“To help navigate these incredibly dark times and put them into historical perspective, you should definitely read Robert Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism.  I meet people all the time who want to learn more about fascism, but don’t know where to begin.  The pile of books that have been published on the subject could form its own mountain, and the sheer range of options can be overwhelming.  I’ve had to take a big bite out of this mountain for my own research, and I can say that if you have time to read just one book on the subject, it should be this one.

I like it because of its accessibility and avoidance of jargon, its broad scope, and because it is attuned to the contemporary relevance of his subject.  As such, he’s not afraid to say that fascism lives on in present day.  Published in 2004, Anatomy of Fascism was not conceived with the current crisis in mind, which makes it less topical and more powerful in my view.  But I like it most of all because it’s argument is solid.  Paxton doesn’t pull any cheap shots to make his subject topical.  Instead, like a good historian, he honors the specificity of pre-WWII European politics and culture, and lets his readers draw their own conclusions.

Paxton, now retired from Columbia University, argues that fascist movements can’t be defined by their political platforms – these change as values change, and fascist states shifted their policies quite often anyway.  A steadier indicator of a fascist movement is its “mobilizing passions” – that is, the emotional triggers and underlying desires that fire up its political base (you’ll have to read the book to find out what these triggers are).  Further, he argues that fascist movements rely on the enablement of traditional conservatives: if an aging conservative establishment had not given Hitler and Mussolini the keys to the kingdom, their movements would have likely died on the vine.  With an eye to the present, Paxton writes, “Fascists are close to power when conservatives begin to borrow their techniques, appeal to their ‘mobilizing passions,’ and try to co-opt the fascist following.”

 

 

-Christopher Vials,
Associate Professor of English & Director of American Studies
University of Connecticut

 

 

“You should listen to Buffy Ste. Marie’s 2009 album Running for the Drum.

It’s not her most recent, or her most acclaimed (though it won a coveted Juno award). It’s not her most innovative (in my completely uneducated opinion, that accolade belongs to 2016’s Power in the Blood, which had me looking for Bjork in the liner notes. She wasn’t there. Neither were liner notes, actually, because it’s not 1988 anymore, but you know what I’m saying). But I think it’s the best album this prolific artist has given us to date.

Running for the Drum comes out of the gate hard and righteous. “No No Keshagesh” was on constant repeat in my house for a while (“keshagesh” is a Cree word meaning “greedy guts”, and the song lives up to every expectation you just had). The second half softens up with “America the Beautiful” (not exactly the version you’re expecting, but perhaps the version you need). As always, Buffy delivers truth to power and a celebration of indigeneity layered with love, anger, sorrow, pride, and longing. Granted, I’ve got Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” on my playlist (and I am not ashamed), so I may not be the sharpest music critic on campus. But you really should give Running for the Drum a listen.”                        

 

-Barbara Gurr,
Associate Professor in Residence,
Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program,
University of Connecticut

 

 

 

 

 

“Read like a curious teenager; read for delight.  Read Ready, Player One and everything else.

 

I mean here the embrace of reading, not because a novel or work of non-fiction is “essential,” but because it on some or all levels brings us joy to be reading it.  And by that I don’t mean that it’s necessarily a cheery read (Game of Thrones is not a feel-good series although it feels good to read it).  I’m an English PhD (read cultural critic), so I get that discomfort (formal, personal) is valuable, but I’ve come to see that for me the great power of reading is that, once we give ourselves over to it completely, we read and read and read and read and the sum of it all matters, even if a given book is a formulaic best seller (and those often shed light on “now” in unexpected ways). So mix it up: read The Girl on the Train and all of Louise Penny, and the Wayward Pines trilogy, and Wolf Hall, and Ender’s Game, and everything by David Eggers, David Mitchell, Jonathan Franzen, Neal Stephenson, Gaiman, LeGuin, McCaffrey, Murakami and Neil de Grasse Tyson.  And everything else.”

 

-Susanna Cowan, PhD

Director, Summer & Winter Programs
University of Connecticut

 

 

 

“You Should…

 

WALK

 

Around Alexander Calder’s Stegosaurus (1973) in downtown Hartford.

 

Alexander Calder (1898-1976) is best known for his mobiles, hanging sculptures comprised of abstract metal shapes that dance on currents of air. Stabiles such as Stegosaurus do the opposite: the sculpture stays put and it is the spectator who moves around the artwork. Stegosaurus is a good example of the large-scale, outdoor sculpture that became the primary focus of Calder’s work during the last two decades of the artist’s life. The 50-foot tall, painted steel sculpture is comprised of 45 steel plates bolted together to form an abstract, arced structure. The sculpture seems to encourage spectators to walk around and even underneath it by refusing to present a static, single image for contemplation. Instead our perception of it constantly changes. It demands to be experienced first-hand.

