Gina Anne Tam, "Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860-1960" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

07/07/20 • 69 min

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The question of how a state decides what its official language is going to be, or indeed whether it even needs one, is never simple, and this may be particularly true of China which covers a continental landmass encompassing multitude of different language families and groups. Indeed, what is even meant by “Chinese” is unclear when one considers the huge range of related but mutually unintelligible linguistic varieties – from Cantonese to Shanghainese and many other lesser known ones. The story of how the Beijing-derived language today known – at least in English – as “Mandarin” became the standard is thus a highly complex one.

In Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860-1960 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Gina Anne Tam takes us through the ways that people in China have navigated the country’s complex linguistic landscape while also negotiating profound questions over the meanings of modern Chinese identity itself.

Moving smoothly from the late imperial period up to the Maoist sixties and indeed beyond, this book is a rich source of insight into how states standardize language, and along the way explores the linguistic debates underlying many vital projects, from educating a nation, to writing novels, organizing socialist revolution, performing opera, and indeed dissing foreigners in rap tracks.

Gina Anne Tam is Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese History at Trinity University, Texas.

Ed Pulford is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups.

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Gina Anne Tam is Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese History at Trinity University, Texas.

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Nicole Myers Turner, "Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia" (UNC Press, 2020)

In her nuanced case study of postemanciaption Virginia, Nicole Myers Turner, (Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University) challenges assumptions regarding the intersection between black religion and politics in this “signal moment of political and cultural transformation in the African-American experience.” Using traditional archival records from churches, political institutions and personal documents -- as well as ArcGIS to create layered maps of black religious and political participation -- Turner interrogates the integral role black churches played in postbellum Virginia politics. Black political engagement is an understudied facet of the postemancipation period but Turner explores developing relationships between two realms of life and how politics were shaped by the racial positioning of the denominations and of black people within those denominations.

In her new book Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia (UNC Press, 2020), Turner argues that the relationship between black religious institutions and political institutions drastically shifted as the Reconstruction amendments established rights for black citizens. That shift, and the myriad challenges black citizens encountered in their newfound citizenship, necessitated that they pursue a means for education and political power. Soul Liberty focuses on the political involvement and bargaining through which black communities achieved these goals. The term “soul liberty” captures the “combination of religious freedom, righteousness, equity and justice” that fueled remarkable institution building in the period. For example, she highlights the interracial coalitions forged with the Republican and Readjuster parties and political magnates, such as William Mahone: one of the first white politicians to recognize the political power of black churches. Turner trenchantly investigates how women in the church were pushed away from ministerial positions, and thus, often ignored as religious and political leaders. She identifies several aspects of churches and their political connections in which women demonstrated agency, such as voting on ministerial positions and tenure, leading discussions, and fundraising. She also diagnoses theological education and its male focus as the main reason that women were held out of leadership positions in the ministry. She provides a nuanced account of the election of John Mercer Langston, the first African-American congressman elected in 1890.

Soul Liberty uses the powerful tools of archival research and GIS to illustrate the transformation of black churches, explicitly and implicitly, into centers of political organization. It is currently available in three forms: print book, verbatim open access e-book, and enhanced open-access e-book, which allows the reader to manipulate some of the layered maps that Turner created with her research. A website based on her research is available at mappingblackreligion.com.

Benjamin Warren assisted with this podcast.

Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013) and, most recently, “Retreat from the Rule of Law: Locke and the Perils of Stand Your Ground” in the Journal of Politics (August 2020).

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Richard Gergel, "Unexampled Courage" (Sarah Crichton Books, 2019)

In his new book Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring (Sarah Crichton Books, 2019), District Judge Richard M. Gergel asks pertinent questions for the Summer of 2020. How do tragic events awaken white people to the violence of structural racism? What do white people do about it? How do black leaders shape their agendas? Unexampled Courage connects the stories of Isaac Woodard, Harry Truman, and J. Waties Waring to illustrate how one incident fits into the larger history of civil rights.

On February 12, 1946, Sergeant Isaac Woodard was discharged from the United States military after serving in World War II. While traveling home by bus, Woodard, one of the 900,000 African American men to serve in WWII, was pulled off the bus and arrested for speaking disrespectfully to the white bus driver. While in the custody of police in Batesburg, South Carolina, Sergeant Woodard was beaten and blinded. Viewed in isolation, the blinding of Isaac Woodard appears to be one of many incidents of police brutality against African Americans but Gergel describes how this particular case – publicized widely by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the black press, and Orson Welles – reached President Harry Truman and set off a chain of events impacting 20th century American civil rights.

In this extensively researched book, Gergel details how the mistreatment of Isaac Woodard shocked President Truman into creating a presidential commission on civil rights “To Secure These Rights” and ordering the Justice Department to prosecute Lynwood Shull, the chief of police in Batesburg. Shull was tried in South Carolina with Judge J. Waties Waring presiding – and found not guilty by an all-white jury. The verdict surprised and outraged Judge Waring who moved to confront racism – his own and that of the institutions that he supported. Moving forward, he ruled against racial segregation in Briggs v. Elliott (1952) and his decision helped lay the foundation for Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) and the legal precedent that separate but equal is “inherently unequal.”

The book highlights how black Americans who fought for civil rights risked their livelihood, bodies, and lives while whites like Truman and Waring negotiated social disapproval, political backlash, and – sometimes – violence. Although the focus is on the white men who “awaken,” he demonstrates the importance of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP leadership in addressing how institutional inconsistencies (e.g. Department of Justice, FBI, jury procedures, racist law enforcement) produced a bystander government.

In the podcast, Judge Gergel connects this mid-century civil rights history to the death of George Floyd, the inability of Congress to pass the Emmett Till Antilynching Act in June 2020, and the challenges of legal reform that remain. He also reveals that the book will be the subject of a public television documentary.

Adam Liebell-McLean assisted with this podcast.

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