48.
Title: [Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain, 1942]
Author: United States War Department.
Genre: Historical Guide
Medium: Web
Acquisition: Read Online
Date Completed: 20 May 2016
Rating: *****

Conduct guides are rich and valuable cultural objects capable of articulating not just the guidance f their intention, but the cultural and social values of a society. Conduct guides allow historians a better understanding of social anxieties and expectations of behavior, and clearly articulate politics of identity at a given time. Such is the case with the 1942 Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain, written and distributed by the US War Department to educate (and correct) American soldiers stationed in Britain after the United States formally enters World War II. Opening with an identification of a joint threat seeking to disrupt a potentially powerful alliance (Hitler), the guide opens with the assertion that this is "No Time to Fight Old Wars," and in the resulting paragraph illustrates the prolonged mistrust of the British by Americans in the 1940s due to the Revolutionary War: "you may think of them as enemy Redcoats who fought against us in the American Revolution and the War of 1812.  But there is no time today to fight old wars over again or bring up old grievances... The most evident truth of all is that in their major ways of life the British and American people are much alike. "

The text that follows represents the building of contentious masculinities in the US and UK, constructing a definable American cultural standard even as it seeks to inform Americans of the culture of their new station. "It is militarily stupid to criticize your allies" the guide says. Twice.

There is much to value in this text, which serves as a primary source useful for defining masculinity central to my research. But here are some of my personal favorite quips:

1. "Don't be misled by the British tendency to be soft-spoken and polite.  If they need to be,  they can be plenty tough.  The English language didn't spread across the oceans and over the mountains and jungles and swamps of the world because these people were panty-waists."

2. "You will find that English crowds at football or cricket matches are more orderly and polite to the players than American crowds.  If a fielder misses a catch at cricket, the crowd will probably take a sympathetic attitude.  They will shout "good try" even if it looks to you like a bad fumble.  In America the crowd would probably shout "take him out." This contrast should be remembered."

3.  "British churches, particularly the little village churches, are often very beautiful inside and out.  Most of them are always open and if you feel like it, do not hesitate to walk in. But do not walk around if a service is going on."

4. "The British welcome you as friends and allies. But remember that crossing the ocean doesn't automatically make you a hero. There are housewives in aprons and youngsters in knee pants in Britain who have lived through more high explosives in air raids than many soldiers saw in first class barrages in the last war."

5. On "British Women at War": "When you see a girl in khaki or air-force blue with a bit of ribbon on her tunic-remember she didn't get it for knitting more socks than anyone else in Ipswich."

6. "The British have phrases and colloquialisms of their own that may sound funny to you.  You can make just as many boners in their eyes. "

You can read the conduct guide online here.

36.
Title: [The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon]
Author: William Thomas Stead
Genre: Journalism, History, Victorian
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: Victorian IS Reading
Date Completed: May 5, 2016
Rating: *****

In 1885, dissatisfied with the lack of protection afforded minors by the law, William Thomas Stead published a four-part work of investigative journalism, exposing the insidious world of child prostitution in London, and specifically the thriving market for virgins supplied through coercion, deceit, and frequently rape.  Often posing as a gentlemen in the market for a "maiden," Stead meets with brothel owners and introducers, follows the mistresses and their charges to midwives and doctors for certificates of virginity, and even manages private conversations with girls during which he tries, often unsuccessfully, to more fully explain their situations. Time and time again Stead secures the sale of these young women, for £5, £7, £10 pounds, and hears of patrons who brag of requiring so many virgins a fortnight, or having "ruined" over 3,000 girls in the course of his sexual career. As a body, and with no exception in his writing, Stead views these children and young women as victims of a malicious system that is unchecked by law and instead protected by a judicial system which favors the wealthy men who are its clientele. At a time when a child of thirteen can consent to sexual acts, despite her more common ignorance of sex , the law wholly protects the men who participate in what Stead calls "organized rape" (9). Even when raped, the victims of this industry have no recourse: "No one will believe for story, for when a woman is outraged,by fraud or force, her sworn testimony weighs nothing against the lightest word of the man who perpetrated the crimes" (34).

