American Disasters – Page 6 – Just another My blog Sites site

April 3, 2014December 16, 2020

Research Update: Yellow Fever 1878

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I’m looking at the 1878 yellow fever epidemic in Memphis and the impacts on national reconciliation.

I started off my search for primary sources trying to obtain some sort of records surrounding the debates of the 1878 National Quarantine Act and the 1879 formation of the National Board of Health. Within these records I was looking to analyze the reasons Southern Congressman had for abandoning state right’s policies in favor of a stronger piece of federal legislation. In addition, I was hoping to explore the reasons of Northern opposition to national action.

I have been able to find some awesome sources that cover these debates, but could stand to find a few more, as well as newspaper sources that covered the debates. However, I need to be sure to keep this source narrowed to Memphis and the surrounding Mississippi River Valley. The plague also affected New Orleans and Atlanta (although it hit Memphis the hardest) so keeping my focus on Memphis has required some digging.

April 2, 2014December 16, 2020

Research Proposal Update: Finding The “Five Points”

Blog Post 9 (for Thursday, 4/3)

In his book “The Cholera Years”, which I reviewed, Charles Rosenberg demonstrates an interesting meta-narrative about disease and public health in America during the 19^th century. Reading “The Cholera Years” helped me realize that the 1832 Cholera epidemic in New York is part of a much bigger story; as a result, I decided it was necessary to narrow down my topic.

Almost all of my sources have mentioned a place called the Five Points in some capacity. Today, the Five Points is situated on Worth Street in lower Manhattan, between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. During the 19^th century, however, this convergence formed the heart of New York City. It was a melting pot inhabited by individuals of various races, religions and nationalities, all of whom struggled to survive in complete destitution.

The Five Points played an important role in the 1832 Cholera epidemic, and its experience implicates many of the meta-narrative themes that Rosenberg described. This quagmire of filth and poverty represented a serious threat to the public health of the entire city: it was the perfect incubator for disease. Records from the 1832 epidemic attribute the greatest number of Cholera cases to the Five Points (Rosenberg, 33). I plan to explore the specific ways in which poverty contributed the remarkable virulence there— shared water sources, unsanitary methods of food preparation, etc. I also plan to describe the social effects of disease in such a densely populated and culturally diverse area.

Furthermore, I plan to demonstrate how perceptions of the Five Points demonstrated the extent to which epidemiology and morality were intellectually associated during the early 19^th century. Well-to-do New Yorkers understood epidemiology through the lens of morality. Lacking sufficient medical explanation for the spread of Cholera, they reasoned that Cholera was a form of divine retribution, and that inhabitants of the Five Points had exposed themselves by succumbing to vice. The Five Points had a reputation for immorality, after all; Rosenberg called it a “the city’s red light district” (33). Violent crime, unemployment and prostitution were commonplace. Gangs such as the Dead Rabbits and Bowery Boys famously clashed here during the 1860s.

In short, I’ve found a great case study, which I can use to make generalizations about the 1832 Cholera epidemic, its social effects, and its implications about the intersection of morality, medical science and public health in 19^th century American thought.

April 2, 2014December 16, 2020

Constructing Disaster Narratives

I think both Wells and Dan rightly argue that disasters present people with a “blank canvas” on which they are able to project their own meanings or interpretations. We can see this to be true in Biel’s chapter, “The Rule of the Sea and Land” where he writes, “A conventional narrative of the Titanic disaster began to take shape before any survivor had been interviewed” (23). The narrative of the chivalric male dominated the press accounts of the disaster before any eyewitness accounts had been documented. Further, in the foreword, Biel cites Henry Adams who used the disaster to promote his own anti-Republican agenda.

I want to pause and acknowledge Molly’s assertion that we must not undermine the significant human loss of disasters’ such as the Titanic. I do think that in the study history there is a tendency to try to understand the broader social and historical implications of a disaster, and then as a result gloss over the numbers of dead. However, I think it is precisely this that constitutes a disaster in the first place – loss of human life and capital. Not to put words in their mouths, but I believe that where Wells and Dan argue that a disaster becomes a blank canvas is after the event becomes viewed as a disaster.

In considering this idea that the Titanic presented an opportunity for people to promote their own agenda or to assert their own disaster narrative, we can see a similar scenario play out in other disasters we have studied. In my own research into the San Francisco Earthquake, this idea plays out in numerous ways. For one, the Progressives certainly saw the disaster as an opportunity to rebuild the city to reflect Progressive ideals. Another example is the intense seismic denial following the Earthquake, as well as the aggressive attempt to ascribe the damage to the fires for fear that the city would not be rebuilt.

