The project that brings me to theRobert Penn Warren Center for theHumanities is a history of Christianfilmmaking in the United States. In

order to offer a survey of the relationshipbetween the American film industry and theuses of the religious text, I am examining filmsmade by Hollywood and by filmmakers adja-cent to it who have achieved national theatricalreleases for their products; in the process, I con-sider what difference it makes that manifesta-tions of religious belief converge with botheconomic behavior and with entertainment,and what consequences this convergence has forreligion, Hollywood, and our understanding ofthe place of each in public life. Some parts ofthis story of the twinning of film and Christian-ity are well known, but there is no book-lengthsurvey that looks at the history of Americanfilmmaking through the lens of its relationshipwith Christianity as both a narrative and socialforce. The most fruitful examinations of Christ-ian creativity in contemporary American publiclife have hitherto focused on broadcasting,music recording, and publishing. This studyfocuses on film because it has historically been aunified industry with a small coterie of produc-ers confronting high economic barriers to entryand consequently desirous of addressing anational audience. The economics of film, inother words, mandate participation in anational discourse in ways that the niche mar-keting possible to publishing and broadcastingdoes not. In short, my book argues that the his-tory of the American film industry may be toldin miniature through its relations with Ameri-can Christianity.

Perhaps unexpectedly, Christianity alsoappears to be a recurring element at moments ofinstitutional crisis within the American filmindustry. As William Uricchio and Roberta Pear-

son demonstrate in their examination of Vita-graph’s The Life of Moses (1910), the religiousfilm simultaneously justified film attendance onthe sabbath and created appreciation for theassimilationist desires of America’s Jews at themoment that the success of the nickelodeon wasgenerating a kind of urban backlash against filmattendance among the young. The 1915 Mutualv. Ohio Supreme Court decision that determinedthat film was an imitative art that deserved noprotections against prior restraint is bookendedby two D. W. Griffith films that manipulate reli-gious rhetoric, The Birth of a Nation (whose con-clusion invokes the figure of Christ) andIntolerance (which contains an extended sequenceset at the time of Christ). Later, another religiousfilm, Roberto Rossellini’s The Miracle, incited thesuit that overturned the Mutual decision in1952. Cecil B. DeMille’s King of Kings (1927), asRichard Maltby has observed, appeared when

opposition to the American film industry wascreated by the industry’s ability to retail big-cityvalues where they were not wanted; in otherwords, religion helped to naturalize the move-ment of film into small-town American life, as it

T H E S E M I A N N U A L N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E RO B E RT P E N N WA R R E N C E N T E R F O R T H E H U M A N I T I E S

VOL . 1 9 , NO . 2 • S PR ING 2 0 1 1 • VANDERB ILT UNIVERS ITY

Letters • Spring 2011 • 1

InsideChristian Cinema as National Cinema............1-4

The Future of the Humanities ............................5

External Grants and Fellowships.........................6

What We Are Writing ..........................................7

Graduate Fellows Lecture Series ..........................8

Harry C. Howard Jr. Lecture ...............................9

Sesquicentennial of the Civil War.................................10

Theory, Interdisciplinarity, and the Humanities.........11

Building Community in the 21st Century .................12

H.B. Warner as Jesus Christ in Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings (1927), courtesy of the Academyof Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Christian Cinema as National CinemaBy Anne Morey

Letters • Spring 2011 • 2

had earlier in urban settings. Perhaps above all, the narrative of the installa-

tion of enforcement mechanisms by 1934 forthe Production Code (the film industry’s self-censorship organization) can be read as one inwhich religion was the solution to an institu-tional crisis in the film industry. The ProductionCode represented the failure of liberal Protestantattitudes toward the film industry and the tri-umph of Catholic approaches to textual regula-tion, as both Maltby and Francis Couvares havenoted. Religion’s utility to Hollywood continuedinto the 1960s, with the biblical spectacularforming a reliable product at a moment whenaudiences had declined by half, as they didbetween 1948 and 1958, making the economicpenalties for misjudging public sentiment con-siderable. Religious filmmaking even combineswith technological innovation; for example, Cin-emaScope, the widescreen format that wasdesigned to lure adult audiences back into the-aters in 1953 debuted in the religious block-buster The Robe.

Religious filmmaking in America thus pos-sesses a lengthy tradition, one substantialenough to permit the development of a numberof different subgenres: the action/adventure reli-gious picture such as Matthew Crouch’s Revela-tion-based The Omega Code (1999) andMegiddo (2001); the Christian musical such asGodspell (David Greene, 1973) and Jesus Christ,Superstar (Norman Jewison, 1973); the Jesusbiopic such as From the Manger to the Cross (Sid-ney Olcott, 1912), King of Kings (Nicholas Ray,1961), The Greatest Story Ever Told (GeorgeStevens, 1965), and Joshua (Jon Purdy, 2002);the Christian art film such as The Last Tempta-tion of Christ (Martin Scorsese, 1988), whichmight be classed with European art films thatexplore religious life and belief in unconven-tional ways, along the lines of Pier PaoloPasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew(1964), and Jean-Luc Godard’s Hail Mary(1985); and the religious horror film such asRosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968) andThe Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973), to nameonly a few. While the religious spectacular of thetype of Ben-Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925; WilliamWyler, 1959) has become relatively uncommonsince the 1960s, other forms have crowded in totake its place. Moreover, the religious film’s debtto secular genres has led to a wide variety of nar-rative and archetypal styles, so that if The Sign ofthe Cross (Cecil B. DeMille, 1933), say, bears aclose affinity to King Kong (1933), Mel Gibson’sThe Passion of the Christ (2004) resembles anassortment of non-Christian films that similarlyexpose the heroic protagonist to unbearablephysical suffering, such as Mad Max, Brave-

heart, or the second Terminator film.A brief history of Hollywood’s relations with

the religious film—and, to some extent, withthe religious filmmaker—makes more obviousthe continuities and breaks in the film industry’sown tradition of religious filmmaking. Religiousoutsiders, as I have argued in another context,have historically hoped for access to the bullypulpit of Hollywood. The history of denomina-tional filmmaking is more complex than can beexplored here, but it embraced mainline Protes-tant denominations such as the Methodists, forexample, who noticed declining membership inthe 1910s and 1920s particularly among youngpeople. Methodists consequently parlayed a his-tory of the illustrated, improving lecture into abrief flirtation with feature filmmaking. Suchattempts at religious filmmaking by religiousgroups remained by and large outside the main-stream and never spoke to Americans in largenumbers. Despite the apparent weakness ofsuch filmmaking, however, religious pressuregroups were at intervals able to call Hollywood’sattention to the usefulness of the mainstreamreligious narrative with films such as DeMille’sThe King of Kings, which was something of amilestone in church/film industry cooperation.

