You searched for Emily Whalen

Creating a Collective Conversation: A Tribute to Joan Neuberger

August 18, 2020

by the Incoming Editor of Not Even Past, Adam Clulow

Long before I applied for a position at the University of Texas at Austin, I knew about Not Even Past. Asked to teach a new course in my old university in Australia, I remember the familiar panic about readings: Where could I find something suitable for an undergraduate audience but written by a genuine expert, an article with a clear argument but also incorporating suggestions for further readings, a piece with its own voice but easily accessible to all. Here for me, as so many, Not Even Past came to the rescue.

For a decade now, Not Even Past has provided the premier platform to communicate the History department’s groundbreaking scholarship to the University of Texas community and the general public. Drawing tens of thousands of readers each year, it is, quite simply, one of the department’s great treasures and something that sets our community of scholars apart from hundreds of others across the country and the globe.

Many people worked on Not Even Past. It received consistent support from successive chairs of the department, the College of Liberal Arts and LAITS. Colleagues and contributors gave generously of their time and expertise in writing for the site, which drew as well on the work of a group of remarkably talented Assistant Editors. But Not Even Past is also unimaginable without the work of its founding editor, Dr. Joan Neuberger, who has guided the site for the past ten years and is stepping down this month. Joan’s vision of great history writing that is accessible to all courses through every part and every page of Not Even Past. It is a vision that is very difficult to realize and anyone who has worked with Joan knows her tireless skills as an editor and the time she invests in guiding a contribution through to final publication.

Joan Neuberger, Founding Editor of *Not Even Past*, testifies on SB 11 (Campus Carry) before the Senate State Affairs Committee (January 2016) Photo by Matt Valentine.

Not Even Past has been marked by constant innovation, the pushing of boundaries ever outwards and by a remarkable growth in its ambition and reach. The site started with the idea of a book blog but it has become something so much more: a full-service platform for the department, the university, and the discipline more generally. Joan’s interview which details the history of the site can be seen here.

Across her career Joan has won many accolades. In 2018, she was awarded the Herbert Feis Award that is given annually to recognize distinguished contributions to public history. It is worth quoting the citation, which sums up Joan’s indefatigable energy: “As the driving force behind multiple noteworthy online history projects such as the Not Even Past website, the Thinking in Public project database, and the 15 Minute History podcast, Joan Neuberger’s scholarship harnesses the possibilities of the latest digital platforms for public engagement. Each year her work touches tens of thousands of people, both inside and outside the academy. In addition, she is an enthusiastic mentor and editor for other historians writing for a general audience.”

Itza Carbajal, Maria Esther Hammack, Rebecca Johnston, John Lisle and Joan Neuberger during the recording of the 15 minute history podcast "Episode 84: Behind the Tower: New Histories of the UT Tower Shooting" — Itza Carbajal, John Lisle, Joan Neuberger, Maria Esther Hammack, and Rebecca Johnston during the recording of 15 minute history podcast “Episode 84: Behind the Tower: New Histories of the UT Tower Shooting“

Such words are echoed by Jackie Jones, the outgoing Chair of the Department of History and the President-elect of the American Historical Association, who writes that she is “delighted to join in celebrating Joan’s extraordinary editorship of Not Even Past from its inception ten years ago until the summer of 2020. The site is a testament to her creativity, energy, tech savvy, broad historical knowledge, and commitment to bringing the past to life for people inside and outside the academy. NEP exemplifies the UT History Department’s highest standards in terms of scholarship, teaching, and service to the department, the College of Liberal Arts, and the University. Because of Joan’s hard work, NEP reminds us that the study of the past can take us to new, surprising, and fascinating places, with the help of texts, images, music, videos, and interviews. Congratulations to Joan on leading NEP through its first decade and showcasing excellent features by faculty, graduate students, and alums!”

Since Joan announced that she was stepping down from Not Even Past, there have been a steady stream of tributes from across the department and the university. Joan has always reserved special time and energy for her work in training graduate students to become public historians. To mark the 10 year anniversary of Not Even Past and to celebrate Joan’s achievement we wanted to collect just a few testimonials from current and former students, for they speak louder than any other accolades of how hard Joan has worked to train, inspire and accompany students on their academic journeys to become distinctive public voices in their own right.

Photos of the creators of the Behind the Tower digital history project.

Every year Joan recruited an Assistant Editor, who worked closely with her on every aspect of the site. In 2016-17, that was Emily Whalen, who wrote to us that “Working with Dr. Neuberger on NEP transformed the way I thought about public history. After a year as a graduate assistant for the blog, I began to understand public history was less an added perspective than it was a holistic philosophy, a way to approach our entire professional toolkit and bring the public along with us as we delve into the past. I will also always remember Dr. Neuberger’s generosity with younger scholars. She is a model for professional mentorship and thoughtful guidance.”

In 2017-18, Natalie Cincotta, took on the role. Here are her words: “I am so grateful for Dr. Neuberger’s exhaustive efforts to make public history a core part of the graduate program. Through Not Even Past, 15 Minute History, Thinking in Public and coursework, Dr. Neuberger has engaged graduate students as writers, editors, and producers in the creative process of making history scholarship broadly accessible. Many of the graduate students who have worked or written for NEP (and other projects) have gone on to create their own websites and podcasts, write for national news publications, and use public history tools in the classroom. Thanks to resources like NEP, graduate students will go out into the world with a repertoire of tools and skills to engage the public in our work as historians in new and exciting ways. “

In 2018-19 the role was filled by Jesse Ritner who writes that “I had the privilege of working with Dr. Neuberger as the Assistant Editor and Books Editor of Not Even Past, where I have also contributed several articles. Writing for NEP, as much as anything has helped me write clearly, in a voice that is my own. Dr. Neuberger’s guidance, and the tremendous amount of energy she put into my pieces, is rare to receive outside of a student’s relationship with their advisor, and I think is one of the most valuable things that professors can offer graduate students. Working for her gave me a sense of what it means to work in digital history and public history, as well as to see (and at times experience) the tremendous amount of work it takes to produce and maintain projects as large as NEP. Her honesty, at times intensity, and her dedication to her project and the students who work for her and write for her, is something that I think the department will sorely miss.”

Alina Scott, the current Assistant Editor, explains that “It has been a pleasure working with and learning from Dr. Neuberger. Her Public and Digital History class sparked my interest in public scholarship. Her ability to take her students’ work seriously, prompted me to apply to work with her on NEP. While serving as the assistant editor of NEP, this became even more clear. Dr. Neuberger’s dedication to her students and public history is evident in how much time she spends with our work. Her care and attention to detail in editing and engaging with the main arguments of NEP submissions go above and beyond the requirements of the job. She also pays keen attention to the needs of the public, adapting NEP to reflect those needs. Not Even Past remains an important resource for UT graduate students and faculty, relevant digital tool, and contribution to public scholarship because of the dedication of Dr. Neuberger.”

