Reporter's Notebook: The State of Cultural History: A Conference in Honor of Lawrence Levine
The organizers of this meeting, which was held at George Mason University in September, stated that its purposes were indicated succinctly in the title. It was to have dual goals, to review the field of cultural history and at the same time recognize Prof. Levine for his distinguished teaching and scholarship in that area.
Without question these two goals according to this reporter as well as those attending and participating were well achieved. One proof was the surprisingly large audience—about two hundred registered, four times the number organizers expected.
In addition the sessions were efficiently set up. Almost all the papers were available well in advance over the Internet. Thus at the meeting after oral summaries of the papers from the authors ample time was left for discussion with the audience. The result was a lively and engaging exchange so that the attendees got a good sense of the origins, growth, and future prospects of cultural history as well as Prof. Levine’s signal and distinguished contributions to its development. Many of the presenters connected their comments to Levine’s best known works as Black Culture and Black Consciousness, his masterpiece; The Opening of the American Mind, an endorsement of the value of multiculturalism in response to Alan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind; and his edited essays on The Unpredictable Past. So again Levine’s place in the origins and growth of cultural history was quite clear and significant both in print and in the classroom.
Despite a last-minute unexpected problem, Prof. Levine’s sudden illness, the organizers were able to minimize his absence and more than compensate for it by the showing of a probing video, “My Career as a Cultural Historian’” which carefully documented not only his scholarship but also his philosophy of history and his principles of teaching. This rather personal video likely raised the consciousness of the conference participants. It apparently encouraged them to begin their discussion with a greeting to the honoree as the entire proceedings were videotaped.
The structure of the sessions was also understandable. After the video on Friday was a keynote session reviewing the principles of cultural history by Professors Nell Painter of Princeton and Jean-Christophe Agnew of Yale. This was followed by dinner where several of Levine’s family, colleagues and students referred to his distinctive personal characteristics, his well known sense of humor formed by his life growing up as a fruit seller’s son in New York’s East European Jewish community on the Lower East Side.
The next day, Saturday, was devoted to two panels of the current cultural history scholarship. That was concluded by commentators dealing with the “Futures of Cultural History” which in turn ended with a conference wrap up and concluding reception in the evening.
As far as the papers are concerned, I would take up too much space reviewing the presentations and comment so I will make a selection of those topics which appealed to me in particular and likely some others in the audience. One point that I found unusual was Levine’s reference in his video to theory and history. He stated that he was somewhat uncomfortable with doctrinaire historians who begin with a philosophy about the past and then proceed to substantiate those principles with historical fact. Levine stated that while he did read and value historical theory, he was more comfortable with a freer, no a priori framework, which allowed him to continually focus and fine-tune his interpretation. Nell Painter in her keynote substantiated Levine’s position by likening his posture to that of William James the pragmatist. Both emphasized the multi- and plural nature of truth.. She also reminded her listeners that De Toqueville’s affirmation of American democracy seemed to leave out the racial tension between White and Black, a tension that a little known French contemporary, Gustav de Beaumont, had revealed in his novel, Marie, in the 1830s about a mixed marriage. But that work was long ignored by Americans as it was not translated into English for over a century, not until the middle of the twentieth century.
Most of the papers reflected the more modern approach to cultural history. While Levine had directed the attention of the field at the start not only to “people of a thinking intellect but “people thinking,’ especially by means of slave songs, artifacts, and folk practices, current practice viewed popular culture personalities and artifacts as the reflections of mass psychology of an era. John Kasson for example saw in Shirley Temple’s astounding popularity, the attempt of the nation under the stress of the Great Depression to find solace in the complex role of a child acting as an adult. Eliot Gorn, also discussing the Great Depression, noted in the legend of John Dillinger, a Robin Hood figure, one whom the public might consider a surrogate for the people’s hostility toward the rich.
Elaine Tyler May through the use of advertisements and news stories found an enormous wave of fear and insecurity that engulfed the nation in the postwar era after the 1950s. The public based their worries on what was considered a rising crime rate and the threats from overseas nations in the Cold War amd later. Debbie Willis found in her research the effort of Negro photographers, particularly in New York, to counteract the negative imagery of the Black female “mammy,” to show the black female as part of the “New Negro.” This meant depicting the attractiveness, middle class demeanor, and even romantic allure of Negro women. And Eric Avila referred to the ability of a Chicano neighborhood to force highway builders to incorporate their cultural imagery into the decoration of the pillars supporting a California interstate road. Thus a rare example of the meeting of top down elite and bottom up ethnic interests making a synthesis in the unusual milieu of public roadbuilding.
The last panel was on the future of the field. Michael Denning raised the thoughtful issue of whether cultural historians can still talk about national culture in this era of globalism and multinational corporations and production. In fact this international culture may not be just contemporary. Inter or multi national institutions and societies have existed long before the twentieth-first century. While that may be true, also true is the historic and continued existence of a national culture—they need not be incompatible. In fact this nation unlike most others was founded on an ideology which included the commitment to democracy and civil liberties, a suspicion of big government and an emphasis on individualism, and a particular economic system, capitalism. While these have been American national values and remain, they have not gone unchallenged. In fact they have always divided the country. The issue is over the purpose of the federal government, to act merely as an occasional mediator between conflicting modes of thought or to be more involved in assuring the welfare of the entire nation?
The final notable paper also dealt with a proposed new direction for future cultural history study. That was Nan Enstad’s “On Grief and Error; Listening for the Future of Cultural History.” Having first uncovered the voice for society’s subalterns (lower classes) and ascertaining that group’s identity, cultural history now was at the cusp of an exciting turning point. By focusing on the crises in subalterns’ lives, their grief and error from mistreatment, the historian should continue Levine’s pioneering work on the expressive arts of the lower classes. But they were more than strategies or outlets for avoiding abuse. Cultural historians could create a more expansive"visionary cultural history" that would be relevant to the historical moment. Historians could learn from the groups’” instruments of life, sanity, health and self-respect” and more broadly educate themselves to better understand power and the efficacy of activism. So scholars would derive a more enduring benefit from the sources which would teach them.p>
The conference then ended on that note of optimism about the future and Levine’s prior role in promoting that brighter outlook for cultural history.