It appears, somewhat unexpectedly, that withthe installation of the Catholic-influenced Pro-duction Code, big-budget religious spectacularssuch as Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments(DeMille, 1923), which had been a recurrentfeature of super-A picture production in Holly-wood in the 1920s, disappeared. It is somethingof a cliché in histories of American religion tosay that the Scopes trial (1925) caused evangeli-cal Protestants to withdraw from the publicsphere for twenty years or more. Whether ornot that was the case, at more or less the samemoment the leadership of a variety of mainlineProtestant denominations was discreditedbecause of its too close dealings with the HaysOffice, which oversaw film industry self-regula-tion. Into the gap created by the absence of aProtestant presence capable of shaping film nar-ratives or film institutions stepped a newly ener-gized and visible Catholicism. This vigorousCatholicism not only provided a rationale forthe Production Code, but also took narrativeshape in the guise of the numerous sympatheticportraits of priests in films such as Boys Town(1938) and Angels with Dirty Faces (1938). Suchfilms present the priest as rescuer of a brokensociety just as Father Daniel Lord, one of theauthors of the Production Code, might be con-strued as the clerical savior of a broken filmindustry.

Hollywood revived the big-budget religiousspectacular in the very changed economic and

social climate of the late 1940s and 1950s, aspan of fifteen or so years that brings us the sur-feit of riches constituted by the second TenCommandments (DeMille, 1956), the secondBen-Hur, The Robe (Henry Koster, 1953), QuoVadis? (Mervyn LeRoy, 1951), and other similarworks. The fit between the film industry’schanged economic structure and the usefulnessof the biblical narrative structure has been wellexplored by film scholars, who see a host of rea-sons for the vigorous return to religious film-making (see Pauly and Sobchack). Causes rangefrom the desire to find pre-sold narratives thatwill take advantage of the differences betweenfilm and television (such as the widescreenprocess introduced in The Robe), to a desire tocontinue to make films that will travel well tothe hinterlands even as the Production Code’sauthority was clearly in decline (a return to the1920s formula of sexual explicitness containedwithin the Trojan horse of suitably pious subjectmatter), to a desire to use the Holy Land as thebackdrop to Cold War allegories or to an explo-ration of the new post-1948 political realities inthe Middle East. So dominant was the formula,in fact, that an unsigned editorial in The Christ-ian Century eventually observed that these films,while often recommended from the pulpit, wereserving the interests of the industry rather morethan they served the interests of believers, com-menting that “father has not seen as much toexcite him elsewhere as he has at movies whichthe churches tell him to see” (“Bible” 1235).The later 1950s and 1960s didn’t see an aban-donment of religious filmmaking, but the fitbetween the religious narrative and the filmindustry became less cozy as Hollywoodadjusted to significant new institutional realities.Indeed, the Paramount Decree of 1948 set upthe legal and economic structures that reducedbarriers to entry into the film exhibition anddistributions markets, which in turn began toundo the framework of the Production Code,permitting more foreign and more risqué filmsaccess to America’s screens. The film industryalso gradually made its peace with television.One might argue that television became thenatural home of the religious film from the1960s onward, with annual revivals of filmssuch as Ben-Hur (typically programmed forEaster Week) and productions such as FrancoZeffirelli’s 1977 Jesus of Nazareth, a made-for-television mini-series.

One of the striking aspects of current reli-gious filmmaking is an alteration in the sociol-ogy of the filmmakers involved. No longer dowe have, as the ur-religious film director, thegentlemanly if pathological DeMille, whoseEpiscopalianism was less important to him than

Letters • Spring 2011 • 3

the successful deployment of a formula of sex,sin, and redemption (or, as his niece AgnesDeMille pithily termed it, “women rollingaround on bulls”). In the late 1990s, successfulentrepreneurs from religious broadcasting beganto move into larger-budget filmmaking;Crouch, whose father runs Trinity BroadcastingNetwork, is an important example here. Gib-son, needless to say, was in 2004 the consum-mate Hollywood insider who elected to deployhis earnings from previous films in the makingof The Passion of the Christ. Often, the creatorsof religious films today are committed evangeli-cal Christians; Gibson represents something ofan exception to this trend as a devout Catholicof a rather radical stripe, inasmuch as he and hisfather, a former priest, evidently adhere to abrand of Catholicism that rejects most liturgicaland social reforms within the Church since theCouncil of Trent (Noxon 52). Notably, his Pas-sion was nonetheless an extraordinary crossoversuccess with evangelical Protestant audiences.

What appears to have changed in the pastsixty years in the sociology of makers of Christ-ian films, then, is that the filmmakers are nowChristians first and filmmakers second. Nor ispublicly proclaimed belief a bar to prominencein industries that previously had little time forcommitted Christians. In keeping with thechanged demography of American Christians asexplored by scholars such as D. Michael Lind-say, now when evangelicals acquire wealth andprestige, they no longer forsake the denomina-tions they started in, in striking contrast to thepractices of successful citizens of a hundredyears or more ago, when achievement of socialposition urged its possessor to move on from,say, Assemblies of God to Presbyterianism as amark of social rise. The major consequence ofthis change may be a decline in ecumenism inreligious film narratives. Indeed, King of Kingswas far more ecumenical in production and sen-timent than is Gibson’s The Passion—rabbis,among other religious leaders, were consulted,and the tone of the film was as inclusive as pos-sible. The two Ben-Hurs are similarly philo-Semitic, again in contrast with the divisiveclimate created by The Passion. Franklin Foerreports of the 1979 Warner Bros. release Jesus(Peter Sykes and John Krish) that, even thoughit was manufactured by an evangelical for use inconverting unbelievers to Christianity, it tendsto be presented via lecturers to audiences inways that attempt to demonstrate the continu-ities or similarities between Christianity and thefaiths practiced in the regions where converts arebeing sought.

Another way of characterizing the change insuccessful religious filmmaking is to suggest that

the religious film hoping to reach a nationalaudience can afford to be more narrowlydenominational in its address than hitherto.Writing in 2007, Frances FitzGerald estimatedthat 75 million Americans, roughly 25 percentof the population, could be described as evan-gelical Protestants, a term that covers an admit-tedly wide spectrum of belief and practice, fromMennonites to Charismatic Episcopalians (31).Nonetheless, this 25 percent may represent arelatively cohesive set of taste cultures andexpectations where certain kinds of popular reli-gious narratives, such as adaptations of the Nar-nia series, are concerned. Theeconomics of this market areclearly well worth serving, asWalden Media’s repeatedinvestment in the Narnia fran-chise has demonstrated.

