Something about spring semester, isn’t it? My friends and those subjected to my ravings will know my thoughts on this already: spring semester is effectively over after spring break. April, in other words, is basically performative. Professors scramble to find ways to cut content without making it seem like they are cutting content. Students scramble to find ways to explain why it is becoming really hard to get anything done. I happen to be teaching a lot of seniors, who have had the pandemic shatter 4 semesters of their college careers. Suffice it to say that I don’t feel all that comfortable being a hardass in these circumstances. Anyway, the performance continued and weirdly ended up being even more time consuming than usual. But it hasn’t all been bad, or weird. The return of in-person schooling for my little ones opened up—get this—the actual workday for me to work! No more, or at least far fewer, crazy early wakeups to try and cram the entire workday into the wee morning hours. So that’s good. And it allowed me to get some actual research done. Crazy, I know. Of course, most of this is just thinking about doing research but, much like just getting dressed in workout clothes, that counts too.
“The Slave Manifest: A Legal History”
Not quite a new project, but an old project that I’ve dusted off and am trying to turn into an article. I’ve done much of the reading for this in bits and bobs over the last few years. The basic idea is that while a rich recent literature explains domestic slave trade, the coastwise slave manifests have not themselves received much attention. Seen from another perspective, coastwise slave manifests have become an extremely important archive for genealogists and historians, but the construction of this archive has yet to receive critical scrutiny. My argument is that in filling out these manifests, federal officers benefitted enslavers; the federal government was more active participant in the slave trade and the political economy of slavery than we may previously have thought. Second, every act of filling out these manifests constituted something like a legal trial, where federal officers decided or confirmed the status of Black people on board the decks of slavers. The project seeks to expand our understanding of the federal government’s complicity in the expansion of slavery. It also suggests that scholars, public historians and others who draw upon this archive should acknowledge the power relations embedded within federal officials scrawling on these manifests.
This is the manifest of the Ship Stativa, Savannah to New York, July 2, 1826. Here we see a woman named Nancy, age 40, roughly 5 feet 4 inches tall, and whose “Class” is described as “Black.” We know Francis Wood claims her as his property. Take a look at the upper right hand corner: “Slave Manifest-Sold by W.T. Williams.” So we know that by 1826 in Savannah, slave manifests were printed in bulk by W.T. Williams, or William Thorne Williams. Who was W.T. Williams? A small collection from the University of Georgia Library (William Thorne Williams Letters and Contracts, MS 0871) sheds some light on this question: he was an alderman for the city of Savannah and a printer who supplied the state government with forms.
I’ve also been easing back in to a collection from the Yale Archives that I got into years ago for National Duties back in the day: Lewis Family Papers, MS 624, Yale University Archives. The collection contains the correspondence of Addin Lewis, collector of customs at Mobile, Alabama and later postmaster and mayor. Lewis had to deal with a lot of coastwise slave vessels and, as someone who was generally critical of slavery, exhibited some zeal in trying to enforce slave trade regulations.
Unrelated, but here is a cool map of Mobile Bay in the Lewis Family Papers (folder 5):
Environmental Justice and the American State
I’ve done an independent study readings course with one of our doctoral students, who pulled together a list of leading works on environmental justice and the state in historical perspective. I learned a lot. A lot. Both from the student, who is brilliant, and from the readings. It was also great to reacquaint myself urban history since I haven’t read much of it in a while. We had some great discussions and I feel like this is a field I definitely want to continue to learn about. Here are some of the pieces we covered in March and April.
Martin V. Melosi, “The Place of the City in Environmental History,” Environmental History Review, Volume 17, Issue 1, Spring 1993, Pages 1–23.
Taylor, Dorcheta. The Environment and the People in American Cities, 1600s-1900s: Disorder, Inequality, and Social Change. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009).
Matthew Gandy, Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).
Tim Cooper, “Recycling Modernity: Waste and Environmental History,” History Compass 8/9 (2010), 1114-1125.
