Interpretation – American Disasters

April 16, 2014December 16, 2020

Disease: a Multifaceted Disaster

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The first chapter in Typhoid Mary highlights mankind’s tendency to find a scapegoat for society’s problems. It also points out the lower class’s vulnerability to man’s hunt for someone to blame. Leavitt notes that many stereotyped the lower classes as “dirtier than their employers” as an explanation for the higher rates of typhoid in the working class (Leavitt 18). This kind of stereotype made lower classes more vulnerable to social isolation.

Leavitt suggests that “as a society, we have become masters of stigmatizing the sick and the contagious; we label them as separate from the mainstream” (3). Society tends to dehumanize people with diseases such as AIDs, making them vulnerable to isolation. This narrative fits into Leavitt’s broader argument that disease is a disaster in a multitude of ways. She argues “it is imperative that we learn to consider the full range of contexts in which disease ravages” (3).

This argument ties neatly into her other central arguments of the text, specifically the social consequences of disease control and the inherently subjective nature of historical interpretation.

It is difficult to tell from only reading one chapter whether Leavitt is successful with her argument. However, her sensitivity to the “various ways to tell Mary Mallon’s story” and the “relevan[cy]” of each narrative seems reasonably convincing (5). Moreover, her argument in chapter one about society’s growing “scientific optimism” seems consistent with her goal to isolate each type of narrative. Jeremiah rightly points out that Leavitt’s argument and the case of Mary Mallon have a broader impact than one woman’s fate. The vulnerability of the lower classes and society’s tendency to label and ostracize diseased individual’s are two such impacts that society needs to keep in mind.

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.

March 26, 2014December 16, 2020

Interpreting Disaster

I thought that both pieces had some intriguing arguments. Steinberg helped me answer some questions that I had about the San Francisco Earthquake, while Davis raises more questions for me to figure out that mamorte highlights in his post.

Steinberg seems to answer the question that we had in class Tuesday as to why the San Franciscan businessmen did not want people to know that the city had been destroyed; the businesses wanted other places to assume that the city was fine, and that they could do business as usual with the San Franciscan businesses. Moreover, the businessmen wanted others in commerce to believe that even though the city was earthquake-prone, this would not affect its business because they circulated the idea that the fire did more damage to the city than the earthquake; any city is susceptible to fire. I also agree with Steinberg’s argument that “blurring the boundary between natural and human actions obscures the social and economic forces responsible for calamity in the first place” (118). People try to make it more difficult to pin down the causes of what actually happened in order to disperse evidence for blame. This idea also poses a threat to the reliability of primary source evidence in the study of history and disasters. When people try to make sense of a traumatic event in immediate aftermath while trying not to place blame on themselves or others like themselves, they are much more likely to skew their own interpretation of what happened.

I also liked Davis and his piece about the ecology of fear, comparing disasters in different time periods and how they’ve developed. I think it’s interesting how he claims that disasters will continue to have more catastrophic effect, even though we have had a lull in terms of calamity from disasters since the Gilded Age. I am not saying that I disagree with his main argument, but I find it intriguing.

January 29, 2014December 16, 2020

Historiography Persuasion

Let me begin by agreeing with AJ’s comments about reading through Eli’s post. Bringing in the Belk parking spot certainly made me laugh and made Turner’s article seem even more far-fetched, stereotyped, and prejudice. While I shared many of the same initial thoughts that Eli describes, Conon’s historiography almost justified Turner’s paper into making “THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY” seem accurate and almost skillfully neglectful. Maybe I have fallen into Cronon’s trap, yet after reading the historiography Turner’s general thesis seems much more accurate, so long as you avoid the problems about democracy, national character, theological problems, and his stereotyping of frontier “types”. (171)

During my initial reading of Turner, I had many of the same feelings that Eli referenced and noted many of the critiques that Cronon brought up. I thought Turner lacked detail, failed to acknowledge many of the underlying factors of western expansion, and his “analytical shortcomings.” (170) Nevertheless, I was slowly persuaded to acknowledge Turner’s entire thesis after I finished Cronon. Regardless by how much historians reject the structure and thesis of Turner’s work, we are still reliant on the work today. As noted throughout Cronon, we acknowledge the article predominantly for the academic ingenuity to understand history through narrative. If one consider Turner’s article as more of a narrative for history as a whole, using the broad theme of the American frontier, than maybe his piece has merit. Regardless of whether Turner though of this piece as a story or strict scholarly writing is insignificant. If Turner was trying to explain why he believed the course of American history was going to take a drastic turn in the years after 1893, than his paper narrates a plausible story behind his reasoning.

