Michael J. Kramer's Blog, page 11

Cook with a Seesaw

bruno latour on composition compared to critique.Francisco de Goya, El Balancín (1791/2).

It is no more possible to compose with the paraphernalia of critique than it is to cook with a seesaw.

— Bruno Latour, “An Attempt at a ‘Compositionist Manifesto'”

Rovings

january 2024 edition.Richard Johnson, Ice Hut GRID #6, from the Series Ice Huts (2007-2019).SoundsAdventures In Sound And Music Special: All Tomorrow’s Yesterdays, January 2024Various Artists, “1944-1994 The evolution of rap from The Golden Gate Quartet to Old Dirty Bastard”Golden Gate Quartet, “”There’s a Man Going ‘Round Taking Names”Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet, “The General Jumped at Dawn”Jody Stecher with Mile Twelve, Mile 77Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin, Heart Songs: The Old Time Country Songs of Utah PhillipsJody Stecher, Dreams from the OverlookMatmos, Return to ArchiveMarianne Faithfull, “Strange Weather”Valley Queen, Chord of SympathyCharles River Valley Boys, Beatle CountryMitski, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are WeMitksi, Be the CowboyVarious Artists, Rumba Doowop, Volume 1Duke Ellington, The Treasury Shows, Volumes 1-25Cobalt, BBC SoundsMitch Goldman’s Deep Focus David Byrne Radio Presents: South Africa, Musical Powerhouse Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Keeping Secrets Will Destroy YouThe Making of I See a Darkness by Bonnie “Prince” Billy, featuring Will Oldham, Life of the RecordWordsKate Mothes, “Framed by Frozen Lakes, Richard Johnson’s ‘Ice Huts’ Capture Wintertime Communities in Canada,” Colossal, 29 January 2024 Michael Jarrett, Interview with Hal Willner, Summer 1994Ray Padgett, “One of Hal Willner’s Final Interviews,” 333 Sound, 22 September 2020Barak Richman, “Universities Are Prioritizing Their Health Systems Over Teaching. That’s Killing Academic Freedom,” Politico, 31 December 2023David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele, “University budgets are moral documents,” Modern Medieval, 23 January 2024Nathan Tankus , “Keynes and the Marxists,” Jacobin, 11 October 2023Elizabeth Anderson, “The Struggle for Meaningful Work,” Dissent, Fall 2023Lars Gotrich, “In 2023, experimental music mapped time and space: Viking’s Choice goes back to the future,” NPR Music, 2 January 2024Steven Greenhouse, “‘Broken’ US labor laws could hamper union wins for workers, experts warn,” Guardian, 27 December 2024Julian Crockett, “The Hold of the Dead Over the Living: A Conversation with Jill Lepore,” LARB, 2 January 2024Various Authors, “Mike Davis Forever,” Post45, August 2022Maya Gonzalez, “Notes on the New Housing Question Home-Ownership, Credit and Reproduction In The Post-War US Economy,” Endnotes 2, April 2010The Editors, “The History of Subsumption,” Endnotes 2, April 2010Enzo Escobar, “Cyborg Manifesto: On Beyoncé’s Renaissance,” LARB, 4 January 2024Jedediah Britton-Purdy, “We’ve Been Thinking About America’s Trust Collapse All Wrong,” The Atlantic, 8 January 2024Peter Gordon, “Everyone Talks About ‘Critical Theory.’ What Is It?,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 January 2024Amy Kapczynski, “The Real Lessons We Should Draw from Claudine Gay’s Resignation,” The Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project, 8 January 2024John Gee, ” No Middle Ground on Campus McCarthyism: Following Harvard President’s Exit, Universities Need to Find Their Fighting Spirit,” CommonWealth Beacon, 9 January 2024Greil Marcus, “Why I Write,” Yale Review, 23 January 2024James Livingston, “Mystery Trains,” Politics, Letters, Persons Substack Newsletter, 22 January 2024Sam Kriss, “Very Ordinary Men: Elon Musk and the Court Biographer,” The Point, 11 January 2024 Michael Oberg, “We Live on Stolen Lands,” Native America: A History, 14 January 2024Michael Oberg, “We Live on Stolen Lands, Part II: The Dispossession of the Oneidas,” Native America: A History, 19 January 2024Michael Oberg, “We Live on Stolen Lands, Part III: A Story of Faithless Guardians,” Native America: A History, 24 January 2024Kim Phillips-Fein , “We Have No Princes: Heather Cox Richardson and the Battle over American History,” The Nation, January 2024“Walls”Henry Taylor, B-Sides @ Whitney Museum of ArtHarry Smith, Fragments of a Faith @ Whitney Musem of ArtEmil Lukas, 1989 from the Sinai to Harlem @ Fundación Pablo AtchugarryDepicting Mexico and Modernism: Gordo by Gus Arriola @ Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & MuseumKylie Manning, Sea Change @ X MuseumJeremy Shaw, Phase Shifting Index @ Musée d’art contemporain of MontrealNancy Holt, Inside Outside @ MACBAAntony Gormley, Body Politic @ White CubeWomen Dressing Women @ Metropolitan Museum of ArtAfrica and Byzantium @ Metropoligan Museum of ArtKelly Sinnaph Mary @ AICON GalleryJoey Frank, The Allimbus Device @ HarawikStanley Whitney, How High the Moon @ Buffalo AKG MuseumTheaster Gates, Hold Me, Hold Me, Hold Me @ White CubeHilma’s Ghost: Enchantments: Bottled Devotionals of Divine Feminine Spirits @ The Aldrich Contemporary Art MuseumDominic Chambers, Leave Room for the Wind @ Lehmann Maupin New YorkMax Beckmann, The Formative Years, 1915-1925 @ Neue Gallery“Stages”Atmospheres: Artists on Feminism and the Environment @ New Museum, 14 December 2023Harry Partch Ensemble, The Wayward, Part 4: U.S. Highball (1943/55) @ REDCAT, 16-17 June 2023Richard Thompson & Jo-El Sonnier, “Tear Stained Letter” @ Sunday Night, 1990Six @ Lena Horne Theater, 19 January 2024EEMT Ensemble for Experimental Music and Theater, Mieko Shiomi’s < boundary music > @ Hundred Years Gallery, 29 October 2017There Is No Air in Space, Mieko Shiomi’s < boundary music >, 10 April 2020 @ 30 Days of Fluxus ProjectJames Smalls, Féral Benga: African Muse of Modernism @ Getty Research Institute, 29 January 2024ScreensQuantum CowboysFrom Here to EternityReacher, Seasons 01 and 02

Syllabus—Recent US History: 1970s to Now

spring 2024 @ suny brockport.Judge Robert Rosenberg of the Broward County Canvassing Board uses a magnifying glass to examine a dimpled chad on a punch card ballot on November 24, 2000 during a vote recount in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Photo: Robert King/Getty Images.HST 617—Spring 2024—Dr. Michael J. Kramer, Associate Professor, Department of History, SUNY BrockportWhat are we up to?

Watergate, disco, stagflation, malaise, Reagan, the HIV-AIDS epidemic, MTV, hip-hop, punk, the Persian Gulf War, Bill Clinton, the Internet, the 2000 presidential election, 9/11, the War on Terror, the Great Recession, Barack Obama, Black Lives Matter, the election of Donald Trump, the Covid-19 pandemic, and much more—these and many other events and phenomena hover in an uncertain historical place, neither quite yet part of history, but no longer current affairs. Given this ambiguous quality, caught between past and present, how might we focus on recent times, particularly as historians? Do we need to handle the recent past differently than other moments in history? What do we learn by considering the history of the United States since the 1960s up to the present as history? How do we notice change and continuity when it is just beginning to appear in the rear-view mirror of the historical gaze? In this synchronous in-person/online graduate course, we investigate recent US history. Our readings focus on a set of monographs that help us consider the 1970s to now. By reading monographs, we get to spend more time with one author and their sense of the recent past. In class, we will also investigate additional sources such as music, films, television, visual arts, and other relevant materials. We will investigate the history of one nation—the United States of America—but also place the recent past of the US in an international framework in our discussions. Students will complete readings, attend seminar discussions, write analytic essays, and complete a final project that either compares two books from the course in greater detail, focuses on other secondary sources, or develops ideas about original primary research.

Things you are expected to do this termComplete the readings.Participate in class discussions.Complete the assignments.Improve critical thinking, communication, and writing skills.Acquire a deeper knowledge of recent US history, including contexualized empirical information, key historical questions, crucial historiographic debates, and a range of methodological approaches.Explore the particularities of recent history: what does it mean to study the recent past as it hovers between history and the present?See SUNY Brockport website for additional History Department course objectives.Required Books

Available at Brockport Bookstore:

Cowie, Jefferson. Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. New York: The New Press, 2010. ISBN: 9781595587077.Martin, Bradford. The Other Eighties: A Secret History of America in the Age of Reagan. New York: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. ISBN: 9780809074594.Hemmer, Nicole. Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s. New York: Basic Books, 2023. ISBN: 9781541646889.Melnick, Jeffrey. 9/11 Culture. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. ISBN: 9781405173711.Tanguay, Liane. Hijacking History: American Culture and the War on Terror. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780773540743.Lowery, Wesley. They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement. New York: Little, Brown, 2016. ISBN: 9780316312493. ISBN: 9780316312493.       Lozada, Carlos. What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era. New York City: Simon & Schuster, 2020. ISBN: 9781982145637Additional essays, listening, viewing on Brightspace website.ScheduleWeek 01 Introduction: Conceptualizing Recent HistoryTu 01/30

Reading/Viewing:

Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer, “Introduction,” Fault Lines: A History of the United States since 1974 (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2020).Liane Tanguay, Hijacking History: American Culture and the War on Terror (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2013), xi-43.Jill Lepore, Firing Line, PBS.com, 7 July 2023.Week 02 The SeventiesTu 02/06Assignment: Due by start of class —Assignment 01: Student info, syllabus review

Reading/Viewing:

Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New York: The New Press, 2010), 1-210.Week 03 The SeventiesTu 02/13Assignment: Due by start of class—Assignment 02: Making a Metaphor for Recent History: Your Line on Fault Lines, Throughlines, Hijacks, Last Days, or Other Ways of Conceptualizing the US Past Since 1970. Your task is to develop your own “working metaphor” for recent US history. What would you describe as a concept for describing the broad tendencies of the last 50 years? Why does this metaphor seem operational and compelling? Develop a 300-500 word essay in Brightspace about this, well-written and cogent. Try to draw upon some evidence from our readings so far, but you might also use other ideas from outside class if you wish to do so. Be bold. We are just starting to set out concepts and theories and interpretations, and they will change as we investigate our time period more thoroughly in coming weeks. Please cite your evidence if you use quotations or paraphrases from others using Chicago Manual of Style.

Reading/Viewing:

Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New York: The New Press, 2010), 211-374.Paul Sabin, “Crisis and Continuity in U.S. Oil Politics, 1965–1980,” Journal of American History 99, 1 (June 2012): 177–186.Week 04 The EightiesTu 02/20

Reading/Viewing:

Bradford Martin, The Other Eighties: A Secret History of America in the Age of Reagan (New York: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), ix-118.Week 05 The EightiesTu 02/27Assignment: Due by start of class—Assignment 03: Short Annotation-to-Analytic Essay Project—The 70s. Select one paragraph from Jefferson Cowie’s Stayin’ Alive and take a photo or make a scan of it as an image file (jpg, png, etc.). Using a PDF or image reader such as Adobe Acrobat or Apple Reader, or by printing out the image and using a pen or pencil, annotate the paragraph. You may write, draw, circle, use arrows, or whatever suits your fancy. Create some marginalia directly on the paragraph. Use your annotations to think about why the paragraph matters. What makes its prose most significant to the argument of the book and the implications of that argument for how we might understand the 1970s and recent US history as a whole? You might try to locate the key paragraph at the start of the book when the author writes something like “this book will argue that” or the equivalent phrase. Or you might find a paragraph about a particular subtopic that matters to you and that you see as mattering to the broader story of the 1970s and recent US history. After annotating the image of the paragraph, upload your annotated image to Brightspace assignment and write a 500-word explanation, in clear, cogent, compelling prose, as to what you observed and concluded about the paragraph. Try to develop a strong topic sentence (argument) to open your paragraph. Use quotations/paraphrasing from the paragraph to support your claim. Then explain how the evidence connects to and supports your topic sentence’s contention. Cite evidence/paraphrases using Chicago Manual of Style.

