American Past Research Articles

Roth on the American Screen: “Serious” Literature and Popular Democracy

Philip Roth seemed to endorse Leo Glucksman's thesis in I Married a Communist (1998)—that politics, "the great generalizer," stands in "an antagonistic relationship" to literature, "the great particularizer" (606)—during the public address he gave upon his eightieth birthday. Roth pronounced, "a fervor for the singular and a profound aversion to generalities is fiction's lifeblood" ("The Ruthless Intimacy" 393). Glucksman, however, made his declaration from the margins of a novel profoundly concerned with national politics—a novel, moreover, which participates in a trilogy that initiated what Bryan Cheyette calls the "national turn" in Roth's late career (163). The tensions between the mission of what Glucksman defines as "serious literature" (Communist 607) and readings of Roth's fiction's salience, or instrumentality, in national politics are only heightened when that fiction is adapted for the screen. This essay examines these tensions within two 2016 screen adaptations of Roth's fiction: Ewan McGregor's American Pastoral and James Schamus's Indignation.

“How the Other Half Lives” <em>American Pastoral</em> and Roth's Other Europe

“How the Other Half Lives” <em>American Pastoral</em> and Roth's Other Europe

Letter from the Editors

Letter from the Editors Robert Chiles, Devin R. Lander, Jennifer Lemak, and Aaron Noble This issue of New York History was produced during a time of historical uncertainty in our state and nation as the world dealt with the vicious COVID-19 virus. It is our sincere hope that all of our readers and contributors are as safe and healthy as possible during these trying times. And, it is our sincere hope that the schools, colleges, universities, museums, archives, libraries, and historical sites that make up New York's diverse and vital historical community can fully emerge from this disaster and continue their important work. Also at the time of publication our nation is engaged in protests as well as historical debates inflamed by the brutal killing of George Floyd and the broader intransigence of racism in America. In this context, the editors echo the sentiments expressed by the New York State Education Department Board of Regents: "America's greatness lies in our diversity, our tolerance, and our willingness to accept and welcome others. These are our nation's founding principles. Sadly, these very ideals are now under attack, as some seek to divide us based on our differences. But we know that, ultimately, civility, dignity, compassion, and respect will prevail—they will unify us and will lift us up as a state and as a nation. As a society, we must do better. This is a time to come together."—The Editors Among the most significant contemporary debates related to American political and social identity is that of historical commemoration, encompassing timely questions of historical relevance, commemorative practice, and the modern significance of figures from the American past. From the moment copies of Common Sense hit the streets of Philadelphia in January 1776, Thomas Paine's life and works have remained central to the meaning of the American Revolution—and the site of conflict over the legacy of the War for Independence and the divergent interpretations of American nationhood in the succeeding centuries. For issue 101.1 of New York History, we are proud to partner with Professors Nora Slonimsky and Michael Crowder from the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies (ITPS) at Iona College to present a series of thematic articles exploring the significance and commemoration of the American Revolutionary era. Inspired by conversations initiated at the ITPS Patriot's Day Symposium in April 2019, articles in this issue by Michael Crowder, Robb Haberman, Michael D. Hattem, Christopher F. Minty, and Mariam Touba explore the broad themes of commemoration and politics through multiple methodological [End Page v] lenses—particular public history. The Artifact NY feature by Nora Slonimsky utilizes material culture to analyze these themes and Alisa Wade's Teach NY provides a teaching module that helps students better integrate women into the political culture of late-eighteenth century New York City. The issue proceeds chronologically from the Revolution into the Early Republican period via Kate Brown's article analyzing several key early decisions handed down by New York's Court for the Correction of Errors—decisions that pragmatically balanced competing class interests within the Empire State's increasingly sophisticated commercial polity while simultaneously elevating the Court to national prominence. The final full-length article in this issue considers a time when New York State once again played a prominent role in a conflict with Great Britain: Harvey Strum's essay on antiwar sentiment among members of the New York State Militia during the War of 1812 highlights the fact that the political divides between Republicans and Federalists that began in the days following American Independence remained contentious over twenty years later. As always, we are thankful to the journal's Advisory Board for their continued support and guidance and to the authors featured in this issue for their hard work and dedication to their scholarship. And, we remain ever grateful to our readers, whose continued interest in New York's vibrant history allows this journal to thrive. Sincerely, The Editors: Robert Chiles, Devin Lander, Jennifer Lemak, Aaron Noble and Danielle Funiciello [End Page vi] Copyright © 2020 Cornell University Press