Banner for *Public and Digital History* class projects : The Public Archive

Many other current and former students contributed to Not Even Past. Kristie Flannery, who has just accepted a position at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, writes that “With Not Even Past, Joan offered history Ph.D. students opportunities to learn about and experiment with how to write the kind of history that people want to read. Joan encouraged us to use our developing expertise to produce clear, engaging, and provocative pieces for public consumption about scholarly monographs as well as novels, films, music and museums that we love (or hate). Producing the high quality stuff you see on the blog involved a lot of patient and kind editing from Joan. Contributing to Not Even Past transformed my understanding of history as practice, of what it means to be a historian and to write history. Thank you!” For Brittany Erwin, a PhD candidate in the department, “Dr. Neuberger’s public history course was a jumping-off point for my digital humanities research. She was a great soundboard and editor, and I am so grateful for her insights.”

We leave the final words to Rebecca Johnston, who also provided the title of this piece. She writes that “the very existence of NEP encourages history students to think about the importance of our work in the public sphere. But it does more than help us find our relevance to the public – it pulls us out of our academic silos into a collective conversation with others in our own department. With NEP, Dr. Neuberger has created a community space that helps to make our department more whole.”

In her tireless work, Joan has created a collective conversation that links students and faculty but also the department’s scholarship to the wider world. As incoming editor, I thank Joan for all she has done and applaud her singular achievement in giving life, with the support of many, to Not Even Past. I hope to do justice to her vision of great history writing accessible to all, and it is an honor to succeed Joan in this role.

Other Projects Mentioned Above:

Professor Neuberger studies modern Russian culture in social and political context, with a focus on the politics of the arts. She is the author of a range of publications, including Hooliganism: Crime and Culture in St Petersburg, 1900-1914 (California: 1993), Ivan the Terrible: The Film Companion (Palgrave: 2003); co-author of Europe and the Making of Modernity, 1815-1914 (Oxford: 2005); and co-editor of Imitations of Life: Melodrama in Russia (Duke: 2001) and Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture (Yale: 2008); Everyday Life in Russian History: Quotidian Studies in Honor of Daniel Kaiser (Slavica, 2010); and The Flying Carpet: Studies on Eisenstein in Honor of Naum Kleiman (Mimésis International. 2017). Her most recent book is This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia (Cornell: 2019).

Examining Race in Appleton, WI

February 6, 2017

By Isaac McQuistion

A story published on Quartz.com shortly after the election proclaimed that history classes are our best hope for teaching people to question fake news and beat back the narrative of “Make America Great Again” and the white nationalism inherent in it. The study of history encourages the use of critical thinking and the questioning of received narratives, to ask why certain things are the way they are.

A historical blind spot of mine for a long time was my local community. It might stem from the teachers I had or the narrative we were given, but I could never find much to get excited about when the subject was state or local history. I grew up in Wisconsin, a state best known for cheese, the Packers, and dull monotony. I looked around my hometown and all I heard were stories about the paper mills and the occasional French fur trader. Everything looked the same, including the people. Especially the people.

Appleton, WI, the author’s hometown (via Wikimedia Commons)

My hometown is overwhelmingly white. That includes me. According to the 2010 census, only 1.7% of people in Appleton, a city of about 75,000, reported themselves as African-American. That translates to about 1,200 people. The entire time I lived there, I had never bothered to ask why there were so few African-Americans in Appleton. I simply accepted it as the way of things.

Fox River watershed (via Wikimedia Commons).

It was my father who forced me to think about the historical roots of why this was. He’s a pastor in Appleton, and he’s probably the person most responsible for giving me my love of history. While talking with him recently, he mentioned that he went to something called a “plunge,” an event organized by a local organization that aimed to get community leaders together and have them explore, in-depth, a particular issue. The topic for this plunge was “being black in the Fox Cities” (the loose conglomeration of towns that sprung up around the Fox River, and of which Appleton is the largest).

Prior to this, my father admits that he hadn’t given much thought to Appleton’s African-American population. For one, the population is incredibly small. For another, Appleton seems to exude a kind of neighborly warmth, that stereotypical feeling of simple Midwestern friendliness that lulls some into idolizing the area. To most appearances, Appleton does not have a problem with race relations, not in the same way that other cities, like Milwaukee, do.

This, my father quickly realized, was a lie. Several minority students from the local college shared their experiences living in Appleton. They told about how they’d been tailed in stores and stopped multiple times by the police on the flimsiest of pretenses. How they felt like they were constantly being surveilled. How most days when they’ve been walking down College Avenue, the main thoroughfare in the city, they’ll have a racial slur hurled at them.

The low number of African-Americans in the city also isn’t incidental. As part of the event my father attended, a curator from the local history museum gave a presentation on the black experience in Appleton. He described widespread institutional racism that decimated African-American population in the area.

Up until the 1920s, the black population in Northeast Wisconsin was small but stable. Precise numbers are hard to come by, since census workers didn’t bother to take account of many of the working poor in the towns and cities. It was by no means an idyllic time or one free of racism, but it also wasn’t unusual to see black-owned businesses and a few African-Americans were even elected to public office.

Segregation was not limited to the Jim Crow South (via Pixabay).

Following World War I, however, growing racism forced much of the black population in the Fox Cities to leave for larger black communities in urban areas. An anti-vagrancy ordinance allowed police to freely discriminate against the black population, as well as others who were thought of as “undesirable foreign elements.” Though some black people could buy homes after the Civil War, in the 1920s subdivisions began specifically excluding blacks.

“Sundown Towns,” that breed of municipality that dictated that all black people leave the city by sunset, sprang up around the country. Appleton had no official ordinance designating it as such, but many supported the custom, to the point where it became one by default.

1925 saw a nation-wide resurgence of the KKK (via Wikimedia Commons).

At the same time, membership in the resurgent Ku Klux Klan grew. A photo of a 1925 Klan rally from the Oshkosh Public Museum shows a crowd of thousands gathered together not under cover of night, but in the middle of the day, packed into a baseball stadium. Churches specifically encouraged Klan members to attend their services and openly recruited from the pulpit.

The net effect of all of these different forms of discrimination was that, according to the 1930 census, the black population in Appleton had plummeted to zero.

Governor George Wallace (via Wikimedia Commons).

For years, discriminatory practices continued in many establishments, despite the passage of anti-discrimination laws. Black athletes and performers would often avoid the city outright. Alabama Governor George Wallace found the environs friendly enough to launch his 1964 presidential campaign at the Appleton Rotary Club, using his speech to decry what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1963 as “The Involuntary Servitude Act of 1963.”