Stead's publications is both fascinating and heartbreaking. He exposes the machinations of the industry, and brings to light the various methods "introducers" and procuresses use to harvest young women for the commodity of their virginity, most often manipulating them into an arrangement which leaves the young girls ignorant of events to come, and later traps them in a web of prostitution from which very few are ever able to escape. Personal narratives humanize the subject, balancing Stead's observations with purportedly true accounts of women trapped in the industry, at times outright kidnapped, and even sold abroad to European and American brothels. The legal, gendered, and sexual problems that allow for the commercial system Stead so aptly vilifies are far from resolved; though the legal age of consent was eventually raised in the UK, child sexploitation and human trafficking persist, often relying on the same commodification of the young, often female, body, and a gendered system of dominance and abuse.  In this way, Stead's accounts are timeless, and serve as a strong historical primary source to understand a bit of a continually contemporary horror.


35.
Title: Student Papers
Length: Over 300 pages
Date Completed: May 3, 2016

32.
Title: Student Research Papers
Length: Over 215 pages
Date Completed: April 21, 2016


33.
Title: [The Island of Doctor Moreau]
Author: H.G. Wells
Genre: Scientifc Romance
Medium: Penguin Paperback
Acquisition: Work Text
Date Completed: April 25, 2016
Rating: *****


34.
Title: Selections from [A Question of Manhood]
Author: Various
Genre: History/Masculinities
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: IS Final Reading
Date Completed: April 24, 2016
Rating: ****

My chapter choices from A Question of Manhood were directed by personal interest, potential use value for my present project, or the possibility of importance for my ever-looming dissertation. They cover several areas of interest relating to my work, including law and gender, courtship, cultural history, and bodily performance.  The first, “For Justice and a Fee: James Milton Turner and the Cherokee Freedmen,” considers an historical conflict of which I knew literally nothing – a dispute over land and tribal rights for the freed African American slaves held by the Cherokee Nation.  In this chapter, Gary Kremer tells of a nation within a nation, governed by four social contracts and two governing bodies, and negotiating a system of rights with no precedent.  The Cherokee Freedmen want tribal rights and a fair share of land and monies given by the government; the Cherokees who once held the slaves deny their rights to either, and James Turner, an outsider, takes up their mantle and fights with the federal government for their intervention.  The whole political and social conflict is nuanced and downright messy, and each decision as the potential to set dangerous precedent.

“Black Policemen in New Orleans During Reconstruction” by Dennis Rousey shares the history of just this – African American men serving in a professional police force at a time when arming their community causes alarm and authority between races is tenuous. Rousey asserts that “The Crescent City’s antebellum tradition in race relation was probably unique,” citing legal circumvention supported by white “employers, policemen, grogshop keepers and professional criminals” for their own purposes and a large Northern population influencing race relations (98). Rousey acknowledges that it is striking to have black officers at all, and further surprising to see them given authority over white citizens, and to see them armed, but that “it became important for the police force to become a microcosm of the whole … community” (99). \

“The African Derivation of the Black Fraternal Orders in the United States,” was not quite what I expected it to be, but rather an explication of the practices and organization of the Independent Order of St. Luke as compared to the social organizations of the Efik and the Igbo of West Africa, justifying the comparison by drawing connections between the American slave trade and these African communities.  The chapter itself is a methodical point-by-point analysis of rituals and cultural symbolism, with the goal of breaking the assumption of European heritage in fraternal orders, and illustrating how this American order can in fact be connected to the African communities from which members (or their forefathers) were taken.

Of greatest personal interest were the chapters on courtship and Jackson.  In “The Courtship Letters of an African American Couple,” Vicki Howard turns to primary correspondence to evaluate the negotiation of marriage between nineteenth-century African American couples, as they negotiate their roles according to both their own communities (what Howard calls “Black Victoria) and the nineteenth-century cult of Womanhood. The project itself is problematic for its one-sidedness, and the constant necessity of assumption that comes into play when looking at only half of a correspondence (Lucia’s letters have not been saved, while she kept the letters she received from Calvin).  A source of discord between the courting couple is Lucia’s desire to continue her education as a teacher, and then to exercise that education professionally; Calvin, also a teacher, initially rejects both desires in deference to the Victorian middle-class cult of womanhood, but eventually yields to Lucia’s desires in order to secure her hand in marriage.  Howard speaks of power in this relationship, showing how most belongs to Lucia before they are married, and how Calvin is quick to negotiate when he believes there is a contest for Lucia’s hand.  For Lucia’s part, Howard identifies her assertions and desires as exemplary of Black Victoria – a moral but industrious woman who finds fulfillment not just in the home, but in actual occupation that in turn helps to build and support the community.