African American Pastors and their Perceptions of Professional School Counseling

African American Pastors and their Perceptions of Professional School Counseling

When Myth Invents the World: Imagined and Deconstructed Nations in Günter Grass’ Ein weites Feld and Philip Roth’s American Pastoral

As a result of the paradigm shift from the ontology era to the deconstruction era, the concept of national identity in humanities is today conceived not as a real entity, but rather as a social construction, imagined by people through national myths. National myths can be defined as ideal and/or ideological narrations, producing a peaceful image of the national community that does not correspond to socio-historical reality. Through Francesco Orlando’s Freudian theoretical framework, the article tackles this problem in relation to its literary representation in Grass’ Ein weites Feld (1995) andPhilip Roth’s American Pastoral (1997), showing different degrees of the deconstruction of nations in the literary field.

Rural Black Pastors: the Influence of Attitudes on the Development of HIV/AIDS Programs.

This exploratory research addressed the question, among rural Mississippi African American Baptist pastors, what is the impact of attitudes toward HIV/AIDS on the development of HIV/AIDS programs in the church? It was hypothesized that empathetic attitudes toward HIV make programming more likely. The study used Froman and Owen's AIDS Attitude Scale (AAS) and a demographic questionnaire, which included a measure that assessed potential program development. A sample of more than 300 African American pastors participated. The findings suggested that there is a significant relationship between rural Mississippi African American Baptist pastors' empathetic attitudes toward AIDS and their willingness to develop an HIV/AIDS program.

The American Beserk. Young Terrorists as Archetypes in Contemporary American Culture

AbstractFrom Philip Roth’s characater Merry Levov in American Pastoral to real-life figures such as the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre, the young domestic terrorist has become the archetype of a dramatic and unpredictable social and political climate. This paper intends to explore the real and fictional avatars of this contemporary anti-hero, its dynamics and specific place in contemporary imagination.

American Pastoral

American Pastoral

Overcoming the Silence: Race, Archaeology, and Memory

ABSTRACTEconomic and racial inequalities impact how sites are or are not recognized as having the attributes necessary to meet the criteria for historical preservation and commemoration, either under private standards or federal law. As a result, past forms of structural racism impact our perception and treatment of historical people in the present, engendering historical silences and impacting which people we remember. This article considers both government and private standards for historic preservation and commemoration in addition to analyzing the practice of historic commemoration on some private Virginia historic sites. Through this dual discussion, I examine how practices governing the preservation of archaeological sites continue to marginalize in the present those whom US society marginalized in the past. Since these practices help determine what constitutes historically significant parts of the American past and what we commemorate, they promote disparity in determining whose history we remember and preserve.

Hydrocarbon Nation: How Energy Security Made Our Nation Great and Climate Security Will Save Us

Hydrocarbon Nation is a book with two purposes. First, it retells the pivotal role that hydrocarbons played in the rise of the United States from the early national period to the present; and second, it articulates a progressive agenda for transitioning to a more sustainable future less reliant on such fuels. Thor Hogan packages this project in terms of the United States' legacy of energy security and its need to shift to climate security. The gist of the historical argument is that the American past can be broken into four political ages (beginning with major realignment elections in 1788, 1861, 1932, and 2008) and that each age drew its fuel from distinct energy regimes. Hogan contends that steam power—fired by wood—and waterpower drove the first political age and that coal, petroleum, and natural gas correlated with the next three ages. These energy sources and their corresponding technologies provided, he explains,...

