Culture Watch

Herman Melville, Dead White Male

by Clare Spark

Since the Melville Revival of the 1920s, Moby Dick has become an undisputed classic of world literature and continues to grow in interest, especially this year and last with the 150th anniversary of the publication of Melville's masterpiece in late 1851. Historians, however, are probably unaware that Herman Melville (1819-1891) and his pathbreaking modernist novels, always the targets of cultural conservatives in both his time and ours, are now the objects of fierce disputes in"the c

"The Story of Us"? Hardly

by Jeremy Stern

History, formerly known as The History Channel, has aggressively advertised its new series – “America: The Story of Us” – as a landmark. They have also pushed it as a vital classroom resource, offering free DVD copies to every public, private or home school in America, together with lavish teachers’ and activity guides. The series opens with a greeting from President Obama, discussing the efforts and determination of ordinary Americans throughout our shared histo

Presenting the Past: The Historical Fiction of Robert Harris

by Jim Cullen

It is an axiom of the historical profession that the great danger and temptation in writing about the past is lapsing into a form of anachronism known as &q

100 Years of a Presidential Baseball Tradition

by Adam Burns

President Obama had the weight of public expectation resting upon his performance this year.  Before he was elected, many Americans expected great things from this vigorous and youthful president, but for some the disappointment continued this month.  On April 5, Obama was deemed by critics to be “high and wide,” whereas last year he was a deemed to have fallen “a little short” of expectations.  However, he still has at least two more attempts to m

Rummaging in “The Hurt Locker” for a Moral Equivalent of War

by James Livingston

Now that The Hurt Locker has won the Best Picture and Best Director Academy Awards—now that we all have to go see it (again)—we’re going to be hearing about how amazing it is that this small-budget movie about the Iraq war br

Baseball Has Lost Some of Its Soul

by William Astore

Baseball is my favorite sport.  I grew up with the Boston Red Sox and endured forty years of heartrending frustration until my team finally broke the Curse of the Bambino in 2004.  I no longer had to endure chants of "1918" (the last time we had won the World Series) from loudmouth Yankees fans who invaded Fenway Park to root for "the evil empire."  Our victory (note the "our") in 2007 proved that 2004 wasn't a fluke, and introduced young Red

The Saga of the Warner Brothers, Hollywood's Studio Family

by Thomas Doherty

For once, Groucho Marx was dead serious.  In 1938, at an informal gathering of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, the incorrigible wisecracke

Lone Star: Discovering the Music of Sam Baker

by Jim Cullen

I'm one of those blue-state, Honda-driving, latte liberals who doesn't think Texas should have been admitted into the Union in 1845:  the whole schem

Could Gerard Depardieu Play Marcus Garvey?

by Colin Grant

There has, to date, been no feature film or biopic on the life of the early twentieth century black nationalist Marcus Garvey.  But the recent controversy in w

Decoding Dan Brown

by Simon Cox

I don't read much fiction. I simply don't have the time, and when I do, its not generally from the "thriller" genre. So how come I have written three guide books to three thrillers? The ans

What More We Can Learn from "On the Waterfront": An Interview with James T. Fisher

by Rodger D. Citron

James T. Fisher is Professor of Theology and American Studies at Fordham University.  On the Irish Waterfront (Cornell Uni

The Leo Frank Case--Now a PBS Documentary

by Thomas Doherty

The must-see film of 1915—actually, in the annals of silent cinema—was The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith’s racist hallucination about the Civil War and its aftermath.  The climatic sequence never failed to wow the crowds. To the strains of a live orchestra playing Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries,” a dauntless band of Ku Klux Klansmen rode to the rescue of white Southern womanhood, determined to exact vengeance on rapacious carpetbaggers, s

The World Turned Inside Out: American Thought and Culture at the End of the 20th Century

by James Livingston

The so-called culture wars at the end of the 20th century were domestic squabbles for the most part—they were mainly in-house arguments about the future of liberalism.  The critique of “tenured radicals” that became the favorite pastime of the mass media in the late 20th century is a case in point.  The watchwords of this critique were political correctness, incomprehensible jargon, ignorance of canonical standards, pursuit of academic

Beyond Diversity: The Cosmopolitan Dilemma

by Jim Cullen

Cosmopolitan /kozmpollit’n/ • adjective1 consisting of people from many different countries and cultures: a cosmopolitan metropolis.

How the Short, Unruly Life of ‘Ramparts’ Magazine Changed America: An Interview with Peter Richardson

by Aaron Leonard

Peter Richardson is the author of American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams. H

Fadeout at the Box Office: The Decline of Movie-going

by Jim Cullen

Everybody's a dreamer and everybody's a star, And everybody's in movies, it doesn't matter who you are . . . . --Ray Davies (of the Kinks), "Celluloid Heroes," 1972 Sometimes, when I drive into the parking lot of multiplex theaters, I imagine some future anthropologist trying to make sense of their bizarre presence: big concrete boxes in a sea of asphalt, scattered across suburban landscapes. The discerning observer will see that these apparent

Neverland, Nevermore

by Kirk Bane

Chiefly comprised of pop culture titles, my library is filled with studies on the Beatles and the Stones, R.E.M. and U2, Marvin Gaye, Janis Joplin, Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, and many other artists.  When Michael Jackson died unexpectedly this summer, it dawned on me that I knew little about him:  an amazing dancer and gifted singer who gave us “ABC,” “Billie Jean,” and “Thriller,” he wed then divorced Lisa Marie Presley, apparently spent large sums on pl

The Amazin’ Mets:  Baseball and the Amazing Summer of 1969

by Ron Briley

            During the summer of 2009, Americans have commemorated the fortieth anniversaries of the Apollo moon landing and the Woodstock musical festival, while also noting the horror of the Tate/LiBianca murders carried out by the Charles Manson gang that same summer.  The possibilities of the era were also apparent in baseball’s Amazing New York Mets whose success obscured some of the difficulties the sport was facing in th

To Kindle or Not to Kindle

by Jim Cullen

Like a lot of devoted readers, I reacted to the roll-out of Amazon's new Kindle two years ago with a sense of wary fascination. As someone with a deep feeling for bound books -- and as someone who quite rationally considers the book the most powerful and user-friendly media technology ever invented -- I wasn't crazy about the idea of the printed page becoming obsolete. On the other hand, there were features of the Kindle, like the ability to download books instantly and store multiple books on t

Bruce Springsteen and American History

by Louis P. Masur

In 1981, touring in support of his album The River, Bruce Springsteen announced  in Paris that he was reading a book that was having a profound effect on him: “I just started to read History of the United States [by Alla