Recently in Scholarship Category

As I complete the revisions to my manuscript on emergent literatures for NYU Press, I've been rereading Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s critique of multiculturalism, The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society, originally published in 1992 and now in a second, revised edition (1998). Schlesinger criticizes what he refers to as the "cult of ethnicity," the idea that "America is not a nation of individuals at all but a nation of groups, that ethnicity is the defining experience for Americans, that ethnic ties are permanent and indelible, and that division into ethnic communities establishes the basic structure of American society and the basic meaning of American history" (20-21)

There's a lot to like in Schlesinger's book -- and a lot to critique as well -- and I'll be including a brief discussion of it in my emergent literatures book. One of the things that feels dated about the book is its preoccupation with Afrocentrism, a movement that has receded in importance in the ten years since the last edition of Schlesinger's book. His remark that twelve percent of American are black, and the felt pressure to correct injustices of past scholarship comes mostly on their behalf" becomes the subject of Nathan Glazer's We Are All Multiculturalists Now (1998), which argues that multiculturalism as an educational movement owes its power to the interest that African American intellectuals and educators have taken in it as a way of addressing the social and educational problems that blacks in America still face.

Schlesinger is no apologist for white resentment: although he believes firmly in the importance of "America" as an ideal, he also believes that the diversity of the United States is one of its chief characteristics and greatest strengths. He just doesn't want diversity to become fetishized in a way that prevents Americans from thinking of themselves as Americans first and representatives of some other group -- racial, ethnic, sexual, religious, or whatever -- second.

One remark in particular caught my eye: Schlesinger described the election of an "Irish Catholic" -- John F. Kennedy -- to the presidency of the United States in 1960 as "a signal of ultimate acceptance that relieved Irish-Americans of the need for ethnic cheerleading" (62).

Unfortunately, Schlesinger passed away in February of last year: he didn't live to see Barack Obama become the presumptive Democratic nominee for the presidency. I wonder what he would have thought about the meaning of Barack's candidacy. Is it possible that the election of Barack would have a similar effect on the self-esteem of Africans Americans that the election of Kennedy had on Catholics? Or is the matter of race too important and divisive to make the cases similar? The "Catholics" that Schlesinger seems to have on his mind in the book are white Catholics.

Only time will tell, but it's worth pondering.

Last night, in Philadelphia, I watched my mentor, Sacvan Bercovitch, receive the American Studies Association's Carl Bode - Norman Holmes Pearson Prize for lifetime achievement. It was my pleasure and my honor to have nominated Saki for the award and to have gathered supporting letters from colleagues and students.

In conferring the award, the prize committee's chairperson, Gordon Hutner (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaigne), described Saki as "the presiding spirit, in many respects, of American Studies. Through his writings, his intellectual politics, his service to the Association, Professor Bercovitch has made an unparalleled set of distinguished contributions over the past thirty years. Perhaps no single literary historian has exerted the profound influence over his field that Bercovitch has, for he has been the key figure in the ideological turn in American literary study and indeed has played a central part in galvanizing the source of its interdisciplinary practice."

Hutner noted that the American Studies Association is "infinitely more robust" than it was the last time it met in Philadelphia, in 1982 when Saki was president and suggested that this robustness may well be "the fruit of Sacvan Bercovitch's labors."

I didn't know Saki then (we wouldn't meet for another couple of years when he had relocated to Harvard), and it was a revelation for me to hear about the central role that he had played in setting the ASA back on course after a period during which it was foundering. I was struck by the fact that he was even more deserving of the Bode - Pearson prize than my letter of nomination had suggested.

What follows is the text of that letter. As a tribute it's inadequate, but at least it achieved what it was intended to achieve.