By Michael Lederer

“May you live in inter­est­ing times.”

Many Amer­i­cans com­ing to Europe are lured by the romance: foun­tains in Rome, cafés in Paris, Span­ish gui­tars, the cool vibes of Berlin. All those exist­ed in the nine­teen twen­ties and ear­ly thir­ties too, though now as then there is some­thing else in the air. It is not fea­tured in any of the very attrac­tive four-col­or brochures put out by tourist agen­cies. Indeed, one won’t see, hear, feel, or taste it if one only has a few hours off the cruise ship, or if the itin­er­ary has one shut­tling between air­port and hotel as fast as one can shout “Next!” But slow down enough to look between the mon­u­ments and land­marks and it’s here: Fear. Like a dash of Tabas­co in the soup, it is giv­ing life here in Europe an unex­pect­ed edge these days. A lit­tle bite to the brew.

Read more »

By Bobbie Kirkhart

Rand Paul emu­lates his father in almost every way. Almost.

:: Ron Paul is a physi­cian; Rand Paul is a physician.
:: Dad was in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives; son is in the Senate.
:: Ron is a Lib­er­tar­i­an-lean­ing Repub­li­can; Rand is a Lib­er­tar­i­an-lean­ing Republican.

Read more »

An Interview with David Goldfield

Amer­i­can Stud­ies Blog: Pro­fes­sor Gold­field, in 2013 you pub­lished a wide­ly acclaimed book, Still Fight­ing the Civ­il War: The Amer­i­can South and South­ern His­to­ry. Even the inter­na­tion­al press is cur­rent­ly fol­low­ing the debate about the Con­fed­er­ate flag which flared up after the shoot­ing of nine black parish­ioners at a his­toric church in Charleston, S.C. Are South­ern­ers still fight­ing the Civ­il War, and why is the Con­fed­er­ate flag such a pow­er­ful symbol?

David Gold­field: Not as much as we used to. Many things have been set­tled in the South over the last fifty years (but not the pre­vi­ous 100 years): fore­most the rise of African Amer­i­cans to the sta­tus of full cit­i­zens as a result of the end of legal racial seg­re­ga­tion and restora­tion of vot­ing rights. African Amer­i­cans hold 1500 polit­i­cal offices through­out the South now, and their eco­nom­ic gains have expand­ed the black mid­dle class.

Read more »

By Sabrina Völz

For those of you who missed Part I, click here.

Last week, we left off with Cheryl Strayed’s long descrip­tion of her­self.… It all seems to be there, well almost. All but two things: age and race. The age part didn’t both­er me too much, but the race part did. I often teach about iden­ti­ty con­struc­tion, race, eth­nic­i­ty, racism, and col­or­blind racism. Recent­ly, I have begun to look more deeply at the top­ics of white­ness and white priv­i­lege.
While read­ing that long descrip­tion, I began think­ing about the fact that when Strayed authored her book, she took it for grant­ed that she is white and that her read­ers prob­a­bly are too. I reread the pas­sage. Nowhere does she men­tion her white­ness. She does not need to do so as she is mere­ly adher­ing to the ‘white­ness’ script of west­ern civ­i­liza­tion that pre­scribes white­ness as the norm, the spring from which Oth­er­ing flows.

Quite intrigued, I began scour­ing the entire book, ask­ing myself the ques­tion whether Strayed’s white­ness was in some small way par­tial­ly respon­si­ble for her per­son­al tri­umph. Of course, her quick think­ing was essen­tial when faced with wild ani­mals with no pro­tec­tion oth­er than a loud whis­tle. And hav­ing the fore­sight to send her­self care pack­ages at stops along the trail as well as accept­ing help from oth­ers at key points also enabled her to con­tin­ue. Prob­a­bly char­ac­ter traits, such as tenac­i­ty, deter­mi­na­tion, and flex­i­bil­i­ty, didn’t hurt her chances either. But why did com­plete strangers go out of their way to help her? Was it her good looks, the nov­el­ty of see­ing a woman—a woman alone—on such a rugged trail, the Amer­i­can way, luck, or was it sim­ply the fact that she is white? Would she have got­ten that help at crit­i­cal parts of her jour­ney if she’d been African Amer­i­can or Native? I can’t answer that ques­tion, but it is cer­tain­ly a ques­tion that is wor­thy of inquiry, a ques­tion which I will con­tin­ue to pur­sue in my own life and teach­ing. What about you? If you are white, have you thought about your white priv­i­lege lately?

