Hold That Thought

In Argentine tango, the steps that dancers perform - and even the shoes that they wear - tell a certain story about the correct role of men and women in the dance. In her recently released book How Americans Make Race: Stories, Institutions, Spaces, Clarissa Rile Hayward argues that racial identities are formed in much the same way. Whether looking at the 1920s or 2013, people's behavior and attitudes toward race are often influenced by factors beyond their own experience and control. Hayward tracks this phenomenon, introduces the ideas of 'institutionalization' and 'objectification," and reveals why some stories about race are more influential than others.

In 1913, Pearl Curran, a St. Louis housewife, sat at a Ouija board with her friends when suddenly the planchette went wild under her hands. It said, "Many moons ago I lived. Again I come. Patience Worth my name." And so began the literary career of the long-dead Patience Worth. Pearl transcribed novels, plays, essays, and poetry supposedly composed by Patience, and both became celebrities. Daniel Shea, emeritus professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, recently wrote a book about the phenomenon, The Patience of Pearl: Spiritualism and Authorship in the Writings of Pearl Curran. In it, he uses modern psychology and the writings themselves to uncover the truth of this ghostly voice.

In recent years, many Americans choose to label themselves as "spiritual but not religious." What is the history behind this type of open-road spirituality, and how have Americans' attitudes toward religion shifted over time? Leigh Schmidt, professor of religious studies at Washington University in St. Louis, uses the story of Sarah Farmer - a visionary who started a religious community in 1894 - to illustrate the ever-present struggle between freedom and surrender in American religious identity.

What can a painting of people on a porch reading a newspaper reveal about what it means to be an American? Angela Miller, professor of art history and archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses the intersection of American arts and nationhood. With examples of portraits, landscape and genre paintings, folk art, and more, Miller explains how visual culture both constructs and challenges the idea of American identity.

When is literature a counterintelligence tool? When is it a means of protest or subversion? Under longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the written word was recognized as all of these and more, especially in relation to African-American writing. For decades, African-American writers were under constant FBI surveillance and scrutiny. From the Harlem Renaissance through the Black Power movement, the FBI obsessively read and analyzed black writing, and black writers, who understood that they were being watched, created new works of literature in response. This bizarre, intertwined relationship culminated in the 1960s, when FBI agents began imitating African-American authors in order to create fraudulent, subversive publications. William J. Maxwell, associate professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, documents this unique literary history in his forthcoming book, FB Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover's Ghostreaders Framed African-American Literature.

In her forthcoming book, Routes of Terror: Gender, Health and Power in the Eighteenth Century Middle Passage, assistant professor Sowande' Mustakeem reveals the forgotten world of 18th century slave ships. In today's podcast, she shares the story of one enslaved woman and discusses why it's so important for Americans to confront this foundational, brutal chapter of history. Mustakeem's research focuses on the experiences of those most frequently left out of the history of the Middle Passage - women, children, the elderly, and the diseased.

Miley Cyrus' recent twerking incident aside, young actresses have been struggling with how to grow up in Hollywood since the silent film star Mary Pickford, "America's Sweetheart," first arrived on the silver screen. As they transition from childhood to adulthood, how can young actresses prove their womanhood on screen? And why do they need to? Gaylyn Studlar, the director of the film and media studies program at Washington University in St. Louis, takes us back to classical Hollywood cinema of the 1910s to the 1950s to examine representations of girlhood by stars like Shirley Temple, Elizabeth Taylor, and Audrey Hepburn. Studlar examines how each of these actresses confronted their age both on and off the screen.

In her collection Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays, author Eula Biss asserts that "nothing is innocent." As explained in the essay "Time and Distance Overcome," even telephone poles are marked by the history of slavery and colonization in the United States. Biss pairs the personal and the political in her writing, and in Notes from No Man's Land, she offers candid reflections on the role of race in her own life and in American history. Biss teaches writing at Northwestern University.

“Music is too important to be left to the musicians,” ethnomusicologist Christopher Small wrote in 1977. A decade earlier, the experimental rock band the Godz seemed to agree. As associate professor Patrick Burke reveals, musicians in the 1960s resisted predetermined categories or simplistic musical identities. Instead, bands like the Godz chose to blend genres, adopt the musical styles of different racial and ethnic groups, and resist the idea that only competent musicians should be heard. In this interview, Burke describes the role of ethnomusicology in dispelling the myth of "authentic" American music.

In his upcoming book Who Should Sing "Ol' Man River"?: The Life of an American Song, Todd Decker, associate professor of musicology at Washington University in St. Louis, reveals how one song has been shaped and reshaped over time. From Paul Robeson to Frank Sinatra - from the era of big bands to the civil rights movement - every performance of "Ol' Man River" has a political dimension involving the evolution of race relations in the United States. Whether performed as a dance ditty or a means of protest, the seemingly endless malleability of this 1927 Broadway tune provides a window onto the many ways that American music has been used to express both personal and cultural identity.

In July of 1863, James Pennington, a prominent African American minister and former slave, saw his neighborhood destroyed in a violent episode now known as the New York draft riots. How did this chapter of Civil War history shape Pennington's identity and those of the primarily Irish rioters? And what does it reveal about the identity of the country as a whole? Iver Bernstein, director of the American Culture Studies Program at Washington University in St. Louis, shares Pennington's story and discusses the tension between the idea of American unity and the diverse experiences that make up the past and present of American culture. Bernstein's upcoming book, Stripes & Scars: Race, The Revitalization of America, and The Origins of the Civil War, is under contract with Oxford University Press.

Kathryn Davis, novelist and the Hurst Writer in Residence at Washington University in St. Louis, reads from her novel Duplex, which will be released September 2013 by Graywolf Press.

For thousands of years, writers and philosophers have wondered about the animating spirit, or the soul. Many believe it is the part of a human being that lives eternally, that connects us with all other life. However, in this age, when we have access to scientific innovations like cloning and organs grown in labs, new questions arise. Is there an invisible thread that connects humans to all life around us? In this episode, Kathryn Davis, novelist and the Hurst Writer in Residence at Washington University in St. Louis, explores what animates us and how the fantastical world she creates in her new novel, Duplex, isn't as far from reality as it first appears.

In Virginia Woolf's essay, A Room of One's Own, she writes: "For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." That is to say, that for most of history women did not have the education, the support of society, or the means to write and claim her own work. However, in contemporary society, we have moved past that—or have we? In 2010, VIDA—Women in Literary Arts—found that between 3 to 5 men were being published or reviewed for every one woman that appeared in leading magazines, such as Harpers, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic. Danielle Dutton, fiction writer and founder of Dorothy, a publishing project, discusses what these numbers mean to her and the poetics of suburbia in her novel, SPRAWL. In the second half of the episode, Vincent Sherry, the Howard Nemerov Professor of Letters at Washington University, explores the life and literary opinions of Virginia Woolf. In addition to the interview, you hear a reading selection from SPRAWL in a second podcast.

Danielle Dutton, writer, publisher, and assistant professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, reads from her novel, SPRAWL, which was published in 2010 by Siglio Press.