The Politics of American Studies

The Politics of American Studies Author(s): Allen F. Davis Source: American Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Sep., 1990), pp. 353-374 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2712939 . Accessed: 05/12/2013 05:34
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The Politics of American Studies

ALLEN F. DAVIS Temple University

IN APRIL

1975

AT THE BICENTENNIAL WORLD REGIONAL CONFERENCE

held in Salzburg, Austria an incident happenedthat startledall those present and underscored the political nature of American Studies. Scholarshad gatheredfrommost European countries,the United States, and Israel to discuss the impact of the United States and Europe on each other. The meetings were held at the Schloss Leopoldskron, an rococo palace, home of the SalzburgSemelegant eighteeenth-century inar, but perhapsmore famous for its role in the movie version of The Sound of Music. After the opening banquet, Gordon Wood of Brown University was in the middle of reading a carefully crafted paper on republicanismand the American place in the world, when Andrew Sinclairof GreatBritainrose noisily fromhis chairto denounceWood's "sad andterriblewords" and to attackthe Americanpresence in Southeast Asia and in Europe. Then he stomped out of the hall. After a few moments of embarrassedand stunned silence, Wood finished his address. Sinclair's outburst(for which he apologized the next day) was related to the particularworld situationin 1975 that found the United States at perhaps its lowest reputationat any point in the twentieth century, even among American Studies scholars.' At anotherconference in Washingtonthe next year, EqbalAhmadof Pakistandenounced HenryKissinger as a war criminalwho ought to be tried for his crimes
Allen F. Davis is a Professor of History at Temple University. This article is his PresidentialAddress to the Annual Meeting of the ASA, Toronto, October 1989.
American Quarterly,Vol. 42, No. 3 (September 1990) X 1990 American Studies Association 353

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(to the discomfortof the State department officials who were present) .2 At the Salzburg Conference, which was jointly sponsored by the BicentennialCommitteefor International Conferencesof Americanists (BCICA), an American Studies committee, the United States Information Agency (USIA), and the Bureau of Educationaland Cultural Affairs of the State Department(but paid for largely by grants from the latter two agencies), there was a considerable debate about the relationship between American Studies scholarship and American money and power. Some American scholars in previous years had refused to take USIA money to travel abroad, and many young European scholars were nervous about selling out to American cultural imperialism. Dennis Donoghue, now at New York University, then the President of the Irish American Studies Association, later wrote about the SalzburgConference and the natureof American Studies.
You think you are talking about an Americannovel, but before you are well begun you find yourself reflecting on the exercise of power in the world. That doesn't happen when you talk about Ulysses. It is absurdto suggest that scholars should turn away from their academic interests lest they find themselves corruptedby American hospitality. But the relation between scholarshipand money and power is an issue in American Studies where it is not an issue in, say Irish Studies, a pursuitin which worldly temptations are few.3

The relationshipbetween politics, power, and American Studies is an issue dealt with every day by those who teach about the United States in anothercountry.It is sometimes not as obvious for those who teach American Studies in the United States, but the relationshipis always there and ought to be explicit. We are all influenced by our own times andby the politics of our generation; often we arechallenged events our control. American Studies as a field has been by beyond especially influencedby events and movements, because it takes as its main task the making sense of the Americanexperience, and because it has a special place and meaning outside the United States. American Studies is rooted in the 1920s and 1930s, but developed its first real growth in a climate of nationalismand patriotismduring World War II and the immediate post-war era.4 The war not only stimulated the study of and the defense of American values, it also altered the careers and forever influenced the world view of the academic generationthat lived throughthe conflict. Some professors and

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graduatestudents served in the Armed Forces; a few were recruited by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Norman Holmes Pearson, who later became chair of the American Studies departmentat Yale and president of the American Studies Association, was not only in OSS (the forerunnerof the CentralIntelligence Agency), but he was also the head of X-2, the counterintelligencebranchof OSS in London. His experience made him a believer in an internationalapproachto American Studies, but he also became a subject of some suspicion among younger scholars when the CIA fell out of fashion.5 Other scholarsstayed at home duringthe war and taughtin a growing number of interdisciplinary programs.Jay Hubbellof Duke Universityprofited from the war in a more direct way. The United States Armed Forces Institute (USAFI) selected his book American Life in Literature for use in the Armed Services, and in one year he sold 50,000 copies to the government.6 American Studies scholars in Europe also profited in many ways from the cold war mentality, as Dennis Donoghue has pointed out. There were many landmarksin the development of American Studies in Europe, all of them related to American hospitality and influence: the founding of the AmerikaInstituutat the University of Amsterdam in 1946, the SalzburgSeminar,begun the next year; the establishment of a chair at the University of Oslo in 1948, the University of Uppsala in the same year; and the founding of the EuropeanAmerican Studies Association in 1954.7 It was not only in Europe,however, thatthe developmentof American Studies was influenced by the cold war climate. Beginning in 1949, the CarnegieCorporation made large grantsto supportthe development of AmericanStudies programsin a half dozen colleges and universities including Brown, Amherst, Minnesota, and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1950 the Coe Foundationgave a half-million dollar grant to Yale to supportAmericanStudies. CharlesSeymour, the Yale president, explained that the "best safeguardagainst totalitariandevelopments in our society is an understanding of our own culturalheritage and an affirmativebelief in the validity of our institutionsof freedom, enterpriseand individualliberty."8A numberof scholarsworriedabout this uncriticalpatriotism andnationalism.MarvinWachman,of Colgate University, writing in 1958, suggested that "teachers of American Studies need not be provincial in their interests and learning, nor