As I re-read the last portions of Turner’s article (after reading Cronon who caused me to ignore some of the obvious flaws) the general ideas seemed to make sense. If we ignore some of details, the American frontier has a unique and possibly accurate parallel with the Mediterranean. Maybe, in 1893 when Turner wrote the article, the idea of expansion had been lost. Without the idea of free land and the frontier, maybe Americans felt forced to modernize. Without the possibility of horizontal expansion, was the vertical expansion (urbanization and industrialization) the next logical chapter in American history? Certainly, I do not agree with everything that Turner is saying, but his thesis, at the most basic level, is hard to ignore. As Cronon points out, a logical story is hard to ignore. If we compare the expansion of American history to various country histories and the interaction with American landscape, maybe Turner was right.

My biggest take away from these two reading’s lies in my drastic openness to Turner’s argument. Can a good historiography like Cronon’s change your mind on even the most farfetched ideas? Certainly this will not be true for every article, but I was struck by how logical Cronon’s approach was to an article I had nearly dismissed.

January 20, 2014December 16, 2020

A Crucible of Fire: Interpreting the “Gilded Age” and Characterizing Its Disasters

Just as last week’s readings approached disasters, our readings for Tuesday’s class examine the “Gilded Age” and approach it generally, attempting to characterize the period and, in doing so, look beyond its materialism and superficiality. As Sarah addressed in her post, Charles Calhoun adopts this approach in his analysis of the period and suggests that in the context of US history it was a time of “substantial accomplishment,” when advancements in politics and pop culture coincided with urbanization and economic development (3). Indeed, as Sarah writes, the period was “not as gilded as it seems.” But perhaps even more boldly than Calhoun, Rebecca Edwards advocates for the period’s significance and, one might say, preeminence in New Spirits. The “Gilded Age,” she insists, was not merely a time of greed, inequality, and other ills of so-called unfettered capitalism, but an “Early Progressive Era,” the “starting point for modern America” (5). She notes, like Calhoun, that alongside the emergence of globalism and development of capitalism, the United States underwent a period of immense change, evolving into a more egalitarian democracy and fostering a democratic culture. But for Edwards, the period was not just one of progress. As she writes, the United States emerged from a “crucible of fire” in early twentieth century, fraught as much with greed and corruption as with disaster (1).

So, how might these affirmative views of the “Gilded Age” influence our interpretation of its disasters?

As our reading last week noted, disasters serve as “daily reminders of the limitations . . . of modernity” (Hewitt 2). Just as they exploit weaknesses in infrastructure and society, they can and often do illicit positive change to mend those weaknesses. And it would seem that this is especially the case in an evolving society, where progress might not begin with disaster—it’s already begun—but instead simply alters its course. Now, if Edwards’ and Calhoun’s assessments of the “Gilded Age” are accurate and the period truly was one of immense progress, I think we ought to evaluate the period’s disasters with its progressive ends in mind, analyzing the way in which disasters challenged the progressive course of the United States. The pitfall of this type of interpretation, of course, would be stooping to a teleological history, in which we interpret disasters as merely the causes of events, not as important events in and of themselves. But I would like to pose the question to the class: Should we interpret disasters in the “Gilded Age” as causes of the Progressive Era or as the results of a progressing era?

In his post last week, Price addressed and critiqued what Bergman described as the “utility” of disaster, suggesting that Bergman perhaps “jumps the gun” in considering disasters useful. And while I agree with him to some extent—it’s critical to recognize the deadly tolls of disaster—I think that we ought to study disasters with intention of uncovering their useful results. Not only does this approach attempt to understand disasters in their context, but recognizes both the momentary and long-lasting effects of those disasters. I think Edwards would agree with this approach as well. After all, she admits that even in this “Early Progressive Era,” it was the “fires” of the age that forged the tools of progress.