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• 1 2014-08-08T14:54:59-07:00 Finding Substance Through History 20 Destined to Repeat it? plain 2016-05-05T16:17:05-07:00 In literary studies, the broad discipline to which I owe my training, we often repeat Fredric Jameson's instruction to "Always historicize!" Whether you feel equipped to live out this command on the grounds Jameson articulates in his book The Political Unconscious (he describes it therein as a "slogan") I can think of at least one good reason to engage with the past that doesn't involve being "destined to repeat it."
   
  Put briefly, learning about the history of something--whether it's a cultural phenomenon or political issue or subject of personal interest––is, to my mind, the surest way to write with substance. When you engage with the past, you can gain a deeper sense of how something works in its current manifestations. 
   
  Everything has a past. When you think about it, that's pretty cool, isn't it?
   
  I should be clear here in noting that I don't mean that history itself is a monolith, or that it ever works in a clear, linear fashion; the past does not lead neatly into the present and future, and historians and other scholars who help us construct what has transpired do not always agree upon the details.
  
  Moreover, if you're thinking that we always need to contextualize what's wrong now with how bad it used to be, stop right there. We shouldn't think the past was always worse, nor should we assume it was always better. In fact, writing with substance requires that you not only look at what something was like in the past, but also ask questions about the perspectives from which those accounts are written. You may conclude that a current version of something is superior to its predecessors, but you must always contextualize that assessment by asking "superior for whom, in what way, and at what cost?"
  
  Take, for instance, the representations of cats, one of my favorite sources of amusement. If I examine the history of these representations, I can't help but notice that cats are often represented in relation to mice. Long before Tom and Jerry, their relationship featured in a fable usually attributed to Aesop, originating before the common era, or BCE, that told the story about the belling of the cat. This story, in which some mice or rats form a council to solve the problem presented by the cat, has been told in a variety of ways over the course of a thousand years. As we can see in the Wikipedia entry for the tail tale, the story circulates in different texts for different audiences, but in all cases the idea of putting a bell on the cat to prevent further danger functions as an allegory for any difficult but necessary task. 
   
  Depictions of this tale usually present the perspective of the mice, a community terrorized by a ruthless invader. Other stories circulate, however, such as the tale of Dick Whittington and his Cat, in which the mice or rats are themselves perceived as problems. In the account featured in one of the pictures below, Whittington's "fine cat" appears as a solution to both a King's infestation problem as well as Whittington's own ticket out of poverty. Historical records suggest that the Richard Whittington upon whom the story was based was not actually a poor man; furthermore, there's no record that this Whittington had a cat, let alone a cat that helped him gain favor with the king. But the rags-to-riches narrative it presents, along with the cat's role as a saving grace, was apparently compelling to readers in the 17th and 18th centuries for some reason, even those who also read and enjoyed the tale of the rat council's idea for a tell-tale bell.
   
  The fact that competing narratives exist shouldn't stop us from looking for more information or from thinking about representations of these animals more deeply; ideally, they will inspire us to do the opposite. Why is this relationship so commonly represented in popular culture? What kinds of dynamics do they comment upon, and what does it mean to shift the perspective in which these stories are told? Indeed, the act of grappling with the messiness of history is an act fundamental to learning and it is essential if you want to write with substance. 
  
  The essays I mentioned in your Assignment 1 by Ta-Nehisi Coates (especially "The Case for Reparations") are great examples of the way historical research provides substance and support for what we write; two essays you will read for Assignment 3 , "Beyoncé's Second Skin (Part I) by Natalia Cecire and Tressie McMillan Cottom's “The University and the Company Man,” an essay on universities' relationship to the workforce, provide additional examples. 
   
  Beyond these exemplary pieces of writing, the search techniques I showed you in the video on using JSTOR afford another way to think about history that is even more in keeping with Jameson's command to "always historicize." Consider not just the way something evolved over time, but also how scholars have talked about that thing or concept over time. Think of this kind of history as a sort of meta-history--that is, a history on top of a history, or the history behind the history we now consider "knowable." For instance, the way we talk about privacy in the age of the internet is indebted to long-standing scholarly interest in privacy as a concept, discussions that were happening prior to the introduction of the World Wide Web. Although the objects and contexts of these inquiries have shifted over time, we build knowledge by drawing on earlier ways of thinking and by looking in multiple directions––that is, forward and backwards in time, but also in academic work on subjects we might see as "adjacent" or affiliated in some way.  
   
