsburg seemed the perfect site for exploring this dispute. Handler said, “In history as a discipline, and academia generally, there’s been an ongoing argument about whether history is objective or relative. Different historians tell different stories about the same events; professional historians know that the facts are only the beginning. At a museum, this debate takes on a funny flavor, because museums are dedicated to objects, which are seen as straightforward facts.”
With this knowledge in mind, and using grants from the Spencer Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Handler got to work. During the next three years, he, Gable, and later Anna Lawson, a PhD in anthropology from class of 1995, conducted hundreds of interviews with Colonial Williamsburg staff; examined archival documents and in-house newspapers, and toured the buildings over and over again. Gable even enrolled in a docent-training course.Handler said, “We studied how a large corporation tells history to a large audience. At places like Colonial Williamsburg, there is a complicated hierarchy of historians, managers, trainers and front-line people. We were interested in exploring not just the story they were teaching but how that story changed as it worked its way through this complicated organization.”
Their exploration yielded interesting results. First of all, they recognized a palpable awareness of the tension between education and entertainment, as Colonial Williamsburg employees repeatedly emphasized that “this is not some historical Disneyland; it’s a serious place.” They also confirmed their initial suspicions that integrating candid discussion of slavery into a celebratory context was a delicate and difficult task.
Specifically, Handler noted the challenges facing African-American employees at Colonial Williamsburg. He said, “For African-Americans who work at these sites, it’s a really tough dilemma. On one hand, they want to talk about the oppression of the system, but they also want to portray their ancestors as strong survivors. And they have to deal with the psychological challenges of dressing up as slaves.”
For the most part, Handler’s research remained focused on Colonial Williamsburg employees, as visitors turned out to be challenging sources of information. He said, “Visitors are really hard to study. It’s very hard to get good answers from them. If you ask them why they’re there, they say it’s because they love history; if you ask them how they define history, they’ll tell you ‘telling the story of our nation’s past.’ It’s difficult to get beyond that. If you’re interviewing insiders, you have a lot of specifics to talk about; with visitors, it’s a lot harder.”
Overall, Handler’s investigation of Colonial Williamsburg illuminated the challenges of merging education and entertainment, fact and revision, celebration and candor. In addition to several scholarly articles, Handler and Gable used their research to write “The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg.” Since its publication in 1997, the book has secured its position in a unique genre — that of the museum ethnography.
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when our topic will be University of Virginia psychologist Amori Yee Mikami, her research of ADHD, and how intervening factors have made this disorder more complex and detrimental for young females.
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