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chauvinisticin theirAmericanism."He did admitthattherewere many who were both.9 Both the AmericanStudies Association and the AmericanQuarterly which preceded it were organized in a climate of patriotismand consensus. Originatedby TremaineMcDowell at the University of Minnesota in 1949, and edited by William Van O'Connorfor the first two years, the journalwas rescued from financialfailurein 1951 by Robert Spiller and the University of Pennsylvania. There are two theories about the origin of the American Studies Association. Robert Spiller always said that it emerged out of The Society of American Studies, a small group founded after World War II at the FranklinInn Club in Philadelphia.CarlBode maintainsthatit grew froma series of luncheon meetings at the SupremeCourtCafeteriain Washington.Both theories are probablycorrect. The AmericanStudies Association was a product of the post-warclimate thatfosteredthe study of Americancultureand encouragedthe formationof professional organizations,journals, and conferences.More significantthanthe conflictingmythsaboutthe place of origin were the different philosophies about the academic mission of the Association. Bode and a few othersbelieved that it should reach beyond the university to all of those interestedin studying American culture; while Spiller, the consummate academic entrepreneur,envisioned the Association as a thoroughlyprofessional and scholarly organization, a way to win power and prestige within the academy. The actual organizationalmeeting was held at the Library of Congress, March 22, 1951, a meeting place that Bode found importantnot only "because this was our nationallibrary,but also because it symbolized the fact that the society was not to be a professors' club but something wider."10 In the end it was Spiller's professional philosophy that prevailed, especially after he obtained a grant for the Association in 1954 from the CarnegieCorporation "to strengthen its workin advancingprograms in American Civilization in colleges and universities." But the two philosophies have always created a tension in American Studies. The need to be thoroughlyprofessionaloften has led to an unfortunate quest for a single AmericanStudiesmethod, for a particular AmericanStudies mission or theory that would set those trainedin the field apartfrom others who tried to interpretAmericanculture. Yet for all the attempts to professionalizethere have been other efforts to reach out to a wider audience. The early issues of the American Quarterlycontain essays

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by Lionel Trilling, Peter Viereck, Max Lerner,MargaretMead, David Reisman, and others, often without footnotes. Significantlythe Quarterly's first issue was devoted to the international dimension of American Studies. In 1961 when Congress established the Peace Corps, many AmericanStudies scholarshelped teach Peace Corpsvolunteers: an American Studies course was an importantpart of the training whetherthe volunteerswere lab technicians,geologists, or mathteachers. The failures and the "stresses and strains of American society" were discussed as well as the more positive aspects. I don't know of any attemptto evaluate the effectiveness of AmericanStudies in Peace Corpstraining,but it is anotherindicationof the willingness of American Studies scholars to reach out beyond the university when they have the opportunity." Surprisinglythose who sought to make American Studies a professional field did not promote a national convention. The American StudiesAssociation was modeled in parton the Association of College Teachers of English, and was a federation of regional chapters. The Association did encourage regional meetings and sponsored sessions at both the ModernLanguageAssociation and the AmericanHistorical Association annualmeetings, but more sessions were held at the MLA. In 1957 Merle Curti worried that there were not enough historians involved in American Studies; another historian remarkedthat "unfortunatelyAmerican belle-letters is too slender a reed to supportthe weight of Americancivilization."1 One-dayregional conferences and sessions at othernationalmeetings did not satisfy everyone, especially duringthe next organizingwave of the late 1960s. It is understandable, given the long-standingoppositionof the nationaloffice to conventions, that the impetus came not from Philadelphia,but from the Mid-Continent chapter,one of the strongestof the regional groups. The first convention was held in Kansas City in the fall of 1967. That was the year of urbanriots in Newark and Detroit. There were nearly one-half million Americantroops in Vietnam, and some of the idealism of the early sixties had given way to bitteranti-warand antidraft demonstrations. Yet there was still affluence in the academic world;jobs were plentifulandtherewas a mood of expansion. Looking back, it now seems obvious that the period from 1963 to about 1969 was an aberration,a small window of opportunitythat closed quickly, but at the time that brief period of optimism seemed like the model for the future. The National Defense EducationAct provided such an

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abundanceof fellowships that many of us worried we were sending graduatestudents out for their first jobs with no teaching experience. There was a flurryof academic organizingin the sixties. The National Endowment for the Humanities was authorized in 1965 and began giving grants in 1966. The Oral History Association was founded in 1967. The American Folklore Society began meeting on its own the same year. RichardDorson, writing in 1967, summed up the feelings of many when he wrote: "The academic prospects for folklore and folkloristshave reachedtheirhighest point ever in The United States." Substitutealmost any field, and the sentiments would have been the same. The WesternLiterature Association, founded in 1965, began its own journal in 1967. The Journal of Social History began the same year, and the Journal of Popular Cultureand the Journal of Interdisciplinary History the next. The Popular Culture Association was foundedin 1969 duringthe second AmericanStudies Convention.The first two American Studies national conventions were held at a time of academic optimism. They were part of the trend of expansion and definition of fields in the humanitiesand the social sciences.'3 Affluence and organizationwere not the only characteristicsof academiathat definedthe 1960s. The people who were young instructors or graduate students during those years do not often remember the prosperity;ratherthey recall their frustration with the university, even their rebellion against the university. I was teaching at the University of Missouri during those years. I recall a huge meeting one Sunday afternoon about 1965 when the vice president of the university announced to the crowd: "You talk about studentrights;let me tell you, students have no rights." Within a very short time, however, most universityadministrators threwup theirhandsin despairandabandoned the concept of in loco parentis. Students freed from dress codes and dormitoryrules began to rebel in other ways. Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and by news that filtered in from Berkeley and Columbia and Wisconsin, they began alternative newspapers, conducted sit-ins, teach-ins, and protest marches. Some faculty began to dress like students,even to act like students;otherscontinuedtheir old ways and became, in some cases, bitter and alienated. Some of us learned how to say "fuck" in the classroom (and you have no idea how difficult that was), and even more importantwe learned to use the first person and occasionally to reveal our own doubts and despair to our students.We became in many ways the studentsof our students,

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and we were often embarrassedand confused because the rules were changing all aroundus.'4 The intellectual turmoil, the Civil Rights Movement, and the antiwar protestsinfluencedAmericanStudies, but so did the attackon the university. Some studentseven wondered why they were in graduate school. Writingin 1971 while a graduatestudentat Yale, Gene Leach capturedsome of the frustrationof that period.
Standingat the window-slits in the upperstacks of Yale's SterlingMemorial Library,AmericanStudies graduatestudentscan see beyond the New Haven ghetto that begins only two blocks away. In fact, they are encouragedto see beyond the ghetto, but not so far as Vietnam, or the un-Yale-like places where, if they are fortunate,they will end up working when they get their degrees. The American Studies programinvites them instead to gaze at an academicmiddle landscapewhere the word "problems"refersto intellectual conundrums.... Graduatestudentslearn unspokenrules of decorumabout where to look and when to look away. They are urged to pour over the catalogue listings of course offerings, but not the sections about how the programis run.... Graduate study, AmericanStudiesincluded, is dominated by the same ethic of competition, the same technicalizationand professionalization of moral issues, the same drive to specialize, and rationalize, the same zeal for efficiency and smooth procedure, the same essentially man15 agerialoutlook thatprevailsin big business, foundations,and government.