Race and Authoritarianism in American Politics

Authoritarianism, it seems, is alive and well these days. The Trump administration's blatant dismissal of democratic norms has many wondering whether it fits the authoritarian model. This review offers a framework for understanding authoritarianism in the American past, as well as the American present. Starting in the early twentieth century, this analysis seeks to provide a better understanding of how authoritarianism once existed in enclaves in the Jim Crow South, where it was intended to dominate blacks in the wake of emancipation. Confining the definition of authoritarianism to regime rule, however, leaves little room for a discussion of more contemporary authoritarianism, at the micro level. This review shifts focus to an assessment of political psychology's concept of authoritarianism and how it ultimately drives racism. Ultimately, we believe a tangible connection exists between racism and authoritarianism. Even so, we question the mechanism. Along the way, we also discuss the ways in which communities of color, often the targets of authoritarianism, resist the intolerance to which they have been exposed. We conclude with a discussion of why we believe, despite temporal and spatial differences as well as incongruous levels of analysis, that micro- and macro-level authoritarianism have much in common.

Family can endure what partnership cannot: A consideration of historical, cultural, and newly arising barriers to missions in China

Relationships between American mission organizations and Chinese house church pastors are currently facing increasing difficulty and strain. To date, the dominant metaphor for how these two members of Christ’s body have related has been partnership. Rising contextual and cultural pressures render partnership inadequate to withstand what familial bonds are more suited to endure. This article first considers the overall historical and cultural context of the relationship between western missionaries and unregistered Chinese churches. Following this is an explanation of two recurring factors which place ongoing strain on their relationship: rising nationalism and government persecution of Christians. Next, new factors which compound existing relational stressors are explored: shifting economic policies and theological brain drain. Finally, initial recommendations are put forth as to how these two groups might move forward living together as family.

The Captive Lab Rat: Human Medical Experimentation in the Carceral State

Human medical experimentation using captive, vulnerable subjects is not a relic of our American past. It is part of our present. The extensive history of medical experimentation on the disabled, the poor, the mentally ill, and the incarcerated has been little explored. Its continuance has been even less discussed, especially in the legal literature. The standard narrative of human medical experimentation ends abruptly in the 1970’s, with the uncovering of the Tuskegee syphilis study. My research shows, however, that this narrative is incorrect and incomplete. The practice of experimenting on the captive and vulnerable persists, not just then but now. Our current approach to human medical experimentation disregards informed consent and privacy, allowing the pharmaceutical and medical industries to play an outsized role in shaping clinical research. The confusing amalgam of laws, rules and codes loosely governing such research almost entirely fail to regulate or prevent patient mistreatment and abuse. Acquiring a true understanding of our system of mass incarceration requires us to unearth the hidden contours of our current experiments on the poor, the disabled, and the confined, and calls for a wholesale revision of the flawed legal and medical regime overseeing human medical experimentation.

Estranged Pioneers: The Case of African American and Asian American Multiracial Church Pastors

AbstractThis article draws upon 121 in-depth interviews from the Religious Leadership and Diversity Project (RLDP)—a nationwide study of leadership of multiracial religious organizations in the United States—to examine what it means for African American and Asian American pastors to head multiracial churches. We argue that African American and Asian American pastors of multiracial churches are estranged pioneers. They have to leave the familiar to explore a new way of doing church, but their endeavors are not valued by their home religious communities. African American pastors face challenges to their authenticity as black religious leaders for leading multiracial congregations. Asian American pastors experience a sense of ambiguity that stems from a lack of clarity about what it means for them to lead multiracial congregations as Asian Americans. Yet, despite differences in how they experience this alienation, both are left to navigate a racialized society where they are perceived and treated as inferior to their white peers, which has profound personal and social implications for them.

Partnering with African American Pastors and Healthcare Professionals to Develop Training Videos that Demonstrate Culturally Appropriate Physician Communication Principles and Methods (FR421C)

Partnering with African American Pastors and Healthcare Professionals to Develop Training Videos that Demonstrate Culturally Appropriate Physician Communication Principles and Methods (FR421C)