 

The sculpture’s five triangular fins invite comparisons with the Jurassic period dinosaur Calder referenced in the title, although Stegosaurus was commissioned in honor of Alfred E. Burr, a publisher of the Hartford Times. It stands in Burr Mall, between Hartford City Hall and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Stegosaurus isn’t the only example of post-war public sculpture worth exploring in downtown Hartford. Its neighbors include Stone Field Sculpture (1977) by Carl Andre, located adjacent to the Ancient Burial Ground, and Amaryllis (1965) by Tony Smith, which stands on the Wadsworth Atheneum’s front lawn. Studies and presentation models for all three sculptures, as well as two temporary outdoor works, are currently on display in a special exhibition at the museum through the end of October.”

 

-Dr. Amanda A. Douberley

Academic Liaison/Assistant Curator, William Benton Museum of Art

 

Photo Credit: TripAdvisor

“You Should “See” Taxi Driver(2017) …  No, not Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster, the new South Korean one…

 

Lost in the barrage of news surrounding North Korean nuclear ambitions and Singapore dreams is the astonishing current history of South Korea. Throughout 2016-2017, hundreds of thousands of South Koreans marched in downtown Seoul leading to the rare—if not unprecedented—peaceful and democratic overthrow of a democratically elected national leader. Immediately coined, “The Candlelight Revolution” because protestors armed themselves only with small flames, a central demand was the government’s ongoing accountability for the country’s dictatorship era (1953-1993). Gone are the secret jails and “disappeared” family members. Throughout the past twenty-five years, South Koreans have transformed their society into a vibrant democracy with regular elections and the right to challenge government openly. Up for grabs now is writing the history that came before, and central in the mix is the 1980 Gwangju uprising during which South Korean troops slaughtered several hundred largely unarmed citizens who were demanding the release from jail of the prominent pro-democracy politician, Kim Dae-jung.

 

Last summer, acclaimed director Jang Hoon released Taxi Driver, starring South Korea’s George Clooney, Song Kong-ho, in a fictionalized work-up of a real-life cab driver who ferried German journalist, Jurgen Hintzpeter, to the center of the violence as it unfolded in Gwangju. Hintzpeter’s smuggled footage of South Korean soldiers shooting innocent students caused an international sensation and ultimately led South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan to reign in the massacre. More violence would come until his overthrow in 1987, and the real cab driver never surfaced despite Hintzpeter subsequent efforts to find him.

 

In the whorl of today’s debate about North Korea, Taxi Driver underscores why it is essential to include South Korea as an equal in any discussion concerning Korea’s collective future. ”

 

-Alexis Dudden
Professor of History
University of Connecticut

 

Photo Source: SydneysBuzz The Blog

“You should…Read: Orwell, Leopold, and Teale

But not the Orwell you think. Read  Politics and the English Language to be reminded that “Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind” and Shooting an elephant for a concrete example of how “when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.”[1] Read Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac to learn that when Canada geese return north in the spring “the whole continent receives as net profit a wild poem dropped from the murky skies upon the muds of March” and the many things a poor farm can teach those willing to learn. Read Teale’s A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm to learn Leopold’s lessons in our own backyard on a farm in Hampton.

[1] And for the best first sentence in an essay: “In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by a large number of people–the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.” WARNING: Descriptions in the essay would have offended many in 1936. More will find them offensive now.”

 

-Kent E. Holsinger
Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor,
Vice provost for Graduate Education,
Dean of the Graduate School,
University of Connecticut

“You SHOULD…Watch: Diary of a Student Revolution

This documentary, part of the UConn Library’s Archives & Special Collections, portrays the conflict between the radical student movement and President Homer D. Babbidge at the University of Connecticut over ten days in the Fall of 1968.  In addition to its spontaneous takes and candid behind the scenes footage, this minimally narrated piece of Vietnam-era journalism about a very local place in America documents the range of voices, gathering places, and aesthetics of dissent at an important moment in our campus’ history.  In a period when the American invasion of Vietnam was shaken by the Tet Offensive earlier that year, the draft of eligible young men into the military continued, the lack of diversity in the student and faculty body on campus was evident, and the administration’s business as usual approach to campus recruitment for the petrochemical industry drew out students who sought to ‘bring the war home.’  Despite its brevity in timespan, this 1-hour film makes accessible a corresponding archival collection measuring roughly 30 linear feet of Administrative Records, Press Clippings, Underground Newspapers, Photographs, Student Government Documents, SDS Fliers and Posters which document the “Crisis at UConn.”

Diary of a Student Revolution poses many questions to the archive about the role of institutional memory and its power to document, surveil or reflect; its ability to share the voices held within and what they may say of the present; as well as its role in erasure and resuscitation of the historical past.  As documented, student chants of “Keep the Status Quo” mirrored those sentiments of the silent majority which would lead this country to seven more years of war and a deepening rift between parents and children, workers and students, soldiers and statesmen.  This film gives me hope for a student body to make change by clamoring for the impossible till it grows from a din to a deafening.”