Leach and some of his fellow American Studies graduatestudents at Yale began their own alternativecourse on contemporaryAmerica and ran it without faculty guidance. They didn't transformYale, but they did change themselves. Some droppedout of the university, but others persisted. Even before Leach and his fellow studentsbegan attackingthe stodginess of Yale, studentsand teachersin otherplaces were tryingto make connections between their study of American culture and what they saw going on in American society. As early as the spring of 1966, at a joint meeting of the Michigan and Ohio-Indianachapters of the AmericanStudies Association (ASA), held at Wayne State University, a group of scholarsfrom a variety of fields met to discuss the "Protest Movements of Our Time." RobertSklarfrom the University of Michigan, who had received his Ph.D. from Harvardthe year before, gave a lecture entitled "American Studies as a Form of Dissent." There were artexhibits, films, poems, and a real sense thatAmericanStudies could learn from the New Left, the-studentmovement, and the Civil Rights Movement. Betty Chmajof Wayne State, who had received the

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firstPh.D. in AmericanStudiesgrantedby the Universityof Michigan, edited some of the papers from the conference and produceda mimeographed booklet called "The Protest Papers." It was probablythe publicationsin AmericanStudfirstof manymimeographed,alternative ies which owed something to The WholeEarth Catalogue, and more to the alternativepress of the counter culture.'6 Some of those from Michigan, including Chmaj and Sklar, played a role in the formationof the Radical Caucus of the ASA. It all began in Toledo at the second ASA national convention in the fall of 1969. I was not there but have tried to recreate what happened at the convention by consulting the surviving documents and by talking to a numberof people who were in attendance.The world had changed in the two years since the first ASA convention in 1967. MartinLuther King andRobertKennedyhadbeen assassinatedin 1968, andAmerican cities exploded in riot. The war in Vietnam had become so divisive that even the editor-in-chiefof Time Inc. announcedthat for the first time in our lives the countryhad lost a workingconsensus "as to what we think America means." The country watched in 1968 as Chicago police beat up young protestors, and even a staid and conservative organizationlike the AmericanHistoricalAssociation voted to protest Mayor Daley's action by moving their convention from Chicago to New York. 1969 was the year of Woodstock and the time when the were organized.The NationalGuard left splinteredandthe Weathermen occupied the campus of the University of Wisconsin, and bombs exat Columbia.'7 ploded in the ROTC headquarters norbomb The radicalswithinAmericanStudieswere not Weathermen throwers;they merely wanted to transfersome of the movement for freedom and equality they witnessed all aroundthem to their teaching and learning. Some of those who were at Toledo would take part two Washingtonhad ever seenweeks later in the biggest demonstration the Vietnam moratorium rally. A few denouncedthe United States as a "repressive,dehumanizing,technocratic,imperialisticsociety," but otherswere not sure, and many were simply curious. The radicalswere led by Sklar,Chmaj,andBob Merideth,a young professorfrom Miami University in Ohio; Nancy Bannister and Bob Scarola, graduatestudents first at Indiana University then at Case-WesternReserve, also played importantroles. The group gathered in the French Room on the thirdfloor of the CommodorePerryHotel where a sign announced

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"New University Conference," but by the meeting's end the group was calling themselves "The Radical Caucus." ArthurDudden, the Executive Secretary of ASA, remembersthat there were really two conventionsgoing on in Toledo, the regularconventionandthe informal one run by the radicalcaucus. He also remembersCarl Bode, the first president of ASA, moving quietly back and forth between the two groupsin his suedejacket tryingto preventa permanentsplit. Everyone recalls excitement, commitment, occasional anger, and groups sitting on the floor engaged in intense conversation.18 The ASA Council, meeting duringthe convention, invited two membersof the RadicalCaucusto speakto them. Bob MeridethandMichael Rockland of Douglass College appearedat the Council meeting and made a series of demands, with Meridethas the spokesman.American Quarterly, he argued, should be transformedinto "a vital vanguard journal";graduatestudents should be added immmediatelyto the editorialboardandto the council;andthe ASA shouldprovidefellowships for black scholarswho would spendbrief periodson several campuses, fellowships for graduatestudentswho would move from one university to another,and supportfor ThirdWorld scholarscritical of the United States. He also urged that ASA hold a plenary session to vote support for the Vietnam moratorium.Despite the tone and arroganceof Merideth's demands, the Council (chaired by Vice President Walkerbecause Daniel Boorstinhad given his presidentialaddressand left town) took the Radical Caucus seriously. The ASA Council rejectedthe resolutionon the Vietnammoratorium and dismissed the call for travelingfellowships, but the next year voted to help subsidize the Radical Caucuspublication, Connections, and to expand the council to include one student and one member of the Radical Caucus. There was a storm of protest from the membership. "Giving the Radical Caucus an automatic seat (because of the force
of its protests . . .) is especially outrageous," one scholar wrote. "I

must confess that I find the logic behind this decision to subsidize the publication of a journal of a specific ideological persuasion to be incomprehensible,"anotherannounced. Several people resigned from ASA in protest, including Daniel Boorstin.'9 The officers of the association, who themselves felt some ambivalence about their actions, had a difficult time explaining the special dynamics of the situationto those who were not present. In the end,