Reading/Viewing:

Bradford Martin, The Other Eighties: A Secret History of America in the Age of Reagan (New York: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 119-194.Week 06 The NinetiesTu 03/05

Reading/Viewing:

Nicole Hemmer, Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s (New York: Basic Books, 2023), Prologue-186.Week 07 The NinetiesTu 03/12

Reading/Viewing:

Nicole Hemmer, Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s (New York: Basic Books, 2023), 187-302.Kelly Lytle Hernández, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Heather Ann Thompson, “Introduction: Constructing the Carceral State,” Journal of American History 102, 1 (June 2015): 18–24.Alex Lichtenstein, “Flocatex and the Fiscal Limits of Mass Incarceration: Toward a New Political Economy of the Postwar Carceral State,” Journal of American History 102, 1 (2015): 113–25.Week 08 SPRING BREAKWeek 09 The AughtsTu 03/26Assignment: Due by start of class—Assignment 04: How Did That Happen? Tracking Change in the 80s and 90s. Develop an outline and then a 1000-word essay based on the outline that focuses on the question of change during the 1980s and 90s using key arguments and evidence from Bradford Martin’s The Other Eighties and Nicole Hemmer’s Partisans. What changed during these two decades of recent US history. More crucially why did it change? How can you, as a historical interpreter, offer a reason or reasons for the change? We will try to be a bit formulaic in the essays to work on good structure. Your outline should consist of five to six sections: (1) opening paragraph introduction to “grab” the reader followed by last sentence that is your thesis statement, or your overarching argument for the essay. Think about using a word such as “because” or “since” or “whereas” or “by contrast” in your thesis statement to force yourself to develop a causal argument, a comparison, or at least a correlation concerning change in the 1980s and 90s; (2) body paragraph #1, starting with a topic sentence that explores a subpoint of the thesis statement; then, quotations and evidence supporting the topic sentence subtopic claim; then, a sentence of explanation of the evidence; then, a transition sentence to the next paragraph; (3) repeat structure of body paragraph with next topic sentence subpoint of thesis statement, evidence, explanation of evidence, and transition sentence;(4) another body paragraph if needed; (5) concluding paragraph: take us deeper into the most crucial points of the thesis statement and try to end with a more lyrical final sentence. Your assignment in Brightspace should include the outline followed by the essay based on the outline. Cite evidence/paraphrases using Chicago Manual of Style.

Reading/Viewing:

Jeffrey Melnick, 9/11 Culture (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), vi-75.Week 10 The AughtsTu 04/02

Reading/Viewing:

Jeffrey Melnick, 9/11 Culture (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 76-180.Week 11 The Early TeensTu 04/09

Reading/Viewing:

Wesley Lowery, They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement (New York: Little, Brown, 2016), 1-128.Adam Tooze, “Introduction: The First Crisis of a Global Age,” Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World (New York: Viking, 2018), 1-22.Week 12 The Early TeensTu 04/16Assignment: Due by start of class—Assignment 04—Final Project Proposal: Outlining, Hypothesizing, Planning. Develop a project proposal for your final essay in the course in Brightspace. The final essay should aim to be a 2-3,000 word comparison of two books, an exploration of additional secondary sources from the time period (in consultation with the instructor), or an essay of original primary research into a topic from the time period (in consultation with the instructor). The proposal should include: (1) a key question or set of questions for the project; (2) a list of materials that will be examined; (3) an hypothesis (2-4 sentences about what you think the essay will argue in response to the key questions); (4) an annotated bibliography of the materials examined using Chicago Manual of Style (list the source and under it a 1-3 sentence description of the source; (5) a workplan (a calendar of how will you bring the project to fruition by the end of the semester; (6) any questions or concerns or worries you have about the proposed final project; (7) Using Google Slides (we will review how to use it in class) or, if you prefer, Powerpoint or Keynote imported into Google Slides, begin to develop a digital slideshow that summarizes your project proposal. The slideshow draft should include at least five slides and make use of at least three slideshow features (appearing/vanishing text, images, audio, annotative arrows, or another feature).

Reading/Viewing:

Wesley Lowery, They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement (New York: Little, Brown, 2016), 129-236.Occupy Archive Digital Exhibits: Spring 2020 CWRU.Week 13 The Late TeensTu 04/23

Reading/Viewing:

Carlos Lozada, What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era (New York City: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 1-145.Week 14 The Late TeensTu 04/30

Reading/Viewing:

Carlos Lozada, What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era (New York City: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 146-252.Week 15Tu 05/07 Where Are We Recently? Where Are We Now?: Conclusions/ReflectionsAssignment: Due by start of class—Assignment 05—Op-Ed Essay: A Key Aspect of the 2000s So Far. Develop an opinion piece for a newspaper about a historical topic from the 2000s. Your opinion piece should argue in under 1,000 words for a particular historical interpretation of the US since 2000 in relation to a contemporary public concern or issue. How can the recent past help us better understand the present, and perhaps figure out a way forward from current difficulties and dilemmas (or at least to comprehend more clearly what the issues are that we face)? Use evidence from our course materials or outside sources. Make an argument. Use the essay outline formula from the How Did That Happen? assignment if you find it helpful. You do not need to use Chicago Manual of Style citation, but you should identify sources in the flow of your prose. See the Opinion section of the New York Times (accessible via Drake Memorial Library) for examples of op-ed essays. Try to write cogently, clearly, precisely, and compellingly. Make an evidence-supported argument that draws upon the recent past to help us understand the significance of an issue in the present more effectively and profoundly.FinalFinal Project. Options: (1) compare two books from course to develop an argument about the recent past; (2) analyze additional secondary sources focused on a particular topic of student interest (in consultation with the professor), perhaps focusing on a particular event or moment in depth; (3) an essay based on primary source research (in consultation with the professor). All assignments must include (1) a 2-3,000 word essay, cogently and precisely argued with a thesis statement, clear structure of topics sentences, evidence, argumentation, and transition sentences, a “grab the reader” introduction and a conclusion that takes the argument to its full level of implications and significance; (2) a digital slideshow summary of the essay that contains at least five-ten slides and makes use of at least three slideshow features (appearing/vanishing text, images, audio, annotative arrows, or another feature).AssignmentsAssignment 01: Student info card/syllabus review 5%Assignment 02: Making a Metaphor for Recent History: Your Line on Fault Lines, Throughlines, Hijacks, Last Days, or Other Ways of Conceptualizing the US Past Since 1970 10%Assignment 03: Short Annotation-to-Analytic Essay Project—The 70s 15%Assignment 04: How Did That Happen? Tracking Change in the 80s and 90s 15%Assignment 05—Op-Ed Essay: A Key Aspect of the 2000s So Far 15%Final Project and Slideshow 25%Participation (speaking, listening, responding to others respectfully and engagingly) 15%Evaluation

This course uses a simple evaluation process to help you improve your understanding of history. Note that evaluations are never a judgment of you as a person; rather, they are meant to help you assess how you are processing material in the course and keep improving your skills of public history knowledge and understanding.

There are four evaluations given for assignments—(1) Yes!; (2) Getting Closer; (3) Needs Some Work; (4) Needs Serious Attention—plus comments, when relevant, based on the rubric below. The policy in SUNY Brockport Department of History Masters-level coursework is that a grade below a B- is considered unacceptable for graduate work.

It is important to turn assignments in on time, as some are “scaffolded,” which is to say many build on previous assignments. Late assignments will lose one full grade every two days they are late.

Remember to honor the Academic Honesty Policy at SUNY Brockport, including no plagiarism. In this course there is no need to use sources outside of the required ones for the class. The instructor recommends not using algorithmic software such as ChatGPT for your assignments, but rather working on your own writing skills. If you do use algorithmic software, you must cite it as you would any other secondary source that is not your own. For more information see SUNY Brockport’s Academic Honesty Policy.

Overall course rubric (for Masters-level courses)

Yes! = A-level work. These show evidence of:

clear, compelling assignments that includea credible argument with some originalityargument supported by relevant, accurate and complete evidenceintegration of argument and evidence in an insightful analysisexcellent organization: introduction, coherent paragraphs, smooth transitions, conclusionsophisticated prose free of spelling and grammatical errorscorrect page formatting when relevantaccurate formatting of footnotes and bibliography with required citation and documentationon-time submission of assignmentsfor class meetings, regular attendance and timely preparationoverall, insightful, constructive, respectful and regular participation in class discussionsoverall, a thorough understanding of required course material

Getting Closer = B-plus-level work, It is good, but with minor problems in one or more areas that need improvement.

Needs Some Work = B-level work is acceptable, but with major problems in several areas or a major problem in one area. The policy in SUNY Brockport Department of History Masters-level coursework is that a grade below a B- is considered unacceptable for graduate work.

Needs Serious Attention = C-plus-and-below work. It shows major problems in multiple areas, including missing or late assignments, missed class meetings, and other shortcomings.

E-level work is unacceptable. It fails to meet basic course requirements and/or standards of academic integrity/honesty.

Assignments rubric

Successful assignments demonstrate:

Argument – presence of an articulated, precise, compelling argument in response to assignment prompt; makes an evidence-based claim and expresses the significance of that claim; places argument in framework of existing interpretations and shows distinctive, nuanced perspective of argumentEvidence – presence of specific evidence from primary sources to support the argumentArgumentation – presence of convincing, compelling connections between evidence and argument; effective explanation of the evidence that links specific details to larger argument and its sub-arguments with logic and precisionContextualization – presence of contextualization, which is to say an accurate portrayal of historical contexts in which evidence appeared and argument is being madeCitation – wields Chicago Manual of Style citation standards effectively to document use of primary and secondary sourcesStyle – presence of logical flow of reasoning and grace of prose, including:an effective introduction that hooks the reader with originality and states the argument of the assignment and its significanceclear topic sentences that provide sub-arguments and their significance in relation to the overall argumenteffective transitions between paragraphsa compelling conclusion that restates argument and adds a final pointaccurate phrasing and word choiceuse of active rather than passive voice sentence constructionsCitation: Using Chicago Manual of StyleThere is a nice, quick overview of citation from the Chicago Manual of Style Shop Talk website. It includes lots of information, including:Formatting endnotes.Tipsheet (PDF).For additional, helpful guidelines, visit the Drake Library’s Chicago Manual of Style page.You can always go right to the source: the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style is available for reference at the Drake Memorial Library Reserve Desk.Writing consultation

Writing Tutoring is available through the Academic Success Center. It will help at any stage of writing. Be sure to show your tutor the assignment prompt and syllabus guidelines to help them help you.

Research consultation

The librarians at Drake Memorial Library are an incredible resource. You can consult with them remotely or in person. To schedule a meeting, go to the front desk at Drake Library or visit the library website’s Consultation page.

Attendance Policy

You will certainly do better with evaluation in the course, learn more, and get more out of the class the more you attend meetings, participate in discussions, complete readings, and finish assignments. That said, lives get complicated. Therefore, you may miss up to three class meetings with or without a justified reason. If you are ill, please stay home and take precautions if you have any covid or flu symptoms. Masks are perfectly welcome in class if you are still recovering from illness or feel sick. You do not need to notify the instructor of your absences. After three absences, subsequent absences will result in reduction of final grade at the discretion of the instructor. Generally, each absence beyond three leads to the loss of one grade level in the final course evaluation.

Online Synchronous Technology Policy

Students in the online synchronous version of the course should log in to Zoom through a laptop or desktop computer with direct Ethernet or robust broadband wireless and, ideally, headphones with microphone. Please be in a calm, quiet location (desk or table in a room, not in your car or out in the world). Keep your camera on during class and mute your microphone when not speaking. In the case of unforeseen technology breakdown (sounds, video, etc.), students may be asked to makeup work during office hours or through an additional written assignment. Individual cases will be negotiated with the instructor.