It’s only been in the past few decades that Appleton’s African-American population has begun to recover. As late as 1980 it stood at only 31 people. Now, it’s about even with what was seen in the years after the Civil War. It wouldn’t be until the 2000s that African-American politicians would again hold local office.

My father, previously unaware of this history and ignorant of the racism prevalent in his community, found himself in a position to do something. He met with another pastor in the city who led a majority African-American congregation. They decided to have their churches team up to volunteer around town, worship together, and attend each other’s fellowship gatherings. They’ve worked with a local Christian youth camping organization to provide day camp and summer camp opportunities for local kids. The idea, more than anything, is to start a dialogue, to have the two congregations get to know each other and to see a little bit of the world through the others’ eyes.

These are small steps, to be sure, but they are a start. My father often talks of growing up in rural Ohio and hearing those around him espouse racist views and use racial slurs. He counts himself as a conservative and has lived most of his life in majority-white areas. He mentions that he took every course on African-American history that was offered at his college to try and free himself from the patterns of thought that characterized his upbringing and surroundings. But there’s an immediacy that comes with knowing the history of the place you live. This knowledge has opened his eyes to an experience completely different from his own, to the way racism has shaped his town and what he can do to help. This, a historical knowledge of our local communities, is what can drive change. And if there ever was a time when we needed to think historically about our local communities and our nation as a whole, it’s now.

An illustration of Appleton from 1874 (via Wikimedia Commons).

History isn’t some abstract thing. It doesn’t just happen at a national or global level, and its effects aren’t remote to us. History is what shapes our daily lives. Once we realize that, once we start thinking historically about where we are, we can see that nothing just happens. Things are not just as they are; they are always as we’ve made them to be. A fuller reckoning of our past helps us determine what we want to build for the future. This, then, is what thinking historically ultimately does for us: it helps us see that what we do today will one day become history.

All information about Appleton’s black population is drawn from A Stone of Hope: Black Experiences in the Fox Cities, an exhibit put together by The History Museum, owned and operated by the Outagamie County Historical Society.

You may also like:

Jacqueline Jones expounds on the Myth of Race in America.
Emily Whalen reviews a book that discusses how American cities are tied to American politics.
Caroline Murray examines the history of indigenous Los Angeles through a public mapping project.

An Apology for Propaganda

November 2, 2016

By David Rahimi

Writing in the middle of World War II, Freya Stark, a well-known British explorer and Arabist working for the Ministry of Information in the Middle East, penned an unpublished – and ultimately unfinished – twenty-five page essay, which she entitled Apology for Propaganda. When we think of government propaganda, we typically think of faceless bureaucrats churning out sensationalized banners, radio broadcasts, and reports about victories, the enemies’ lies, and various kinds of disinformation. Stark’s Apology, however, provides a unique glimpse into how propagandists justified and viewed their own work in a critically self-conscious manner. On a larger scale, the manuscript reflects on an intimate level the dynamics of British colonial thought, particularly a steadfast belief in the nobility of Britain’s colonial “civilizing mission.” Stark’s Apology not only reflects an available theory of propaganda discussed within the Ministry of Information, but also the persistent belief that, despite any shortcomings, imperialism was really benevolent for Arab colonial subjects.

Freya Stark (via Alchetron).

By her thirties, Freya Stark (1893-1993), an impulsive British explorer of the Near East, developed a romanticized and idealistic obsession with the Arab world and Persia in the same vein as T.E. Lawrence, whom she much admired. She traveled among the Druze, explored Luristan and the hideout of the fabled Assassins at Alamut, and wrote extensively about her travels in Baghdad, Yemen, Arabia, and other parts of the Middle East. When WWII began, Stark volunteered to serve in the British war effort and she was assigned to the Ministry of Information where her linguistic and literary talents were well-suited.

Stark likely wrote this piece sometime between October 1943 and May 1944, while traveling in America on an official diplomatic tour to clarify the British position on the Zionist question. Ultimately, it seems the decision was made not to publish the Apology because Stark’s boss, Stewart Perowne, thought it was too revealing about British intelligence efforts in Egypt and Iraq in the still ongoing war.

British WWII propaganda after Mussolini’s unsuccessful invasion of Egypt in 1942. The poster depicts captured Italian troops entering Cairo under British guard (via Wikimedia Commons).

Stark begins the essay by arguing that propaganda fundamentally deals with the “originating and spreading of ideas.” However, propaganda has two distinct meanings: (1) the propagation of a “gospel” or firmly held set of beliefs, and (2) deceitful information. Both grew out of the Jesuit tradition, with the former being an innocent form of “persuasion,” while the latter took form as people associated the Jesuits with “unscrupulous subtlety.” Persuasion meant simply to truthfully present one’s beliefs in a dialogue (“two-way traffic”) with the target audience, making use of slogans and positive statements. Stark firmly believed the government should wholeheartedly embrace this kind of propaganda, since ideas “are as potent as drugs.” Indeed, there is a “duty” to firmly explain the British and Allied cause when they feel confident of the justice and necessity to prevent others from heading over a “precipice.” For Stark, this was connected to her firm belief that the “British desire to encourage freedom in the Arab world is perfectly sincere.” Justifiable propaganda could only be that which worked for the good of the audience, in this case the Arabs. On the other hand, Stark thought that bribing and trickery were repugnant as well as ineffective means of persuasion, and cooperation with Arabs was necessary, since the most persuasive formulations of secular democratic ideals could only be expressed in Arabic by other Arabs and not through translation.

North Africa and the Middle East in 1940 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Stark then moved from these ideas to show how she tried to implement them in her Ikhwan al-Hurriya (Brotherhood of Freedom), an anti-fascist group in Egypt and Iraq. Based on the organizational examples set by the Bolsheviks and Muslim Brotherhood, this project consisted of a diffused network of loose cells, where British and Arab members could discuss the democratic principles that they shared. She writes that, despite some initial difficulties, the British-inspired Brotherhood garnered about 40,000 members throughout the Middle East at its peak. The British authorities were highly appreciative of this effort, though despite Stark’s high hopes, the organization was officially outlawed in Egypt in 1952.

A chief reason for this was the contradiction within the Brotherhood about politics. Stark envisioned it as an apolitical group and so had to turn several “good men” away in Iraq because of their interest in politics. However, an organization that was ostensibly meant to promote democratic principles could not help but be political in a colonial environment. Stark was happy that there were young Arab men who were receptive to the British message, but she seemed to think that this could be conducted on British terms without raising political questions about Britain’s decidedly undemocratic role. Stark easily mistakes the friendships she formed and admiration for democratic ideas she found with an overall positive disposition to British colonialism. Furthermore, there is no mention of the popularity of Muslim Brotherhood’s anti-British efforts or how Ambassador Miles Lampson’s use of tanks on February 4, 1942 to compel King Farouk to accept the Egyptian nationalist Wafd Party into the government led to the discrediting of the king, the Wafd, and parliamentary democracy as mere British tools. The enormous popularity of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalist and authoritarian government beginning in the 1950s also belies Stark’s overly enthusiastic tone in the manuscript. Unlike T.E. Lawrence, who had seen Britain renege on its promises at Versailles after WWI, Stark believed wholeheartedly in the goodness of the British imperial project and whatever did not fit in with this image she discounted as an aberration or simple mistake.