As we discussed early on in the course, disasters have the unique ability to bring social issues to the surface. Perhaps the way in which these societal tensions surface is through people using disaster as an opportunity to express sentiments that might be disregarded otherwise.

April 2, 2014December 16, 2020

Differing Interpretations of the Titanic

Part One of Steven Biel’s Down With the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic offers several different interpretations of the events surrounding the sinking of the Titanic. These interpretations come from all segments of society; the rich, the poor, and every other segment of society developed their own unique interpretation of the Titanic disaster. These differing opinions is what Biel draws on to construct his argument Biel argues that the way disaster is interpreted is subject to our own beliefs. This argument is strengthened throughout the first part of the book.

I found it very interesting how everyone at the time of the Titanic was able to use this disaster to further strengthen his or her own beliefs. Every segment of the population read into the sinking of the Titanic an explanation for the disaster that reaffirmed their own values. The rich were painted as heroes, while the poorer, more ethnic passengers were described as villains. Additionally, arguments were made for and against women’s suffrage and religious doctrine was employed as an explanation for the catastrophe. To me, this seems like a form of exploitation. Spectators are using the deaths of the Titanic passengers to further their own agenda. I think this shows something about human character that is slightly morbid.

I like the argument that Dan and Wells brought up that the Titanic does not have an intrinsic meaning. I agree; while the Titanic had meanings to a lot of different people at the time, it seems difficult to assign an intrinsic meaning to this disaster. Also, I disagree with Molly’s assertion that we have become indifferent to loss of life because of this class. The loss of human life and capitol was horrible, but as historians, we examine the way events like the sinking of the Titanic affected the course of history. Through this historical lens, we have to realize that not everything has to have meaning, but we must analyze its historical significance.

April 2, 2014December 16, 2020

Gendering Human Responsibility

The portion of the Steven Biel reading that was particularly interesting to me was his description of the ways in which different narratives developed regarding “male chivalry” after the Titanic’s sinking. This discussion relates directly to my research on the various portrayals of male heroism as a result of the Titanic for my final paper. My research has led me to read various newspaper articles from the days and weeks after the Titanic sinking, most of which exuberantly praise the men who died on the ship as a result of the “women and children first” philosophy.

Biel’s discussion makes is obvious that the narrative of “male chivalry” was by no means uncontested. The ways in which the same narrative regarding male heroism were manipulated after the disaster of the Titanic is what makes the study of gender relations during this time period so interesting. The perspective from the Progressive Women’s magazine is particularly interesting as it makes no attempt to negate the male’s “chivalrous” end, but instead points out the absence of male chivalry in life (Biel 104-105). This narrative calls out the concept of human responsibility in disaster, which we have discussed repetitively in class. However, this narrative takes the additional step of gendering the term, and instead of blaming human error, it specifically targets male error as the cause of the disaster. These women’s interpretation of the male sex’s guilt in the Titanic is related to Molly’s previous post about the ways in which the people in charge are primarily responsible for the disaster.

April 2, 2014December 16, 2020

Fact vs. Fiction in “Down with the Old Canoe”

The one thing I can hold true from Steven Biel’s Down with the Old Canoe, it’s that there are a whole bunch of stories that come from the Titanic. Biel makes the case that we should not exploit the myths of the Titanic because as its legacy could mean any number of things depending on our own cultural context. Over the years the saga of Titanic has been shaped to a variety of ends – begging for a resolution that Biel argues we will never fully get.

I agree with Amani when she wrote, “the Titanic served as a powerful metaphor for groups all across American society, groups like women’s suffragists, African Americans, the wealthy, and even traditionalists”. And I think Wells said it best when he observed that the Titanic served as a blank canvas on which Americans could project their own meaning, “The Titanic was certainly meaningful, but only in that it reflected the social and ideological complexities of a particular historical moment.” Those fighting for female empowerment pointed to the fact that women were strong enough to row the life-support boats and were organized enough to erect expensive memorials (although they paradoxically praised male chivalry). Meanwhile anti-suffragists reflected that women were better served by chivalry than voting rights. It gave special attention to praising the heroic deeds of the champions of capitalism, like Astor. “Such anecdotes” Biel writes, “served to conflate wealth and self-sacrifice, power and moral grandeur, social status and character” (42). Fundamentalists pointed to the greed and subsequent divine punishment of the day while the progressives pointed to new safety regulations. Everyone, it seemed, had something to gain and lose from the disaster.

