C19: America in the 19th Century

The N-word is here to stay, and so are debates about it. However, scholars and teachers don’t need the word to disappear so much as they need to be more deliberate and intellectually rigorous in handling it. In this episode, Koritha Mitchell (Ohio State University) suggests that students and faculty members should not be subjected to hate speech in the classroom just because it appears in the texts we study. She shares her deep disappointment with how little white instructors as well as those in other dominant identity categories have thought about their use of slurs in their classes and proposes solutions to improve pedagogical practices. She details her own classroom policies and offers examples of how the policies function in texts by Mark Twain and James Baldwin. We also hear Mitchell's former students discuss how her policy transformed their learning experiences and critical thinking during and beyond her courses. Throughout, Mitchell identifies how intellectually lazy ways of handing racial slurs in the classroom result from, and fuel, that which makes our institutions unjust. Episode produced by Xine Yao, Paul Kotheimer, and Koritha Mitchell. Post-production by Xine Yao. View Koritha Mitchell's classroom covenant: http://www.korithamitchell.com/teaching-and-the-n-word/

The new issue of J19 is hot off the presses! Starting with the cover image of the 1833 Leonid meteor shower, J19 editors Elizabeth Duquette and Stacey Margolis share their process, advice, and what makes them excited about the ideas and conversations in this issue. Hear teasers about the articles that critically engage crows, notebooks, juvenile delinquents, comets, sin, and Indigenous newspapers. Features include the forum on theatre via keywords, a Pleasure Reading piece on teaching in a maximum security prison, and letters that help to build a sense of scholarly community. Submit not only your research but also your letters about anything in previous J19 issues and your personal Pleasure Reading essays! Essays by Jamie Bolker, Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Zach Marshall, Laura Soderberg, Kathryn Walkiewicz, David Zimmerman Pleasure Reading by Gale Temple Letters by Holly Jackson, Sarah E. Chinn Forum edited by Matthew Rebhorn featuring Heather Nathans, Douglas A. Jones Jr, Amy E. Hughes, Joseph Roach

Every week in 2018, Ivy Schweitzer and her team of students at Dartmouth College select several poems and letters written by Emily Dickinson in 1862, a year of creativity “at the White Heat,” and then frame them with a summary of the news of the time, literary culture, biographical events in the Dickinson circle, a brief survey of more recent critical responses and a personal reflection. This episode explores the “White Heat” blog, where the goal is to create immersive contexts in which to read this notoriously difficult writer and to counter the mythology that Dickinson was isolated and sui generis. In fact, this was the year Dickinson “came out as a poet” to the famous literary figure, Thomas Higginson. Members of the team, including Schweitzer, Victoria Corwin, a senior undergraduate, and Joe Waring, a recent graduate, talk with Michael Amico (Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development) about their experiences blogging Dickinson in what the team regards as an experiment in public humanities and a model for doing scholarship and experiential learning in the digital age. This episode was produced by Michael Amico and Conrad Winslow. Post-production help from Doug Guerra.

In this episode, Paul Fess (LaGuardia Community College) explores the connections between Martin Delany and the songwriters Joshua McCarter Simpson and Stephen Foster. Embedded in the mix of Delany’s novel Blake; or, The Huts of America are several songs that invoke some of Foster’s most familiar melodies, such as those associated with the songs “Oh! Susanna” and “Uncle Ned.” Digging through the archive, scholars have discovered these parodies to be the work of the relatively obscure Joshua McCarter Simpson, an activist in Ohio’s Colored Conventions movement, a conductor on the underground railroad, and, with the publication of his Original Anti-Slavery Songs, the first African American to produce a songbook of original compositions. This episode examines how Delany and Simpson strategically repurpose Foster's sentimentalism-infused melodies, navigating the racial complexities of antebellum culture. While Foster aimed to soften the degrading aspects of minstrelsy, Delany and Simpson use these melodies to create a Black abolitionist discourse, challenging sentimental aesthetics. The novel's characters, like Simpson's lyrics, redefine the nostalgic longing in Foster's songs, emphasizing the harsh realities of enslaved life. Delany and Simpson employ music as a tool for political activism, crafting a counterhegemonic discourse and fostering a sense of collective resistance against enslavement. Post-production support provided by DeLisa D. Hawkes (University of Tennessee, Knoxville). Transcript available at https://bit.ly/S07E03Transcript. Additional resources available at https://bit.ly/S07E03Resources.