Disabilities and accommodations

In accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and Brockport Faculty Senate legislation, students with documented disabilities may be entitled to specific accommodations. SUNY Brockport is committed to fostering an optimal learning environment by applying current principles and practices of equity, diversity, and inclusion. If you are a student with a disability and want to utilize academic accommodations, you must register with Student Accessibility Services (SAS) to obtain an official accommodation letter which must be submitted to faculty for accommodation implementation. If you think you have a disability, you may want to meet with SAS to learn about related resources. You can find out more about Student Accessibility Services or by contacting SAS via the email address sasoffice@brockport.edu or phone number (585) 395-5409. Students, faculty, staff, and SAS work together to create an inclusive learning environment. Feel free to contact the instructor with any questions.

Discrimination and harassment policies

Sex and Gender discrimination, including sexual harassment, are prohibited in educational programs and activities, including classes. Title IX legislation and College policy require the College to provide sex and gender equity in all areas of campus life. If you or someone you know has experienced sex or gender discrimination (including gender identity or non-conformity), discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or pregnancy, sexual harassment, sexual assault, intimate partner violence, or stalking, we encourage you to seek assistance and to report the incident through these resources. Confidential assistance is available on campus at Hazen Center for Integrated Care. Another resource is RESTORE. Note that by law faculty are mandatory reporters and cannot maintain confidentiality under Title IX; they will need to share information with the Title IX & College Compliance Officer.

Statement of equity and open communication

We recognize that each class we teach is composed of diverse populations and are aware of and attentive to inequities of experience based on social identities including but not limited to race, class, assigned gender, gender identity, sexuality, geographical background, language background, religion, disability, age, and nationality. This classroom operates on a model of equity and partnership, in which we expect and appreciate diverse perspectives and ideas and encourage spirited but respectful debate and dialogue. If anyone is experiencing exclusion, intentional or unintentional aggression, silencing, or any other form of oppression, please communicate with me and we will work with each other and with SUNY Brockport resources to address these serious problems.

Disruptive student behaviors

Please see SUNY Brockport’s procedures for dealing with students who are disruptive in class.

Emergency alert system

In case of emergency, the Emergency Alert System at The College at Brockport will be activated. Students are encouraged to maintain updated contact information using the link on the College’s Emergency Information website.

Additional Brockport policies

Visit the SUNY Brockport Academic Affairs page for additional information.

Syllabus—The Fannie Barrier Williams Project

spring 2024 @ suny brockport.Fannie Barrier Williams, ca. 1880.African and African American Studies/History/Women and Gender Studies 381Overall Course Objectives

Students will:

acquire knowledge of US history, African American history, women’s history, local history, and New York State historyacquire historical skills of research, analysis, interpretation, and communicationexpand knowledge and applicability of diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice understandingacquire information literacy and how to assess evidenceacquire fluency with effective use of digital toolsRequired MaterialsWilliams, Fannie Barrier. The New Woman of Color: The Collected Writings of Fannie Barrier Williams, 1893–1918. DeKalb, Ill: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780875802930.Hendricks, Wanda A. Fannie Barrier Williams: Crossing the Borders of Region and Race. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780252079597.Additional readings and materials (available via course website).ScheduleUnit 01: Who Was Fannie Barrier Williams? Digital Journaling for Developing Research QuestionsWeek 01

Tu 01/30 What Are We Up To This Semester?

Th 02/01 FBW in Brockport and Beyond

Reading Due: Fannie Barrier Williams, “A Northern Negro’s Autobiography,” 5-13, in The New Woman of Color; Mary Jo Deegan, “Fannie Barrier Williams and Her Life As a New Woman of Color in Chicago, 1893-1918,” in The New Woman of Color, xii-xxxiiiWeek 02

Tu 02/06 FBW As Social Justice Activist and Sociologist—Digital Reading Journal Explained

Reading Due: Mary Jo Deegan, “Fannie Barrier Williams and Her Life As a New Woman of Color in Chicago, 1893-1918,” in The New Woman of Color, xxxiii-lx.Assignment: Student info due at start of class.Assignment: Digital Reading Journal starts. We will use the discussion boards to share our observations of Wanda A. Hendricks’ biography of Fannie Barrier Williams as we read it. Each Reading Journal entry should include (1) one quotation from the biography, not more than three sentences; (2) the page number of the quotation; (3) a comment about the quotation, why did it make an impression on you? Why does it matter? Explain cogently and with precision, in not more than three sentences.

Th 02/08 FBW: Early Life

Reading Due: Wanda A. Hendricks, “Introduction” and “North of Slavery: Brockport,” Fannie Barrier Williams: Crossing the Borders of Region and Race, 1-27.Week 03

Tu 02/13 FBW in Hannibal, Missouri, Washington, DC, and Boston, MA

Reading Due: Wanda A. Hendricks, “‘Completely Surrounded by Screens’: A Raced Identity,” Fannie Barrier Williams: Crossing the Borders of Region and Race, 28-49.Assignment: Digital Reading Journal Entry 01 due by start of class.

Th 02/15 FBW Arrives in Chicago

Reading Due: Wanda A. Hendricks, “Creating Community in the Midwest: Chicago,” Fannie Barrier Williams: Crossing the Borders of Region and Race, 50-68.Week 04

Tu 02/20 FBW Builds a Life in Chicago

Reading Due: Wanda A. Hendricks, “Crossing the Border of Race: The Unitarians, the World’s Fair, and the Chicago Woman’s Club,” Fannie Barrier Williams: Crossing the Borders of Region and Race, 69-92.Assignment: Digital Reading Journal Entry 02 due by start of class.

Th 02/22 FBW in Progressive Era Chicago

Reading Due: Wanda A. Hendricks, “A Distinctive Generation: ‘The Colored Woman’s Era’,” Fannie Barrier Williams: Crossing the Borders of Region and Race, 93-118.Week 05

Tu 02/27 FBW in Progressive Era Chicago

Reading Due: Wanda A. Hendricks, “The New Century: North and South Meet,” Fannie Barrier Williams: Crossing the Borders of Region and Race, 119-149.

Th 02/29 FBW in Progressive Era Chicago and Back to Brockport

Reading Due: Wanda A. Hendricks, “A New Era: Duty, Responsibility, and Tension” and “Conclusions,” Fannie Barrier Williams: Crossing the Borders of Region and Race, 150-176.Unit 02: Digitally Annotating the Works of Fannie Barrier Williams—Starting to Make Sense of Primary SourcesWeek 06

Tu 03/05 Visit Brockport Local History Museum

Reading Due: Fannie Barrier Williams, “A Northern Negro’s Autobiography,” 5-13, in The New Woman of Color.Assignment: Digital Reading Journal Entry 03 due by start of class.

Th 03/07 Hypothes.is Workshop

Assignment: Digital Annotation Project starts. We will use the digital tool Hypothesis and the Chrome browser to comment on a set of selected essays by Fannie Barrier Williams. You can set up your Hypothesis account at the Hypothesis website. You must install the Chrome browser, set up a Hypothesis account, and install the Hypothesis extension in Chrome by following the instructions at the Hypothesis website. Then join the private FBW Project group on Hypothesis. For the digital annotation assignments, each student will create at minimum two annotations per FBW essay and write two responses to other students. Each annotation should offer a precise, compelling observation about something FBW wrote; in clear prose, your annotation should then explain why (explaining why is the crucial part) the selected text is significant (why does it matter? What makes it important to questions of history, politics, culture, and society?). Responses should be encouraging but can also probe implications of other annotations: what does the annotation make you think about thematically, in terms of issues of history, justice, equality, struggle, freedom, race, gender, class, region, or some other topic?). In class we will discuss digital annotation and how it might help us work, as both individuals and together, to understand FBW, her biography, her context, her legacies, more effectively.Week 07

Tu 03/12 Visit Morgan Manning House

Th 03/14 Reading FBW Herself

Reading Due: FBW, “The Intellectual Progress of Colored Women of the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation,” “Club Movement among Negro Women,” “Do We Need Another Name?” in The New Woman of Color, 17-46, 84-86.Week 08 SPRING BREAKWeek 09

Tu 03/26 Open

Th 03/28

Reading Due: FBW, “The Problem of Employment for Negro Women,” “The Colored Girl,” “Colored Women of Chicago,” “Industrial Education—Will It Solve the Negro Problem?,” in The New Woman of Color, 52-57, 63-69, 78-83.Assignment: Digital Annotation 01 due by start of class.Week 10

Tu 04/02

Reading Due: Fannie Barrier Williams, “The Need of Social Settlement Work for the City Negro,” “The Frederick Douglass Centre: A Question of Social Betterment and Not of Social Equality,” “Social Bonds in the ‘Black Belt’ of Chicago: Negro Organizations and the New Spirit Pervading,” “The Frederick Douglass Center[: The institutional Foundation],” “A New Method of Dealing with the Race Problem,” in The New Woman of Color, 107-132.

Thu 04/04

Reading Due: Fannie Barrier Williams, “Refining Influence of Art,” “An Extension of the Conference Spirit,” “In Memory of Philip D. Armour,” “Eulogy of Susan B. Anthony,” 100-106, 92-95, 135-137.Unit 03: Zotero to Understand Historical Context and Interpretive Debates (Historiography): What Was “Respectability” Politics?Week 11

Tu 04/09 Zotero Workshop

Reading Due: Deborah Gray White, “The First Step in Nation Making,” Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994 (New York: WW Norton & Company, 1999), 21-55.Assignment: Digital Annotation 02 due by start of class.Assignment: Zotero Project starts. Zotero is a free, digital bibliographic tool created by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. It can help you collect and organize research, sources, and citations. Each student will use the tool to assemble three additional books, articles, or other sources related to FBW, her life, context, and legacies from the WorldCat library system and JStor article database by way of Drake Memorial Library. Then, using the Zotero add function or using the web save page, each student will research and add three sources to our group library in Zotero. In class, we will practice inserting these citations into footnotes and bibliographies, making corrections to the entries to match Chicago Manual of Style formatting, and exploring why we cite sources and how it can empower research and learning.

Th 04/11 Deborah Gray White and Martha Jones on Respectability Politics

Reading Due: Martha Jones, “Lifting as We Climb,” Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (New York: Basic Books, 2020).Week 12

Tu 04/16 Kevin Gaines’ Critique

Reading Due: Kevin Gaines, “Preface: The Intersections of Racial Liberalism and Racial Uplift Idelogy” and “Introduction: Uplift, Dissemblance, Double Consciousness, and the Ideological Dimensions of Class,” Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995), xi-18.