My Philip Roth

My Philip Roth Debra Shostak (bio) Halfway through a year I was devoting to writing a book about his work, Philip Roth appeared to me for the first time in a dream. He said little; in fact, he seemed interested only in talking to my husband rather than to me. He stayed on the fringes of the dream, looking sternly over at me once or twice, until the dream shifted away, as dreams do, and I was startled awake by the disappearance of my quarry. I was lying at my in-laws' house on a sofa bed, a rather inadequate contraption that slopes lumpily upward from your feet to your head, so you feel as though you should be rising rather than sleeping, restless, and guilty for your sloth. It was a Christmas in Wisconsin without snow, so desperately wished for by my children, like the outline of a story where the plot hasn't been filled in. That's how my dream felt, too. Of course, I knew that it wasn't Philip Roth in the dream, it was me, or so psychoanalytic wisdom tells me, since it was my dream and not the real world in which I very nearly met the man I was spending all my days thinking about. But if Philip Roth was me, then my husband must have been me, too, which confusingly means that I did get to speak to Roth, though really I was talking inaudibly to myself and never heard his side of the conversation. I didn't meet Philip Roth in the dream, couldn't fill in the outlines that my waking imagination could color in just so far. Had I done so, I would have betrayed the fraught work of imagining subjectivities that Roth spent a career exploring, perhaps best captured in that riveting paragraph in American Pastoral in which Zuckerman confesses that "The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again" (Pastoral 35). That, the writer admits, is the work of imaginative writing. It's getting people wrong that is living. It's also the work of imaginative reading. That's what's so vital about reading, getting people wrong in all those ways that are right for us, at the moment and from wherever we are sitting. The experience of a dream is like the experience of reading a book, where [End Page 135] we people the pages with our own resistant, three-dimensional images of the reality we know must exist, just as we know it. The beautiful wrongness of our reading depends on how reality is always slipping away from us, even as we form it into pictures and provocations and things that seem substantial until they aren't. Our subject—and subjectivity—when we read includes not only the "people" within the written world but also the person writing that world, and one of those persons is, well, me the reader, improbably decked out as an impersonation of the writer. Of course, this is exactly what we literary scholars have scorned for years, ever since Wimsatt and Beardsley explained the intentional fallacy, and it is one of the first things we teach our students. Fiction is not autofiction, we assert; how naïve not to assume a stance of distance and detachment from texts that are only constructed storyworlds. Yet one might suggest that Wimsatt and Beardsley had to invent the fallacy because that is exactly what most readers do, and long to do; how else to establish a priesthood of readers? In any case, however obvious it seems when I express the thought, this notion—that we (rightly!) misread texts and others, and that among those texts and others we misread count the authors of our fantasies—has been one of the most intriguing, divertingly frustrating, enduringly pleasurable lessons that three decades of reading and rereading Roth have given to me, and much more forcefully and meaningfully than all the psychoanalytic and reception theories I've encountered to explain this project of intimate...

Remembering Roth: The Sharp Mustard Flavor of <em>The Human Stain</em>

Remembering RothThe Sharp Mustard Flavor of The Human Stain Ann Basu (bio) Philip Roth intrigued, provoked, amused, and absorbed his readers for more than fifty years. Challenging and delighting us, his novels have generated an intellectual response from writers and scholars that has created one of the most vibrant literary fields in modern literary criticism. Roth declared that he would write no more fiction after Nemesis, published in 2010. Now he is gone, and we can only await his official biography written by Blake Bailey and continue to speak amongst ourselves about his great literary legacy. Roth was an American to his core. His Jewish family and upbringing shaped his vision of a nation whose culture he never stopped exploring and whose flaws he dissected in ever more powerful ways. The nature of Roth's contribution to his national culture is perhaps best expressed in Roth's conversation with Primo Levi in 1986, when Roth asks Levi to explain "the tension between your rootedness and your impurity" as a Jew and an Italian. Levi returns: I see no contradiction between "rootedness" and being (or feeling) "a grain of mustard." To feel oneself a catalyst, a spur to one's cultural environment [. . .] it is an advantage to belong to a (not necessarily racial) minority [. . .] don't you feel yourself, you, Philip Roth, "rooted" in your country and at the same time "a mustard grain"? In your books I perceive a sharp mustard flavor (Shop 13). There is much truth in Levi's observation. Roth's novels are sharp and pungent granules within American culture at the same time as being thoroughly within the grain of that culture; they are incisive, provocative, and sometimes outrageous. His scrutiny of his country and its culture will be desperately missed. My love for Roth's fiction began with The Human Stain (2000), the third novel of his American trilogy published after American Pastoral (1997) and I Married a Communist (1998). Before this novel cropped up on my English [End Page 33] Literature masters reading list, the only contact I had had with Roth's work was his first short story collection, Goodbye Columbus, and his notorious Portnoy's Complaint that I didn't know how to make sense of in the lurid light of its celebrity. I was little-prepared for the mature, sweeping, masterly accomplishment that was The Human Stain. I became immersed in the story of the racially-passing Coleman Silk and of Coleman Silk's America, to a depth that I have rarely experienced. The fascination with The Human Stain that drew me to Roth's work began with the shock of finding out that its "Jewish" and "white" protagonist, Coleman Silk, was a light-skinned black man who, in his youth, had made a fateful decision to pass as white, using Jewishness as a cover identity to explain features like his curly hair. Crucially, Roth hides the fundamental fact about Coleman's "passing" for the novel's first eighty-five pages. The revelation about Coleman's race highlights the truth that when we read we complete the meanings of the text from our own imaginations—an activity that Roth continually problematizes. His work, to a greater degree than many writers', induces an imbalance or oscillation in readers' minds as we establish predictive patterns from the text but are nevertheless made jarringly aware of other temporarily excluded meanings, like Coleman's "alien" blackness. We are thus continually brought to test our own judgments about Roth's novels. My own reaction to Coleman's blackness startled me. I was disoriented by the revelation. The knowledge of Coleman's secret brought me right up against my preconceptions about the character, reconfiguring my category of "what-is-Coleman." I was knocked off-balance, compelled to revisit scenes from the book in the light of my new knowledge. This act of re-reading also made me reflect long, deeply, and uncomfortably on my understanding of race and racial categories. Philip Roth challenged me to do some real work on his text and on myself and hooked me on his writing. The Human Stain's exploration of American identity under pressure boils down to the word...