By Sabrina Völz

After hear­ing that the trav­el­ogue Wild by Cheryl Strayed was made into a movie, I thought about pick­ing up a copy of the book and inves­ti­gat­ing why so many peo­ple are wild about Wild: A Jour­ney from Lost to Found. The mem­oir sketch­es Strayed’s strug­gle to over­come the loss of her moth­er to can­cer, a failed mar­riage, and the ensu­ing depres­sion that plunged Strayed into using hero­in recreationally—if that’s possible—and hav­ing sex with strangers. How­ev­er, the major­i­ty of her book describes her 1,110 mile trek on the Pacif­ic Crest Trail and her jour­ney to inner peace. It all sound­ed cheesy, so I was reluc­tant but even­tu­al­ly did buy the book after see­ing a sto­ry on the Night­ly News about the many Amer­i­cans fol­low­ing in Strayed’s footsteps.

Although I teach life writ­ing and am always look­ing for new teach­ing mate­r­i­al, I approached the book as a just-for-fun read. After a few pages, I came across Strayed’s descrip­tion of her­self that plunged me into a strug­gle with some­thing much deep­er. Well, take a look. Is it just me? Or is there some­thing about the fol­low­ing pas­sage both­er­ing you as well?

Read more »

By Sabrina Völz

Before we get to our top­ic at hand, let’s get out that Karaoke mic and get ready to sing a song to the tune of “Ten Lit­tle Indi­ans.” One lit­tle, two lit­tle, three lit­tle can­di­dates, four lit­tle, five lit­tle, six lit­tle can­di­dates, sev­en lit­tle, eight lit­tle, nine lit­tle can­di­dates, ten lit­tle Repub­li­can can­di­dates. For Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, that is, if you haven’t yet heard. Well, not exact­ly ten. Jeb Bush, for­mer Gov­er­nor of Flori­da, just joined the race last Mon­day, and Don­ald Trump, a real estate tycoon, made his deci­sion pub­lic on Tues­day. And there are still a few poten­tial can­di­dates think­ing about throw­ing their hat in the race. So stay tuned. Now if you are seri­ous find­ing out who may make it to the Oval Office in the 2016 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, then you’ll have some work to do. It won’t be easy, but there is no bet­ter time than the present to begin.

To be fair, I am going to intro­duce the oth­er can­di­dates in alpha­bet­i­cal order and in a blog-friend­ly way:

• Ben Car­son, for­mer Head of Pedi­atric Neu­ro­surgery at John Hopkins
• Ted Cruz, Sen­a­tor from Texas
• Car­ly Fio­r­i­na, for­mer CEO of Hewlett-Packard
• Lind­sey Gra­ham, Sen­a­tor from South­ern Carolina
• Mike Huck­abee, for­mer Gov­er­nor of Arkansas and ordained minister
• George Pata­ki, for­mer Gov­er­nor of New York
• Rand Paul, Oph­thal­mol­o­gist and Sen­a­tor of Kentucky
• Rick Per­ry, for­mer Gov­er­nor of Texas
• Mario Rubio, sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion Cuban Amer­i­can and Sen­a­tor from Florida
• Rick San­to­rum, for­mer Sen­a­tor of Pennsylvania

As you can imag­ine, hav­ing so many GOP can­di­dates in the U.S. pres­i­den­tial race does pose a few challenges.

Read more »