Th 04/18 Brittany Cooper’ Rebuttal

Reading Due: Brittany Cooper, “Introduction: The Duty of the True Race Woman” and “Chapter 1— Organized Anxiety: The National Association of Colored Women and the Creation of the Black Public Sphere,” Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 1-55.Unit 04: Table Tents and Slideshows: Using Canva and Slideshow to Design Public Projects About FBW’s Life, Context & LegaciesWeek 13

Tu 04/23 Canva/Slideshow Workshop

Assignment: Zotero Project due by start of class.Assignment: Table Tent/Slideshow Workshop starts. For the final exam in the course, students will create (1) Table Tent public history displays using Canva. Each will consist of one quotation from Fannie Barrier Williams (on one side of the Table Tent) and a well-written, precise, cogent paragraph explanation of the quotations significance, written for a general audience (on the other side). The table tents will also include a QR code that links to the FBW Project website, an image of FBW, and the name of the student who created the text. Each will also have a short one-sentence biography of FBW written together by the class. The Table Tents will be displayed on Seymour Union cafeteria tables and Drake Memorial Library tables as well as at Spring 2024 graduation events such as luncheons. (2) To provide further explanation of the Table Tent project, students will each create a digital slideshow of the quote, paragraph, and additional information and explanation to convey the significance of FBW’s life, historical context, and legacies with regard to that particular quotation. These will be displayed online and on the large monitors in the lobby of the Fannie Barrier Williams Liberal Arts Building. We will primarily use Google Slides to create the slideshows, although students may also, if they wish, use Powerpoint or Keynote and important the slideshow into Google Slides. The final assignments in the course will be “scaffolded,” meaning that as we move toward the end of the semester, there will be smaller assignments to help you draft your final projects and receive feedback on them so that you can iterate, revise, and bring the final projects to completion successfully and satisfyingly. We will hold an in-class workshop on how to use Canva and Google Slides and use additional class time, if required, to gain competency with the digital tools and work toward the goals of the final projects.Table tent exampleGoogle Slideshow example

Th 04/25 Black Women Public Intellectuals in US History and Culture

Reading Due: Hettie V. Williams and Melissa Ziobro. “Introduction,” A Seat at the Table: Black Women Public Intellectuals in US History and Culture (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2023).Assignment: Table Tent quote selection and one paragraph explanation due by start of class—draw on annotation work of FBW with Hypothesis; select a quotation that mattered to you, that you saw as historically or thematically significant, and that you would like to share with people who know little to nothing about Fannie Barrier Williams. How can you help new audiences at Brockport and beyond campus learn about this figure and appreciate her life, historical context, and legacies more fully? Your quote should be placed in the template on Brightspace, followed by a draft of your paragraph. This kind of short writing is challenging. You must articulate the significance of the quotation briefly, efficiently, precisely, and accessibly. Think of yourself writing a wall label next to a painting in a museum exhibition. How can you clearly and cogently express what matters about the quotation to someone who is unfamiliar with Fannie Barrier Williams? How can you get that person interested in the quotation’s content, in who FBW was, and in why the quotation might spark the person to scan the QR code to find out more about FBW?Week 14

Tu 04/30 Ella Baker

Reading Due: Text, video, audio, and downloadable documents at “Ella Baker,” SNCC Digital Gateway.

Th 05/02 Audre Lorde

Reading Due: Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism” and “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 2007).Assignment: Table Tent quote update and draft of paragraph due by start of class. This is an assignment I call “Thirteen Ways of Looking at your Paragraph” (inspired by the Wallace Stevens poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”).   Your goal is to revise your paragraph 13 times. Yes, 13 times! Save each revision in the Brightspace Assignment template. By iterating, but saving each iteration, you will begin to improve the paragraph while preserving past efforts. After your first 12 revisions, use the 13th one to create your final revised version of your paragraph. Then, write a one-paragraph reflection about the process of iteration and revision of the paragraph: what did you notice as you did the revisions? When you looked back at earlier versions of the revision, were there any moments worth returning to in your final version? When did revisions feel like they went off-track? Did any new ideas emerge while iterating? If so, what were they? What got confusing and what clarified? What are you struggling with still in your paragraph at this stage of revision?Week 15

Tu 05/07 Table Tent/Canva/Google Slideshow Workshop

Th 05/09 Combahee River Collective, bell hooks & Closing Reflections

Reading Due: Combahee River Collective Manifesto ; bell hooks, “Introduction,” “Talking Back,” and “Feminism: A Transformational Politic,” Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (New York: Routledge, 2015), 1-9, 19-27.Assignment: Google Slideshow draft due by start of class. Send in the link to your Google Slideshow on Brightspace so that you can receive feedback as you work toward the final version of the slideshow.Final Due Wednesday, 05/15Table Tent text and design in Canva uploaded to Brightspace.Google Slideshow link uploaded to Brightspace.AssignmentsStudent info 5%Reading Journal 01 5%Reading Journal 02 5%Reading Journal 03 5%Digital annotation 01 5%Digital annotation 02 5%Zotero assignment: 5 secondary sources 5%FBW Table tent quote selection/paragraph explanation draft 10%FBW quote/paragraph slideshow draft 10%FinalTable tent Canva template 15%Slideshow 15%Participation in class (speaking, listening, responding to others respectfully and engagingly) 15%Evaluation

This course uses a simple evaluation process to help you improve your understanding of history. Note that evaluations are never a judgment of you as a person; rather, they are meant to help you assess how you are processing material in the course and keep improving your skills of public history knowledge and understanding.

There are four evaluations given for assignments—(1) Yes!; (2) Getting Closer; (3) Needs Some Work; (4) Needs Serious Attention—plus comments, when relevant, based on the rubric below. The policy in SUNY Brockport Department of History Masters-level coursework is that a grade below a B- is considered unacceptable for graduate work.

It is important to turn assignments in on time, as some are “scaffolded,” which is to say many build on previous assignments. Late assignments will lose one full grade every two days they are late.

Remember to honor the Academic Honesty Policy at SUNY Brockport, including no plagiarism. In this course there is no need to use sources outside of the required ones for the class. The instructor recommends not using algorithmic software such as ChatGPT for your assignments, but rather working on your own writing skills. If you do use algorithmic software, you must cite it as you would any other secondary source that is not your own. More information on SUNY Brockport’s Academic Honesty Policy.

Overall course rubric

Yes! = A-level work. These show evidence of:

clear, compelling assignments that includea credible argument with some originalityargument supported by relevant, accurate and complete evidenceintegration of argument and evidence in an insightful analysisexcellent organization: introduction, coherent paragraphs, smooth transitions, conclusionsophisticated prose free of spelling and grammatical errorscorrect page formatting when relevantaccurate formatting of footnotes and bibliography with required citation and documentationon-time submission of assignmentsfor class meetings, regular attendance and timely preparationoverall, insightful, constructive, respectful and regular participation in class discussionsoverall, a thorough understanding of required course material

Getting Closer = B-plus-level work, It is good, but with minor problems in one or more areas that need improvement.

Needs Some Work = B-level work is acceptable, but with major problems in several areas or a major problem in one area.

Needs Serious Attention = C-plus-and-below work. It shows major problems in multiple areas, including missing or late assignments, missed class meetings, and other shortcomings.

E-level work is unacceptable. It fails to meet basic course requirements and/or standards of academic integrity/honesty.

Assignments rubric

Successful assignments demonstrate:

Argument – presence of an articulated, precise, compelling argument in response to assignment prompt; makes an evidence-based claim and expresses the significance of that claim; places argument in framework of existing interpretations and shows distinctive, nuanced perspective of argumentEvidence – presence of specific evidence from primary sources to support the argumentArgumentation – presence of convincing, compelling connections between evidence and argument; effective explanation of the evidence that links specific details to larger argument and its sub-arguments with logic and precisionContextualization – presence of contextualization, which is to say an accurate portrayal of historical contexts in which evidence appeared and argument is being madeCitation – wields citation standards effectively to document use of primary and secondary sourcesStyle – presence of logical flow of reasoning and grace of prose, including:an effective introduction that hooks the reader with originality and states the argument of the assignment and its significanceclear topic sentences that provide sub-arguments and their significance in relation to the overall argumenteffective transitions between paragraphsa compelling conclusion that restates argument and adds a final pointaccurate phrasing and word choiceuse of active rather than passive voice sentence constructionsCitation: Getting Better at Using Chicago Manual of Style

You are not required to use Chicago Manual of Style in this course, but if you wish to improve your skills with CMoS, the following information can provide help.

There is a nice, quick overview of citation from the Chicago Manual of Style Shop Talk website. It includes lots of information, including:Formatting endnotes.Tipsheet (PDF).For additional, helpful guidelines, visit the Drake Library’s Chicago Manual of Style page.You can always go right to the source: the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style is available for reference at the Drake Memorial Library Reserve Desk.Writing consultation

Writing Tutoring is available through the Academic Success Center. It will help at any stage of writing. Be sure to show your tutor the assignment prompt and syllabus guidelines to help them help you.

Research consultation

The librarians at Drake Memorial Library are an incredible resource. You can consult with them remotely or in person. To schedule a meeting, go to the front desk at Drake Library or visit the library website’s Consultation page.

Attendance Policy

You will certainly do better with evaluation in the course, learn more, and get more out of the class the more you attend meetings, participate in discussions, complete readings, and finish assignments. That said, lives get complicated. Therefore, you may miss up to three class meetings with or without a justified reason. If you are ill, please stay home and take precautions if you have any covid or flu symptoms. Masks are perfectly welcome in class if you are still recovering from illness or feel sick. You do not need to notify the instructor of your absences. After three absences, subsequent absences will result in reduction of final grade at the discretion of the instructor. Generally, each absence beyond three leads to the loss of one grade level in the final course evaluation.

Students in the online synchronous version of the course should log in to Zoom through a laptop or desktop computer with broadband wireless and, ideally, headphones. Please be in a calm, stable location (desk or table in a room, not in your car or out in the world). Keep your camera on during class and mute your microphone when not speaking. In the case of unforeseen technology breakdown (sounds, video, etc.), students may be asked to makeup work during office hours or through an additional written assignment. Individual cases will be negotiated with the instructor.

Disabilities and accommodations

In accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and Brockport Faculty Senate legislation, students with documented disabilities may be entitled to specific accommodations. SUNY Brockport is committed to fostering an optimal learning environment by applying current principles and practices of equity, diversity, and inclusion. If you are a student with a disability and want to utilize academic accommodations, you must register with Student Accessibility Services (SAS) to obtain an official accommodation letter which must be submitted to faculty for accommodation implementation. If you think you have a disability, you may want to meet with SAS to learn about related resources. You can find out more about Student Accessibility Services or by contacting SAS via the email address sasoffice@brockport.edu or phone number (585) 395-5409. Students, faculty, staff, and SAS work together to create an inclusive learning environment. Feel free to contact the instructor with any questions.

Discrimination and harassment policies

Sex and Gender discrimination, including sexual harassment, are prohibited in educational programs and activities, including classes. Title IX legislation and College policy require the College to provide sex and gender equity in all areas of campus life. If you or someone you know has experienced sex or gender discrimination (including gender identity or non-conformity), discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or pregnancy, sexual harassment, sexual assault, intimate partner violence, or stalking, we encourage you to seek assistance and to report the incident through these resources. Confidential assistance is available on campus at Hazen Center for Integrated Care. Another resource is RESTORE. Note that by law faculty are mandatory reporters and cannot maintain confidentiality under Title IX; they will need to share information with the Title IX & College Compliance Officer.

Statement of equity and open communication

We recognize that each class we teach is composed of diverse populations and are aware of and attentive to inequities of experience based on social identities including but not limited to race, class, assigned gender, gender identity, sexuality, geographical background, language background, religion, disability, age, and nationality. This classroom operates on a model of equity and partnership, in which we expect and appreciate diverse perspectives and ideas and encourage spirited but respectful debate and dialogue. If anyone is experiencing exclusion, intentional or unintentional aggression, silencing, or any other form of oppression, please communicate with me and we will work with each other and with SUNY Brockport resources to address these serious problems.

Disruptive student behaviors

Please see SUNY Brockport’s procedures for dealing with students who are disruptive in class.

Emergency alert system

In case of emergency, the Emergency Alert System at The College at Brockport will be activated. Students are encouraged to maintain updated contact information using the link on the College’s Emergency Information website.

Additional Brockport policies

Visit the official Brockport policies webpage.

Public History Students Create Fannie Barrier Williams Project Proposals & Collaborate with Social Work & Art Students

students in my fall 2023 introduction to public history seminar created project proposals about brockport native & gilded age/progressive era activist fannie barrier williams. they also collaborated with students in social work & art on additional public history explorations.Fannie Barrier Williams, ca. 1880.

In the fall of 2023, students in my Introduction to Public History seminar completed project proposals for exhibitions, websites, lesson plans, monuments, memorials, and other public history concepts. Each one is driven by one essay written by Fannie Barrier Williams, and seeks to connect her life, times, and legacies to public audiences today.

Read my Introduction to the public history project proposals and view the student public history project proposals themselves at the Fannie Barrier Williams Project website.

In addition, students in Introduction to Public History worked with students in Dr. Nicole Cesnales‘ Social Work seminar to explore issues of cultural sensitivity and they compiled data for students in Mitch Christensen‘s Graphic Design Typology 2 students in the SUNY Brockport Art Department to create visual timelines.