Entering into the Green: Philip Roth and the Pastoral Impulse

This essay, informed by Annette Kolodny's research on the "pastoral impulse," re-examines Philip Roth's subversion of myth in American Pastoral (1997), illuminating the ways Roth exposes and critiques the gendered chasms within America's national narratives. The article connects Roth's novel to John Milton's Paradise Lost as a way of re-considering how the Swede valorizes Dawn as an Eve-like figure of perfection. I focus on how Roth, via Zuckerman, positions Merry and Rita as a hybridized Miltonic serpent who seeks to bring about Seymour and Dawn's fall from the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. By doing so, I argue Roth's problematic representation of women in American Pastoral works to deconstruct the gendered patriarchal narrative that underlies America's "pastoral impulse."

Getting People Wrong: Some Preliminary Thoughts on Philip Roth's Passing

Getting People WrongSome Preliminary Thoughts on Philip Roth's Passing Matthew Shipe (bio) A few weeks after Philip Roth's death this past May at the age of 85, I was invited to participate in a podcast hosted by fellow Roth Society member Danny Anderson. He had invited me on his show, The Sectarian Review, to discuss Roth's long and distinguished career and speculate on his ultimate impact on American literary culture. I had never done a podcast before and have always been apprehensive about the platform—when using it, I always recall that bit in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (1996) when a Skype-like invention creates a sort of national existential crisis as people become painfully self-conscious and purchase attractive mannequins to be their stand-ins for video chats. Nevertheless, I was more than happy to talk about Roth with Danny and his other guest Michial Farmer, a friend I had met through Updike circles.1 For around two hours we bandied about our favorite bits of Roth's work and somehow tried to solidify our thoughts on what his fiction had meant to us. Midway through the podcast, Danny and I recalled the Roth@80 event, laughing at the memory of finding ourselves in a room with Don DeLillo, Nicole Krauss, Jonathan Lethem, Louise Erdrich, and, of course, Roth himself, without a drink anywhere in sight. The night was somewhat surreal—it felt a little bit like being thrust, sober and slightly underdressed, into a Fellini film.2 I do remember managing to nudge myself in line behind Don DeLillo as he ordered a Sprite.3 I think I ordered one too hoping that I might impress him (shockingly, the gesture wasn't noticed). At the end of that night, I made my way to the front of the room to talk with Roth—again, I'd like to reiterate that this would have been the type of event where a drink (or two) would have been very handy. It was my one time to meet Roth: I can't remember what I had told him—something fairly generic about how much his work had meant to me—but I'm grateful that I was able to tell him this and he was gracious in our brief conversation. As I was finishing up, some family [End Page 130] friends approached and a flurry of pictures were taken. I like to believe that I'm in the back of one of those photos, an unidentified curly-haired mystery man never to be identified in some Roth family photo book. After sharing stories of that night, Danny asked us to read aloud our favorite passage from Roth's fiction as a way to wrap up the conversation. While there are countless passages I could have selected, the choice for me was fairly easy. I turned to my well-worn copy of American Pastoral (1997), the novel that was my first real introduction to Roth when I was an undergraduate back in the late '90s. I qualify it as my "real introduction" because I know I had read a few of the stories in Goodbye, Columbus (1959) while in high school—we did "Defender of the Faith" and maybe "Eli the Fanatic" sometime during my senior year—but I had not really experienced Roth until American Pastoral was assigned in Professor Marshall Boswell's junior seminar titled "The Literature of Replenishment."4 That course, more than anything, propelled me down the Roth rabbit hole. After the semester, I snatched up a remaindered copy of Sabbath's Theater (1995), and soon after found myself quickly making my way through much of Roth—zipping through the first Zuckerman trilogy after graduation, reading Letting Go (1962) after my first year in grad school,5 and then tackling The Human Stain (2000) the summer after it had been released as I was recovering from that first year in grad school. I confess I didn't pick up Portnoy's Complaint (1969) until much later in my Roth reading, and I still haven't read When She Was Good (1967), a lapse that I was loudly called out on by students...