The final chapter, “Peter Jackson and the Elusive Heavyweight Championship: A Black Athlete’s Struggle Against the Late Nineteenth Century Color-Line” follows the professional career of Peter Jackson from his youth as a sailor to his success as a boxer, and the difficulties he faces in his professional progress due to his race.  A superior athlete who first makes his name in Australia, Jackson travels to the United States in order to challenge the title-holder of Heavyweight Champion of the World; John L. Sullivan refuses to cross the color line and meet Jackson in the ring, as do all of the subsequent challengers, literally blocking Jackson from even the chance of gaining the title for himself.  David Wiggins details Jackson’s failures with his successes in the ring, narrating his constant and easy successes  - and illustrating just why white boxers were afraid to fight him. None wanted to be the champion to lose the belt to him.  That Jackson is powerful, skilled, and practiced is never drawn in to question; rather, each rejection is clearly articulated as an upholding of the color-line.  Jackson’s failure to achieve the title is not his own, but rather the last front against which these white athletes can uphold their artificial sense of superiority.

12.
Title: [Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917]
Author: Gail Bederman
Genre: Masculinity Studies
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: IS Book 3
Date Completed: February 20, 2016
Rating: ***1/2


The concluding remark of Gail Bederman’s Manliness and Civilization is thus: “This study suggests that neither sexism nor racism will be rooted out unless both sexism and racism are rooted out together” (239), articulating the thesis which connects the previous readings of Ida B. Wells, G. Stewart Hall, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, T. Roosevelt, and Tarzan. These rhetor’s, Bederman asserts in her introduction, articulate the various “remakings” of masculinity in America at the turn of the century, each considering the role of civilization, race, and gender in defining ideological manhood. Central to the text is the interconnectivity of race and gender, echoing the “othering” likewise central to Kimmel, and the class divide demonstrated by MPs in Griffin.

Bederman’s introduction begins with a literal fight, between Jack Johnson and the “white hope” Jim Jeffries, and the cultural and journalistic violence that erupts when Johnson wins the heavyweight match. Johnson’s performances illustrate warring masculinities, and well introduces Ida B. Wells’ efforts against lynching culture and the figure of the primal rapist, which becomes central to the entire volume. Writes Bederman, “Lynching, as whites understood it, was necessary because black men were uncivilized, unmanly rapists, unable to control their sexual desires” (46).

Chapter one on “Remaking Manhood” defines expectations of manhood versus masculinity at the turn of the century, detailing the struggles between men and feminizing civilization, the women’s movement, and savages. Biology and evolutionary theory are used to argue that Anglo-Saxons are more evolved, and therefore better suited to power and gender constructions; “savage” races lack strong gender distinctions, therefore marking their inferiority. The White City and the World’s Fair become a strong backdrop for their historic construction, as races and gender are strictly and literally regulated in the organization of the event; to add to this history I’d like to bring up H. H. Holmes, the “first” American serial killer who took advantage of the spectacle of the fair as he murdered women and sold their remains as skeletal medical specimens.

The second chapter details the efforts of Ida B. Wells and her anti-lynching campaign, in which she rejected the horrific image of the “Negro rapist” (48). In her campaign, Wells compellingly asserts that white lynchers are less evolved and less mainly for their savage violence, proving their black victims are superior in gender and culture (58, 59, 73). Gender is crucial to both sides of this discourse, as definitions of manliness are at stake, in direct relation to the violation or protection of femininity (specifically, white womanhood).

Unfortunately, Wells’ efforts fail, as chapter three and the discussion of G. Stanley Hall demonstrates. As a researcher in education, Hall advocates for savage boyhood as a cure for the white cultural ailment of neurasthenia. Hall subscribes to the belief of recapitulations, and his work seeks out the “super-man” – he who demonstrates the cultural and intellectual superiority of the Anglo-Saxon, and draws on the physical health and strength that comes from a “Savage” youth encouraged in violence and untamed physical exertion. In Bederman’s reading of Hall I see Kimmel’s aggressive American masculinity, and the prizing of the capacity for brutality that continues today.