Links:Michael J. Kramer, “Introduction: Fall 2023 FBW Public History Project Proposals”Fall 2023 Public History Student Project ProposalsVisual Timelines in Collaboration with Mitch Christensen’s Graphic Design Typology 2 Art Department Students

Supported by a SUNY Brockport Office of Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion Diversity Fellowship Grant, a Mellon Foundation Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium Teaching Fellowship, and the SUNY Brockport Departments of History, African and African American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies, the Fannie Barrier Williams Project is a yearlong inquiry into the life, context, and legacies of Fannie Barrier Williams.

Harry Smith Speaks

unearthed from the archives: harry smith discussing the anthology of american folk music on a 1965 wbai sing out! magazine radio show hosted by barbara dane & irwin silber.Harry Smith, circa 1965. Photograph: David Gehr.

Archives often reveal wonders. Suddenly the voice of Harry Smith—currently the focus of an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art—entered the headphones at the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Collection as I conducted research there on a Spring 2023 John W. Kluge Center Fellowship. While going through the collection of the singer, guitarist, and radical political activist Barbara Dane, I discovered she had saved audio recordings of a radio show she co-hosted with her husband, Sing Out! magazine editor Irwin Silber, on WBAI-FM in New York City during the mid-1960s.

One show featured Smith, an eccentric avant-garde film maker, collector, ethnographer, visual artist, and bohemian who had, among other activities, compiled the Anthology of American Folk Music in 1952 for Folkways Records. The Anthology, a strange assemblage of commercial folk music first released commercially on 78 RPM recordings in the 1920s and 30s, became a kind of bible for the 1960s folk revival, inspiring musicians such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Jerry Garcia. Smith figures in a chapter from my current book project, This Machine Kills Fascists: Technology and Folk Music in the USA.

Now either below or at the Harry Smith Archives website you too can hear the audio of the radio interview and read a short introduction and transcript (transcribed with the help of History Department student intern Sam Sevor—thanks Sam!).

“Harry Smith’s Conscious Outrageousness”: The Lost 1965 Sing Out! Radio Show Interview

By Michael J. Kramer

I tried to play off insane / But found it would not do.

— Kelly Harrell & The Virginia String Band sing about “Charles Guiteau,” Volume 1:
Ballads, Track 16, Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music

“I would like to say to any teenagers in the audience that if you can kill the president, I can get somebody to write a song about you,” Harry Smith says to listeners in “radioland” on Barbara Dane and Irwin Silber’s Sing Out! program, broadcast on New York City’s Pacifica radio station, WBAI, 99.5 FM, in April of 1965.

“This is Harry Smith’s conscious outrageousness, right?” Silber exclaims.

It was a spur-of-the-moment description, but one that suited Smith. On this long-lost recording, the collector, filmmaker, visual artist, mystic, scholar, and bohemian is in fine form, jousting playfully with his hosts and taking pleasure in revisiting his famous 1952 compilation for Folkways Records, the Anthology of American Folk Music.

As editor of the premier folk music revival publication, Sing Out! magazine, Silber provides context throughout the show for why Smith’s Anthology was significant while Dane, a well-known singer of jazz, blues, and folk who was married to Silber, banters back and forth with Smith. They make for a wonderful trio as we learn details about how Smith transported his massive record collection of old 78s from San Francisco to New York, his memories of studying Jewish mystics, and his effort to make a film about Thelonious Monk. Smith talks about his criteria for including certain recordings on the Anthology, the antiracist intent of his non-ethnographic sequencing of the tracks, which were all previously released as commercial recordings in the 1920s and 30s, and how he devised the strange booklet that accompanied the compilation, with its faux- newspaper headlines for each song. Dane sings, Smith tries to get Dane to sing more, and Smith himself even sings a bit. By the end of the broadcast, Smith, in typical fashion, almost takes over the entire show.

The broadcast was preserved on a reel-to-reel tape either originally recorded by or saved by Little Sandy Review editor Jon Pancake. It wound up in Barbara Dane’s personal archive, which now resides at the American Folklife Collection at the Library of Congress. Rarely if ever heard since 1965, the radio show gives us a rare opportunity to hear Smith in action. It adds information to the long interview with Smith conducted by John Cohen a few years later in 1968 and published in two parts in Sing Out! magazine itself. Here, on the Sing Out! radio broadcast, we get a sense of Smith in action: zany, fun, sarcastic, anarchic, a trickster who also, in his way, wanted to celebrate America, which, as he remarks at the end of the show, is “beautiful, I love it. I would hate to see anything happen to it….”

ListenHarry Smith interviewed on WBAI Sing Out! Radio Show hosted by Barbara Dane and Irwin Silber, 25 April 1965.Transcript

Sing-Out! Radio Showwith Barbara Dane and Irwin Silber. Guest: Harry Smith. April 27, 1965. WBAI, New York City.

57:30 min. Pancake reel. Tape ID: AFC 1980/001: SR034, MBRS Shelflist number: RWC 6411, Barbara Dane Collection, American Folklife Collection, Library of Congress.

Music: Uncle Eck Robert, “Brilliancy Medley”

Barbara Dane: This is Sing Out, with…

Irwin Silber: Irwin Silber…

Barbara Dane: Barbara Dane…

Harry Smith: and Harry Smith, world’s greatest folklore authority.

BD: Yes, indeedy.

HS: Also, the world’s biggest wino at this point, dear friends in radio land, so forgive me.

BD: And Uncle Eck Robertson playing the “Brilliancy Medley.”

Music: Uncle Eck Robert, “Brilliancy Medley”

BD (singing): As I went out one morning, I was singing a country song / I met a man with a microphone, and oh, he didn’t me wrong / He led me to a shady nook and put on a reel of tape / And had my country ditty down before I could escape / To Tin Pan Alley he took my song and there he happened to meet / A publisher who cleaned it up and give the time a beat / And now it’s on the hit parade, and now they pay a fee / To that false young man with a microphone, and nobody thinks of me / So all you pretty country girls, who like to sport and play / Be careful of your copyright! It’s all they want today / And they ever trust a roving man, whoever he may be / If his hand is on the microphone and not upon your knee

HS: Aunt Barbara, where did you learn to sing?

BD: See, I’ll tell you, Harry, yeah.

IS: Our music is truly a people’s music created by all Americans.  And we are learning the variety of this music, and what stamps it as belonging to this land and this people. In this, the phonograph has been a potent factor. Many of these records were produced for the purpose of sale to one group, such as the shapenote singers, or the Arcadians, the rural dwellers, etc. Others were sold in localities where singers and tunes were of such sufficient popularity that the manufacturer took little risk in merchandising them. Let me point out that this rich heritage of the American people was not and is not available to the majority of Americans, especially those who live in metropolitan areas. When a well-known authority on this music first heard the collection, he said, “And were these records actually put on sale in stores? Are they really from commercial pressings?”

HS: That was Henry Cowell.

IS: “The one logical way to produce an anthology of this kind is to make use of the recordings themselves. Because of the nature of the record industry, a given amount of records are issued of any one selection, and re-pressings are not made until a large reorder is received from dealers. The usual amount is 10,000 copies. However, record manufacturers have been known to repress 5, 000 copies. Some of the records in this anthology had an original pressing of only 500 copies. As it does not pay to re-press this type of music, produced to sell only to a limited audience, many of these records are collectors items. Ironically, in 1952, the record industry tried to legally freeze reissues by other companies, and the record company that instigated the legal action in this state, as the federal government wouldn’t put through a bill to this effect, was the only English record company that sells and distributes its own products in the United States. The irony is that English folklorists come to this country to transcribe their music, as it is almost nonexistent in England, and in this country the English language, literature, culture is so pronounced.”

Well, I’ve been reading from the introductory notes to a record album series, the Anthology of American Folk Music, issued 13 years ago, and one of the genuine historic landmarks in the development of the appreciation of folk music in the United States today. This album was put out in 1952 by Folkways Records. The man who wrote what I was reading from was Moses Asch, the founder and director of the company. And what happened with the issuing of this set was I believe, one of the most revolutionary changes that took place in the whole understanding of folk music and the way in which it could be utilized.

BD: Yeah.

IS: First of all, it was revolutionary because he put out records that ostensibly he had no right to put out. In other words, a collection of recordings, most of these made in the 1920s, long out of print, and as he described, which were made primarily for sale and distribution on a local level.

BD: Yes, and made in terms of private property laws.

IS: Right, okay.

BD: By the major recording labels.

IS: And they were put out on the major labels. RCA, Victor, and Columbia, and their subsidiaries. And these records then went out of print. They were unavailable for over 20 years. And nobody dared to put them out again in any form because it wasn’t their property. The theory behind this album was that the music was the property of the American people and that no record company had the right to sit on it and freeze it. The man who edited this whole series is named Harry Smith. That’s who’s sitting here in the studio with us tonight. And we thought that it would be interesting tonight to play songs from this historic anthology, talk about, some of the reasons behind it, discuss some of the music, or whatever we felt like, and hear from Harry about his relationship to the whole project. So with that as an introduction.

HS: I would just like to say that Mr. Asch is a very bad person. Every time that I come in his office, he throws me out. In fact, that last week he gave me a desk, where I could sit up there, so he’d know exactly where I was to be thrown out.

IS: That’s knowing where it’s at, right?

BD: That’s a symbiotic relationship, Harry.

IS: Is that because of this anthology, or is it for other reasons, Harry?

HS: I’ve understood that if he was kind to people, that the place would be so crowded with folk singers that there wouldn’t be any room for the bills, or records, or anything.

IS: Yeah, true.

BD: With the money, there’s no place to put the money.

HS: No, I don’t think there’s too much money. I was only trying to make a joke there. To let our friends in radio land know that I’ve known Mr. Asch for a long time and he really has dedicated his life to this sort of project. And I think this was the most elaborate thing he’d done up to that time.

IS: I think so. Harry, how did you come to do this? Who initiated this project? Was it your idea or Moe’s? How did it work out?

HS: Well, I had come here from San Francisco. I had a grant from the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation to make films. So naturally I wanted to come here and show them to them. And I’d shipped all my stuff. The heaviest portion of it was the phonograph records. Actually, I sent everything collect because I decided one afternoon, okay, I’ll go to New York. So the bill piled up and up. You know, one month it’s 235 dollars and a week later it’s like 285. And I finally got Pete Kaufman, who is a prominent collector of folk music records, to bail everything out. I’d been sleeping on his sofa. However, to pay him back, which I never have to this day, but in other words, to get a hold of a few dollars, I started selling sort of duplicate records to Mr. Asch. And then one day after I’d been coming in there perhaps for a month with boxes of records, he said to me, “‘why don’t you put some of this down? Why are you being so bad all the time?” And so we did. That was it.

IS: I see. …One of the features of this set, Harry, is the extensive booklet of notes that goes along with it. I shouldn’t say booklet, it’s a book.

BD: Worth a dollar, says here.

IS: Well, sold for a dollar.

BD: Probably worth more.

IS: Are these notes all yours?

HS: Yeah, everything in there is mine.

IS: Foot head notes or head foot notes, I don’t know how to describe them exactly.

HS: It took months to do that, and that’s why it sells for a dollar. I see. That’s why we… I think it’s the first book they sold also.

BD: When I was a young folknik about 15 years ago, I remember, when it came out, 13, whenever it was, I remember people used to slip them out of the house, they couldn’t afford the record.

HS: I’d like to mention Marian Distler’s name, who really did all the typing and so forth on these things.

IS: Well, that’s in the days when Folkways consisted only of Moe Asch and Marion Distler.

HS: That was all it was, yeah. There they were, and they’d work on it up until, like, maybe 10 in the evening.

IS: Well, let’s, what, what would be some of your favorite selections? Let’s pick out something just to play.

BD: I have my favorite picked out. May we? Could we play the one about—oh well, they’re all my favorite—but can we hear about the history of good old Charles Guiteau?

HS: Yeah, that’s a beautiful, beautiful assassination record.

Music: Kelly Harrell & The Virginia String Band, “Charles Guiteau”

IS: Hey, well. I guess the problem is still with us. Harry, you started you said with hundreds of thousands of records. On what basis did you make the selection for material to go into the Anthology?

