Malamud at Oregon State: A Digital Humanities Project

A New Life: Political Context

In Bernard Malamud’s A New Life, Levin’s predecessor Leo Duffy was fired from his job at Cascadia College for supporting Presidential Candidate Henry Wallace (who called for an end to racial segregation), and for asking his students to write about the Lysenko theory, among other reasons. Duffy’s dismissal has many similarities to Ralph Spitzer’s firing from Oregon State College: he worked on behalf of Wallace’s campaign and taught Lysenko theory in his classroom. This project explores the political climate of the United States, the Pacific Northwest, and Corvallis in the 1950s and examines how the events of Spitzer’s dismissal influenced Malamud’s novel. The project consists of a timeline and a relationship map, as well as the correspondence between Ralph Spitzer, Linus Pauling (who supported Spitzer), and President Strand (the Oregon State College President who dismissed Spitzer).

This project consists of two components:

Part I: Timeline
This timeline highlights key political events and provides the political atmosphere in which Bernard Malamud wrote A New Life. 
 
Part II: Tree
This tree provides more information about the political environment of Corvallis in the 1950s with focus on the dismissal of Ralph Spitzer. Clicking on “Spitzer” will give you three categories to choose from: Comments, General Politics, and Oregon State College Politics. Each category provides information through letters, which have been annotated, as well as passages and comments from the published novel and early manuscripts of A New Life that address the issues in these categories.

 

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