Though the writing is highly repetitive, I find these first chapters to be thoughtful and compelling, and can well place Bederman’s reading in larger gender discourses of which I’m aware. The following chapter on Gilman though, is deeply problematic. Specifically, Bederman’s readings of Gilman’s experiences with Dr. Mitchell and the rest cure. According to Bederman, Gilman is diagnosed with neurasthenia following her marriage, for which Dr. Mitchell prescribes the infamous rest-cure. Bederman forces this history into her own narrative, failing to identify the malady as post-partum depression, Gilman’s maternal experiences, her violent rejection of the treatment, and her literary attacks on Dr. Mitchell, to whom she sends a copy of “The Yellow Wallpaper.”  This short story goes far in discrediting the rest cure, but does not fit Bederman’s readings of neurasthenia, and so is left out. From my perspective this feels careless, and leads me to question conclusions about which I am less familiar. That said, the racial/gender binaries which Gilman forwards are both shocking and historically grounded, and she thus serves as a persuasive example of American feminism’s contentious relationship with racial minorities.

The conclusion, focusing on Tarzan and drawing on Roosevelt’s performative masculinity from chapter five, marries each of these chapters to show they are not disparate ideas, but a larger rewriting of turn-of-the-century masculinity. And it is here that most of my discussion points focus, as I’d like to consider Tarzan of the book, Tarzan as a Disney character, and manhood as performed for contemporary children. I’d also like to go back and think of Jack Johnson in light of the development of the whole, and H. H. Holmes of Devil in the White City.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale

29.
Title: [Maus]
Author: Art Spiegelman
Genre: Nonfiction Graphic Novel
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: Borrowed from Colleague
Date Completed: April 28, 2014
Rating: ****

30.
Title: [Maus II]
Author: Art Spiegelman
Genre: Nonfiction Graphic Novel
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: Borrowed from Colleague
Date Completed: April 28, 2014
Rating: ****

I read my first graphic novel in graduate school - Fun Home, which was assigned as part of a Queer Theory course.  Wholly unfamiliar with the genre, impart because of my own English snobbery, Fun Home presented a series of intellectual challenges, and ultimately I found myself drawing on my undergraduate film and art studies to help with my more practiced literary analysis.  Ultimately, the experience was rewarding, and from time to time I again find myself pursuing a reading list of graphic novels (last inspired by the fortuitous introduction to Persepolis).

Recently, a colleague mentioned a new graphic rhetoric text, which I quickly obtained, and just as quickly handed off to another department colleague with far more experience in using graphic novels.  From this same colleague I was given a promising reading list, beginning with Maus by Art Spiegelman (which he kindly let me borrow).  I've heard of the pair before, and knew the general subject, but had never got around to picking them up.  Now, armed with the story of Spiegelman's run-in with the New York Times Bestseller list, I spent an evening curled up with the most wonderful kind of difficult story - that of a survivor.

There are many elements I enjoyed, and some of which I was not fond. I appreciate Spiegelman's choice of anthropomorphic characterization, and cherished his ability to share complex and moving emotion through alien faces.  I appreciated, too, his attempts at honest portrayal - his father, for all of admirable qualities and inspirational concentration Auschwitz story, is not at the time of the story a "good" man: he is miserly, bitter, critical, and racist.   But it is this honest portrayal that I found most unsympathetic; though Spiegelman presents Vladek as he sees him, the angst he feels at his portrayal predominates much of the text, shifting the story from Vladek's survival to Art's attempt at survival - surviving the example and crushing influence of his formidable father. 

I was engrossed from the beginning, and moved only to fetch the second volume once I had finished the first.  That I have not moved so quickly to finish A Death in the Family may say something about my interests and tastes in reading, but I am glad to have finally had the opportunity to scratch Spiegelman off my list.  Now onwards to the other promising reads suggested by my colleague, including Daytripper and The Graphic Canon. 