HS: Well, um. Well, er, um, uh. Sorry friends in radio land, I say well, er, um, uh, because, uh, the editor of Sing Out! is sitting out over there, he’s a very formidable person, he’s a big, uh, big folklore authority.

IS: C’mon Harry (laughing).

HS: More or less that the recording had to be well made, and that it was interesting, and that it would add up to so many sides per record, I think was about it. There were many wonderful records that have been recorded by mechanical means before the electric recordings came in. In fact, probably the best ones. But as far as these are concerned, they all had to be clear electric recordings. And I included all the good versions of Child ballads that I was able to locate. Not that they’re nearly as good as the ones that Dr. Bronson edited for the Library of Congress, for example. But for commercial records, I tried to get all of the Child ballads and then some of the important later ballads. And so on and so forth.

IS: That’s always been one of the most fascinating uh, aspects of this anthology was, one of the things that was a revelation to me. You know, growing up in…getting interested in Folk Music with a capital F and a capital M in New York City where you start out by believing folk songs is what Burl Ives sings, or Pete Seeger sings. Which is just a step on the way to finding out what it’s about. I guess I had a typical big city contempt for…

HS: Now listen, Irwin, what is this? Pete Seeger is no longer with Folkways? Why are you (laughing)?

BD: Well…

IS: No, no, I’m not putting Pete down. You know that. But it’s a different thing. That’s all.

BD: People such as Pete and Burl served as a bridge, an introduction, and a doorway, but then once you got inside the door, you know, there was the Anthology, that was the next step, if you were lucky.

IS: Well, Pete does this on a whole different level, and it’s good. You know, I love it. But it’s not, it’s not the same thing. I don’t have to convince you of that, do I?

HS: He’s a wonderful banjo player. I like him.

IS: It was interesting to hear, in this anthology, versions of Child ballads, which had been filtered through more than just an oral tradition, as in some of the recordings from the Southern Appalachians, but were the musicians’ conception of what would have some commercial appeal, even right in their own neighborhood. And it takes on a whole different character. In some ways it’s much more valid than a Child ballad still being sung the way it may have been sung 300 years ago and nobody could care less, except as a folklore study. But in terms of emotional communication, what the heck does that mean?

BD: I agree because I think that what you find on these records is something that reflects…what is the term they use, contemporary community standards? You know, what the people were singing to each other probably and what they felt their neighbors were digging. 

HS: In fact, it’s number 10 in that series, “Willie Moore,” by, uh, I forget who it’s by, it’s on the list there.

IS: Burnett and Rutherford, it says.

HS: Dr. Bertrand H. Bronson, who I mentioned before, because he once hired me to mow his lawn, or rather Mrs. Stern did, Dr. Bronson, if you’re listening to us.

BD: This is all Berkeley talk, now (laughing)

HS: I’m sure it is, yeah. Well, he probably remembers me as living in the basement there. He thought that that might be a very ancient ballad. The only place that that song occurs is on that one phonograph record. It has never been printed.

IS: You mean, it’s not a Child ballad, but it should have been.

HS: It probably actually is. Or about that age. Maybe about 1700.

IS: Before we play it, and this is number ten, one of the great things about this anthology is Harry’s capsule descriptions of the plot of each album. For instance, this one, “Willie Moore,” the description of the plot is, “Annie on the grassy mound after parents nix marriage to king. Death probably self-inflicted.”

BD: Laughs. You weren’t working for, uh, Hearst Press then or anything?

HS: No, I was trying to make imitation newspaper headlines.

BD: I thought so. It’s a gas.

IS: No, it was great.

Music: Dick Burnett and Leonard Rutherford, “Willie Moore”

IS: Well, listen, one of the things that I’ve always dug—we’re talking about the Child ballads in these new kind of versions—is this is the first time I ever heard Clarence Ashley, for instance. Now Clarence Ashley, here he is. It’s interesting, a lot of the guys who sang on this series are making a comeback today: Clarence Ashley. “Dock” Boggs, Furry Lewis, all of a sudden they’ve been rediscovered.

BD: And gee whiz, they didn’t even know they were singing on this series when they did it (laughing).

IS: That’s right (laughing).

HS: Yeah, there’s a issue of the Little Sandy Review. What’s that man? What’s the name of the man that issues the Little Sandy Review?

BD: Paul Nelson.

HS: Yeah, I’d like to put in a good word for him, too.

IS: Is that the good word?

HS: That’s the good word.

IS: Is it enough?

HS: Paul Nelson is a good word.

IS: (Laughing) Okay, Paul Nelson is a good word. Now, this one of Clarence Ashley’s, “The House Carpenter,” well the first time I heard it was, you probably remember, Richard Dyer-Bennett singing, uh, (imitating Richard Dyer-Bennett) “Well met, well met”…(laughing)

HS: Ba woom!  No, no, he says it…much more nicer voice.

IS: Well, whatever it is, I mean, we’re not trying to put Richard Dyer-Bennett down. He’s got his thing.

HS: Hey, let’s try to put Richard Dyer-Bennett down.

IS: There is Clarence Ashley. 

Music: Clarence Ashley, “The House Carpenter”

IS: I know I’ve been talking a lot, but maybe you would give me one more favorite.

BD: That’s alright, you talk pretty.

IS: Awww.

BD: Oh, of mine? Can we play? You know what I like?

IS: You go ahead. We haven’t let Harry vote yet, but that’s…oh yeah, he did vote for one…

BS: Oh, well he voted when he picked the whole collection, man. Didn’t he?

IS: Okay.

HS: Well, I would like to say to any teenagers in the audience that if you can kill the president, I can get somebody to write a song about you.

BD: You’re immortal. …You can get someone to?

HS: Yeah, I have somebody. I won’t tell you who they are, but…

BD: Oh, oh. You have a little old lady locked in an attic somewhere…

HS: from Pasadena uh huh.

IS: This is Harry Smith’s conscious outrageousness, right?

HS: I’m serious about that.

BD: Well, were you talking about a particular song in here that you wanna do now? Another one of your…

IS: We already did Charles Guiteau.

BD: Yeah, I know you did, but isn’t there another, isn’t Mr. Garfield in there or anything?

HS: Yeah, there is another one in there. And of course, the Library of Congress puts a record out on that subject, which is why I happened to mention it (paging through booklet)

IS: Well, listen, look for it, Harry, because I wanted to tell about one of the most fascinating songs I ever heard learned from this anthology.

BD: Good, and then later I get to pick another one.

IS: Yeah, right.

IS: Ah, this one. Let me read Harry’s description: “Technology unemployment hits shoe industry in the year of 18 and 4.”

HS: Ah, that’s a pretty one, yeah (laughing).

IS: Right? Isn’t that a great one? I’ve never seen as successfully a song dealing with an economic subject. And I’ve listened to every union song and labor song and, you know, all those kind of things. But to get a summing up of the industrial revolution and automation, there’s just nothing to beat it.

Music missing on recording: Carolina Tar Heels, “Peg and Awl”

BD: Pete Seeger sings that now. 

IS: Not on this album. That was the Carolina Tar Heels.

BD: Well, the one that I was thinking about before…I’m very partial to one that’s called “The Fishin’ Blues.” What do you know about that? I don’t know anything about it.

HS (singing) “I’m a goin’ fishin'”

HS and BD (singing together): “Yes I’m a goin’ fishin’ / I’m a goin’ fishin too.”

HS: Yeah, I just recorded the Holy Modal Rounders, uh, singing that for Folkways.

IS: What do you mean for Folkways? They don’t, uh.

HS: Yeah, they do. They just made a record for Folkways last week.

BD: Who is Henry Thomas, who made this record that you use?

HS: I really don’t know. One of these uh…. Because of course I haven’t been interested in these subjects for many years. I came to New York to study the Kabbalah, or rather I came here to make a movie of Thelonious Monk, but I, uh, fell in with, uh.

IS: And what went wrong? 

HS: What went wrong? During the day I got here, I, I met someone sent me to a place called the Home of the Sages of Israel, where a lot of old men, like 80 and 90 years old, threw handkerchiefs on the floor around a model of the Tree of Life and danced on them, so I devoted about ten years to that particular subject.

IS: Sounds like the folk music of New York City, right?

HS: Yeah, they sang beautiful songs about Shimon bar Yochai, who was supposed to have written the Zohar, and, uh, long ballads of various sorts. And, you know, they…

IS: And this distracted you from Thelonious Monk?

HS: Not really, no, uh…Thelonious and I got to be really good friends later.

IS: I realize I’m not supposed to follow the train of this thought, but I have this habit. Anyway, we were talking about fishing blues, right?

BD: Fishing blues. That was a big occupation around my house at one time, and I really enjoy that song.

HS: Fishing blues?

Music: Henry Thomas, “Fishin’ Blues”

BD: Yeah. That sounded like a little ten-cent plastic whistle from the dime store.

HS: The pitch is very accurate, so it must be almost. Yeah. But I think that Ralph Rinzler or somebody has discovered Henry Thomas again, haven’t they? 

BD: (Laughing)

IS: Well, if anybody has discovered Henry Thomas again, it’s undoubtedly Ralph Rinzler.

BD: Or John Cohen. I don’t know. Anyway, what were you saying about this, this, the recording industry at that time, while the record was on there, Harry?

HS: Well, actually I was asking Irwin and Barbara if it was alright to say the word Negro on the air because it’s peculiar these racial classifications.

IS: Well, WBAI is a non-profit…just be careful.

HS: (somewhat sarcastically) Yeah, they’re a bunch of communists.

BD (laughing) Which we’re going to prove next week, I think, or the week after.

IS: One of these weeks. 

HS: Long ago, my teacher of physical anthropology, Wilton Krogman, had pointed out that all of these things like racial designations are really due to conditioned reflexes, that the only reason that, say, Indians or Chinese or Negroes or anything exist is because the brain has become conditioned to pick up certain features and use them as the cues to recognition of types. So, I was just asking Barbara and Irwin—which is a much better way than saying Irwin and Barbara—if it’s alright to use the word Negro on there. 

IS: You’re supposed to alternate.

BD: But what would you say about how they designated the records, or didn’t?

IS: Or didn’t, that’s the point.

HS: Well I think that in most preceding series that the racial background of the recordees had been rather carefully stipulated. That, that was the thing.

BD: On the catalogs, they always did. Sure.

HS: Sure. More than anything else that was to me the interesting thing about this series—that was not done.  So it, proved a sort of an interesting psychological test for all of these people who claimed that they were able to decide that this record was made by such and such. I collected a number of catalogs that had been annotated by, you know, Mr. X and Mr. X and Mr. Y and Mr. Z, who were famous authorities on those subjects and they really didn’t know. Funny thing is that nobody was able to…for example, “Mississippi” John Hurt, really no one was able to decide what he was.

IS: Is “Mississippi” John Hurt in the Anthology?

BD: Sure, it’s the first place his records were reissued, along with a great number of other people like “Dock” Boggs and Buell Kazee and…ta ta ta, you know, blah blah blah. I think it was one record of “Blind” Lemon Jefferson…

IS: Yeah, I see “Mississippi” John Hurt, the “Spike Driver Blues,” listed there as number 80 on the thing.

HS: Yeah, I got tossed out of…. There’s a couple of his records in here. That’s a good one, “Spike Driver Blues.” Why don’t we play that?

IS: Yeah, I like that very much.

HS: And I don’t know, if Andy Warhol…

BD: Yeah, play it, and while you’re listening to it, just think in your own mind whether it makes any difference where he fell in the catalog (laughs).

Music: “Mississippi” John Hurt, “Spike Driver’s Blues”

BD: And that counts for the discovery of “Mississippi” John Hurt, more or less, doesn’t it?

HS: Yahoo!

BD: Yippee! Sure.

HS: As Peter Stampfel would have said, “Aoooo!”

IS: One has to explain to your favorite radio land audienc, that the price you exacted from us for appearing on tonight’s program was the right to give your acknowledgements to various and assorted friends and associates who have contributed to your, um, present state of being.