In an intensely Americanslippage between commercialbehavior and electoral behavior,the very strength of the Christ-ian market must be seen in thelight of what I have elsewheretermed “the plebiscite at thebox office.” I have argued ofthe 1920s and 1930s that out-siders wishing to colonize Hol-lywood tended to figure suchefforts precisely in terms of an election whoseresults were to be measured by ticket sales. Thehistory of subcultures vis-à-vis mainstream pop-ular culture in the United States has been, tosome extent, one of the market place as pollingplace, in which commercial clout translates topolitical power. In Crouch’s words, “I trulybelieve that once the Christian communityunderstands that they have a vote by buying aticket, they will become the country’s largest sin-gle market” (Peyser 45). It is, of course, preciselythis electoral rhetoric that suggests that Christ-ian cinema might serve as a national cinema onsome level, partly because the assumption thatthe devout buy movie tickets for the right narra-tive has always been a means of identifying sto-ries acceptable nearly everywhere within thenation, and partly because religion itself hasbeen a means of disciplining the film industry inways that assisted its project of maintaining anational audience. As Maltby observes, the Pro-duction Code, which substituted Catholic tex-tual regulation for the Protestant preference foreconomic regulation of the industry, also obvi-ated audience research, effectively serving as acontract with moral preceptors in communitiesall over the country, promising that Hollywood’sproducts would not, in the main, corrupt ordebase. One might note further that Holly-

wood’s more pluralistic approaches to religion-infused narratives before the 1970s was itself away of binding up the nation. Consider BoysTown again, which is detached from the specificdoctrines of Catholic belief but attached to theperson of the sympathetic priest. While it isobvious that Boys Town is the expression of thevision of a Catholic priest, Edward Flanagan, hisbiggest backer is a Jewish pawnbroker, and thefilm makes clear that the organization permitsevery boy to worship in his own fashion.

There is another sense in which the“national” label needs to be explored with refer-

ence to Hollywood’s Christianproducts. When film scholarsuse the term in conjunctionwith geographical or social des-ignations such as Britain orJapan, they are signaling thatthey wish to organize a discus-sion of that cinema so as toexplore long-term narrative,technological, or formal preoc-cupations or strategies, or thespecific political economy of aparticular film-producingnation as it might bear onwhat gets produced and how,or the institutional structuresparticular to the film industry

in question. The American film industry may bethe world’s most studied, but it is not necessarilydiscussed as a national cinema in a limited sensebecause its reach, historically, has been global. Itwas arguably the world’s only global cinemabetween the First World War and the 1960s,when a variety of Asian cinemas began to extendtheir range, at least economically, beyond theirnational borders. However defined, any nationalcinema is nonetheless capable of scooping up astory from a different “national” tradition andindigenizing it. If one wants an example of thisproductive cross-fertilization, one need look nofurther than the transcultural permutations ofAkira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954), whichwas westernized in two senses as The Magnifi-cent Seven (1960) and Bollywoodized as Sholay(1975), among the highest-grossing Indianfilms, before returning, most recently in theAmerican context, as A Bug’s Life (1998).

The prospect of examining film narrativesfrom the Bible in a national/transnational con-text has been, to say the least, daunting becausemany national cinemas can obviously claimthese narratives as part of their patrimony. Butnot all narratives, or perhaps better put, not allrenditions of these familiar narratives, will berecognized as operating within the nationalvein. I have been fascinated for some time by

Anne Morey

Letters • Spring 2011 • 4

the survival into the 1960s of somewhat creakynineteenth-century chestnuts as a dominantfeature of mainstream religious filmmaking,which tends to be stylistically conservative atthe same time that it requires stories that exceedthe confines of the canon of Biblical tales. So,for example, Ben-Hur, The Sign of the Cross, andQuo Vadis, which were published respectively in1880, 1895, and 1896, become the models forwhat we might call the New Testament histori-cal novel, in which fictional characters interactwith Christ or with figures who knew Christ.This narrative strand is not narrowlynational—consider the origins of each work’sauthor, again respectively: American (Lew Wal-lace), British (Wilson Barrett), and Polish(Henryk Sienkiewicz). Moreover, adaptationsof these works begin to circulate in bothEurope and the United States in the early twen-tieth century, when the film industry was with-out doubt at its most international. What thenis particularly American about these narratives,beyond the establishment and persistence of anidiom that continued to be practiced in theUnited States well into the 1950s with the pub-lication and filming of Lloyd C. Douglas’s TheRobe (1942/1953)?

A provisional answer would suggest thatthese works came to represent what a New Tes-tament historical narrative should be, to theexclusion of other kinds of storytelling. Whenthe American public was offered narratives suchas The Miracle or The Last Temptation of Christthat emerged out of a different tradition offilmmaking, one less dependent upon linearplot structure and the delineation of a characterwhose motivations were clearly articulated andsympathetic, religious audiences found theproducts blasphemous. Behind the rejection ofthese films may be a preference for a differentkind of storytelling as much as a loathing forthe specific kind of content they offered theirviewers. In other words, these nineteenth-cen-tury chestnuts proved durable because theychimed with the story-telling traditions of theAmerican cinema—one might even say, giventhe large number of adaptations of these foun-dational texts, that they are partly constitutiveof that filmmaking tradition, at least where theproblem of representing divinity is concerned.Walden Media’s contemporary success with theNarnia franchise may similarly mark the natu-ralization of a new set of religious texts withcrossover appeal to evangelical audiences, andthus a new forum for the exploration of thefunctions of taste in this regard. Indeed, one ofthe questions I need to examine is the degree towhich our understanding of the mainstreamreligious film is separable from spectacle and

the spectacular. The Christian screenwritinggroup Act One also confronts this problem.They oppose the spectacle-driven approach ofdirectors such as Crouch for something a littleless blood-and-thunder. Another way ofexpressing their aims might be to suggest thatthey hope to create films that might evangelizein subtle ways, without dramatizing canonicalevents such as the Crucifixion or the Apoca-lypse in order to terrify the unbeliever.

