February 3, 2020: Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

history as a subject of study is more than a linear progression of events its ideas currents of thought institutions of learning social movements moral awakenings and more in a brief new book today's guests traces the history of ideas that shape the United States from its beginning she's Jennifer Ratna Rosen Hagen this week on story in the public square [Music] hello and welcome to a story in the public square where storytelling meets Public Affairs I'm Jim ludus from the Pell Center at Salva and Jena University alongside me is my friend and co-host G Wayne Miller of the Providence Journal each week we talk about big issues with great guests authors scholars journalists and more to make sense of the stories that shape public life in the United States today top US this week we're joined by dr. Jennifer Ratner Rosen Hagen the morel Kerdi and vila spore gaze a distinguished achievement professor of history at the University of wisconsin-madison she's also the author of an important new book the ideas that made America Jennifer thank you so much for being with us thanks for having me it's a real pleasure to be here we want to talk about your book but I think almost more foundationally I want to ask you what is intellectual history intellectual history is a way of studying history but instead of studying the big politicians or the big you know political events or Wars not that those are not relevant but it looks at the past by way of ideas and by way of people who make them or are moved by them so it's fundamentally a historical enterprise but it's really interested in looking at things like intellectual movements or certain key ideas or even key texts famous thinkers but it can also have more humble aspirations which is to look at how average Americans simply understood themselves and understood their America what of all the history that you could study what drew you to this is the field well it's with the ideas so I was a 19 year old undergrad who sort of backed my way into a an intellectual history course really almost by accident it was probably just that it fit into my schedule you know like who who knows and I've never I've never even heard of such a thing intellectual history but what I was introduced to were literary critics philosophers scientists artists and that those ideas those figures were windows on to a particular moment and in that case it was an American intellectual history class those were windows on to the American past so I learned about the Progressive Era I learned about the Harlem Renaissance I learned about the New Deal but it wasn't necessarily by way of the big political structures or the economic context but by way of the ideas that were either expressive of certain commitments of the time or ideas that went on to be influential in shaping the the course of American history and it was is the word feral like you know like I get I took the course and it's like I became intellectually feral because in a good way I think I hope because it was so intoxicating to come into contact with people for who I had no idea who they were or I had heard the names right but it was just a name I didn't have any concept and it was like I mean for my 19 year old self and now for my much older self the idea that you could have a conversation across time and space with these people was just so powerful for me and so moving that if you had not been a historian what do you think no I was changing yeah was life changing um I I wish I could say that that some of my students would say the same thing and in a positive way I'm not so sure but I'm working on it yeah it was life I mean like like life altering feels more I mean it was seismic because I know even no sense of myself as an intellectual either I mean that was not it would never been a term of self description I still use it tentatively now you know at risk of embarrassing myself or other professional thinkers but the it was really intoxicating to come into contact with some of these works some great some not so great but it was like a portal into someone else's mind and in some time cases they would say something that was so utterly offensive to me but then it helped me thrash out what I thought you know and sometimes it articulated something in me but as yet not articulated and I was so grateful for that contact so I mean I tell this story but it's it to talk about stories in the public I mean this one is very very true that because of the course I in those days we had card catalogs I remember I mean as if it's yesterday running down to our library at the university that I was at in looking up American intellectual history and the call number was e one six nine point one still is and then you know looking through those cards and then going running down to the stacks to that section and just setting up residence they're more or less for the last three decades so that's a profound experience have you ever had an epiphany or an apocalypse or whatever the word is like that I mean this was truly a defining moment yeah this doesn't happen to everyone all the time and sometimes I'm so grateful for it I mean I've never had anything like that yeah I mean I think not I'm sure my husband would like me to say you know when I met him would say when I gave birth to them so so I'm sure there's a lot of them in there but I mean in terms of those those moment of self reckoning or I would say probably a couple of other times along my intellectual path as I discovered an idea that I wanted to pursue or an idea that was kind of rattling around but not yet sorted out like something clicks into place that can be very very powerful and energizing but in terms of you know kind of life course that's it it was the encounter with American intellectual history in writing the ideas that made America obviously there are a whole lot of