HS: Yes, if there are any friends in radio land who have money of any amount, you may contact me through Folkways.

BD: (laughing) For any purpose. 

HS: Yeah. 

BD: Harry Smith is currently one of the country’s leading outrageous filmmakers, in case you’re interested in outrageous filmmaking. 

IS: I’m only interested in outrageous films, not in outrageous film-making.

HS: Well, I am embarking on a very elaborate project now. I don’t know whether there’s any of our friends in radio land have ever looked at movies.

BD: Some of them also have eyes besides ears, you know, so go ahead. 

HS: Like Andy Warhol and Jack Smith and Robert Frank, William Burroughs, and Ed Sanders, and so forth, you know, making a movie with, you know.

IS: Actually, what he’s doing, he has a telephone book open, and he’s just reading names.

HS: Yeah, they are names, they’re names, they’re names, names, names. But, I would like to point out that where I discovered Aunt Barbara Dane was in the—strangely enough, due to the population explosion, we don’t have to go to the Appalachians anymore, like Cecil Sharp or something. I went to the Folklore Center. 

IS: The best field recording in the world is done at the Folklore Center.

HS: And I was talking to Izzy Young and suddenly Aunt Barbara and, her manager.

BD: Who may your manager be, right, you heard that phrase (laughing)?

HS: (singing) Who may your manager be?

BD: Listen, let’s get off that subject and play “John the Revelator.” That’s a gas.

IS: Well, the reason I asked about “John the Revelator” is it’s one of these songs, Harry, that’s always confounded me. I could not…I tried and tried and tried to get all the words. I assigned 12 different people to try and get all the words so we could print it sometime in Sing Out! and nobody has succeeded.

BD: You never asked me!

IS: I don’t mean to “John the Revelator,” but I mean to “John the Revelator” as sung on this particular recording.

BD: I know.

IS: Okay.

BD: I’m the best interpreter of recorded words.

IS: Listen, make up a prize now we can offer to anybody who’s listening.

HS: A free copy of the latest Sing Out!

IS: A free subscription to Sing Out! to anybody. Now, I mean this. This show is a big put-on except for this genuine one-hundred percent gift offer: a free subscription to Sing Out! to anybody who successfully notates the words to “John the Revelator” that we’re gonna play now.

HS: Notes, not notate. (playfully) What sort of a magazine editor are you?

BD: Notate is a musical thing.

IS: Well, okay, but just get us the words, okay? All of them.

BD: We need the woids [words]. As a matter of fact, you know you’re talking about “Blind” Willie Johnson, right? The singer on this record is “Blind” Willie Johnson. I just got through claiming that I was the greatest, you know, record-listener-to-word-getter-off-er-record-er that exists, and I tell you, on the question of…

IS: You already have a subscription to Sing Out!

BD: …on the question of “Blind” Willie Johnson, I resign. My skills are no longer…so in other words, if you can do it, I’ll also, let’s see, what’ll I do? I’ll give you a free autographed picture of Harry Smith (laughing).

HS: I would suspect that “Blind” Willie Johnson already has a subscription to Sing Out!, though.

Music: “Blind” Willie Johnson, “John the Revelator”

IS: “John the Revelator” sung by “Blind” Willie Johnson. We repeat once again our once-in-a-lifetime offer: a free subscription to Sing Out! for the first person to write out the words as sung and send them in to us.

HS: Okay, here’s the words. Now, (laughing) where’s my Sing Out!?

IS: Okay, leave your name with the girl at the front desk and don’t call us, we’ll call you.

HS: Hey, why don’t you play this Number 61, “James Alley Blues,” by Richard “Rabbit” Brown. It became a joke in New Orleans according to Louie Dumaine. I don’t know if anybody knows about Louis Dumaine. He was a trumpet player with Buddy Bolton’s band and so forth. But he told me that, that with Richard “Rabbit” Brown a specialized thing developed which was called “running rabbit,” see, because poor Richard “Rabbit” would be drunk singing in the middle of the night and everybody would throw water on him. And it became quite a thing to see who could make him run the farthest. He must have been quite a character, but that record was made in a garage in New Orleans.

BD: Some of the best music.

HS: He only made those two sides, which this is one, and then another version, which is a vocal version of “Tiger Rag.” And a 12-inch record, strangely enough, one side of which has “The Sinking of the Titanic.” (Singing) “Twas on.” I know that whole song, I won’t sing it though.

IS: Sing it, sing it, sing it. 

HS: I can’t remember it. (Singing) “An April morning in the year of 19….” (fades out).

BD: Do you know ever since I heard that line in this song we’re going to play right next—”I’ve been looking for a cat to offer me some Uneeda biscuits and a half a pint of gin”—but nobody made such a concrete offer yet. [

HS: I would love to play the guitar like he does. He’s as good as Thelonious Monk in his own way.

Music: Richard “Rabbit” Brown, “James Alley Blues”

BD: Ooh, that’s tough sayings. Tell us about, you were talking about Robert “Rabbit.”

HS: Rabbit? Tell me, Aunt Barbara, do you know another song like one of the Child ballads that you could sing for us as a sort of a closing…?

IS: Don’t you like the way Harry moved in here, took over the…. This is the Harry Smith Show.

BD: Right, yeah.

HS: (Grunting) Ha-ba-da-ba.

IS: With his two guests, Barbara Dane and Irwin Silber.

HS: Barbara never gets to do anything though, don’t you like…Barbara?

BD: I tell you, one of these fine days I’m gonna start singing on this show. I don’t know what it is with me. But the thing is, I like to hear people sing all the time and when I sing myself I can’t hear them. I’m inside my head, so I’d rather….

HS: Don’t you know that protest song goes WBAI?

BD: I’m gonna write one. Listen…

HS: (Singing) The elevator is small and the engineer’s good / Sing Out! is the one that should be understood.

IS: It’s a good beginning, Harry. It’s a good beginning. Can I get the copyright on that song?

BD: (Giggling) We’ve got a very limited amount of time left, so let me recapitulate. We’ve been talking with Harry Smith. Who is very hairy. I don’t know about how smithy. He’s also the person who had the perspicacity to put together a rather completely….

HS: That was many, many, many, many years ago, you see, because I devote most of my time these days to being interviewed on the radio.

BD: That’s right, I know Harry.

HS: And to my city of a shanty gold wage [?].

BD: I know, your schedule is really appalling. See, he beat everybody out. See he put out this completely uncensored…. I mean, he just used his own taste as the only guideline. What did he like, you know?

HS: I have a very bad voice. Actually, I’m a very nice person, see, but my voice is against me now.

BD: Well.

IS: One of the great things about the Anthology, of course, is, as you said, the tremendous variety of material. There are many areas we didn’t cover, but one in particular…

HS: America.

IS: America, yes (laughing).

HS: Yeah, it’s a beautiful, I love it. I would hate to see anything happen to it and they better stay out of Vietnam. Have a bad thing happen to it.

BD: We’re going to wind up with a, with a mad Cajun dance tune. Because within these six records, there is, there is really the whole world of music. If I had to throw everything else in my collection away, I think if I kept these six records, I could be quite content. I was, for a number of years, quite content with just these six records.

IS: Before we play it, you tell me, Harry, is the title of the song and the artist’s name a put on?

HS: Where?

IS: On this here. It’s number 37.

HS: You mean Folkways Blues by…?

IS: No, no, no.

BD: Wait, you can say that in a minute. But the first thing, I have to make an announcement, which I’ve been trying to build up to here, and you won’t let me get at it.

IS: Oh, alright, go ahead.

BD: We have, besides our famous for the words of the song that we announced a few minutes ago, we have a new concept to announce and we want you to pick up on this and tell your friends and your children and your enemies or whoever. We’re going to accept the submission of tapes of tunes written by yourself and sung by yourself. We will listen to the tapes and pick, every week, one, best one. Best. Better. Good. Decent. Something. Anything that’s valid that we think we ought to play. We’ll pick one, arbitrarily (laughing).

IS: Anyway, send us your original song. Sing them yourself. Send it on some kind of a tape that we can play over the radio. And at the end of the year we’ll announce a big once-a-year contest and we’ll give away WBAI to whoever wrote the best song. Right?

BD: Chris Albertson [WBAI disc jockey and eventual biographer of Bessie Smith].

IS: Okay, to wind up the Anthology, number 37. It’s spelled S A U T C R A P A U D.

BD: It’s sautéed frog legs, right?

IS: It’s “Saut Crapaud,” and it’s performed by Columbus Fruge.

Music: Columbus Fruge, “Saut Crapaud”

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Berkeley Folk Music Festival Project intern Sam Sevor at the State
University of New York (SUNY) Brockport’s Department of History for assistance with
transcription. Thanks to Barbara Dane, Nina Menendez, Nina Silber, and the Estate of
Irwin Silber for permission to publish the radio broadcast. At the Library of Congress’s
American Folklife Center, thanks to the incredible staff, among them Judith Gray, John
Fenn, Guha Shankar, Stephen Winick, Jennifer Cutting, Allina Migoni, Melanie Zeck,
and Eric Graf. Similarly, thanks to the wonderful staff at the John W. Kluge Center at the
Library of Congress, among them Kevin Butterfield, Travis Hensley, Michael Stratmoen,
Andrew Brenner, Sophia Zahner, and David Konteh. At the Harry Smith Archives, Rani Singh.

Picture This

enjoying the shelf featuring anticapitalist picture books at the public library.

When we consider and reflect upon nature at large or the history of mankind or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations and reactions in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away. This primitive, naive but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away. …But this conception, correctly as it expresses the general character of the picture of appearances as a whole, does not suffice to explain the details of which this picture is made up, and so long as we do not understand these, we have not a clear idea of the whole picture. In order to understand these details we must detach them from their natural or historical connection and examine each one separately, its nature, special causes, effects, etc.

— Engels, Anti-Dühring

Syllabus—Public History Internship

seminar @ suny brockport, spring 2024.HST 485/585—Spring 2024—Dr. Michael J. Kramer, Department of History, State University of New York (SUNY) BrockportWhat are we up to?

The Public History Internship course is a chance to get real world experience in local (or regional) archives, museums, or other historic sites—or online through a virtual internship. The History Department has on-going relationships with local and regional institutions. Inquiries about potential internship placements may be initiated by faculty or students and are established by mutual agreement. Each student should complete roughly 90 hours with a final project or 110 hours without one, depending on the specifics of the internship arrangement.

As with any job, there is some paperwork to complete. All students in an internship placement must fill out the internship contract with their site supervisor prior to or at the start of the semester. There is a short mid-term report from the site supervisor to complete, as well as a final report from the site supervisor. To help you reflect on and learn from your experience, students maintain an internship log, a set of short essays, and convene online for discussion.

Your site supervisor and course instructor will work with you to establish safe, respectful interactions, reasonable expectations, and clear guidelines for your internship. If you encounter any issues or problems at your internship, contact Professor Kramer. If you encounter a situation of discrimination or harassment, Professor Kramer can direct you to resources both confidential and otherwise (see the Discrimination and Harassment page for more information). If you require accommodations of some sort, please refer to the Disabilities and Accommodations page for more information.

What You Will Learn

This course is helps you gain real world experience in the field of public history, broadly conceived. Over the course of the semester, you will:

explore the broader field of public history and how historical inquiry and knowledge relates to publics, broadly conceived.develop your understanding of a particular institution and how it relates to the broader field of public history.gain experience with what it is like to work on a public history project.improve your skills of researching and writing reflectively about your internship experience.improve skills of oral presentation and communication.learn how to use source citation using Chicago Manual of Style effectively and accurately.How This Course Works

This course allows you to build a reflective dimension to your public history internship this semester. We will keep it simple, but substantive. There are two assignments: a mid-semester, a final reflection, and a blog post for the Department of History’s Timelines website (see examples from the Fall 2023 course). If you wish to develop an additional project or essay or something else from your internship, consult with me. As needed, we will convene a few times to check in over the semester. If you encounter any issues or problems at your internship site or have any concerns, please contact me or the chair of the Department of History as soon as possible.