 –

Graham Stinnett
Archivist
Human Rights and Alternative Press Collections
UConn Library

Diary of a Student Revolution (1969):

http://archives.lib.uconn.edu/islandora/object/20002%3A860070394

 

D’Archive Ep. 4 “Abbie Hoffman, UConn and the War in Vietnam”(2017):

http://whus.org/2017/09/darchive-episode-4-abbie-hoffman-uconn-and-the-war-in-vietnam/

 

UConn Archives Alternative Press Collection:

http://archives.lib.uconn.edu/islandora/object/20002%3A19920001

 

 

 

 

“Ok readers: the “bad” and the truly bad humanities. The queen of “bad” is Lady Gaga The Brilliant. Am already standing in line for tickets to A Star is Born coming out in October. Am already planning to see it numerous times. If “bad” is good, she’s one of the best –the Super Bowl of 2017 proved that. Just try to deny her.

 

The truly bad? War. Wanna go there? Read a slew of novels and memoirs out these days or zero in on the best one in the bunch. Helen Benedict’sThe Sand Queen is a multivoiced novel of the early American war in Iraq. In one corner is a young American army woman, Kate, continuously tormented by her male comrades-in-arms as they guard an infamous prison camp (Bucca, it actually existed) and continuously tormented as well by the “enemy” male prisoners she oversees. In another corner is an Iraqi woman near Kate’s age, Naema, whose male relatives get brutally seized by American troops, leaving the family to stand at the prison camp gates with others to plead for news of all the innocent mistreated male family members held there. Be prepared: there is no redemption in this novel for either character or for the reader, no nicey-nice friendship between Kate and Naema that soothes the pain on both sides. No. it’s war, baby. Wanna go now?

 

See Gaga after reading Queen and imagine the anger she would unleash at those gates. ”

 

 

– Christine Sylvester
Professor of Political Science
University of Connecticut

 

 

 

 

“You SHOULD…Look At: Pincushions”

 

 

“The method of reading material things as scripts aims to discover not what

any individual actually did but rather what a thing invites us to do.”

 

— Robin Bernstein, Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil

Rights  (2011): 11.

 

“Round, filled with stuffing, and covered with shiny fabric, pincushions are ornamental objects despite their quotidian purpose. As household commodity, they embody a distinct home-tied intimacy. An object which dates back to the fourteenth century, pincushions were arguably in their heyday during the Victorian “cult of domesticity” era. In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, it was believed that having a tomato on the mantle would bring prosperity and wealth. A tomato pincushion served as a convenient facsimile when tomatoes were out of season.

 

For me, a pincushion immediately reminds me of my mother, a Japanese woman and military wife who used patterns bought at the Base Exchange to make my clothes. The pincushion she owned both fascinated and scared me. Bordered by eight clinging figures with identical faces and matching pony tails, my mother’s pincushion was strikingly “exotic.” But what scared me were the faces, which featured exaggerated slanted eyes and thin smiling mouths. Their faces were a constant reminder of my own difference as one of the few Asian Americans in my school. My non-Asian American classmates took considerable pleasure in highlighting that difference by “slanting” their eyes, asking if my family ate dogs, and telling me to “go back to where I came from.”

 

It was not until graduate school, when I made the fateful decision to shift my area of focus from Victorian literature to Asian American studies, that I came to see my mother’s pincushion as a historically-driven artifact. When Chinese immigrants were recruited en masse in the 1850s and 1860s to labor in mines and work on the western portion of the transcontinental railroad, they were met with great xenophobia and racial violence. Unlike their Irish counterparts, Chinese railroad workers – as so-termed “sojourners” — were not allowed to bring their families. As early as 1854, in People v. Hall, Chinese were – along with indigenous people and African Americans – prohibited from testifying against whites in the newly annexed state of California. After 1878, in a ruling issued by the Ninth Circuit Court in California, Chinese immigrants were denied the right to naturalize. And, in 1882, Congress passed what would – until recently – be the only immigration prohibition to name a specific ethnic group: the Chinese Exclusion Act.

 

Cast as inassimilable subjects, treated as disposable “coolies,” and depicted as a “yellow peril” Chinese immigrants faced considerable discrimination in the U.S. labor market. As Irish women moved out of the laundry business, Chinese men unable to find work, filled the void. They came to dominate – out of racialized necessity – the industry, a reality reflected in laundry service product advertising which repeatedly accessed a Manchu hair style (the queue) and traditional dress to economically depict “Chinese-ness.”

 

In closing, situated within a longue durée history of immigration and racialization, the pincushion my mother owned was both byproduct of and testament to fact that the United States – notwithstanding claims otherwise – was not always a welcoming “nation of immigrants.” Despite this, the very fact it was in her possession, coupled with its intimate connection to an Asian American childhood, accentuates a nostalgia that I cannot fully shake.”

–

Cathy J. Schlund-Vials
Associate Dean for Humanities & Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Professor of English and Asian/Asian American Studies