ideas hundreds thousands going back over a long history how did you decide which ones to include in your book and therefore which ones many more not to include because it's a concise history yes yes yeah so I think the idea for this actually came originally from my editor at Oxford University Press where they can see that there is a real appetite now for these you know shorter volumes that give people you know a larger sweep of something but can actually be done in our busy you know busy day in a and so there hasn't been I mean it's been decades since there's been anything like a sweep of American intellectual history and so the vision was it's time now we need another one but we also need one that fits into our world of then 2019 now 2,000 or 20 you know 2020 and so and then I foolishly thought oh it's brief that should be easier and no one told me so I sort of foolishly imagined like I mean I'm only I'm sort of kidding but I actually saw the constraints of the brevity as perhaps liberating knowing that I couldn't possibly tell every story I could not possibly introduce every thinker I could not possibly do an exegesis on every major text it would force me to resort to what I call I hopefully not pretentiously voice and vision which is my voice as that's gonna carry it through and a certain vision of the key themes or the key light motifs and I'll get as much as I can I'll bring as many thinkers to the mic as I possibly can without crowding you know the the crowding the pages and without exhausting my reader so it was both a source of tremendous turmoil and you know I mean just cries when I had to cut something that I just thought this is disqualifying someone should take away my PhD and other times when I was grateful and I just said you know may this serve as an introduction to this history one-volume even if it was 800 pages couldn't cover the ground but if it can do something to activate people's excitement about American history by way of ideas if it could introduce them to thinkers who they read long ago but haven't been you know haven't been reminded of or be introduced to someone new who they didn't even know was possible then you know my thought was it did its job one of the things you mentioned that it's been decades since there's been the sort of concise history of American intellectual history one of the things that struck me about your book is it's inclusive so you begin with a really sort of a I thought a very interesting reflection on the lack of understanding about the pre-columbian yeah intellectual history yeah and then throughout the the volume you discuss underrepresented populations female voices african american voices slave voices how is that different from the last time somebody tried to publish on this american intellectual history um i think the key word here is different i mean the last I mean there are some beautiful surveys one of them was written in the late 40s and it was a Pulitzer Prize winning book called the growth of American thought written by merle Kirti who was a professor of american intellectual history you have exactly so i recommend for anyone i mean in many ways it's very very dated but it's also beautiful and timeless and that was in a bit again a big sweeping and you know he was someone who tried to be attentive to underrepresented voices but it was it just wasn't the demands of his moment or at least not as he conceptualized it i mean it's funny to think about story in the public square i think the reason why it was it's been so many decades since anyone tried was because we lost faith and the possibility that we could tell a story that was inclusive you know that we could tell a story of something like american thought that widened out beyond you know the founders and a few you know the great names that people you know people know that that seemed to cacophonous to multi vocal working in too many registers from professional intellectuals to you know wrap artists you know whatever the case may be how would you possibly tell that story and so i think many of my colleagues rightly for years you know sort of backed off of the notion that you could tell a comprehensive narrative that could do that which is the demands it should have been the demands of our entire century i mean you should have been the demands of our long history but certainly to the demands of our moment and so that is what i set out to do to find a balance between the names our familiar and should be familiar so you know Jonathan Edwards or Thomas Jefferson or Ralph one Ralph Waldo Emerson you know for whom I cannot imagine a writing that book pretty much on anything without Emerson to be honest but I mean certainly not this but then the names that are perhaps lesser known or people not really not necessarily understood as formidable thinkers or just who don't don't get enough air time and so some of that is lesser-known biblical scholars in the nineteenth century who were involved with what was called biblical historicism so a new scientific approach to the Bible but this has a huge radiating effects on American intellectual life but their names are you know in many cases lost not lost to history but certainly lost to popular consciousness exactly trying to think about art as a venue where ideas are put out there so Louise milu Jones an important african-american artist and the Harlem Renaissance she communicated her ideas with with paint not with words but the her paintings make arguments and they made very particular arguments that were very crucial for the Harlem Renaissance and so I also tried to be not only more expansive or ecumenical in terms of the kinds of figures that that I chose or representative but also the kinds of sources as well so texts are not the only ways in which ideas make their way in the world ideas make their way through other forms you know a visual culture they wait make their way also in