PaperworkDue at start of semester—Internship Letter of AgreementDue by March 15—Internship Site Supervisor Midterm Evalulation FormDue by May 15—Internship Site Supervisor Final Evalulation FormAssignmentsWeekly hours and tasksMid-Semester ReflectionsFinal ReflectionsBlog Post DraftBlog Post

Tribute to Barry Olivier

written for barry olivier’s memorial life celebration, 14 January 2024.Barry Olivier shaking hands with bluegrass and old-time mountain music bandleader JE Mainer at the 1963 Berkeley Folk Music Festival.

In 2011, when I first contacted Barry Olivier about digitizing the Berkeley Folk Music Festival Collection, which had been his working archive for producing the festival between the late 1950s and 1970 before he sold it to Northwestern University’s Special Collections Library in 1973, he immediately supported the idea. “Oh,” he said, “it can be a continuation of what we were trying to do at the Festival!”

After a few conversations and, in 2011, an eventual visit by Barry to my class and the library at Northwestern, where I was teaching at the time, we settled on a concept for thinking about the project.  It should strive to become a “digital river of song.” The goal was to create a website about the Festival that digitized all of the 30,000 artifacts that sat in boxes on the shelves at Northwestern (and still do, available for research). Online, these could then become a vehicle for more people to carry the best energies of the original Festival forward.

The metaphor of a river of song really pleased Barry. As I learned more about the Festival’s history and Barry’s life, I began to see why. He was someone who liked to do the slow, steady work that sets things flowing. For Barry, putting on a massive folk festival was not about asserting some frozen sense of how things should be but making it possible for people to join, enjoy, participate, and go where they wanted to go on the powerful current of folk music tradition.

A Northern California native, Barry told me that he remembered attending the San Francisco World’s Fair in 1939. It was one of a number of points of inspiration for the Berkeley Folk Music Festival, which grew out of Barry’s contributions to the Bay Area folk scene in the early 1950s, such as founding the Barrel, a music store, and hosting local singers on the Midnight Special, a radio show on KPFA-FM, the local Pacifica radio station. Having been a student in the theater program at Cal, Barry began to organize concert programs in 1957 and 58 for the Associated Students of the University of California. These featured performers such as Jean Ritchie, the Appalachian dulcimer singer; Cisco Houston, who had been running buddies with Woody Guthrie; and Sam Hinton, the San Diego-based oceanographer, harmonica virtuoso, and folk singer who would go on to serve as the Master of Ceremonies for every subsequent Berkeley Folk Music Festival, beginning in 1959.

Another influential figure at the Berkeley Folk Music Festival in the first year of the Festival was Pete Seeger, who along with his father Charles, a pioneering ethnomusicologist who had taught at Berkeley in the 1910s until he was kicked off the faculty for his radical politics, would be deeply influential on Barry’s ideal for a folk music festival. Barry, like the Seegers (Pete’s half-brother Mike and half-sister Peggy would also appear at the Festival), believed in folk music as something communal, popular, open to all. They were less concerned with strict rules of authenticity and purity, more interested in participatory inclusion.

Barry picked up on this. He sought to create a well-organized event filled with concerts, panels, workshops, campfires, coffee hours, formal and informal spaces. It was smart, even a bit nerdy, but also fun. The goal was to have serious fun, in all senses of the term: fun as a means to the serious ends of exploring what folk music was and could be. The goal for Barry at the Berkeley Folk Music Festival was to produce solid structures that allowed for casual conviviality; an event on a fancy university campus that asserted anyone was welcome to study and make and create folk music knowledge; a mixing of peoples and styles of music that both celebrated differences of background and origin but also encouraged festive togetherness and exchange.

For the tumultuous decade of the 1960s, the Berkeley Festival took over the Cal campus for a long weekend, usually once a year around the July 4th holiday or thereabouts. The first years of the Festival saw it develop into an established event. As the folk revival became a national phenomenon in the early and mid 1960s the Festival became a huge affair: its final Jubilee concerts could fill the Hearst Greek Amphitheater and they placed center stage at the most prestigious public university in the United States figures from the margins of mainstream American society: a sharecropper guitar player from rural Texas such as Mance Lipscomb, who was the son of enslaved peoples; a blind guitar player from the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina such as Arthel “Doc” Watson; an older balladeer from Arkansas such as Almeda Riddle; a songster from the Delta such as “Mississippi” John Hurt; later,  in 1970, a young norteño Mexican-American band such as Los Tigres del Norte.

It was as if the Berkeley Festival asserted that these figures from the margins had as much knowledge and expertise and wisdom to offer the world as any of the most prestigious faculty at the University of California itself. By the later half of the 1960s, Barry opened up the festival to new influences: singer songwriters, rock bands, less well-known forms of regional vernacular music in California such as Cajun sounds from Louisiana; even avant-garde experimental musicians performed: the Texas art band Red Crayola hung melting ice above the stage in front of a microphone as they clanged away loudly on electric instruments, stretching the definition of folk music to what many thought was the breaking point.

At the event, Barry fostered folk music interactions in many of the same campus spaces where dramatic political events such as the Free Speech Movement and Vietnam War protests took place, but Barry’s goal was not to put his body “upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus” to “make it stop,” as New Left student political activist Mario Savio dramatically insisted at Cal in 1964. Rather, Barry wanted to transform campus spaces, using a broad understanding of folk music to create moments for interaction among a more inclusive and diverse populace: marginalized working class black, white, and brown musicians; people of all generations; audiences whose interests might range from very traditional understandings of balladry, such as the esteemed Berkeley English Department faculty member Bertrand Bronson, a world expert on the British Child Ballads, to Kaleidoscope, the Los Angeles experimental folk band who transformed the old ballad “O Death” into a dramatic meditation on the expanding American military intervention in Vietnam during the 1960s.

In some sense, the Festival is a less recognized origin point for the so-called San Francisco Renaissance of the late 1960s—the Summer of Love and all that flowering of music, utopian longing for peace, and investigations of whether there could be different ways to live more freely in modern America and the world. Most histories focus on the Beats, the Acid Tests, the Trips Festival, the Haight Ashbury neighborhood, and the Monterey Pop Festival, but a peek in the Berkeley Festival archive reveals that almost all the famous figures of the era were folkies, or that Barry was at these and other events taking in and processing what was happening. We find a photograph of a young Janis Joplin performing at the Monterey Folk Festival in 1963; Barry’s amazing photos of Bob Dylan at his infamous 1965 press conference, organized by music critic and friend Ralph Gleason; photographs of a young, short-haired, watch-wearing Jerry Garcia singing along with Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers and hanging out with Ralph Rinzler, Jean Ritchie, and others at the 1962 Winter Berkeley Folk Music Festival; Barry’s amazing photos from Monterey Pop; his reportage and photographs (for Gleason) from the ill-fated Altamont Festival in 1969; and of course all the correspondence, business records, posters, fliers, programs, notes, a bit of audio, and over 10,000 photographs of the Berkeley Folk Music Festival itself.

All this material reminds us of Barry’s Herculean task in keeping the Festival going (money was always an issue, but Barry was always clever at, as he put it to me once, “shucking for bucks,” and he found ways to put together his own funds with some support from the university to keep the festival going, often at a loss); it also provides ample evidence of the Berkeley Festival’s significance. It contributed in vital ways to shaping the West Coast cultural and musical milieu of the 1960s, helping to encourage a more open, abundant, diverse, inclusive sense of encounter and experimentation than back East, where the folk revival got stuck on issues of Dylan going electric at Newport in 1965 and other matters of authenticity and purity. Out at Berkeley, when the former folkies in the Jefferson Airplane performed at the Festival in 1966, they were welcomed for the intriguing ways they were taking folk music in new directions. And who was in tow backstage? A now shaggy, long-haired, Beatle boot-wearing Jerry Garcia. There was a throughline from Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers to the Jefferson Airplane (named, after all, in part for Blind Lemon Jefferson, the blues guitarist) and Garcia’s Grateful Dead, a throughline that runs right through the Berkeley Folk Music Festival.

As anti-Vietnam War and other radical politics intensified at Cal during the late 1960s, Barry was able to keep the Festival going. Partly, it was because he was trusted by all sides. Campus administrators knew him. Some were friends of the family in Berkeley. Younger activists and musicians knew him too. Barry navigated protests on Telegraph Avenue at the 1968 Festival by having Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach lead the audience at the opening concert on Sproul Plaza in an ecstatic chant and dance, shifting conflict into serious fun. He worked carefully with his ushers and police to kept he event safe, but with flexibility and a sense that it was welcome to all. He was neither out for overly controlled order, nor for anarchic chaos, but for safe, joyous, open engagement with folk sounds and folk revival ideas. In this sense, Barry offers a different kind of figure to the split then—and now—between so-called conservatives and liberals, between, say, the reactionary politics of then California governor Ronald Reagan and the outlandish recklessness of some of the hippies in the Haight or the increasingly militant radicalism of political activists in Berkeley by the late 1960s. Barry offered a different path. The Berkeley Folk Music Festival sought to be more like a beautiful trail alongside the river of song as it burbled along between the redwood and Eucalyptus trees on the Cal campus.

As Barry argued to me, he was not exceptionally political other than being, as he put it, generally a liberal Californian; yet in its way the Festival had a cultural politics: Barry was interested in encouraging a sense of temporary but powerful public community and basic human dignity for a pluralist, multicultural America. He treated performers not as high and mighty superstars but rather as special participants in a communal event; he treated audiences as equals, worth of just as decent treatment as any of the stars on the program. He invited scholars to share ideas about folklore, and created egalitarian moments of exchange that honored expertise but did not emphasize hierarchies of privilege or separateness.

Barry also attended and organized other festivals. Most fascinatingly, newly financially flush rock band managers and promoters hired him to direct the Wild West Festival in Golden Gate Park, a massive rock music and arts gathering that was supposed to be bigger than Woodstock during the summer of 1969 (for the full story see the chapter in my book The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture). Barry, however, wisely called the Wild West Festival off when it seemed like violence might take place at the event. It was a difficult, but smart decision as a few months later, violence erupted at the poorly organized Altamont rock festival on the outskirts of the Bay Area. Even when music festivals were becoming big business by the end of the 1960s, Barry always put decency, safety, and shared humanity above profit and success.

It is a good example of how Barry was interested most of all in helping the river of song flow. He was not intent on being a high and mighty king in a palace on the cliffs, or building a dam by the waterfalls of musical heritage, or becoming a hermit in a cottage tucked in an isolated cove around the river’s bend. He was interested in helping people move forward on the music—propelled by past traditions, open to new discoveries, enjoying the journey along the way. With the Berkeley Folk Music Festival, Barry wanted to create a vessel for edifying musical enjoyment that was also constructed to support expressions of individual creativity, social enjoyment, and collective togetherness. He did the heavy lifting, the careful planning, the necessary implementation to made festivity seem effervescently festive and fun.

In doing so, he contributed to a distinctly West Coast vision of the folk revival and of music and culture as a whole. It would strive to be more open, less competitive, less divided between superstars and passive audiences, more curious about exploring, in concert, what exactly this thing called folk music was and could be. Thousands upon thousands of people were able to feel moved by folk music thanks to his efforts. Barry put in the time and effort—countless hours upon hours of organizing—to make the Berkeley Folk Music Festival and other musical events seem to float with ease.

Now, digitally, you can take in the river of song Barry helped to keep flowing. The Berkeley Folk Music Festival website features an introductory multimedia exhibit and from there you can delve into digital versions of the over 30,000 artifacts that Barry used to put together the Festival each year he produced it. We are still working on improving the project and developing new iterations of it. The website stands as a testament, I hope, to his vision, his labor, and most of all his ethos that if one does the work to create safe, dignified, participatory spaces of festivity and serious fun, the channels for human creativity and togetherness can open up. May the river of song that Barry tended to with such dedication and love keep rolling on.

Theory’s Task

jacqueline rose on theory.Jacqueline Rose. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian.

It is the task of theory to keep track of both political life and itself.

— Jacqueline Rose