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however, the sympathetic hearing extended to the Radical Caucus preventedthe division thatoccurredin otherprofessionalorganizations. At the AmericanHistoricalAssociation conventionin 1969, Staughton LyndandEugeneGenovese engagedin a shoutingmatchat the business meeting and wrestled for control of the microphone as they vied for the radicals.Ultimately, all the radicalproposals the chanceto represent lost. The Radical Caucus of the Modem Language Association had more success; they actuallyelected a vice presidentand passed a series into two camps.20 of resolutions,butin the process split the organization The word "radical," in the context of 1969, troubledmany people in the American Studies Association. When Gene Leach was elected as the representativeof the Radical Caucus to the Council, however, he proved to be reasonable,mature,and anythingbut a bomb thrower, and the issue subsided. Leach and Lois Rudnick, the other graduate of studentsand their concerns studentelected, took the representation as their primarymission. They were so effective that they prepared the way for a great many other students elected to the council, and today it is assumed that students should play a role in all Council decisions. The Radical Caucus renamed itself in 1971, "The Communityof ScholarsConcernedAbout America" (a typical sixties title), but to most people they remainedthe Radical Caucus. It was a shifting group, but Lawrence Chisolm of SUNY, Buffalo, Gene Wise, CaseWesternReserve, and Alice Kessler-Harrisof Hofstra, in addition to the others, played key roles. Over the next years, they had a large impact on the field of American Studies on their own campuses and nationallythroughtheirjournals,ConnectionsandConnectionsII. They raised issues about teaching and learningand about the politics of the association. The Radical Caucus challenged the way things had been done in the American Studies Association. They ran candidatesfor presidentand vice presidentin 1971, 1973, and 1975, and managed to elect two of their members vice president. They altered the way presidents were selected, insisting on the nominationof at least two candidatesand a in the pastone nomineehadbeen selected vote of the entiremembership: by a small group of insiders, then elected by the council.2' The issue of the role of women in the Association was more controversialthan that of electing radicalsand studentsto the Council. In 1969 Betty Chmajwas the only woman on a council of twenty-seven.

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This reflectednot only the attitudeof the nationaloffice in Philadelphia and the status of women in universities, but also the practice of the regional chaptersin every part of the country, for in 1969 most of the council members were elected by the chapters. Chmaj almost singlehandedlyforced ASA to face the "woman question." It was not easy. Many of the men who called themselves radicaldid not think the issue of discriminationagainst women in the Association was a concern of high priority, and the ASA, like all professional associations of this period, had its share of male chauvinists and womanizers. One could say of Radical American Studies what Rayna Rapp said of her male colleagues at the University of Michigan: "They had all this empathy for the Vietnamese, and for black Americans, but they didn't have much empathyfor the women in their lives; not the women they slept with, not the women they shared office space with, not the women they fought at demonstrations with."22Still, enough people (both male and female) followed Chmaj's lead so that the Executive Council of the ASA meetingin Washingtonin December 1969 passed a resolution: "that the American Studies Association formally states its opposition to discriminationagainst women in admissions, grants, awarding of degrees, faculty employment, salary and conditions of employment andconsideration for promotion,andthatit undertake to receive, solicit and publicize informationrelating to specific instances of such discrimination."In 1971, RobertWalker,as president,appointeda Committee on the Statusof Women, which was chairedby Chmaj, and the Councilvoted to help subsidizea book, AmericanWomen andAmerican Studies, which she edited. The next year the Council approveda series of resolutions on the status of women, based in part on those passed by the Modern Language Association, but more comprehensivethan those of most organizationsat thattime. Indeed, the ASA's resolutions on women became the model for many otheracademicorganizations.23 Passing resolutions was one thing, but making real changes was somethingelse again. The programcommitteefor the 1971 convention contained no women, the editorial board approvedfor the American Quarterlyin 1972 containedno women, and a conferenceon American When Studiesheld in Floridathe same year had no women participants. I became Executive Secretaryin 1972, I conducted a special election to select three temporarywomen representativesto the Council as an interimmeasureuntilwomen could be elected throughregularchannels.

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Severalmembersof the associationresignedin protest,chargingreverse discrimination.Eventuallywomen took their place on committees and on the Council, but just as significant, the study of women became an important influenceon AmericanStudiesas a field. To look at American culture throughthe eyes of women was to question and revise many aspects of the American characterand the American consensus. Black studies was anothermatter.There were very few Afro-American members of ASA, although John Hope Franklin, the leading historianof the Americanblack experience, had been presidentof the Association in 1967. Some of the Radical Caucus agenda includedthe need for a black perspective, and several Afro-Americanscholars had appeared on regional programs;but there were no Afro-Americans among the small group that gatheredat Toledo to talk into the night abouttransforming Americansociety andorganizinga radicalAmerican Studies community.The minutesof the 1969 Council meeting mention a discussion of "the potential relationshipbetween American Studies and black studies," but the implicationwas that AmericanStudies had something to teach black scholars. In 1969, however, when feelings of black power and black separatismwere very prevalent, few black scholars wanted to be instructed. The 1971 program did have one session on black studies with Letitia Brown and Mary Berry participating. For all the rhetoric of cooperation and the efforts of Arthur Dudden, Robert Corrigan, and others to reach out to black scholars, the Association of Negro Life and History met in the same cities and at the same time as ASA in 1971 and 1973 with little cooperation between the two groups.24 The 1971 convention, held in Washington, was the first American Studies convention sponsored by the American Studies Association and planned from the national office (the 1967 and 1969 conventions had been run by regional chapters).With Robert Sklar (who had been elected vice presidentof ASA) as programchair, the conferencebroke new ground with sessions on black studies, women's studies, ethnic studies, popular culture, museums, and comparative studies. There was also a panel discussion on "AmericanValues and the Indo-China War"that included HowardZinn and RobertJay Lifton. Lewis Mumford was one of several participantsfrom outside the university. The of 1971 convention was a key event in broadeningthe interpretation American Studies. It was also the first convention where ASA ran a