Gregg Mitman, "In Search of Health: Landscape and Disease in American Environmental History," Environmental History 10 (2005): 184-209.
Jonathan Bergman, “Disaster: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” History Compass 6/3 (2008), pp. 934-946.
Harold Platt, Sinking Chicago: Climate Change and the Remaking of a Flood-Prone Environment. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2018).
Maureen Flanagan, “Environmental Justice in the City: A Theme for Urban Environmental History.” Environmental History, Vol. 5, No. 2, (2000), pp. 159-164.
Early American History and More, so Much More (a.k.a. the spring JER is great)
Harsha Walia, Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (New York: Haymarket Books, 2021).
Jason Blakely, “Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule’s Technocratic Despotism,” Chronicle of Higher Education, February 1, 2021.
Eran Zelnick, “Self-Evident Walls: Reckoning with Recent Histories of Race and Nation,” Journal of the Early Republic 41, no. 1 (Spring, 2021), 1-38.
Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, “‘Confidence’: Private Correspondence in Daniel Parker’s War Department,” Journal of the Early Republic 41, no. 1 (Spring, 2021), 39-68.
Nan Goodman, “The Jewish Apostate and the American Expatriate: Leave-Taking in the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 41, no. 1 (Spring, 2021), 69-86.
Mark Power Smith, “The Young American Movement, the Koszta Affair of 1852, and the Construction of Nationalism before the Civil War,” Journal of the Early Republic 41, no. 1 (Spring, 2021), 87-114.
Britt P. Tevis, “‘Jews Not Admitted’: Anti-Semitism, Civil Rights, and Public Accommodation Laws,” Journal of American History 107, no. 4 (March, 2021), 847-70.
Dylan C. Penningroth, “Everyday Use: A History of Civil Rights in Black Churches,” Journal of American History 107, no. 4 (March, 2021), 871-898.
Bench Ansfield, “The Crisis of Insurance and the Insuring of the Crisis: Riot Reinsurance and Redlining in the Aftermath of the 1960s Uprisings,” Journal of American History 107, no. 4 (March, 2021), 899-921.
The West Wing as History
I taught my West Wing class again this spring and it was just awesome. The students, even under some difficult conditions, were superlative. Our discussions were almost always so dense that we ran out of time before we got through even half of the agenda (the one exception being the day I tried to teach after getting my second vaccination…I think I made it through 40 minutes before fleeing). I was so inspired by these amazing students and their brilliance that I started writing a few pages of this thing that might one day be a book! Wow, I know. The chapter I’m into right now is about the understanding of feminism that the show seeks to propagate. If you’re a fan of the show you’ll instantly think of Ainsley Hayes idiotic take on the ERA, and that is a good chunk of part of a chapter. Abbey Bartlet gets a lot of time, as does a certain ‘girls group with a stupid name.’
I brushed up on some classics of 90s feminism, including Susan Faludi’s Backlash and Arlie Hochschild’s Second Shift. More recent works by Ellen Malcolm about the history of said ‘girl’s group’ (When Women Win: Emily’s List and the Rise of Women in American Politics (Houghton Mifflin, 2016)) and Lisa Levenstein on the organizational infrastructure of 90s feminism (They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties (Basic Books, 2016) were really useful to understand what was going on even as the ‘backlash thesis’ gripped public discourse as well as the show’s framing of feminism.
Less fun—and this I really do not recommend—was revisiting the poisonous discussion of feminism in the political media in the 1990s. Maureen Dowd’s op-eds were noteworthy for their cringe-inducing qualities. My word. Also nauseating was the relentless focus on Hillary Clinton’s supposed machinations—one minute she’s supposedly co-president, another she’s disappeared too far from public view, and the next she’s covering up murders. I mean, wtaf. I might add that while it was patently obvious that none of this actually happened, it effectively shaped public perception of her. This of course will be obvious to the modern US scholars reading this, but damn the political media coverage of her was a sexist travesty. And thus the ‘fun’ project became depressing. Oh well. Here’s some choice non-Modo evidence from the anti-HRC machine. Ugh. This is a page from Peggy Noonan’s Case Against Hillary Clinton in which she is pretending to be Hillary Clinton. Seriously.