This examination of Christian cinema asnational cinema is poised between the per-durable association between God and Mam-mon in American culture on the one hand andthe changes experienced in genre and socialmores on the other. Of the God and Mammonnexus, Stephen Prothero observes that theinterpenetration of Christianity and popularculture (which he dates to the Second GreatAwakening) has meant that “Americans havebeen selling Jesus stuff since the early nine-teenth century” (146). The excitement of thisproject stems from acknowledging the continu-ity of that relationship while also attempting toexplain the significance of new developments.The Warren Center’s theme of “Representationand Social Change” is a very helpful backdropagainst which to explore the problems I con-front in this project. It has been exceptionallyproductive to talk to people outside the disci-plines that I normally inhabit (film studies,English, and American studies) to see whatrelated structural issues emerge in anthropol-ogy, history, and sociology. It has been particu-larly useful to discuss what constitutes evidenceor which methods of analysis are most com-pelling across disciplines. Above all, conversa-tion with the other Warren Center Fellowsfocuses my attention on the stakes of the pro-ject, meaning those questions that clusteraround the issue of why scholars should careabout the phenomenon of the religious film.Film still represents one of the most public are-nas for struggle in popular culture, but it ismore than a bellwether for the ebb and flow ofthe power of specific denominations in Ameri-can life. It is also a set of rhetorics and businessstrategies that must shape and address a largeand diverse public in order to have a presencein the marketplace. Addressing a public inorder to have a presence in the marketplace hasalso been, as Randall Balmer notes, religion’stask in this country since the inception of thenation. The mutual colonization of popularculture and religion should be a productive sitefor investigating the consequences of religiousstorytelling for national life.

Works Cited

Balmer, Randall. Blessed Assurance: A History ofEvangelicalism in America. Boston: Beacon P,1999.

“The Bible Against Itself.” The Christian Century28 October 1959: 1235-36. Print.

Couvares, Francis G. “Hollywood, MainStreet, and the Church: Trying to Censor theMovies before the Production Code.” MovieCensorship and American Culture. Ed. FrancisG. Couvares. Washington: Smithsonian,1996. 129-58. Print.

DeMille, Agnes. Interview in Hollywood: ACelebration of the American Silent Film; TheAutocrats. Written and directed by David Gilland Kevin Brownlow. Thames Television,1980.

FitzGerald, Frances. “The Evangelical Sur-prise.” New York Review of Books 26 April2007: 31-34.

Foer, Franklin. “The Passion’s Precedent: TheMost Watched Film Ever?” New York Times 8February 2004. Web. 4 November 2010.

Maltby, Richard. “The King of Kings and theCzar of All the Rushes: The Propriety of theChrist Story.” Screen 31.2 (Summer 1990):188-213. Print.

Noxon, Christopher. “Is the Pope Catholic . . .Enough?” New York Times Magazine 9 March2003: 50-53. Print.

Pauly, Thomas H. “The Way to Salvation:The Hollywood Blockbuster of the 1950s,”Prospects: An Annual Journal of American Cul-tural Studies 5 (1980): 467-87. Print.

Peyser, Marc. “God, Mammon, and ‘Bible-man.’” Newsweek 16 July 2001: 45-48. Print.

Prothero, Stephen. American Jesus: How theSon of God Became a National Icon. New York:Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003. Print.

Sobchack, Vivian. “‘Surge and Splendor’: APhenomenology of the Hollywood HistoricalEpic.” Representations 29 (Winter 1990): 24-49. Print.

Uricchio, William, and Roberta E. Pearson.Reframing Culture: The Case of the VitagraphQuality Films. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.Print.

Professor Anne Morey is the 2010/2011 WarrenCenter Visiting Faculty Fellow from Texas A&MUniversity.

Letters • Spring 2011 • 5

In early September of 2010, Mona Freder-ick, executive director of the Warren Cen-ter, and I met with the Center’s dissertation

fellows to discuss Paul J. Silvia’s How To Writea Lot, which we had read over the summer.This was the opening session of the graduatefellows program and one of the few times dur-ing the academic year that the students wouldnot be meeting on their own. That afternoonwe talked about a number of issues. I asked thestudents to address their major concerns, andthey kindly complied. Naturally, they spoke ofthe pressure to complete their doctoral thesesand their anxiety over the future. Some wouldbe applying for teaching positions this year,and seeking a job during an economic crisiscertainly would be anxiety-producing. There isan intrinsic vulnerability built into being agraduate student. One has to jump over manyhurdles and to deal with a range of challenges,some professional and some personal. Oneconstantly is being evaluated, judged, com-pared, and contrasted. And one has to learnhow to write on demand, how to play todiverse audiences, and how to self-present,both in writing and “live.” This is, in essence,the norm, the given.

What took me aback in the session was thestudents’ apprehension about the future ofeducation in general. My impression was thatthey, in varying degrees of pessimism and opti-mism, were worried not only about obtaininga position but about the future of tenure,about the fate of the humanities, and about thecareers that awaited them. The commentsmade me sad, for a number of reasons. First,these students are dedicated scholars and highachievers, and they deserve to reap the rewardsof their efforts. Second, the alarm far surpassedwhat I had thought would be the primaryfocus: the here-and-now of dissertation writ-ing. Third, my hope is that the fellows—andall Vanderbilt graduate students—will enjoythe process of completing their degrees, despitethe rigor of the enterprise, and that they willface the future with positive (albeit reasonable)expectations. Fourth, they forced upon me areality check, the results of which might not bepleasant to confront.

Over the past decades, the profession obvi-ously has changed. Some forty years ago, bymy count, working conditions improved,salaries became more competitive, opportuni-ties became more equal, spouses became part

of the equation, and so forth. Canonsexpanded and were revised, and new areas ofteaching and research were validated: ethnicstudies, gender studies, area studies, interdisci-plinary studies, film, popular culture, etc. Theboom in theory caused scholars and their stu-dents to think differently, to reevaluate thepast, and to approach their work with adecided self-consciousness. Structuralism, post-structuralism, cultural studies, and other phe-nomena have rewritten the script for the liberalarts, for curricula, for departments, for pro-grams, and for individual scholars and coursedesigns. Titles of dissertations from previousyears seem to be worlds apart from currenttopics under investigation and objects underscrutiny. Although there have always beenadvocates of pure pragmatism, with emphasison practicality and materialism, the humanitieshave held their own, in some cases more con-vincingly than in others. Progress—and itmight be possible to cite globalization in thiscontext—should promote the humanities, butthere is a tendency to favor the present and thefuture over the past. The humanities disci-plines start at the beginning, as it were, andthose that go far back, such as classical studies,risk falling into disrepute in some circles fortheir supposed lack of relevance. Professors arenot only the victims here, but also at times theinstigators, as when we allow students to avoidcourses that deal with the “old stuff,” andthereby elide the interrelations that come frommovements and transitions. This is a questionthat is very much open to debate and toopposing positions, yet it is a question thatencompasses the crucial points of where we areand where we want to be. There is no doubtthat we have to be prepared to redesign at boththe macro- and micro-levels, in order to ensurethat we are giving our students, our colleagues,and our disciplines a maximum effort, and,hyperbole aside, to ensure the survival of thehumanities. There is a struggle at hand, but itis worth pursuing by those who believe inknowledge for its own sake, who find strengthin a familiarity with the past, who equate thestudy of the humanities with critical thinkingand tolerance, and who discover values beyondreality principles and dollar signs.