Nasser and the Free Officers overthrew the Egyptian monarchy in 1952, marking the decline of British influence in Egypt (via Wikimedia Commons).

Stark’s unpublished Apology shows us how some British propagandists in the Middle East theater of WWII conceived of their roles as good-natured persuaders. They were not oblivious to accusations of cynical propaganda and Stark’s essay shows a conscious effort to articulate a morally acceptable form of propaganda that could serve British and Arab interests, in that order. Stark reflects a strain of British colonial thought that, while sympathetic to Arabs, still thought that British dominance was a guiding hand that benevolently, yet condescendingly, treated colonial subjects as paternalistic clients.

Freya Stark’s “Apology for Propaganda,” can be found in handwritten and typescript drafts, Container 1.3. Freya Stark Collection 1893-1993 (bulk 1920-1976). Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas-Austin.

Additional sources:
William Cleveland and Martin Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East (2009)
Jane Fletcher Geniesse, Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark (1999).
Efraim Karsh and Rory Miller, “Freya Stark in America: Orientalism, Antisemitism and Political Propaganda,” Journal of Contemporary History 39, 3 (July, 2004): 315-332
Temple Wilcox, “Towards a Ministry of Information,” History 69, 227 (1984): 398-414

More by David Rahimi on Not Even Past:
Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age, by Muhammad Qasim Zaman (2012)

You may also like:
Emily Whalen recommends A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence, by John E. Mack (1976).
Ogechukwu Ezekwem reviews The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, by Frederick John Dealtry Lugard (1965).

Trauma and Recovery, by Judith Herman (1992)

September 28, 2016

By Augusta Dell’Omo

For Judith Herman, “to study psychological trauma means bearing witness to horrible events.” A professor of clinical psychiatry at Harvard University Medical School and a founding member of the Women’s Mental Health Collective, Herman is best known for her research on complex post-traumatic stress disorder, particularly with victims of sexual and domestic violence. In her own words, Trauma and Recovery is a book about “restoring connections” between individuals and communities and reconstructing history in the face of a public discourse that did not want to address the horrors of sexual and domestic violence. Herman begins her work by situating it in the feminist movement and the “forgotten history” of traumatic disorders, describing the cultural and political factors that have continually prevented psychological trauma from being recognized effectively by the public. From there, she enumerates not only the symptoms of traumatic disorders, but argues that only by renaming sexual, domestic, and violence traumas as “complex post-traumatic stress disorders,” and treating victims as suffering from this specific disorder, can victims truly “recover.”

Trauma and Recovery has been recognized as a groundbreaking psychological and historical work because it forces the reader to come to terms with the underlying traumas that permeate society and the ways in which a culture of oppression furthers the protection of the perpetrators. While Trauma and Recovery is over two decades old, its argument seems particularly fresh in the context of current national conversations on the status of victims of sexual assault, particularly in university settings, and their treatment in society. A close reading of Trauma and Recovery forces us to examine our own biases and the historical precedents that have colored our treatment of victims today.

hqdefault — Judith Herman in a 2002 interview (via YouTube).

Herman argues that the study of psychological trauma is not governed by consistency, but rather “episodic amnesia,” in which the stories of the victims became public for brief periods of time before diminishing into the background. She points to three key moments: the treatment of “hysterical women” in late nineteenth-century France, the treatment of shell shocked soldiers in England and the United States after the First World War, and finally, the public awareness of sexual and domestic violence that took place during the feminist movement in Western Europe and North America. For Herman, one of the consistent elements in all three cases was a culture of societal neglect, in which the victim is rendered invisible and discredited, a horrifying tendency that seems to have continued into American society today.

nach_gasangriff_1917 — British soldiers after a German chemical weapon attack in 1917 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Herman follows with a description of trauma, stating that it overwhelms the victim, removing control, connection, and meaning. Individuals display hyperarousal, intrusion, and constriction, sometimes at levels so extreme they force an alternative state of consciousness to form, so that the victim can actually cope with their reality. This alternative state of consciousness, Herman argues can manifest in a variety of ways including multiple personality disorder, amnesia, and “sleep walking.” One of the most persistent elements Herman describes is “intrusion,” in which traumatized individuals cannot resume the normal condition of their lives due to the repeated interruption of the trauma. These symptoms occur because of a rupturing of the “inner schemata.” This is paramount for understanding both individual and societal trauma: for the individual, their trauma disrupts their inner schemata of safety, protection, and trust in the outside world.

Throughout Trauma and Recovery, Herman delineates the ways in which the societal context can affirm and protect the victims by giving voice to the disempowered, but can also deny the victims through silencing and rejection. Indeed, Herman states that denial is often the default state of society, in which the active process of “bearing witness” instead “gives way to the active process of forgetting.” These ideas of “bearing witness,” and forcing vocalization of events are similar to the work of religious, ethnic, and racial minorities in the face of traumatic genocide, oppression, and destruction. The active construction of a truthful narrative helps survivors to “re-create the flow” of memory, transform the recollection, and mourn that traumatic loss. In Herman’s final section, the emphasis on “truth” becomes paramount: only through a truthful understanding and representation of events can individuals and society come to an understanding of psychological trauma.

5827890190_26a0466f91_b — A culture of victim-blaming still shapes the experience of trauma (via Richard Potts).

Herman’s Trauma and Recovery was a groundbreaking work that forced society to reckon with the nature of trauma and proved how understanding trauma can help us comprehend some of the most damaged groups in society. Herman’s research is critical in the historical understanding of how to bring truth to individuals and groups that societies have passively or actively chosen to repress. Furthermore, she raised interesting questions about constructing historical narrative when dealing with both perpetrators and victims and she showed how the collective memory of a society can hide atrocities that have been committed. Herman states in her afterword, that she sees the culture of victim blaming and repression of the heinous crimes of sexual violence as disappearing. However, lawsuits against universities about willful ignorance and discrediting of sexual assault survivors’ testimonies exposes Herman’s final claims as too optimistic. If nothing else, her work inspires historians to pursue a more active understanding of painful truths and charges us to side with the victims of violence to establish truth and justice, for which, she says, there “can be no greater honor.”

Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (New York: Basic Books, 1992)

You may also like:
Emily Whalen reviews John Mack’s psychological profile of T.E. Lawrence, A Prince of Our Disorder (1976).
Jack Loveridge recommends Robert Graves’ iconic war memoir, Goodbye to All That (1929).
Jimena Perry explores violence and historical memory in Colombia’s museums.

Americans Against the City, By Stephen Conn (2014)

September 26, 2016

By Emily Whalen

“Have you ever lived in the suburbs?” New York City Mayor Ed Koch asked in a 1982 interview for Playboy magazine. The interviewer had asked the famously witty Koch if he would ever consider a gubernatorial campaign for the state—if Koch won the race, it would mean a move away from the Big Apple and to the governor’s mansion in semi-rural Albany. “It’s sterile,” Koch continued, “It’s nothing. It’s wasting your life, and people do not wish to waste their lives once they’ve seen New York!”

Koch’s bluntness likely closed the door to a potential governorship, despite his popularity among urban constituents. During Koch’s long tenure as mayor (1978-1989) most Americans harbored distinctly anti-urban attitudes, preferring the serenity and monotony of suburban life over the clamor and chaos of the “greatest city in the world.” In fact, as Stephen Conn argues in Americans Against the City, the story of American anti-urbanism—a generalized distaste for the dirt, diversity, and disarray of the city—stretches across the nation’s history. According to Conn, since the end of the Civil War, the American political and physical landscapes have been deeply interrelated. Where and how we live shapes our political attitudes and expectations. Focusing on the material, social, and cultural elements of living habits inside and outside the city, Conn argues that the anti-urban strain in American culture—manifest in the growth of suburbs and decentralized cities—relates directly to a mistrust of centralized government. Progressives in the 1920s saw the dense cities of the Northeast as workshops where the problems of governance could be perfected. Yet by the end of the Second World War, that optimism had faded. Cold Warriors and their successors on both ends of the political spectrum tried to reclaim their independence from big government by rejecting urban life. Conn links the decline of “urbanity” (a sense of collective responsibility and tolerance) in modern politics to this national decentralization—the “hustle and bustle” of a true city provides “lessons in civility and diversity” that once enriched our political process. As Americans fled to suburbs, urbanity—and civility—plummeted.

new_york_city_aerial_view_1919 — New York City in 1919 epitomized the benefits and problems of urban life (via Wikimedia Commons).

Beginning with Frederick Jackson Turner (whose 1893 essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Conn describes as “a Mid-Westerner’s revenge on…an overbearing East Coast.”), Americans have been skeptical of cities. Conn examines how a sense of exceptionalism convinced many Southerners and Westerners in the late 19th century that urban centers like New York City and Chicago posed a threat to American values, like ruggedness, self-sufficiency, and independence. Furthermore, city-dwellers at the turn of the century faced real problems, such as unsanitary living conditions, corrupt political machines, and overcrowding. Yet the solutions that urban-skeptical reformers offered didn’t address these issues; instead, most of these projects aimed to push people out of cities. The problems of the city, according to people like Benton MacKaye, arose from the density and variation of urban life and would not follow Americans into nature. MacKay designed the Appalachian Trail, the 2,200-mile hiking trail extending from Maine to Georgia, in 1921 in the hopes that city-dwellers would follow it out of the urbanized Northeast and, after finding a more wholesome existence, never return.

appalachian_trail_heading_to_double_springs_gap_from_clingmans_dome — The Appalachian Trail (via Wikimedia Commons).

As suburbs proliferated across the nation, Conn argues, they sustained “decentralized cities,” where whites and other privileged groups left urban centers at the end of the work day and returned to homogenous housing developments. “Most suburbs,” Conn explains, rather than developing a unique culture, “functioned to reject the city while simultaneously taking advantage of it.” Decentralized cities like Albuquerque, NM relied on federal government spending for growth, largely for maintaining and constructing roads, despite the anti-government attitudes of their citizens. Other decentralized cities in the Midwest, like Columbus, OH, embarked on “urban renewal” schemes in which the living history of the city fell victim to commercial development. In 1979, city leaders demolished Columbus’s historic train station to make way for a convention center and parking lot. “Beyond expressing their contempt for trains,” Conn argues, “those who ordered the building torn down expressed their contempt for Columbus’s past.” Dismissing the benefits of city dwelling, and the importance of a city’s history, anti-urban sentiments poisoned most urban renewal schemes of the late 19th century.

800px-union_station_mural_by_gregory_ackers_columbus_ohio_1987 — This 1987 mural by Gregory Ackers depicts Columbus’ historic Union Station. In 2014, new construction on the lot blocked the mural from public view (via Wikimedia Commons).

Conn looks at many cities across the country in his history of anti-urbanism, including a place familiar to Texans: Houston. Houston city leaders refused to accept federal zoning requirements throughout the 20th century, even when it meant passing on attractive funding opportunities that would enrich public governance and culture. During the Cold War, Houston’s elite saw nefarious designs behind the push for federal zoning laws. “Zoning was part of a transitive property that led straight to Moscow: zoning = planning = government interference = Stalinism,” Conn relates. Affluent, white residents believed that the free market, not public regulation, would solve Houston’s successive housing crises. Yet, because housing areas were largely segregated by color, privileged Houstonites ignored the problems their poor and marginalized neighbors faced, all while undermining public programs designed to improve general welfare. The elites “simply could not acknowledge that the ‘market’ does not function the same way for all Americans.”

Houston also serves as an example of how modern “gated communities” attempt–and fail–to cultivate the vibrant urbanity lacking in decentralized cities. Communities, Conn demonstrates, are just as much about exclusion as inclusion, and the gated oases of suburbia represent “exactly the opposite of city life.” The gated communities suggest “a society where social ties have frayed, where we simply do not trust each other and do not even want to make the attempt.” That exclusion—in Houston, as in Greenwich, CT—often follows racial and socioeconomic lines.

aerial_indian_creek_near_dallas_6039814731 — Sprawling suburbs, like Indian Creek outside of Dallas, characterize many cities of the American Southwest (via Wikimedia Commons).

Americans Against the City pays close attention to both liberal and conservative anti-urbanism throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Conn describes the “hippie” communes and environmental movements of the 1970s as “essentially different versions of white flight” from urban issues. Yet toward the end of the book, Martin Anderson (one of President Reagan’s most important economic advisors) and the New Right bear the brunt of Conn’s criticism. These men largely promoted policies based on the idea that the market is more democratic than public government, while simultaneously benefitting from federal access and funding. Fighting against public spending on services and entitlements, Anderson helped entrench the now-prevalent idea that the government has no “role to play in promoting the general welfare, except as it enhances private wealth.”

