Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Rva, Richmond, And The Geography Of Memory, Laura Browder

English Faculty Publications

“Can The Old South Rebrand Itself? Richmond Tries, With A Dynamic New Logo” ran the headline of a 2012 article in the monthly business magazine Fast Company, announcing the city’s new logo, RVA — shorthand for Richmond, Virginia. “The former seat of the Confederacy has been quietly transforming itself into a more creative place,” explained author Emily Badger. “Now it has the visual identity to match.” Badger went on to describe the challenge faced by students at the VCU Brandcenter, who in 2010 were charged with rebranding the city, “a task more daunting given that Richmond has long had a …

The Meaning Of The Soldier: In The Year Of The Pig And Hearts And Minds, Laura Browder

English Faculty Publications

In the Year of the Pig (1968) and Hearts and Minds (1974)—the first an Academy Award nominee, the second an Academy Award winner—are the two best-known Vietnam War documentaries of their time. They are works that could hardly be more different—one a cool, intellectual take on the origins and then-current state of the war, and the second a highly emotional appeal to end the war. By viewing them together it is possible not only to connect the dots between the contrasting intellectual and filmic traditions from which each emerged, but also to see, through the viewpoints of each film, how …

’Sans Artifice Est Ma Simplicité’: Sincerité Et Vertu Dans Les Regrets Et Astrophil And Stella, Anthony P. Russell

English Faculty Publications

Dans le présent essai, j'aimerais avancer l'hypothèse que ce recueil original et insolite a eu, sur le développement de la poésie lyrique anglaise, un impact bien plus significatif que ce qui a été admis jusqu’à ce jour. Je souhaite spécifiquement examiner l'éventuelle importance pour Philip Sidney, clans son Astrophil et Stella, de la complexité avec laquelle Du Bellay a abordé la vertu de la sincérité. Que l'on prenne au sens littéral ou non les engagements de sincérité personnelle et de liberté esthétique de Du Bellay clans les Regrets, on ne peut nier que le poète ait choisi de présenter la …

A Personal Look At America's Foremost Communist, Laura Browder

English Faculty Publications

There is nothing quite like the experience of being in the beautiful, sunlit special collections reading room on the top floor of Bird Library—especially when one is about to dive into 86 meticulously cataloged boxes of family history. I was there to do research for a documentary about my grandfather, Earl Browder, as well as a joint biography of him and my grandmother, Raissa Berkmann Browder—a task that was almost overwhelming to contemplate.

After all, my grandfather Earl Browder was the head of the American Communist Party (CPUSA) during its most influential period—the Great Depression. He coined the slogan “Communism …

Historical Realism And Imperialist Nostalgia In Terrence Malick’S The New World, Monika Siebert

English Faculty Publications

The promotional materials for Terrence Malick’s The New World (2005) devote considerable time to detailing the extraordinary effort of the production crew to recreate Werowocomoco, the capital of the Powhatan’s paramount chiefdom, and Fort James, the first surviving English settlement in Virginia, in the period from 1607 to 1617. The hour-long documentary on “The Making of The New World” accompanying the DVD release of the film, for example, chronicles the shared work of a research team of historians, archeologists, linguists, anthropologists, and members of Virginia tribes to represent as faithfully as possible Powhatan and English agriculture, architecture, language, and …

Revisions In Red, Laura Browder

English Faculty Publications

In this article the author reflects on her experience of researching the history of her grandfather Earl Browder, a former leader in the U.S. Communist Party, and exploring his significance both in historical and personal terms. She comments on her research regarding his status as a spy of the Soviet Union, share her views on her father's reluctance to discuss his past, and notes Browder's campaigns for President of the U.S. in the 1930s.

Imagining Jefferson And Hemings In Paris, Suzanne W. Jones

English Faculty Publications

In Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, cultural critic Bell Hooks argues that "no one seems to know how to tell the story" of white men romantically involved with slave women because long ago another story supplanted it: "that story, invented by white men, is about the overwhelming desperate longing black men have to sexually violate the bodies of white women." Narratives of white exploitation and black solidarity have made it difficult to imagine consensual sex and impossible to imagine love of any kind across the color line in the plantation South. Hooks predicted that the suppressed story, if …

Book Review: The Mormon Menace: Violence And Anti-Mormonism In The Postbellum South, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

“Whereas anti-Mormon violence had been characteristic of virtually every northern locale of Mormon settlement during the antebellum period,” Patrick Mason writes in his history of the subject, “violent assaults on Mormon missionaries became an increasingly southern practice in the years after the Civil War” (93). What distinguishes Mason’s book from other chapters in the sad saga of religious persecution is his excellent analysis of the complexities that result when political agendas, regional norms and interests, and theories on the proper role and limits of government all collide in the face of religious heterodoxy. Virtually all late nineteenth-century citizens and politicians …

City Folks In Hoot Owl Holler: Narrative Strategy In Lee Smith's Oral History, Suzanne W. Jones

English Faculty Publications

Over the years American writers have perceived Appalachia differently depending on how America has perceived itself. While those who have approved of the American way of life have looked down on mountain life, those who have disapproved have seen Appalachia as an alternative culture from which America might take a lesson (Appalachia, 65). In 1873 the journalist William Harney and the editors of Lippincott Magazine "discovered" Appalachia, and historian Henry Shapiro argues that since then America has thought of this mountainous portion of eight southern states as a discreet region, "in but not of America" (Appalachia, 4). In …