And here is Barbara Olsen explaining the evils that ensue when women have—gasp—ambition! What a jackass, to quote a renowned first lady.
Gautham Took a Break and Read Some Great Books (also got vaxxed!!!)
Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy (New York: Liveright, 2021).
-Historians, I strongly recommend this book. Talk about a disturbing nexus between history and contemporary politics. The first half of the book is particularly important because it lays out the connection between the men who propped up Jim Crow in the US Senate and the procedural maneuver of the filibuster. The short version? Mitch McConnell is lying to you. But the long version is worth learning about.
Talia Lavin, Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy (New York: Hachette Books, 2020).
-If you are a parent to young or youngish children and you enjoy being terrified, read this book. In particularly Gautham style, I started reading it hours after my first Pfizer jab and so, in the subsequent achy, hazy mess, my head was swirling with Levin’s lengthy but remarkably beautifully written (and weirdly funny) account of interacting with absolutely insane internet nazis types. As you might suspect, there are more of them than you might expect, and they are all over the internet.
Food
***NEW AND VERY EXCITING FOOD NEWSLETTER***
Tim Marchman, Popping Tins: a food newsletter dedicated to reviewing tinned seafood. Be still my beating heart. Someone’s finally done it. Thank you Tim Marchman.
Also great this month-ish:
Jason Okundaye, Aaron Vallance, Iqra Chaudhry, Anna Parker, Edmee Lepercq, Apoorva Sripathi, Marie Anne Benavente, Leila Gamaz, Sofya Mitchell, “Culinary Dead Ends,” Vittles, April 12, 2021.
Andrea Aliseda, “Machismo on a Fork,” Vittles, March 17, 2021.
Jesse Bernard, “The Mythos of Food in New York Rap,” Vittles, March 8, 2021.
Kevin Vaughn, “Pizza is Survival,” Vittles, March 14, 2021.
-My gold star for food writing goes to this Vaughn piece. Especially if you love pizza (and who doesn’t?).
Recipe: Ottolenghi’s Lamb Arayes
Somewhere between a stuffed pita and a quesadilla. All we know is that these are damn tasty. I’ve subbed in feta for Ottolenghi’s preferred cheddar, and added a few things. Original recipe in Ottolenghi, Simple, 214.
Ingredients:
1 lb ground lamb
1 medium onion diced
1 tomato chopped
1/2 cup parsley chopped finely
1/2 cup mint chopped finely
1/2 cup basil, shredded
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup feta (drained well if block)
corn tortillas or mini pitas
spices: 1 tsp ground cumin, 1 tsp zatar, 1 tsp allspice, pinch paprika, pinch chili powder,* 2 tsp salt, pinch garlic powder
*of course if I’m making this for myself that pinch becomes at least two tablespoons but you do you.
Method:
mix all of the ingredients well. heat olive oil in large cast iron pan until very hot, sauté until meat is cooked through (I like it to get a bit crispy).
put filling and as much feta as you’d like between two tortillas or pitas
in clean cast iron or skillet on medium high, cook the arayes on both sides as you would a quesadilla
Notes: make the filling ahead and then it becomes an easy lunch or dinner. Have used beef and for a vegetarian version diced cauliflower can work.
Football
I got nothing. But two years ago, if you’d have offered me a deal of winning the Champions League and the Premier League in consecutive seasons, to be followed by shite drudgery in the next season (in an * year), I’d take that deal again right now.
Caoimhe O’Neill, “Trent Alexander-Arnold: Is He Slowly Turning into Joao Cancelo?” The Athletic, March 1, 2021
Other
Jessica Valenti, “Following the Rules Won’t Save Us,” All in Her Head, March 15, 2021.