the embodied in the intellectual themselves so the persona of the intellectual they make their way in our built environment too and so that was I tried to use the book also as a way to alert people to the ways in which American ideas are around them all over the place in ways that you don't even think of you know so so that's something that I tried to do in the book I'll take a class one of the one of the questions you tackle it's a big question in your book and in your work is what does it mean to be an American yeah over time and how has that question been answered over time and again we would have to like take the Masters level class to get that answer but sort of succinctly it clearly has changed by period by community yeah by people yeah talk a little bit about that well that's I mean we're in question it's a big question so the the what's important is that that is one of the key questions of American intellectual history or in American intellectual history in other words if you're trying to tell the grand narrative of American thought it is a history of people asking this very question what does it mean to be an American in a place where we you know with the exception of Native Americans everybody's a - it you know everybody has a back story right from the inception you know right from the earliest colonies there was very little that held these people together they had different religious commitments they different tongues different places origins you know from home and so right from the start America has been a plurality and of people trying to figure out who was are we you know who is my we here and so that story is that that question just comes up again and again it comes up in the 18th century is we have the expansion of of the British Empire it comes up again in the American Revolution who is the we now as we think about ourselves oppositional II to England after that you have new waves of immigrants you've got you've got slaves you've got indentured servants so this question over and over has - it is asked over and over again and up until you know up until our own time so it is I think the key thing is that that is the question of American intellectual history if you could say there is one what does it mean to be an American and then the story is or the history there is to widen out and ask who's asking that question why are they asking it then how what in what ways are they blinkered in saying this is what it means to be an American and that's not what it means to be an American you know what are the conditions that lead to those answers and then how do those answers translate into public policy economic you know our economic policy the built environment of our cities you know even even something like that is an expression of who is are we so is there a single answer to that question that we could all agree on today what does it mean to be an American I'm afraid no I got not aware of it I know that there are answers that I find very very persuasive there's answers that I like to share and my own writing and my own teaching well I can introduce you to a name of a thinker from who wrote in 1916 his name was Randolph Bourne and I do feature him in the book he was a young intellectual who wrote during the the years leading up to and during World War one he dies in the influenza outbreak and at the end of the war but he was a young a young guy from New Jersey who went to Columbia and when he goes to New York it's like his world broke open talk about transformative experience seeing people hearing different languages seeing the incredible possibility of what was then called the American melting pot but his thought was the melting pot doesn't even do justice to this incredibly this incredible symphony of human difference that we have in America and what he did was to look and you know he's writing now during World War one where what is that that's belligerent nationalism that's a kind of provincialism you know that's a chest-thumping tribalism and he says why so he was also unsurprisingly against American entry into World War one and his point was so the piece is called transnational America it was published in 1916 you can google it you know it's on it's online and it's a beautiful if you will argument but also love letter to American pluralism that what it means to be an American is to be - it to recognize that nobody has any claims to being an authentic American unless of course you're indigenous he makes this argument already in 1913 yeah and that he in his languages that it bespeaks a poverty of imagination to not see this as what recommends America what makes America great what makes America exceptional and so that that that's a piece I think that tries to get on our radar screens you know or and come trippingly to the tongue about how we might conceive what it means to be an American could be required reading for well I want to say when I this is I've been lucky enough to get some some wonderful letters from readers of the book and invariably they identify born as someone who they never had heard of before and again he was kind of an intellectual rock star in his day but history is funny that way he just kind of drops off this the the the radar screen he becomes important in the 1960s again as young intellectual radical intellectuals are trying to find therefore mothers and forefathers and born kind of has a renaissance then so you know he's not unknown to certainly not to scholars or political commentators but he certainly doesn't have that wider reach but this text should be a foundational text I think don't lie I'm a big fan of that answer you know so there is a maybe I was like guys there's a spirit of our times right now that for the first time in my adult life there are people who were voicing skepticism about the in durability of the American Republic mm-hmm is that we are their antecedents for that in our 224 240 