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job placement service and an insured day care center. The Executive Secretary Arthur Dudden, a full-time Professor of History of Bryn Mawrwho ranthe ASA office on a part-timebasis, had to learnquickly how to deal with the complex task of managinga nationalconvention. The National American Studies Faculty (NASF) was also organized in 1971. The NASF, modeled after the National HumanitiesFaculty, was the brainchildof Robert Walkerand was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. John Hague of Stetson University was appointed director. The idea of the faculty was to organizethe membershipof ASA into teams of unpaidconsultants"in ways which would enable a betterunderstanding of the Americanpast to illuminatethe needs and opportunitiesof the present." Consultants workedwith high schools andcommunityandfour-yearcolleges, sponsored conferences, and ran institutesto encouragecooperationamong institutions. Most importantof all, they tried to relate the world of scholarshipto the community. Some of the National Faculty projects were traditional(helping colleges restructure their curriculum,for example), but many were innovative and unusual. National Faculty volunteers consulted with DARE, Inc., an alternative school for boys expelled from the public schools in Boston, worked with an inner city neighborhoodin Denver, and sponsored a four-week institute in Columbia, South Carolinadesigned to help high school teachers incorporate Afro-American,Native American, Chicano, and Women's literatureinto the high school curriculum.The National Faculty worked with Bethune-CookmanCollege in Florida and Rust College in Mississippi, where a teamof scholarsmet with a varietyof facultymembers to demonstratehow black literatureand culturecould be incorporated into a number of courses. Not all projects were successful, but the concept of reaching out from the university to the community was important.In the end, those who servedas consultantsprobablylearned more than those they tried to teach, and a few had their lives and careerstransformed. One-ofthe most innovativeof the NationalFaculty projectswas the museumprogram,which enabledtwo teams of American Studies experts to work with communitymuseums in small cities in various parts of the country. They helped redesign exhibitions to interpretthe story of local communities in the context of American culture. Joanna Zangrando, a member of one of the teams, recalls presentinga plan to the Lion's Club in Lima, Ohio in a room where

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she was the only woman present. She remembersworking with Mennonite women in a Kansastown on a quilt exhibit. She also remembers the long, lonely trips from one small city to another.25 One of the most valuable things that John Hague did as directorof NASF was to reach out to the young dissident scholars in the Radical Caucus. He used them as consultants, invited them to conferences, and in many ways provided the forum for a dialogue between those or established who called themselvesradicalsandthose moretraditional (over time the lines between the groupsbecame very difficultto draw). It was this dialogue thathelped revitalizeAmericanStudies in the early 1970s and preventedthe divisions and despairthatinfested many other place academic groups duringthese years. Perhapsthe most important where such dialogue took place was the KirklandCollege conference of August 1972. The KirklandSummerInstitutehas alreadyenteredAmericanStudies folklore. There are stories of all-nightbridge games, of skinny dipping in the reservoir,of intense workshopsand long discussions aboutteaching and learningand social relevance, and of utopiandreamsabout an American Studies Center and a radical American Studies community. The KirklandInstitutebegan as a dream of Nancy Bannisterand Bob Scarola and a few others in the Radical Caucus;a dreamrelatedto the counter-culture impulse to form a community and to get to the heart of the matterby getting away from it all. John Hague, as the director of the American Studies Faculty, made the dream a reality by finding the money to help subsidize the venture, and Doris Friedensohnfound the place.26Doris was teaching at KirklandCollege, a small liberal arts institutionin Clinton, New York, in 1971 when the presidentof the college handed her the issue of Connections that included Gene Leach's essay on Yale. Fascinatedby what she read, she invited the Instituteto Kirkland.27 The advertisementsfor the Instituteannouncedfour days of "problem-stating, problem-solving workshops." Thirty-nine people attended. They came from many different parts of the country, from diverse backgrounds, and they representedalmost as many political positions. Ranging in age from the early twenties to perhaps sixty, they came for differentreasons, some sent by their universities, others on a more personal quest. Some wanted to restructurethe university and change society. "Wouldn't it be great," one person wrote, "if

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American Studies could or would become a 'truly subversive' experience for its students,unfittingthem for careersratherthandisciplining them toward careers." "Wouldn't it be great," another wrote, "if American Studies could cut through the problems of student-teacher roles and create a sense of learningratherthan teaching." Workshops wereorganizedaroundsuchproblemsas "Contract TeachingandLearning," "Student Centered Culture Studies," and "American Studies Beyond the University."28 I had just become the Executive Secretaryof the American Studies Association, and several people suggested that it might be useful if I attended:perhapsI could bridge the gulf between the Radical Caucus and the national office, and at the same time perhapsI could find out what the Radical Caucus was all about. I went expecting to be an observer,but I was quickly told that there would be no observers, that I had to be a participant.29 The discussions were often intense and sometimes personal;occasionally they resembled group therapy.Nancy Bannisterhad written, in one of her early calls for action, that American Studies should "provide people with the opportunityto learn about the process of solving personal and social problems," and Bob Merideth often switched from talking about culture studies to arguingthe importance of Gestalt Therapy.The search was personal as well as political. Yet the diverse mixtureof people gatheredat Kirklandbecame a groupnot all agreeing, some being turnedoff by the talkof personalproblems, othersrejectingtheoriesborrowedfromThomasKuhn, KennethBurke, and HerbertMarcuse-that came away after four days with a greater respect for the quest that everyone shared, on one level or another,of finding a way to make American Studies work in the classroom and in a world that seemed in 1972 to have gone mad. By 1972 the time of academic expansion was over, and the New YorkTimeswas writing of a "Ph.D. glut." The young people at Kirklandandeverywherewonderedif they would ever get a tenuredposition in a university. At the same time some debated whether they wanted to teach in a university (which seemed part of a corruptculture) even if they could. Muchof the talkat Kirkland,in retrospect,seems utopian, idealistic, and impractical. One group, for example, dreamed of establishingan AmericanStudiesCenterthatwould publishbooks, create broadcastsand films, train teachers, consult with museums, conduct