But this book is not really about the sinking of the Titanic. No, it’s more about a society’s ability to reconstruct an event. I agree with Molly, the ability of a culture to reshape a disaster does not make the event intrinsically meaningless, especially when we are talking about lives. But thinking about going forward with my primary analysis paper, Biel’s text serves as reminder that I should understand the biases of my speaker. What you have to lose or gain in your recounting or exploiting of disaster?

Ha – here’s one thing this guy gained in exploiting the disaster:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/02/27/titanic-ii-cruise-ship-lifeboats-blue-star-line_n_2771356.html

April 2, 2014December 16, 2020

Distinction between Cultural and Individual Significance

I disagree with the notion that the sinking of the Titanic has no intrinsic meaning, as Dan suggests that Wells has argued, and I’m worried that as our society is exposed to more disasters, we become increasingly numb to the significance of individual human lives and stories. Although I agree with Wells’ point that Biel believes and argues that the sinking of the Titanic was only culturally meaningful “in that it reflected the social and ideological complexities of a particular historical moment,” I think that from the individual triumphs depicted we can divine some small, personal hints of significance inherent in the disaster itself.

As Biel points out, activists for all issues skewed perceptions of the accounts to suit their agendas. This manipulation of facts for the purposes of activists is the subject of Biel’s chapter entitled, “The Rule of the Sea and Land.” My favorite example of this lies in Biel’s depiction of female activists claiming heroism “at the expense of men whose class and ethnic origins were suspect” (55). The women claimed they had to demonstrate physical strength to row their own lifeboats. Here Biel invokes thoughts of Social Darwinism by insinuating that women felt they had to put down other marginalized groups in order to gain any credence in mainstream society. This Social Darwinism may or may not have been noticed by those present on the boat, but Biel certainly makes the case that activists and journalists imposed it on those who were present.

By discussing and condemning the manipulation of heroic deeds before actually discussing the deeds themselves, I think Biel minimizes these deeds’ significance. Although racist and elitist, Andrews seemed proud that she had played a part in her own survival. For her, the sinking of the Titanic was significant. Yet Biel focuses less on Andrews’ perception of the disaster, and more on the public’s perception of it. As his title, Down with the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster, suggests, Biel focuses more on reactions to, rather than personal victories within the disaster. This is where the conflation between cultural and individual significance comes in. It is easy to forget an event’s significance to individuals who participated, especially when compared with it historical and cultural significance. It may even seem too easy an argument to make—of course this event was meaningful for those who experienced it. But I don’t think that suggests that the event had no intrinsic meaning whatsoever. The meaning was more personal than it was cultural, and it makes sense that Biel did not find that meaning, since his intent was to provide an account of only the cultural history of the sinking of the Titanic.

April 2, 2014December 16, 2020

Mining for Meaning in the Depths of the Ocean

Steven Biel’s Down With the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster, asserts that the historical value lies in the ways in which we understand and use the disaster. Biel points out that the Titanic in and of itself, the sinking of a single steamship in the middle of the ocean which in reality did not yield any great policy changes regarding ocean safety, was not actually significant. What was significant, according to Biel, are the ways in which Americans used the Titanic to understand their current anxieties about the world in which they lived. Biel stresses that the Titanic did not flip the switch from enchantment with technology to disillusionment with progress. He emphasizes that it did not signal the end of a happier simpler period. Biel describes the current state of unrest within American society which existed prior to the sinking. It is the way that each of these groups used the Titanic to extract lessons and advance causes that were already near to them which made the Titanic an irreplaceable part of American Culture. It was the way the Titanic served as a powerful metaphor for groups all across American society, groups like women’s suffragists, African Americans, the wealthy, and even traditionalists.

This view of the Titanic allows us to interrogate why we feel that the Titanic signified a simpler time. It allows us to understand more fully the state of American Affairs. It allows us to see the multiplicity of meaning that was invested in the sinking. And it allows us to think critically about this event. Like Wells mentions in his post, there is no true, universal, and singular meaning that arose from the deep waters into which the Titanic sank. The meanings manufactured were as diverse as the tensions experienced at the time. This makes the Titanic more than just a powerful metaphor, but a literal archaeological site for some of the greatest issues of the early 20^th century.

April 2, 2014December 16, 2020

The Gospel of Wealth

While reading part 1 of Down with the Old Canoe by Steven Biel, I was struck by the intense moralization that the titanic caused. It was especially striking that while mainstream newspapers saw the Titanic as a symbol of fearless chivalry and as the justification of wealth, many American pastors saw this a a sign of God’s punishment for mans excess and hubris. This leads me to agree with Wells’ post that the Titanic crash had no inherent meaning, but it was a blank slate for people to project meaning onto based on the emotions they were feeling at the time. Of the meanings that people projected onto the disaster, the one I found to be most interesting and controversial was the idea that the noble wealthy men sacrificed themselves for the sake of the poor and the immigrants, but that these “underclass” citizens were undeserving.