Americans Against The City stands as a well-researched and provocative history of the ideas and politics rooted in our physical environment. Conn’s easy writing style and fascinating evidence make the book a pleasure to read. His conclusions resonate with the contemporary moment and offer a new explanation for the fraying political consensus. Suburbs, Conn explains, disconnect us from our geography–disassociating our work lives from our personal lives, our futures from our histories. As a result, although Americans are more mobile than ever, we feel detached from our political geography. This disruption lies at the heart of a creeping polarization in our political discourse, canceling out opportunities for compromise and eroding a sense of collective responsibility. The values of democratic government, Conn reminds us, arose from urban milieux. It remains to be seen whether they will survive in the suburbs.

US Survey Course: Teaching US History

August 25, 2016

During the summer of 2016, we will be bringing together our previously published articles, book reviews, and podcasts on key themes and periods in the history of the USA. Each grouping is designed to correspond to the core areas of the US History Survey Courses taken by undergraduate students at the University of Texas at Austin.

Digital Teaching: Taking U.S. History Online:

Every year thousands of students take introductory courses in U.S. History at UT Austin. In the spring of 2016 Prof Jeremi Suri experimented with an online version of the U.S. History since 1865 survey course. He, his students, the technical team, and his teaching assistants, Cali Slair, Carl Forsberg, Shery Chanis, and Emily Whalen all blogged about the experience of digital teaching for readers of Not Even Past.

We start with Jeremi Suri’s article describing taking U.S. History online.

Posts from the TAs:

Don’t you hate it when you are teaching a class and you know the students tip tapping on their laptops are just playing on social media? Emily Whalen explains how Class Chat helps encourage positive digital student engagement during class.

Ping! Are you listening? Carl Forsberg discusses how ‘pings’ keep students accountable and engaged during online lectures. Ping!

Shery Chanis suggests virtual office hours might encourage more students to meet with TAs.

Cali Slair discusses the in-person studio attendance requirement.

From the other side of the screen:

Ashlie Martinez and Abigail Griffin offer a student’s view and Assad Lufti discusses how the course could open up opportunities for students across the world to learn.

How can technology improve public speaking? Here is an answer, and a wonderful video by one of the students taking the course.

How does an online course get online? Take a look behind the scenes at the Student Technology Assistants who film, record, edit, and produced the course.

Also check out this video by UT’s Liberal Arts ITS Development Studio who help produce and develop rich and effective online courses like Prof. Jeremi Suri’s US History course.

Take a look at the course syllabus here.

US Survey Course: USA and the Middle East

August 18, 2016

Shaherzad Ahmadi traces the history of violence in Iraq stemming from the oft overlooked Iran-Iraq War (1980-88)

Yoav Di-Capua explores the history of ISIS in his review of Abdel Bari Atwan’s Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate (University of California Press, 2015)

Mark Atwood Lawrence examines the value of drawing lessons from history in Debating the Vietnam and Iraq Wars.

Celeste Ward Gventer asks Was Iraq War Worth It?

Jonathan Hunt discusses Iran’s Nuclear Program and the History of the IAEA.

Syria´s President Hafez al-Asad (sitting on the right side) signing the Federation of Arab Republics in Benghazi, Libya, on April 18, 1971 with President Anwar al-Sadat (stting left) of Egypt and Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya (sitting in the centre). The agreement never materialized into a federal union between the three Arab states. Photo Credit: The Online Museum of Syrian History via Wikimedia Commons.

Chris Dietrich examines connections between the US and Libya in Oil and Weapons in Gaddafi’s Libya and Jeremi Suri discusses the The Death of Qaddafi.

Toyin Falola turns the lens on Africa and the United States

Recommended Books:

Emily Whalen recommends Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of US-Arab Relations, 1820-2003, by Ussama Makdisi (PublicAffairs: 2010).

Clay Katsky reviews Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman, by Greg Grandin (Metropolitan Books: 2015).

Kristin Tassin suggests Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism, by Zachary Lockman (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Lady Jane Acquah discusses Securing Africa: Post-9/11 Discourses on Terrorism, edited by Malinda S. Smith (Ashgate: 2010).

And here are some Great Books on Islam in American Politics & History

Film and Media:

Christopher Rose asks What’s Missing from ‘Argo’ (2012)?

Emily Whalen offers Historical Perspectives on Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016)

On 15 Minute History

The U.S. and Decolonization after World War II

Following World War II, a large part of the world was in the hands of European powers, established as colonies in the previous centuries. As one of the nations that came out on top of the geo-political situation, the United States was looked to with hope by aspiring nationalist movements, but also seen as a potential source by European allies in the war as a potential supporter of the move to restore the tarnished empires to their former glory. What’s a newly emerged world power to do?

Guest R. Joseph Parrott takes a look at the indecisive position the United States took on decolonization after helping liberate Europe from the threat of enslavement to fascism.

The International Energy Crisis of the 1970s

Most Americans probably associate the 1973 oil crisis with long lines at their neighborhood gas stations, but those lines were caused by a complex patchwork of international relationships and negotiations that stretched around the globe.

Guest Chris Dietrich explains the origins of the energy crisis and the ways it shifted international relations in its wake.

Roundtable: Antiquities in Danger

Straight from the headlines: ISIS destroys the temple of Bal at Palmyra. Looters steal friezes from Greco-Roman sites in Ukraine under the cover of conflict. A highway is built through an ancient Mayan city in the Guatemalan highlands, the legacy of decades of near-genocidal internal conflict. Why is the loss of human patrimony important, especially in the context of the loss of lives? How can we begin to explain why both are worthy of our consideration? And what can high school or college educators and their students do about it?

Our first roundtable features three experts from the University of Texas who’ve taken the destruction of sites where they’ve worked and lived seriously, and are working to raise awareness of the importance of antiquities in danger around the world, and share simple steps to raise awareness about the problem and how to get involved.

Islamic Extremism in the Modern World

In this episode, we tackle “that pesky standard” in the Texas World History course that requires students to understand the development of “radical Islamic fundamentalism and the subsequent use of terrorism by some of its adherents.” This is especially tricky for educators: how to talk about such an emotional subject without resorting to stereotypes and demonizing? What drives some to turn to violent actions in the first place?

Guest Christopher Rose from UT’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies offers a few suggestions and some background information on how to keep the phenomenon in perspective.

You may also like these articles on the history of Islam in America:

Denise Spellberg’s article and book on Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an and episode on 15 Minute History.

Reem Elghonimi reviews A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order, by Kambiz GhaneaBassiri (2010).

Digital Teaching: Prioritizing Public Speaking

April 28, 2016

Every year thousands of students take introductory courses in U.S. History at UT Austin. This spring Prof Jeremi Suri is experimenting with an online version of the U.S. History since 1865 survey course. He and his teaching assistants, Cali Slair, Carl Forsberg, Shery Chanis, and Emily Whalen will blog about the experience of digital teaching for readers of Not Even Past.