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workshops, and help influence policy on the national level. The center was never organized and after a few years the National AmericanStudies Facultylost its funding and disappeared.The 1970s proved a time of crisis for many who had taken part in the Radical Caucus. One committed suicide, one went insane, two left the university and joined the Farm in Tennessee, the largest of the nation's communes. OthersdesertedAmericanStudiesfor otherfields, but some remainedcommittedscholarsandteachersin a world thathad changed, often struggling in universities and colleges where budget crises precluded even dreamingof transformingthe university and the world. Yet the Radical Caucus and Kirklandhad their impact. The dream of the KirklandInstituteto alterthe natureof the 1973 ASA convention to be held in San Francisco did come true; some of the spirit and informalityof Kirklandwas broughtto that conference. A committee headed by David Whisnantand Nancy Bannisterorganizedmore than twenty workshops on topics as diverse as "Film and Video," Indian Studies, "ContractTeaching," "The Uses of Autobiography," and "Ecology and EnvironmentalStudies." The workshop format, which contrasted with the more formal and traditionalsessions, helped to twenty-eightpercent Further, transform the SanFranciscoconvention.30 of the participantswere women. This compared with fifteen percent on the 1971 program. To put it in perspective, the AHA meeting in San Franciscojust two months,later had only six percent women participants.3' Something else happened at San Francisco. With Alice Kessler-Harris, CarolSmith-Rosenberg,WarrenSusmanand otherson a program committee chaired by James Stone, cultural history, the study of material culture and social history-with its emphasis on gender, ethnicity, race and class-became dominantin the association and displacedthe emphasison Americanexceptionalismand an American consensus. As one looks at American Studies today it is difficult to single out the thread of influence that started with the Radical Caucus and the KirklandInstitute. One theme that does run throughmuch of the literature(always mimeographed)is a concern for teaching and a search for new methods and ways to engage students in a changing world. Books such as Teachingas a SubversiveActivity,Deschooling Society, andGrowingUpAbsurdarefrequentlymentioned.In additionto skinny dipping, Kirklandwas a place for swappingsyllabi and discussing non-

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traditionallearning. Another theme that runs throughthe literatureof the RadicalCaucus is the connectionof the personalwith teaching and learning. Connections (the Radical Caucus publication) is filled with letters, personal statementsand taped interviews: the use of the first person became accepted on many levels in the sixties, from the New Journalism (pioneeredby Tom Wolfe with his Yale Ph.D. in American Studies), to more informal testimonials and autobiographicalaccounts.32Many people were fascinated with the tape recorder,which next to the mimeograph machine, symbolized much of the counter cultureactivity of the sixties and seventies. None were more intrigued with the tape recorderthanJay Mechling, RobertMerideth,and David Wilson who all taught in the American Studies Departmentat California-Davis. Mechling, who had studiedat StetsonunderJohnHague, converted to another kind of American Studies at the University of Pennsylvaniawhere he had just finished his Ph.D. when he attended the KirklandInstitute.Over a period of months in 1974-75 these three talked into a tape recorderabout their lives, loves, frustrations,and also about their researchin culture studies. They edited the result into a book called Morning Work:a Trialogue that sums up much of the hope, optimism, naivete, and self satisfactionof the Radical Caucus.33 Therearemany important legacies fromthe RadicalCaucus. Perhaps the most importantwas the democratizationof the American Studies Association; but also significantwas the challenge to make the study of Americanculturemore diverse and inclusive and the insistence that the personal and the political be connected to the process of teaching and learning. Yet the attemptof a few radical scholars, most notably RobertMeridethandGene Wise, to devise a theoryof AmericanStudies largely failed. Just as the searchfor one AmericanStudies method and the attemptto define the American characterhad failed in the 1950s, so the search for one theory did not succeed in reorientingthe field in the 1970s. On one level at least, the search for a single theory was an attemptto make the field legitimate, and it ignored many who were not truebelievers, who had not had the properconversionexperience.34 As I look at the programsfor recent American Studies conventions and as I read, or attemptto read, many of the currentbooks and articles in the field, I am dismayedto discoverthata greatmany young scholars (and some not so young) are once again seeking the one true approach. Mane seems seduced be deconstructionism,the new historicism, or

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literarytheory.3 We all need theories by anotherversionof post-modern to approach our work, and debating theoretical approaches can be intellectually stimulating, but our main task should not be to write about theory, but to write a narrative,to tell a story, and to explain Americancultureto as wide an audience as possible. Too often those converted to theory drop names, invent words or write in convoluted sentences, making their articlesunintelligibleto all but a few insiders. It is not just those studying literarytexts who fall prey to excessive specializationand unreadablelanguage. It was importantin the early seventies to write about the diversity of American culture-to study race, gender, class, and ethnicity-but now some of the work in social historyhas become so narrow,so focused on small topics, and in some cases so technical and statistical, that it also has lost its audience. In a time when some proclaimthe "Closing of the AmericanMind," or the "End of History," we cannot allow Fukiyamaand Bloom to be the only ones who explain Americanculture, or the place of the United States in the world. As American Studies scholars we have a responsibility to write text books, help constructmuseum exhibits, produce films, define new methodsof teaching, as well as to do careful, original research. We also have a responsibility and an opportunityto write readable prose, to define "the governing narrative,"and to help all Americans make sense of their world at the end of the twentieth This does not mean finding a new unity, a new consensus. century.36 In telling the story of the American people, we must describe the diversity,the conflict, the racism, andthe despair.As AmericanStudies we have an opportunityto look at the becomes more internationalized, Americanexperiencefromoutsideas well as fromwithin. We especially need to addressthe problem of the meaning of American culture in a post-cold-war world. It will not be an easy task, but we should not hide behind our little studies, our careful deconstructionof texts, our over concern with footnotes, and our preoccupationwith charts and graphs. As the last forty years has demonstrated,we cannot avoid politics, but we should be receptive to many approachesand theories. We can build on the early heritage of American Studies, and on the best of the RadicalCaucusand the NationalAmericanStudies Faculty. By interpretingAmerican culture for a wide audience, we can have an influence. We can make a difference.