40. 
Title: [Assassination Vacation]
Author: Sarah Vowell
Pages: 258
Genre: Nonfiction
Medium: Hardback
Acquisition: Library Book
Date Completed: May 17, 2013
Rating: ***1/2

An excerpt of Assassination Vacation in Housekeeping vs. The Dirt inspired me to pick up Vowell's book; I know shamefully little about presidential history, but the premise of the novel is appealing for anyone with a taste for the macabre or off-beat, so I thought it would be an interesting way to dip my toe into the subject.  And Vowell really seems to know her stuff, from textbook history to asides and anecdotes about the key players that keeps the story interesting and clearly represents the author's slightly quirky voice.

So why just 3.5 stars?  In the middle of the book I turned to my partner and said, "I wish she'd just stop talking.  This book could be so good if she'd just get out of her own way."  Sarah Vowell is a vociferous liberal, which is not wrong by any means, but she's a liberal like some conservatives are Confederate sympathizers: loud and angry with a great sense of superiority that doesn't actually help anything.  I even understand her anger and frustration, because I, too, had to live through the Bush administration and the shameful wars we are still plagued with, but her rhetoric is textbook without any constructive input, rendering the passages as effective as waving a Confederate flag.  Passion is admirable, but passion without action seems sophomoric.  And this is why I chose not to read about politics. 

In a nutshell, Assassination Vacation is a great popular historical text that brings the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley to a (perhaps under-informed) contemporary audience, drawing lines between places and events through the gaze of someone who demonstrates passion for both her history and her future. 

393 
Title: [The Devil in the White City]
Author: Erik Larson
Pages: 447
Genre: Nonfiction
Medium: Kindle
Acquisition: Library Book
Date Completed: May 14, 2013
Rating: ****

Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, about Chicago's Worlds Fair and serial killer H.H. Holmes is not a book I would have ever found on my own; credit for this read goes to one of my students, who was assigned the book in high school and was shocked that I had never heard of it, given my own reading habits.  A big thank you goes out to her for a fantastic read.

For most of this book I assumed I was reading historical fiction.  In fact, I assumed as much up until my sister-in-law invited me to see a rock opera about "America's first serial killer, H.H. Holmes."  Thus is the narrative style of the text, that it allows for such misconception - Larson's books is a story that seems to imitate true crime writing, as opposed to an overly technical nonfiction account.  As such, I'm sure the scholarship of the text may be suspect to someone who knows the Fair or Holmes better than I, but as someone with no prior knowledge or experience I found the book to be engrossing, and the characters fascinating. 

10.
Title: Inside the Victorian Home
Author: Judith Flanders
Pages: 416
Genre: History
Medium: paperback
Acquisition:
Date Completed: January 16, 2012
Rating: ***

Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England is a popular (as opposed to academic) text that attempts to use the structure of a typical Victorian household to describe various elements of nineteenth-century British life. The organizational pattern is only marginally successful, as Flanders frequently moves beyond the confines of each chapter to provide broader observations.

But organization is not the only complaint I have with the text. While reading of subjects with which I am extensively familiar (such as corsetry, as a single example of many) I frequently found myself disagreeing with Flanders's interpretations and presentations. Interestingly, I found that the same sources of research that would lead me to disagree with Flanders are also to be found on her list of secondary sources. Such discrepancies were often minor, but ultimately tainted my reading of the text as I considered the validity of the information related to subjects with which I'm less familiar.

11.
Title: Understanding Comics
Author: Scott McCloud
Pages: 215
Genre: Nonfiction Graphic Novel
Medium: paperback
Acquisition: mentioned by a colleague
Date Completed: January 17, 2012
Rating: **1/2

The premise of Understanding Comics appealed to me when a colleague first described McCloud's work: a history of comics and graphic novels told as a graphic novel. Fantastic! Unfortunately, the execution was not what I had hoped for.

Understanding Comics is less a history of the evolution of comics, and more an attempt to find a place for comics in the fields of literature and art history. Far-reaching and often grasping, McCloud presents a malleable definition of "comic" in his attempt to legitimize the genre and find a critical space for the work. As a new fan interested in the genre, I found the text awkward and obtuse.