It is significantly more difficult to be anadministrator now than it was forty years ago.The scholar/teacher-turned administrator mustalso be a financial manager and must face

many other tasks that likely were not taught ingraduate school. Universities are businesses, ifnot prototypical businesses, and there is littlepoint in fighting the inevitable in that regard.Still, we need to preserve what needs to be pre-served, cost-effectiveness notwithstanding, forthe greater good of education and service tosociety. Training young minds is, in the par-lance of one company’s ad agency, “priceless.”When I was a graduate student at Johns Hop-kins University in the 1970s, I taught severalSpanish language classes, and I remember thatsome of my students, many of whom were pre-med, informed me that what I was planning todo with my life (teaching literature) was infe-rior, or less generous of spirit, to what theyhoped to contribute to humanity. (ProvostRichard McCarty was studying at Hopkins atthe same time, but his field was biobehavioralsciences, considerably higher on the “list” thanRomance languages.) Those comments mademe think carefully about how I could endeavorto make a difference to the students whom Iwould teach over the years and to the readerswho might come upon something that I hadpublished. I still firmly believe in the well-rounded student, and one of the beauties ofteaching at Vanderbilt University has been thatthe well-rounded student holds the defaultposition. Among the students who do brilliantwork in Spanish literature classes are languagemajors, but also majors in the humanities, thesocial sciences, and, yes, most resoundingly,the sciences. And, I might add, the pre-medstudents seem to understand perfectly why ithelps to have incorporated language and litera-ture into their academic programs.

There are real challenges in store for thehumanities, but I hope that we can think ofthem as problems to be solved rather than ascause for despair. Rethinking and retooling areprobably in order. Those of us at the WarrenCenter invite anyone in the Vanderbilt com-munity to discuss the state of the humani-ties—here and elsewhere—and we hope toorganize some sessions with participants fromacross the disciplines. It is important that wereflect, continually, on how we educate stu-dents and how we encourage and calm thosewho are about to begin their professionalcareers. Needless to say, we want those careersto be rich, fulfilling, and, to the extent possi-ble, free of angst.

Up in the Air?: The Future of the HumanitiesEdward H. Friedman

Letters • Spring 2011 • 6

We extend congratulations to our colleagues in the humanities andsocial sciences in the College of Arts and Science for receiving the following external grants and fellowships for their scholarly research as a result of applications submitted in the 2009 calendar year. We rely on departments to provide us with this information.

William CaferroJohn Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation FellowshipResearch on Effects of the Plague on the Medieval Economy

David L. CarltonGlobal Research Institute at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Research FellowshipStrategies of Southern Development: The Case of North Carolina

Julia P. CohenNational Endowment for the HumanitiesScholarly Edition and Translations AwardThe Sephardic Studies Reader, 1730-1950

Humberto GarciaAmerican Philosophical Society Franklin Research GrantRomanticism Re-Oriented: Indo-Muslim Travelers and English LiteraryCulture, 1760-1820

Clark Library/Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century StudiesShort-Term FellowshipRomanticism Re-Oriented: Indo-Muslim Travelers and English LiteraryCulture, 1760-1820

Thomas GregorNational Endowment for the HumanitiesFellowshipMehinaku Art: Social Change and the Evolution of an Aesthetic Tradition

Leor HaleviAmerican Council of Learned SocietiesCharles A. Ryskamp Research FellowshipForbidden Goods: Cross-Cultural Trade in Islamic Law

Rick HillesThe Brecht’s HouseWriter’s Residency

Carlos JauregiNational Endowment for the HumanitiesFellowshipGoing Native and Becoming Other in Latin American Literature and Film

Vera M. KutzinskiNational Endowment for the HumanitiesScholarly Edition and Translations AwardAlexander von Humboldt in English: New Translations of His Major Writings on North and South America

Ling Hon LamNewhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley CollegeFellowshipFrom Exteriority to Theatricality: Exploring the Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China

Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard UniversityAn Wang Postdoctoral FellowshipFrom Exteriority to Theatricality: Exploring the Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China

Chiang Ching-kuo FoundationScholar GrantFrom Exteriority to Theatricality: Exploring the Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China

Jane G. LandersNational Endowment for the HumanitiesFellowshipAfrican Kingdoms, Black Republics, and Free Black Towns in Colonial Spanish America

Gilder Lehrman Institute of American HistoryResearch FellowshipAfrican Kingdoms, Black Republics and Free Black Towns in Iberian Atlantic

Larry MayAustralian Research CouncilDiscovery GrantMorality, “Jus Post Bellum,” and International Law

José MedinaMinistry of Science and Innovation of SpainResearch GrantIdentity, Memory, and Experience

Jonathan RattnerImagining AmericaCritical Exchange GrantImagining America Vanderbilt University/University of Iowa Critical Exchange Grant

Kathryn SchwarzFolger Shakespeare LibraryShort-Term FellowshipCounterfactual Women: Femininity and Teleology in Early Modern England

Bronwen WickkiserAmerican School of Classical Studies at Athens NEH FellowshipNew Approaches to Asklepios

External Grants and Fellowships

Letters • Spring 2011 • 7

What books are our colleagues in the College of Arts and Science writing and editing? LETTERS has asked Vanderbilt University’shumanities and social sciences departments toshare their faculty members’ 2010 publications.Their answers show an active and diverse mixof scholarly interests.

Lewis V. Baldwin. Never to Leave Us Alone:The Prayer Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.Fortress Press.

Lewis V. Baldwin. The Voice of Conscience:The Church in the Mind of Martin LutherKing, Jr. Oxford University Press.

Jerome Brillaûd. Sombres Lumières, essai sur leretour à l’antique et la tragédie grecque au XVI-IIe siècle. Presses de l’Université Laval, Les Col-lections de la République des Lettres.

William Caferro. Contesting the Renaissance.Wiley-Blackwell.

Katherine B. Crawford. The Sexual Culture ofthe French Renaissance. Cambridge UniversityPress.

Kate Daniels. AWalk In Victoria’sSecret. LouisianaState UniversityPress.

Carolyn M. Deverand Lisa M. Niles,co-editors. The Cam-bridge Companion toAnthony Trollope

(Cambridge Companions to Literature). Cam-bridge University Press.

Dennis C. Dickerson. African AmericanPreachers and Politics: The Careys of Chicago.University Press of Mississippi.

Tom D. Dillehay. From Foraging to Farmingin the Andes: New Perspectives on Food Produc-tion and Social Organization. Cambridge Uni-versity Press.