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NOTES
A version of this paper was presentedas the PresidentialAddress at the American Studies Association's annualmeeting, 2 November 1989. I want to thankthe following people for sharingtheir memories, and in some cases their files, with me and for commentingon an early draftof this essay: Betty Chmaj, Arthur P. Dudden, Doris Friedensohn,JohnHague, Alice Kessler-Harris, Gene Leach, Jay Mechling, RobertSklar,RobertH. Walker,and JoannaZangrando.Many of these people disagree about what happenedand its meaning, and most reject at least a part of my interpretation. This is not intended to be a complete history of the American Studies movement, but only some personal observations on various aspects of the recent past. 1. Dennis Donoghue, "ThoughtsAfter Salzburg,"TimesLiterarySupplement (June 1975), 658; Dennis Donoghue, Reading America: Essays on American Literature (Berkeley, 1987), 3. My memory of the incident differs slightly from Donoghue's, in the language used by Sinclair. particularly 2. Conference on "The United States in the World," held at the Smithsonian Institution,Sept. 1975. Ahmad's paper used Americanrevisionist scholarshipto denounce American foreign policy. See Eqbal Ahmad, "Political Culture and Foreign Policy: Notes on AmericanInterventionsin the ThirdWorld,"in Allen F. Davis, ed., For Better or Worse:TheAmericanInfluencein the World(Westport,1981), 119-44. 3. Donoghue, Reading America, 4. BCICA stood for Bicentennial Committee for InternationalConferences of Americanists and was chaired by Robin W. Winks of Yale University. In addition to the meeting in Salzburg, Austria, the committee organizedmeetingsin Fujinomiya,Japan;Shiraz,Iran;San Antonio, Texas;andAbidjan, Ivory Coast. See Robin W. Winks, "The Study of America Abroad on the Occasion of the Bicentennial," in Robin W. Winks, ed., Other Voices, Other Views:An International Collection of Essays From the Bicentennial (Westport,Conn., 1978), 3-15. 4. Philip Gleason, "World War II and the Development of American Studies," American Quarterly36 (Bibliography 1984): 343-58. 5. Robin W. Winks, Cloakand Gown:Scholars in the Secret War,1939-1961 (New York, 1987), 247-321. 6. Kermit Vanderbilt,AmericanLiteratureand The Academy: The Roots, Growth and Maturityof a Profession (Philadelphia, 1986), 460-98. 7. RobertH. Walker,AmericanStudiesAbroad (Westport,Conn., 1975); Sigmund Skard, Trans-Atlantic: Memoirs of a Norwegian Americanist(Oslo, Norway, 1978). 8. JosephineMartinOber, "Historyof the American Studies Association" (unpublished Masters thesis, Bryn Mawr College, 1971), 16 ff; Seymour quote, New York Times (19 May 1950), 29; Annual Report of the CarnegieCorporation of New York, 1954. The Coe Foundationalso subsidized American Studies Programsat Stanford, Harding, and Wyoming. 9. ArthurE. Bestor, Jr., "The Study of American Civilization:Jingoism or Scholarship?"Williamand Mary Quarterly9 (Jan. 1952): 3-9; MarvinWachman,"Chauvinism and American Studies," AmericanStudies (May 1958): 3-4. 10. Carl Bode, "The Start of the ASA," unpublishedessay, 1960, ASA MSS, Libraryof Congress, publishedin somewhatdifferentform in AmericanQuarterly31 (Bibliography 1979): 345-54. Form letter from Robert Spiller, Scully Bradley, Roy

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F. Nichols, Richard H. Shrylock to , 20 Nov. 1945, ASA MSS, Libraryof Congress; Conversationswith Robert Spiller, 1971-78. 11. RobertW. Iverson, "AmericanStudies in the Peace Corps," AmericanStudies (July 1962): 1-3. 12. American Studies: Problems, Promises and Possibilities (Austin, 1958), 30. Various early surveys suggest that there were always more historians than literary scholars, but in the 1950s the literaryscholars often took a leadershiprole; William Hesseltine, "Some Observationson AmericanStudies ProgramsAbroad," 1963, ASA MSS, Libraryof Congress. 13. Dorson quote, Annual Report of the AmericanFolklore Society (March 1967), 2. CharlesT. Morrissey, "Arrowheadand Arden House in Context:The Oral History Association and the Ethos of Formationin 1966-67," unpublishedessay. Ray B. Browne, AgainstAcademia:TheHistory of the Popular CultureAssociation/American Culture Association and Popular Culture Movement, 1967-1988 (Bowling Green, 1989). 14. For the transformation of the universities, see MorrisDickstein, Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties (New York, 1977); Godfrey Hodgson, America in Our Time:From WorldWarII to Nixon, WhatHappenedand Why(New York, 1976); Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Yearsof Hope, Days of Rage (New York, 1987). 15. Gene Leach, "Yale: Trimming the Ivy," Connections (Fall 1971), no pages; Leach, "RadicalAmericanStudies:A Movementand a Moment," unpublishedpaper, New England American Studies Association, April 1982. 16. Betty Chmajwith James McEvoy, "The ProtestPapers,"mimeographed,1966; Chmajto Allen F. Davis, 11 July 1989. 17. Hodgson, America, Our Times, 364; Gitlin, The Sixties, 285ff. 18. Chmajto Davis, 11 July 1989; conversationwith ArthurP. Dudden, 16 Sept. 1989; Ray Browne to Members of ASA Advisory and Host Committees, 17 Sept. 1969; RobertMeridethto Membersof Executive Council, ASA, 3 Nov. 1969; Michael McGiffert to Ex-Council ASA, 16 Dec. 1969 (all correspondencein possession of Chmaj). The New University Conference was a radical scholarly organizationbased in the mid-west to which some American Studies scholars belonged. Another more academic rebellion also took place at the Toledo convention when Ray B. Browne used his position as programchair to denounceASA as elitist and to form the Popular CultureAssociation. 19. Minutes of ASA Council Meeting, 28 Dec. 1970; Letter to ASA Members, 23 April 1971; Brooke Hindle to ArthurDudden, 26 May 1971; August Meier to Arthur Dudden, 19 May 1971; Daniel Boorstinto ArthurDudden, 12 May 1971, (ASA MSS, Libraryof Congress). 20. Minutes of Executive Council Meeting, 31 Oct. 1969, Toledo, Ohio, ASA MSS, LC. On the turmoilwithinthe AmericanHistoricalAssociation, see PeterNovick, ThatNoble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question'and the AmericanHistorical Profession (New York, 1988), 434ff. On the Modem Language Association, see Edward E. Ericson, Jr., Radicals in the University(Stanford, 1975). 21. The best place to follow the impact of The Radical Caucus is in the Council Minutes and in the publicationsConnectionsand ConnectionsII, which unfortunately have not found theirway into most libraries.Also see an occasional articlelike Robert Sklar's, "American Studies and the Realities of America," American Quarterly22 (Summer 1970): 598-605. Significantly this article was not published in a regular issue of the Quarterlybut in the bibliographyissue, sponsoredby the association.