By Emily Whalen

A good presentation, like a good lecture, should look effortless. Whether it’s a Youtube tutorial, a formal debate, or an academic job talk, practiced presenters know that seamless public speaking requires planning and practice. History courses focus mostly on reading and writing skills–vitally important in a world where remedial writing classes cost businesses an estimated $3.1 billion a year. Because of time restraints and high enrollment in general survey courses, some undergraduates won’t ever need to craft a formal presentation for a grade. In a world where presentation is a critical element of success, why don’t we prioritize public speaking?

When we began planning for our new online course, we were looking for ways that the online format could not only meet the standards of a traditional class, but exceed them. We wanted to raise the bar for what we expected of our students, all while preparing them in tangible ways for life beyond college. That was when Dr. Suri came up with the idea of having students record a short verbal presentation based on one of the class’s assigned essays. Students would have already done the intellectual work–analyzing a primary document–but would need to use time management and organization skills to turn the essay into a 2-minute speech. They would get a sense of the work that goes into the lectures they see every week, and gain important insights into how to present themselves in a formal manner. And, given the online format, we could download and view the presentations on our own time for grading – without sacrificing valuable lecture time.

We had already written this exciting idea into the syllabus when we learned about the Sanger Learning Center’s new Public Speaking Center. There, students could schedule one-on-one appointments with student speech consultants to hone and polish their presentations. The Public Speaking Center even reserved a block of time specifically for our students to come in and take advantage of this wonderful service. It was also a fantastic way to showcase for students some of the fantastic supplemental resources available to them as members of the UT community! We had 89 students sign up for the Public Speaking Center’s appointments. This participation shows how an online class can encourage students to use on-campus resources.

The positive effects are clear. We’ve enjoyed watching and grading some truly outstanding presentations, like this creative submission from freshman Janessa Lynch.

Response to the assignment has been generally positive, and the videos have been a great way for us to see a different side of our students–and for them to participate in our historical-technological experiment.

A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence, by John E. Mack (1976)

April 11, 2016

By Emily Whalen

David Lean’s magisterial film epic, Lawrence of Arabia (1962) gave us a mythic hero struggling against impossible odds. The film’s theatrical merits—breathtaking cinematography, nuanced performances, riveting score—cemented Western audiences’ enduring interest in the title character, but offered little factual substance about the life of a compelling and controversial historical figure, and supported a lopsided view of the 20^th century Middle East. The film best serves as a gateway to understanding the real Lawrence and the legacy of British Colonialism in a still-tumultuous region.

Peter O'Toole as T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia. Via Wikipedia — Peter O’Toole as T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia. Via Wikipedia.

If the nearly four-hour movie is an introduction, T.E. Lawrence’s own memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, is a 600-page next step. Lawrence aficionados bear the badge of completing the windswept tome with great pride: the author records labyrinthine tribal relationships and the minutiae of desert battles in its densely detailed pages to many readers’ great exhaustion. Yet Seven Pillars continues to capture the imagination of readers interested in Britain and the Middle East during World War I with its arresting poetry. Some might initially balk at the book’s bulk, but by the time Lawrence describes a night of feasting under the stars with Auda ibu Tayi and the Howeitat Bedouins, the spell has been cast. Yet, however seductive his prose and the great sweep of his narrative, Lawrence’s autobiography remains unbalanced. Lawrence himself admits a degree of unreliability. “All men dream: but not equally,” he writes, “Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes.” As a dreamer of the day, Lawrence’s account of his own life falls far short of objectivity. His tendency to flicker between excess and asceticism foreshadows the ferocity of the historical and moral debate about his role—and Britain’s—in the Arab Revolt.

Lawrence was an eccentric, divisive figure during his life, and he remains divisive more than eighty years after his death. In July of 1915, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, initiated a correspondence with Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, on the subject of lands under Ottoman administration. McMahon and his counterparts in London saw growing Arab nationalism within the Ottoman empire as a potentially useful wartime tool. Cultivating Arab national aspirations would undermine Ottoman sovereignty, particularly desirable for Britain at the beginning of World War I. The McMahon-Hussein correspondence suggested to the Sharif that Britain would support an Arab kingdom under the Sharif’s suzerainty, carved out from Ottoman lands—including Jerusalem and the Holy Lands. Many scholars point to the correspondence as impetus for the Revolt, and something Lawrence vocally encouraged. When the later Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Letter came to light, indicating British colonial aspirations and promises to create a Jewish homeland in the same parcel of land, McMahon’s commitments to Arab self-rule suddenly rang hollow. The question of how much Lawrence knew about McMahon’s apparent duplicity—and of course the subject of Arab or Israeli control of the area—remains bitterly contentious.

Those seeking a more balanced assessment of Lawrence would do well to turn to a third source: John Mack’s psychological biography of Lawrence, A Prince of Our Disorder. Mack’s Pulitzer Prize winning volume sharpens the reality of Lawrence as an individual in history and thus casts a clearer distinction between man and myth. For example, in Seven Pillars, the Damascus Campaign of 1916-1918 quietly blooms into an eternity; Mack neatly folds those desert months back into the context of Lawrence’s life, devoting roughly 50 out of 600 pages to the same two years. A historicized and humanized Lawrence distills for the reader the extraordinary leadership qualities and the fortuitous convergence of circumstance that enabled him to crest, alongside his guerillas, the wave of the Arab Revolt. The mythological Lawrence, now discernible in contrast, tells the reader much about the way that wave broke, contextualizing both the subsequent criticism and adulation of Lawrence. Mack’s work stands as a sensitive, fully contextualized portrait of an historical figure, with family secrets, literary predilections, and intensely emotional qualities that both malformed him and made him “of a higher quality.” A Prince of Our Disorder grounds and enriches Seven Pillars and Lawrence of Arabia. It reminds the reader of Lawrence’s limitations.

“The wash of that wave,” writes Lawrence of the Arab Revolt, “…will provide the matter of the following wave, when in the fullness of time the sea shall be raised once more.” Lawrence’s continuing attraction lies in what Mack describes as the man’s tendency to offer “his extraordinary abilities, his essential self, and even his conflicts to others for them to use according to their own need.” The present conflicts of the Middle East can appear hopelessly intractable, with many countries locked in bloody conflict or bound to an unjust status quo. Moments of change are moments of hope. So Lawrence survives, as we watch for another wave.

Mack, John E. A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976).

Lawrence, T. E. Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph (London: Penguin, Doubleday, 1925).