Edward H. Friedman. The Little Woman. ALiberal Translation of Leandro Fernández deMoratín’s El sí de las niñas. Juan de la Cuesta.

Sam B. Girgus. Levinas and the Cinema ofRedemption: Time, Ethics, and the Feminine.Columbia University Press.

Lenn E. Goodman. Creation and Evolution.Routledge.

Robin M. Jensen. Living Water: Images, Sym-bols, and Settings of Early Christian Baptism.Brill Publishers.

Shaul Kelner. Tours That Bind: Diaspora, Pil-grimage and Israeli Birthright Tourism. NewYork University Press.

Michael P. Kreyling. The South That Wasn’tThere. Louisiana State University Press.

Jane G. Landers. Atlantic Creoles in the Age ofRevolutions. Cambridge University Press.

Larry May. Genocide:A Normative Account.Cambridge UniversityPress.

Nella Van Dyke andHolly J. McGam-mon, co-editors.Strategic Alliances:Coalition Building andSocial Movements.

University of Minnesota Press.

Paul B. Miller. Elusive Origins: The Enlighten-ment in the Modern Caribbean Historical Imag-ination. University of Virginia Press, NewWorld Studies Series.

Daniel M. Patte, editor. The Cambridge Dic-tionary of Christianity. Cambridge UniversityPress.

Nicole Duran, Teresa Okure, and Daniel M.Patte, co-editors. Mark: Texts @ Contexts.Fortress Press.

Walter Blue, NinaDulin-Mallory, Vir-ginie Greene, StacyHahn, Lynn T.Ramey, and Eliza-beth Willingham,co-editors. La Questedel Saint Graal: Fromthe IllustratedLancelot Prose of Yale229. Brepols.

Virginia M. Scott. Double Talk: Deconstruct-ing Monolingualism in Classroom LanguageLearning. Prentice Hall.

Dieter H. Sevin. Trotzdem Schreiben. Beitragezur deutschsprachigen Literatur der Moderne.Hildesheim.

Samira Sheikh. Forging a Region: Sultans,Traders and Pilgrims in Gujarat, 1200-1500.Oxford University Press.

Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse, co-edi-tors. The Pragmatism Reader: From PeirceThrough to the Present. Princeton UniversityPress.

Steven M. Cahn and Robert B. Talisse, co-editors. Political Problems. Prentice Hall.

Scott F. Aikin, Steven M. Cahn, and RobertB. Talisse, co-editors. Thinking About Logic:Classic Essays. Westview Press.

Herbert Kitschelt, Kirk A. Hawkins, JuanPablo Luna, Guillermo Rosas, and ElizabethJ. Zechmeister, coauthors. Latin AmericanParty Systems. Cambridge University Press.

What We Are Writing

Letters • Spring 2011 • 8

Now in its fifth year, the Warren Cen-ter’s annual Graduate Student Fel-lows Program currently sponsors

eight outstanding Vanderbilt graduate stu-dents in the humanities and qualitative socialsciences in a yearlong fellowship program.These awards are designed to support innova-tion and excellence in graduate studentresearch and allow the students a service-freeyear of support to enable full-time work onthe dissertation. It is expected that studentswho receive this award will complete the dis-sertation during the fellowship term. Addi-tionally, one graduate student from Queen’sUniversity in Belfast is selected to participatein the Graduate Student Fellows Program.

As part of their affiliation with the RobertPenn Warren Center for the Humanities, Fel-lows are integrated into the center’s interdisci-plinary scholarly community throughparticipation in a weekly seminar, occasionalseminars with visiting speakers, and specialevents. The capstone of the fellowship is thedelivery of a public lecture during the springterm. The Graduate Student Fellows LectureSeries is an intellectually invigorating time atthe Warren Center and we encourage you toplan to attend one or more of these talks bythese outstanding young scholars.

Below is the schedule for this year’s talkswhich will all take place at 4:10 p.m. in theWarren Center’s conference room. Lecturetitles will be posted soon on the Warren Cen-ter’s website; the listing at right includes thetitles of the Fellows’ dissertations.

2010/2011 Warren Center Graduate Student Fellows Lecture Series

March 23 Christina DickersonDepartment of History

“A Death in the Woods: The Infamous Jumonville Affair of 1754”

March 28 Sarah Tyson, Ethel Mae Wilson FellowDepartment of Philosophy

“Can Diotima Be Reclaimed? The Problem of Women in the History of Philosophy”

April 5 Stacy Clifford, George J. Graham, Jr., FellowDepartment of Political Science

“Indispensable Idiocy: Social Contract Theory and Cognitive Disability”

April 8 Jason Parker, Joe and Mary Harper FellowDepartment of Spanish and Portuguese

“’¿Qué dirá mañana esa Prensa canalla?’: Ramón del Valle-Inclán’s Theatrical Critique of Mass Media”

April 14 Elizabeth Covington, Elizabeth E. Fleming FellowDepartment of English

“Memories Bought, Sold, and Stolen: The War Between Literature and Science for Control of the Past”

April 18 Jennifer FoleyDepartment of Anthropology

“Ancient Maya Identity and Imagined Community at La Sufricaya, Guatemala”

April 20 Elizabeth ZagattaDepartment of Religion

“The Potential and Peril of Pleasure in Christian Sexual Ethics”

April 25 Sarah Glynn, American Studies FellowDepartment of Sociology

“‘I am tattooed therefore I am’: Meaning Making in the Tattoo Encounter”

April 27 Clive Hunter, Queen’s University (Belfast) Department of French,

“Troping Legba: Dany Laferrière and the Politics of Polyrhythm”

Letters • Spring 2011 • 9

David Blight, Class of 1954 Professorof American History and Director ofthe Gilder Lehrman Center for the

Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition atYale University, will present this year’s HarryC. Howard Jr. Lecture at 4:10 p.m. on March24th, location to be announced. ProfessorBlight’s talk is titled “Gods and DevilsAplenty: Robert Penn Warren’s Civil War.”

A prolific writer, Professor Blight is mostrecently the author of A Slave No More: TwoMen Who Escaped to Freedom, Including TheirNarratives of Emancipation (Harcourt, 2007).In 2001, he published Race and Reunion: TheCivil War in American Memory (Harvard Uni-versity Press), which received eight bookawards, including the Bancroft Prize, theAbraham Lincoln Prize, and the FrederickDouglass Prize. Other publications includeBeyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory, and theAmerican Civil War (University of Massachu-

setts Press, 2002); and Frederick Douglass’sCivil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (LSU Press,1989). Professor Blight is currently writing abook related to the Civil War sesquicentennialthat is rooted in the work of Robert PennWarren, comparing the 100th anniversary ofAmerica’s most pivotal event to its 150th. Heis also working on a new biography of Freder-ick Douglass that will be published by Simonand Schuster by 2013.