The idea that the wealthy are inherently moral seems strange for this time period. As the nation shifted from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era, more Americans started viewing large companies as bad for society and the wealthy as immoral and only looking out for themselves. Why then is an entire segment of society seeing the Titanic as a validation for the wealthy. At first I assumed that all of the newspapers reporting these stories would be from places like New York, where the readership was the industrial elite, but newspapers from all over the country were reporting this very story. On page 43 Biel quotes a Denver columnist who writes about the “disease-bitten child whose life is at best less than worthless, goes to safety.” What was in my mind the most interesting paradox was that for many the wealthy proved their right to live by dying, while the poor showed they were fit for death by living. There is a certain chivalric notion to that statement that I think one would be hard pressed to find in our modern era. Speaking of the modern times, I was trying to imagine a newspaper running an article like the Denver paper did in our time, and at first I thought it could never happen. As I thought more about it, the way most American newspapers report on the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have a similar tone. While I think it is important that we hear about and honor our dead soldiers, far more innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians have been killed in the conflict and that is often not reported on, and when it is it is more of a side note.

March 31, 2014December 16, 2020

A Gordian Knot or a Web of Lies?: Steven Biel and the Meaning of the Titanic

As we’ve already encountered thus far in the semester, disasters often yield a variety of interpretations. From Father Pernin’s account of the Peshtigo Fire to the “seismic denial” of San Francisco’s leading capitalists, personal motives—whether economic, social, political, or religious—tend to color descriptions and blur otherwise clear observations of human catastrophe. For some, this phenomena would seem a real thorn in one’s side, obscuring the facts of a disaster. But for Steven Biel, it presents an exciting opportunity: the chance to disentangle a web of intersecting, conflicting, and overlapping personal stories, to make sense of a “diversity of meanings” (118). In Down with the Old Canoe, Biel tackles and interprets this web for himself and—as Dr. Shrout so often encourages us to do in class—”parses out” its various strands to weave a single, intelligible reading.

Well, not really. In reality, the various interpretations of the Titanic were a lot more convoluted and tangled-up than one might think. The disaster itself, Biel writes, was “historically not intrinsically meaningful,” and whatever historical meanings it did offer were “neither simple nor universal” (8). The conventional narrative of chivalric, first-cabin males was nothing but a “myth” in that it “located a disturbing event within routine structures of understanding” (24). The conventional religious interpretation, likewise, owed its existence to the “familiar moral vocabulary” of Protestantism (65). Convenience—whether in the form of a convenient gender or class hierarchy or a convenient religious language—it seemed, determined the Titanic’s various meanings.

But in nearly every instance, ideology also shaped interpretation. Biel notes that just as the conventional narrative reinforced conservative race, gender, and class hierarchies, so too did it undermine ‘traditional values.’ Feminists, for instance, “turned the chivalric myth against itself” (105). Socialists treated the Titanic as a symbol of Capitalism itself, the iceberg as the imminent threat of Proletarian revolution. African Americans, meanwhile, stripped the conventional ‘myth’ of its racist connotations to endorse a message of “universal brotherhood” (109). Such a ‘diversity of meanings’ suggested that, despite their advocates claims to timeless truth, interpretations were themselves products of their own time, rooted in an equally tangled social, political, and ideological web. The America of 1912 was “contested terrain” (100). It found itself at the ‘watershed moment’ of a revolutionary, transitional period of American history: the Progressive Era.

As disappointing as it may be to realize that even Harvard’s own Steven Biel can’t find the ultimate strand in this tangled web, the one and only absolutely without-a-doubt true meaning of the Titanic disaster, Biel’s point is an important one. The Titanic was certainly meaningful, but only in that it reflected the social and ideological complexities of a particular historical moment. As Biel points out, the Titanic really “changed nothing except shipping regulations” (24). Instead, it was the disaster’s role as a sort of blank canvas for American society that created the Titanic‘s meaning.

So, perhaps Nate should consider revising his statement from last week. He claimed that when people attempt to interpret human catastrophes, they tend “to skew their own interpretation of what happened,” thus obscuring the real meaning of the event itself. But what if a disaster, as Biel would suggest, is not ‘intrinsically meaningful’? Well, then it would seem that treating its various ‘meanings’ as a tangled web is futile. Maybe it’s more useful to think of them as a Gordian Knot. Just cut through it all and realize, like Biel did, that ‘meanings’ are historically constructed.