Historical Perspectives on Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016)

April 4, 2016

By Emily Whalen

“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown,” Lawrence Walsh growls to Jake Gittes in the final moments of Chinatown, Roman Polanski’s iconic film noir about corruption and betrayal in Los Angeles. Walsh’s now-classic line reflects Jake’s utter disenchantment by the end of the film—he has has lost faith in the status quo, in honor, and even in love by the time he winds up in the lawless Chinese part of town. It’s a sentiment echoed again and again in Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. Throughout the movie, through explosions and dust and sweat, John Krasinski’s Jack Silva hears by way of explanation: “It’s Benghazi.” The message couldn’t be clearer: the rules don’t matter here.

Reactions to Michael Bay’s latest venture have so far cropped up along predictable lines. Some, looking to the film’s scrupulously non-political focus and standout performances by Krasinski and James Badge Dale, applaud the comparatively restrained, fact-driven story. Others challenge the film’s simplistic take on a complex geopolitical event, lacking historical context and rife with cultural assumptions. Michael Bay isn’t an auteur and nuance isn’t his strength—nor is it what most of his audience wants from a movie. But considering the tidal shifts in our current culture over war, over government, and over America’s place in the world, 13 Hours offers a provocative starting point for Bay’s applauders and scoffers to talk across the aisle.

The narrative follows a group of six ex-military contractors, hired to run security for a CIA annex in bullet-pocked Benghazi in 2012. Jack joins Dale’s Tyrone “Rone” Woods, on “one last job” because he needs the money—the economy at home is faltering. The contractors comprising the Global Response Staff (GRS) sweat away in a grubby CIA compound. The compound abuts “Zombieland,” the eerie village slaughter yard that seems to enjoy an abundance of ethereal breezes. Jack, Rone, and their crew of uniformly tall, rugged, and muscular contractors immediately clash with the pudgy CIA Station Chief, who sneers metaphorically and literally at the hired protection any chance he gets. This is one of the film’s major leitmotifs: the effete, bloated bureaucrat gets into the way of the seasoned, decisive GRS team at every turn of the plot, preventing them at best from doing good, at worst from doing their jobs.

Screenshot from 13 Hours.

When news of Ambassador Chris Stephens’s visit to Benghazi comes, the GRS team stops by the State Department’s diplomatic outpost, a well-appointed pleasure garden compared to Zombieland, to offer the Diplomatic Security (DS) team a gratis security assessment. The outpost is hopelessly vulnerable, another indication of bureaucratic—and departmental—incompetence. DS depends on a deeply unreliable local militia, the February 17th Martyrs’ Brigade for the majority of their protection. Jack and his fellow mercenaries make a congenial offer to help in case a crisis crops up during the visit. Of course, a crisis develops.

The climax of the film comes on September 11, 2012. Crowds of armed, organized militants storm the diplomatic outpost, and the DS team issues a desperate call to the GRS guys: “If you guys don’t come now, we are going to fucking die.” Geared up and ready, the GRS team turns to the CIA Station Chief for an official go-ahead. But, concerned about chain of command and protecting his own agents, the Chief instead issues a “stand down” order to the GRS team. A tense twenty minutes passes. Finally, Rone bests the Chief in a contest of will, and the heavily armored contractors swing into action. Piling tragedy upon insult, the Chief’s delay means the GRS team loses the opportunity to save the life of Ambassador Chris Stephens, who perishes from smoke inhalation after the attacking militants and the Mediterranean wind turn the outpost into a hellish inferno.

Survivors of the real Benghazi GRS team—who collaborated with Bay’s scriptwriters—have been vocal with journalists like David Kirkpatrick about the “stand down” order. The film suggests the order virtually eliminated any chance of saving Stephens from an avoidable death. The film abstains from directly criticizing initial, inaccurate State Department and White House reports of the attack on Benghazi, which called the attack a spontaneous act of riot violence. It also mercifully avoids the political morass of Secretary Clinton’s email servers. The movie does, however, contradict 2014 reports to the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, which quite clearly state that the CIA issued no such “stand down” order. The CIA itself has denied that the chief, who is still undercover, prevented the GRS team from rescuing their DS counterparts. It’s difficult for a secret agency to respond to such a public lashing, and viewers would do well to consider the order less a fact than an illustration of endemic problems in the way American government departments interact in foreign countries. Lack of coordination and competition for legitimacy, especially in conflict zones, carry real dangers.

Screen shot from 13 Hours.

The world of Benghazi is a bewildering, hostile world. Bay’s nearly two-and-a-half-hour long film effectively conjures up the fatigue and bafflement with which most Americans regard the Middle East. Friends look like—and can quickly become—dangerous foes. By its end, the viewer, like Silva and his comrades, longs for treehouses, neat lawns, and McDonald’s drive-throughs. More sensitive viewers might decry the movie’s failure to offer real context for the embassy attack, or to portray ordinary Libyans as more than potentially malevolent scenery in a movie about Americans in peril. Gaddafi ruled Libya with an iron fist for 34 years – yet the failures of the revolution look through Bay’s lens like moral failures of a people unready for self-rule. The film opens with a shaky montage depicting Gaddafi’s murder, but it delves no deeper into decades of Libyan history that might help a viewer understand why the 17 Feb Brigade melted away from the embassy doors on September 11, 2012.

Conscientious viewers might consider why the movie doesn’t move beyond standard tropes about the Middle East. Why do audiences still accept Arabs in Adidas sweatpants and battered AK-47s as an existential threat to five skilled warriors in head to toe body armor? Critics will decry the movie’s hyper masculine, anti-intellectual bent, but perhaps it is more useful to question how Jack, Rone, and their muscular friends became so cynical and battle-ready in the first place. The GRS and DS teams face a bleak and bloody night virtually alone: the contractors and agents rail against their isolation in between bouts of heavy shelling. In the end, the GRS team—and the audience—never receive a satisfactory explanation for the mighty American military’s absence. What policies and decisions placed the GRS team in Zombieland, beyond the protective reach of American military power?

It’s easy to dismiss 13 Hours as a superficial tribute to the kind of aggressive nationalism that undermines American credibility in the world. It’s also easy to praise the film’s veneration of military contractors who risked their lives and their careers to do the right thing. But discussion of 13 Hours should not stop there—it captures a moment in American culture, warts and all, that is worth interrogating from both sides of the aisle.

Creating a Collective Conversation: A Tribute to Joan Neuberger

Examining Race in Appleton, WI

An Apology for Propaganda

Americans Against the City, By Stephen Conn (2014)

US Survey Course: Teaching US History

Digital Teaching: Taking U.S. History Online:

More articles on teaching US history:

US Survey Course: USA and the Middle East

Recommended Books:

Film and Media:

On 15 Minute History

Digital Teaching: Prioritizing Public Speaking

A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence, by John E. Mack (1976)

Historical Perspectives on Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016)

Recent Posts