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22. Betty Chmajto ASA Executive Council, 3 Nov. 1969; RobertWalkerto Arthur Dudden, 15 Sept. 1971, (ASA MSS, Libraryof Congress). ForRappquote see Ronald Fraser,et al., 1968: A StudentGenerationin Revolt (New York, 1988), 301. 23. Also serving on the committee were Blanch Gelfant, Lillian Schlissel, Lois Rudnick, Carlene Bagnell Blanchardand Robert Merideth. See "Resolutions on the Status of Women," American Quarterly 24 (Oct. 1972): 550-54; Chmaj to Arthur Dudden,4 Feb. 1972, Allen F. Davis to Alma Payne, 3 Oct. 1972, ASA MSS, Library of Congress. 24. ASA Council Minutes, 28 Dec. 1970; Convention Program1971, ASA MSS, Libraryof Congress. 25. National American Studies Faculty Reportsto the Council 1972-1976, in possession of John Hague, also ASA MSS, Libraryof Congress. John Hague to Allen F. Davis, 10 July 1989; Conversation,JoannaZangrando,29 Sept. 1989. 26. Conversationwith Doris Friedensohn,30 Sept. 1989; Nancy Bannisterto Bob Meridethand Jay Mechling, 2 Aug. 1972 (in possession of Jay Mechling); Bannister to all, 25 Sept. 1972. 27. "AnnouncingAmerican Studies SummerInstituteon Programsand Teaching, KirklandCollege, Clinton, NY, Aug. 23-27, 1972" (in possession of Jay Mechling). Memoriesof Kirklandare confused because therewas anothersmallerconferenceheld there in the summerof 1973. 28. Connections, 2: 2, "Reporton the American Studies SummerInstitute." 29. Participatingin my first workshop at Kirkland,I began to work out a strategy to use family history in the classroom, a strategythat later became a book. Jim Watts and Allen F. Davis, Generations: YourFamily in Modern American History (New York, 1974), 3d edition, 1983. 30. Program:"FourthBiennial Convention of the American Studies Association, Oct. 18-20, 1973"; David E. Whisnant, "Proposalfor an AlternativeCultureFestival at the AmericanStudies Association Meeting," ASA MSS, Libraryof Congress. The alternativeculture festival was scaled down, but twenty-one workshops were held. 31. Percentagesare based on an analysis of the three published programs. 32. Paul Goodman, Growingup Absurd:Problemsof Youth in the OrganizedSystem (New York, 1960); Ivan D. Illich, Deschooling Society (New York, 1971); Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner,Teaching as a Subversive Activity (New York, 1969). Forthe new journalismandthe use of the firstpersonin the 1960s see Dickstein, Gates of Eden. 33. Jay Mechling, RobertMerideth,and David Wilson, MorningWork: A Trialogue on Issues of Knowledgeand Freedom in Doing AmericanStudies (Salinas, California, 1979). 34. The debate over, and search for, an American Studies method and paradigm, or definition,can be followed in: HenryNash Smith, "Can'AmericanStudies' Develop a Method?"AmericanQuarterly9 (Summer1957): 197-208; RobertE. Spiller, "Unity and Diversity in the Study of American Culture:The American Studies Association in Perspective," American Quarterly 25 (Dec. 1973): 611-18; Cecil F. Tate, The Searchfor a Method in AmericanStudies (Minneapolis, 1973); Mechling, Merideth, Wilson, "AmericanCultureStudies: The Discipline and the Curriculum," American Quarterly25 (Oct. 1973): 364-89; Gene Wise, "'Paradigm Dramas' in American Studies: A Culturaland InstitutionalHistory of the Movement," American Quarterly 31 (Summer 1979): 293-337; Robert F. Berkhofer,Jr., "A New Context for a New American Studies?"American Quarterly41 (Dec. 1989): 588-613.

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what all the fuss is about 35. For the uninitiated,good places to begin to understand are Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis, 1983); H. Aram Veeser, ed., The New Historicism (New York, 1989); John E. Toews, "IntellectualHistory after the Linguistic Turn:The Autonomy of Meaning and the of Experience,"AmericanHistorical Review 93 (Oct. 1987): 879-907. Irreducibility 36. Two recent pleas for a narrativesynthesis are Thomas Bender, "Wholes and Parts:The Need for Synthesis in American History," Journal of American History, 73 (June 1986): 120-36, and Alan Dawley, "A Preface to Synthesis," Labor History 29 (Summer 1988): 363-77. We could all emulate Marcus Rediker's richly textured narrative,Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: MerchantSeainterdisciplinary MaritimeWorld1700-1750 (New York, 1987). men, Pirates and the Anglo-American He writes in his preface: "In reconstructingthe social and cultural life of the early common seamen, I have sought both to tell a story and to write a eighteenth-century history" (9). Another model for American Studies might be Simon Schama, The of Dutch Culturein the GoldenAge (New of Riches: An Interpretation Embarrassment York, 1987).

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