  We will discuss together how historical research and historcized research can give substance to your writing on topics that interest you; the assigned essays and exercises in this course will give you several opportunities to practice doing both.  
• 1 2014-08-04T15:14:36-07:00 Reading and Writing: Assignment 1 18 Reading a complex narrative with sources and using Lexicat to find them plain 2020-01-02T07:16:54-08:00
  In order to understand why reading is important for writers, you will read this essay, "Home Is Where the Hatred Is: The case for reparations: a narrative bibliography" by Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer for The Atlantic. 
   
  In your assigned reading, you will notice that Coates refers to an essay he wrote that was published in May 2014, a cover story for the Atlantic Monthly called "The Case for Reparations." The original essay's argument and evidence are too complex to summarize adequately here; if you follow the links in this paragraph and scroll down through the original essay's various parts, you'll see what I mean. But the text below the title ("Two hundred fifty years of slavery...Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole") gives you a sense of his broad claim: America needs to reckon with the "moral debts" it incurred in the long period in which slavery was legal, and that it continued to incur in periods of time subsequent to its abolition––including our present moment. "The Case for Reparations" does what its title suggests, presenting a rationale for cultural change through a major reckoning of America's debt to slavery and, by extension, what Americans owe the descendants of those who were enslaved.
   
  If you're interested in learning more about the cover article's impact and reception, please take a look at this story in The Washington Post when you find a convenient time. And of course, I encourage you to read the original essay at that time as well. 
   
  We will not be discussing "The Case for Reparations" or debating the merits of that argument in our upcoming class meeting, however. Not yet, anyway. For the purposes of our next meeting (and toward the end of completing Assignment 1), we aren't concerned with the argument itself so much as the process of learning and thinking that led him to make it. Coates provides us with an exceptionally useful glimpse into that process in "Home Is Where the Hatred Is," a piece he describes aptly as "a narrative bibliography." It functions as both a follow-up piece to the original cover story and a behind-the-scenes look at why the best writers are those who read and think deeply about what they read.  
   
  I mentioned previously that we'll primarily read academic writing that appears in venues that are not funded by advertising. In this case (and in many others this semester), I'm assigning an essay that doesn't fit that description neatly. But more so than almost any other piece of writing I know, I think it beautifully illustrates how reading shapes how we think and informs both how and what we write. 
   
  Your Assignment 1, due by the start of our upcoming class meeting, is as follows:
  1. Read "The case for reparations: a narrative bibliography" in its entirety.
  2. Open up a document and prepare to write. Make sure your first and last name are at the top of your document as well as the date of our next class meeting. 
  3. For each book (or other kind of written work) Coates mentions, write 2-3 sentences in your own words that explain how the book contributed to his knowledge of his subject matter––that is, how it affected how he conceives of America, American history, and the more specific topics his essay addresses––and anything else you find interesting or noteworthy about it from his account. You'll need to use both the first page of Coates's account and the list at the end to understand the full extent of how his reading informed his writing. 
  4. Go to Hofstra's Library Catalog, Lexicat (see? the cats are everywhere on this campus!). Determine whether Hofstra owns a copy of each book (or written work) mentioned and, for each of entry in your document addressing item #3 that our library owns, add in the call number in Hofstra's Axinn Library. 
  5. Prepare to bring a hard copy of this document to class. (You won't often be required to bring a hard copy of your work, but in this case, please do so.)  
  6. When you submit your assignment (at or near the beginning of our class start time), we'll discuss any problems you might have had using Lexicat. But you should complete the assignment to the best of your ability prior to class and be ready to submit it to me upon your arrival. Please think and plan ahead! Your professors will not find "Pride Print didn't work" an acceptable response to assigned work.
  Hint: one major key to academic success is the ability to read and follow directions carefully. Be sure you understand what this prompt asks you to do (and does not ask you to do) before you start your work.
  
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