year history as a republic sure oh sure so sometimes it's a rhetorical move I mean that's so that's the perhaps fun but also challenging part of intellectual history is trying to discern and parse when that's a rhetorical move right and when it's earnest but maybe wrongheaded and when they might have you know maybe they were right so for example in the ninth thirty's of course this is something that many commentators from the right and the left are saying I mean this is not a this doesn't track politically but the kind of crisis of our republic with amidst the specter of totalitarianism from fascism and Nazism in Europe and some worried that FDR's New Deal was a sign that it was coming here that it could happen here other I know exactly other Sinclair Lewis or and some thought no that that was going to be the way of saving democracy for you know from that sword but yeah that was a move that was made then and and I think not an unreasonably so because history could have gone another way right so yeah the crisis of the Republic I mean the Civil War I mean that's that that's that's another one and that was real and they were right and it was and I'll leave it to another historian who you invited on to say why fit you know the North won the Civil War and how things worked out afterwards but so but yeah I mean there there been many many episodes in the past sometimes again not thinking maybe it's rhetorical or was strongly felt by that person but probably not paired out by reality but I think we are in a moment like I'm not saying that we're heading into a civil war but I think we're in a moment where it's more than rhetorical that it's an informed lament it's or an informed critique an informed cry cry for help so yeah that's sobering so the the impact of science on American history thought culture and of course intellectual ideas has been profound mm-hmm and and this is among your work to talk a little bit about that and perhaps maybe starting with Darwin yeah we see echoes even today of Darwin and the theory of evolution and certainly historically they've been many there's been famous trial and talk about the impact of science okay well um so I'll focus on on Darwin and what I love about Darwin is that is something that my students know or at least no of everyone has this idea you know 1859 Origin of Species comes and America breaks into two you know you've got religion you know pious people committed to their religious faith on one hand and the atheists are what then was becoming a fashionable term agnosticism agnostics or actually should say soon after Darwin it becomes a coined as a term and for not many people but a term of self description really responding to Darwin's challenge but the dart it didn't happen that way I mean and so that's a neat experience a people are very very very talented at ignoring ideas that challenge their own or so I mean there were many ways in which people just said he's wrong you know this is this is crazy this is soft science this is ungodly and they just dodged it it was no problem there were others and I think this is where it gets more interesting for whom Darwin really should have fundamentally altered their world but instead what they did was to just rework Darwinian conceptions of evolution to support their own view and so where the the folks who had the positive genius for this were mostly liberal Protestant ministers and theologians at the time who were able to rework Darwinism and see it as an endorsement of their faith rather than a challenge to their faith and so anyway it's just I think Darwinism is interesting because it really the ways in which it gets dodged it gets reappropriation it gets subdued and I think they in the impact of Darwinism that takes a while to roll out and to you know challenge make changes in American thought but it's just it's not one storyline so out of what out of the Darwinian reception and giving additional credence to evolutionary theories this is where we start to get kind of more authority for race sciences which becomes the groundwork for eugenics so you know there's a path in which science I don't even know if I need the scare quotes authoritative science can be used for very regressive means or science can be deployed in political ways that maybe isn't consonant with you know with with its own right you know commit is not unique to America no no now this is not the human experience exactly but there's a path from Darwinism to progressivism which basically says well Darwin shows that it's an ever changing ever becoming universe and so it means the democracy we have right now isn't fixed and final the social relationships we have right now aren't fixed and final the what seem like intractable intractable problems with our industrial capitalism yeah you know think about Jakob Reese and the pictures you know from the late 19th century of tenement houses this this this chasm between the haves and have-nots we now know from evolutionary theory it doesn't have to be like this we are in an ever dynamic universe um so that this get actually emboldened progressives to make what you know what would then be called progressive change to ameliorate problems rather than to be used as an apologia for them that's a hugely important topic were out of time so thank you so much for being with us she's Jennifer Ratner Rosen Hagen the book is the ideas that made America you want to check it out that's all the time we have this week but if you want to know more about story in the public square you can find us on Facebook and Twitter or visit peloton org for G Wayne Miller I'm Jim Lewis asking you to join us again next time for more story in the public square [Music]

Channel: The Pell Center

Views: 1,642

Rating: 4.8222222 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: GFoTguc2nsU

Length: 27min 20sec (1640 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 11 2020