In advance of the upcoming election, we’ve asked members of the UCHI community to suggest a book, article, poem, painting, video, or piece of music that they think everyone should take a look at in this current moment.
Micki McElya says you should read…
Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994). This book has been like a warm blanket and darkly funny, knowing friend in these days of struggling to teach, mourn, write, rage, understand, and remain hopeful.
Kenneth Gouwens says you should read…
“Desiderata,” an early 1920s prose poem by the American writer Max Ehrmann. At this moment, we might consider some famously wise words from a meatpacker in Terre Haute, Indiana (who also took grad courses in Philosophy at Harvard). Those who find this too earnest might at least get momentary comic (if corrosive) relief from current preoccupations by listening to the National Lampoon parody, Deteriorata.
Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
Contributors
Micki McElya is Professor of History at the University of Connecticut. She received her B.A. in history from Bryn Mawr College in 1994 and a Ph.D. from New York University in 2003. Before joining the faculty of the University of Connecticut, she was an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama (2003-2008). Her recently published book, The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery was a Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2017 and a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. It was a co-winner of the 2018 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize from the Foundation for Landscape Studies, winner of the inaugural Sharon Harris Book Prize from UConn’s Humanities Institute, and finalist for the 2016 Jefferson Davis Book Award from the American Civil War Museum.
Kenneth Gouwens is Professor of History at the University of Connecticut. He has published extensively on the culture of Renaissance Rome. His current research interests include Cultural history of Italy, 1494-1530; Pope Clement VII (Giulio de’Medici); and the distinctions drawn between humans and simians in the Renaissance and in our own era.
From transgender persons seeking to become the gender they truly are to religious business owners seeking exemption from anti-discrimination laws, a wide range of political claims are cast in terms of authenticity. Despite the ubiquity of these claims, it is not always clear what is at stake and whether we should understand these stakes as political. Part of the difficultly is that our most prevalent ways of framing the stakes of authenticity claims—what Hagel calls the ethical frame and the recognition frame—downplay their political character. In this paper, Hagel articulates a third way, found in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. For Rousseau, what is at stake in becoming authentic is our individual well-being, the character of our social world, and our possibilities for freedom and equality. In this chapter, Hagel draws out this last set of stakes in Rousseau’s work, articulating them as the democratic frame. According to it, what makes authenticity so crucial is the way it secures our freedom and equality. Even when Rousseau articulates the stakes of authenticity in terms of a more ethical or recognitional reading, we can read him against himself to see how this democratic framing remains implicit. Hagel concludes by showing that understanding the stakes of authenticity in terms of freedom and equality is promising in three ways: it helps us grasp the causes and consequences of becoming authentic better than alternative frames; it avoids some of the problems of essentialism and paternalism that arise in the other two frames; and it offers us a promising new way of thinking about authenticity—in which one is authentic when one develops oneself in a way that enhances, rather than corrodes, one’s possibilities for freedom.