Professor Blight was elected as a member ofthe Society of American Historians in 2002.Since 2004, he has served as a member of theBoard of Trustees of the New York HistoricalSociety and the Board for African AmericanPrograms at Monticello in Charlottesville,Virginia. He also serves on the Board of Advi-sors to the Abraham Lincoln BicentennialCommission and is involved in planningnumerous conferences and events to com-memorate both the Lincoln anniversary and

the sesquicentennial of the U.S. Civil War. Inhis capacity as director of the Gilder LehrmanCenter at Yale, Blight organizes conferences,working groups, lectures, the administering ofthe annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize,and many public outreach programs regardingthe history of slavery and its abolition. In2009, Blight chaired the jury for nonfictionfor the National Book Award. Currently, Pro-fessor Blight holds the Rogers DistinguishedFellowship in 19th-Century American Historyat the Huntington Library.

The Harry C. Howard Jr. Lecture Serieswas established in 1994 through the endow-ment of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas E. Nash Jr.,and Mr. and Mrs. George Renfro, all ofAsheville, North Carolina. The lecture honorsHarry C. Howard Jr. (B.A., 1951) and allowsthe Warren Center to bring an outstandingscholar to Vanderbilt annually to deliver a lec-ture on a significant topic in the humanities.

Historian David Blight to Present Harry C. Howard Jr. Lecture

2010/2011 Warren Center Graduate Student Fellows. From left: Elizabeth R. Zagatta, Sarah J. Glynn, Elizabeth R. Covington, Sarah Tyson, Stacy A. Clifford, Christina M. Dickerson, Clive Hunter, Jennifer M. Foley, Jason T. Parker

Letters • Spring 2011 • 10

April 12, 2011, will markthe 150th anniversaryof the start of the U.S.

Civil War. Across the country,this national anniversary will bemarked in various ways by arange of interest groups. Manyof the contentious topics thatdivided the American public in1861 continue to trouble ournation today, including the roleof race in our society, the debatebetween states rights and federalauthority, the role of govern-ment in our daily lives, and talkof secession by various groupsacross the United States.

Vanderbilt University will provide a num-ber of opportunities—through classes, publiclectures, and discussion groups—for our stu-dents and our community to reflect upon thesignificance of this sesquicentennial anniver-sary. These events will allow us to engage withthis seminal historical period in the develop-ment of the United States and will give ourcampus and our community occasions tothink critically about past and current con-flicts in our society.

Courses Offered

American Studies 100W. Professor of EnglishMichael Kreyling will teach this introductorycourse on the theme of memory studies,focusing on Robert Penn Warren’s The Legacyof the Civil War (1961) and Warren’s novelWilderness. Kreyling will also use various his-tory texts, including works by C. Vann Wood-ward, Bruce Catton, and Shelby Foote.

American Studies 297—American StudiesSenior Project. Teresa Goddu, Associate Profes-sor of English and Director of American Stud-ies, will focus this course on commemorationsand memorializations of the U.S. Civil War,specifically in and around Nashville. Thecourse will culminate with an American Stud-ies Road Trip to various Civil War memorialsites in the region.

Commons Course: Black Women Freedom Fight-ers. Assistant Professor of History BrandiBrimmer will lead an examination of the lifeand labor of Callie House—an African Ameri-can laundress who lived much of her life less

than a mile from theVanderbilt Commons—and the ex-slave pensionmovement, a poor peo-ple’s movement thatsought pension from theU.S. government ascompensation for slavery.

English 288-02—TheAmerican Civil War.Taught by Senior Lec-turer Rory Dicker, thiscourse will examine lit-erature about the CivilWar, including textssuch as Harriet BeecherStowe’s Uncle Tom’s

Cabin, John William DeForest’s Miss Ravenel’sConversion from Secession to Loyalty, andStephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage.

History of Art 295—Race, Gender, and Sexual-ity in 19th Century American Art. ProfessorVivien Green Fryd of the History of Artdepartment will examine ways in which gen-der and race are constructed in nineteenth-century American visual art and culture.Professor Fryd’s class will meet with visitingspeaker Charmaine A. Nelson, who is Associ-ate Professor of Art History at McGill Univer-sity. Professor Nelson is most recently theauthor of The Color of Stone: Sculpting BlackFemale Subjects in Nineteenth-Century America(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,2007) and Representing the Black Female Sub-ject in Western Art (New York: Routledge,2010).

Humanities 161—The American Civil War.Team-taught by Richard Blackett, AndrewJackson Professor of History, and MichaelKreyling, Gertrude Conaway Professor ofEnglish, the course will trace the mainpolitical, social, and economic events asso-ciated with the war. A number of expertson the U.S. Civil War have been invited asguest speakers; they will also be giving lec-tures which will be open to the public.

Schedule of Events

Events marked with an asterisk (*) are part ofthe Humanities 161 lecture series and willoccur at 4:10 p.m. in 101 Buttrick Hall.

Thursday, January 27Stanley Harrold, Professor of History, SouthCarolina State UniversityAbolitionism and the Coming of the CivilWar*

Wednesday, February 2“Thinking Outside the Lunchbox,” Discus-sion of Robert Penn Warren’s 1961 book TheLegacy of the Civil War, led by ProfessorsMichael Kreyling and Richard Blackett, noonat the downtown Nashville Public Library.This event is sponsored by the Warren Centerand the Tennessee Civil War National Her-itage Area Center for Historic Preservation, inconjunction with Vanderbilt’s Office of Com-munity, Neighborhood, and GovernmentRelations. Registrants for the luncheon areencouraged to read the volume prior toattending the lunch time conversation. Moredetails can be found at the website:www.van-derbilt.edu/lunchbox/upcoming.html.

Tuesday, February 8Joseph Glatthaar, Stephenson DistinguishedProfessor, University of North Carolina,Chapel HillWhy the Confederacy Lost: the Experiencesof Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Vir-ginia*

Thursday, February 17George Rable, Professor and Charles G. Sum-mersell Chair in Southern History, Universityof AlabamaThe Civil War as a Political Crisis*

Thursday, February 24Thavolia Glymph, Associate Professor of His-tory, Duke University‘Disappeared Without Any Account BeingHad of Them’: Enslaved Women and theArmies of the Civil War*

Sesquicentennial of the U.S. Civil War: Spring 2011 Courses and Events

The Robert Penn Warren Center for theHumanities is hosting a conference on “TheObject of Study: Theory, Interdisciplinarity,and the State of the Humanities” on March 18and 19, 2011. The conference sessions willfeature speakers from different disciplinesaddressing their views of the current state oftheory within their disciplines and in general.Each session will also include Vanderbilt fac-ulty members as moderators and as respon-dents. Visiting speakers for the conference areDavid Gies (University of Virginia), DavidTheo Goldberg (University of California,Irvine), and Valerie Traub (University ofMichigan).