49.
Author(s): Kathryn Hughes
Title: The Victorian Governess
Publication: Hardback
Pages: 204
Genre: Nonfiction, History, 19th-century
Acquisition: Purchased used from Abe Books
Date Completed: June 12, 2011
Rating: ****1/2

The history of the Victorian governess is a difficult one to write for one very basic reason: a lack of reliable primary source material. Though historians have access to some government and institutional data, and a clutch of letters, magazines, and a few precious journals, the gaps these sources have left remain far more significant than the enlightenment they can provide.

Fiction will tell us that the governess plays an essential role in the lives of upper-middle-class and upper-class households, but what of the real women who toil away in isolated schoolrooms? While some "histories" of the profession feel justified in using fiction as fact in the absence of actual historical documentation, Hughes attempts to construct a history of the governess that is as grounded in reality as possible. Her examination does indeed discuss fictional governesses - in the first chapter, after which her allusions to novels are kept to a minimum. Instead, Hughes relies on what documentation is available, and focuses on the lives of a few known governesses, and the popular publications which discussed the "plight of the governess" during the nineteenth-century, in order to piece together as accurate an analysis as possible.

Hughes' account fully acknowledges the gaps that are inherent in such a project, but uses this absence of information to make a few significant observations about the role of the governess in Victorian society. The volume as a whole is concise and smart, and makes good use of the resources at hand. Overall, I found The Victorian Governess far preferable to Ruth Brandon's Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres.

67.
Author: Alison Rattle and Allison Vale
Title: Mad Kings & Queens: History's Most Famous Raving Royals
Publication: Hardback
Pages: 152 pages
Genre: nonfiction, history
Acquisition: Purchased August 21, 2010
Date Completed: August 21, 2010
Rating: 2 stars out of 5

Mad Kings & Queens is exactly what one would expect from a Barnes and Noble bargain history book, but I am nonetheless disappointed. I was prepared for the lackluster writing and the lack of development, but I was not prepared for the prejudice and judgment that guided the choices made by Rattle and Vale. It is no secret that royal lines have long been plagued with mental instability, and the "inbreeding" of European royal families has lead to a long list of unfortunate offspring. This progeny makes up a strong portion of the book, which is seasoned with famous figures such as Vlad the Impaler and Elizabeth Bathory (named as Erzsebet Bathory, accent marks missing).

What I found distressing was the long list of monarchs who were dubbed insane for, well, enjoying sex. Some of these royal figures are even included for simply enjoying sex with their lawful partners. Others, of course, include queens who had a number of affairs, and rulers who indulged in homosexual desires of varying degrees. While I understand that contemporary politics, religion, and cultural stigmas would likely influence the subjects of these royals to recoil in horror, does a strong libido really mark a historical figure for entrance into a collection of Mad Kings & Queens? I would argue that a king who engaged in sexual congress with his wife late into his seventies deserves a little more indulgence than the tsar who ran naked through the streets stabbing citizens.

Interested in naughty kings and queens? Eleanor Herman is a lot more fun - and a lot less judgmental.

49.
Author: Susan Griffin
Title: The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues
Publication: Paperback
Pages: 250 pages
Genre: Nonfiction
Acquisition: Recommended by dk_phoenix
Date Completed: June 19, 2010
Rating: 3 stars out of 5

The Book of the Courtesans is Susan Griffin's love letter to women of loose morals. For a book designated nonfiction, I found Griffin's writing to be more romance than history; she only peppers her daydreams of rags-to-riches courtesans and women of delightful freedom and tenacity with biographical information of the women themselves.

The title suggests a structured look at the "virtues" of courtesans throughout history, so the author's bias is neither unexpected nor unappreciated (after all, I purchased her book because of my own personal interest in the subject). For the most part, the virtues she lists are what a reader would expect from the subject matter: beauty, wit, grace. However, the author takes numerous liberties with her own structure, and includes "virtues" such as timing (which I wouldn't necessarily call a virtue), and even includes "Her Pink Rabbits" under the chapter on "Brilliance". Hhmmm.

The Book of the Courtesans is an exercise in purple prose and presumption as opposed to reliable research and true biography. While the reader will be treated to some information about the women who inspire Griffin's work, what they will largely encounter is Griffin's own romanticized imaginings of the world that these women create.