The conference sessions will take place inthe auditorium of the Bishop Joseph JohnsonBlack Cultural Center. The conference sched-ule follows.

Friday, March 18

1:30 OPENING

Welcome:Carolyn M. Dever, Dean, College of Arts and Science and Professor of English and Women’sand Gender Studies

Introduction:Edward H. Friedman, Chancellor’s Professorof Spanish, Professor of Comparative Litera-ture, and Director, Warren Center

2:00 SE S S ION ONE

Introduction:Mark Schoenfield, Professor and Chair ofEnglish

Visiting Speaker: Valerie Traub, Professor of English and Women’s Studies, University of MichiganThe New Unhistoricism (and Early Modern Futures)

Respondent:Ellen Armour, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair in Feminist Theology andDirector, Carpenter Program in Religion,Gender, and Sexuality; Interim Chair, Department of Religious Studies

3:15–3:30 Break

3:30 SE S S ION TWO

Introduction: John Sloop, Senior Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Communication Studies

Visiting Speaker: David Gies, Commonwealth Professor of Spanish, University of VirginiaThe State of the Arte: Hispanism and Literary Theory

Respondent:William Luis, Chancellor’s Professor of Spanish

A reception will follow the sessions.

Saturday, March 19

10:30 SE S S ION THREE

Introduction: Barbara Hahn, Distinguished Professor of German

Visiting Speaker:David Theo Goldberg, Director, University of California Humanities Research Institute;Professor of Comparative Literature andCriminology, Law and Society, University of California, IrvineLiving in a Critical Condition: Poor Theory andthe Post-humanities

Respondent:Dana Nelson, Gertrude Conaway VanderbiltProfessor of English

11:45–12:00 Break

12:00–12:30 Speakers’ Roundtable: Closing Comments and Questions

Letters • Spring 2011 • 11

The Object of Study: Theory, Interdisciplinarity, and the State of the Humanities

Thursday, March 3Charmaine A. Nelson, Associate Professor ofArt History, McGill UniversitySugar Cane, Slave and Ships: The TropicalPicturesque and Pro-Slavery Discourse inNineteenth-Century Jamaican Landscapes4:10 p.m., Cohen Hall 203. History of Art295 speaker.

Thursday, March 17Stephanie McMurry, Professor of History,University of PennsylvaniaAntigone’s Claim: Gender and Treason in theAmerican Civil War*

Thursday, March 242010/2011 Harry Howard Jr. LectureDavid Blight, Class of 1954 Professor ofAmerican History and Director of the GilderLehrman Center for the Study of Slavery,Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University Gods and Devils Aplenty: Robert Penn War-ren’s Civil War 4:10 p.m., location to be announced. See Let-ters article on page 9.

Thursday, April 7Bobby Lovett, Professor of History, TennesseeState UniversityNashville and the Civil War, 1860–1866 andthe Economic, Social and Political Transfor-mations*

Thursday, April 21Stephen Ash, Professor of History, Universityof Tennessee, KnoxvilleWilliam G. Brownlow, Saint or Sinner? AFresh Look at One of Tennessee’s Most Con-troversial Civil War Figures*

The Program in American Studies and theWarren Center plan to host a roundtable dis-cussion late in the spring term on issuesrelated to secessionist movements across mul-tiple time spans and geographical and culturallocations. More details on this roundtable willbe announced soon.

Robert Penn Warren Center for the HumanitiesVU Station B #3515342301 Vanderbilt PlaceNashville, Tennessee 37235-1534

First ClassU.S. Postage

PAIDNashville, TN

Permit No. 1460

As part of the 2010 Southern Festival ofBooks, the Warren Center joinedtogether with Humanities Tennessee

to host a series of sessions at the book festivalto bring greater public consciousness to thenature of some of the divisions in our cultureand to suggest ways that we might rethinkthose divisions and transform the discordcaused by those divisions within the context ofour nation’s, state’s, and community’s need fora more civil democracy. Additional supportfor the program was provided by Vanderbilt’sCal Turner Program for Moral Leadership inthe Professions.

The Chairman of the National Endow-ment for the Humanities, Jim Leach, has aspecial interest in the issue of civility and has

recently launched a fifty-state “Civility Tour.”As part of his tour, he participated in the firstsession on this topic at the Southern Festivalof Books, “A Conversation on Civility andDemocracy,” on Friday October 8 from noonto 1:00 p.m. in the Tennessee Capitol Build-ing’s House Chambers. John Seigenthaler,founder of Vanderbilt’s First AmendmentCenter, and Carl Pierce, Executive Director ofthe Howard Baker Center at the University ofTennessee, Knoxville, also joined ChairmanLeach on this first panel. Following his presen-tation at the book festival in downtownNashville, Chairman Leach delivered a secondaddress at Vanderbilt University later thatafternoon on “Civility in a Fractured Society.”

On Saturday, October 9, the following speak-ers presented remarks as part of the series“Building Community in the 21st Century:Perspectives on Civility and Democracy.”Each session was moderated by a VanderbiltUniversity representative.

Building Community in the 21st Century: Perspectives on Civility and DemocracyOctober 8–9, 2010

Janet FlammangPolitical Science, Santa Clara University“The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics, and a Civil Society”Moderator: C. J. Sentell, Philosophy, Vanderbilt University

Hiroshi MotomuraSchool of Law, UCLA“Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States”Moderator: Daniel B. Cornfield, Sociology, Vanderbilt University

David E. Campbell Political Science, University of Notre Dame Robert PutnamPublic Policy, Harvard University “American Grace: How Religion Divides Us and Unites Us”Moderator: Vanessa Beasley, Communication Studies, Vanderbilt University

Matthew HindmanMedia and Public Affairs, George Washington University “The Myth of Digital Democracy”Moderator: Joe Bandy, Teaching Center, Vanderbilt University

Patrick Johnson African American Studies, Northwestern University“Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South”Moderator: Dana Nelson, English, Vanderbilt University

John Kasson University of North Carolina“Rudeness and Civility: Manners in the 19th-Century Urban America”Moderator: Mona Frederick, Warren Center, Vanderbilt University

Diana MutzPennsylvania State University“Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative vs. Participatory Democracy”Moderator: Mark Hetherington, Political Science, Vanderbilt University

NEH Chairman Jim Leach