David Lowenthal: An Appreciation

1 David Lowenthal An Appreciation richard longstreth David Lowenthal (1923–2018) was more than sixty years old when The Past Is a Foreign Country, his most ambitious and widely acclaimed book to date, was published in 1985 (Lowenthal 2015). For many scholars this volume would be a fitting capstone to a distinguished career, but for Lowenthal it came during a new and very consequential period in his pursuit of analyzing human culture. Since then, his impact has continued to be significant in a number of fields, and his passing has been mourned by scholars in American studies, anthropology, archaeology, art and architectural history, cultural and social history, environmental history, geography, and museum studies, among other realms. That sense of loss is no more acutely felt than in the field of historic preservation. In the United States, at least, preservationists have been notoriously nonintrospective . Critiques have mainly emanated from outsiders. Historical accounts have been modestly growing in number, yet many studies are more documentary than analytical, and much fertile ground remains unexplored. Even the motivating factors that have propelled preservation from a relatively localized antiquarian pursuit into a major force in the reshaping of numerous communities, large and small, have not been examined in adequate depth. Avoiding introspection can in part be explained by the fact that during the second half of the twentieth century preservation did indeed reinvent itself. The new business of preservation has been activist-oriented and necessarily preoccupied with effecting fundamental changes in how we address the built environment. Under the circum­ stances, there has been no time for self-examination, especially no time for addressing ambiguities, let alone shortcomings. Like many novel endeavors , preservation has focused on getting concrete things done, not on intellectual exploration. Many scholars , especially architectural historians, supported preservation efforts but did not focus on them in their research. Some geographers dismissed the effort as intellectually flaccid. And, even though preservation was emerging as a decisive factor in the urban landscape, UMP067_Preservation_ff.indd 1 12/18/19 3:23 PM 2 Preservation Education & Research v o l u m e 1 1| 2 0 1 9 just as conservation was in the natural landscape, most urban historians just ignored the phenomenon. The dearth of critical inquiry makes Lowenthal’s work all the more significant . He was among the first scholars of high repute to understand how important preservation had become as a cultural phenomenon. Moreover, he framed his subject not as a wholly new occurrence, but as one with deep roots in Western thinking. He was remarkably broad in the kinds of sources—popular as well as elite—he mined for his analysis. From centuriesold treatises to contemporary advertising copy, ruins to replicas, psychoanalysis to science fiction—the material he marshaled to formulate his arguments is astounding by any standard. His essays and books that examine attitudes toward the past are far more than critiques ; they are profound explorations of the human outlook and demonstrate how important the preservation enterprise , warts and all, really is in contemporary society. Not since John Ruskin has anyone matched Lowenthal’s prolific explorations of how the physical past has left its imprint on our culture. In 1983 Lowenthal offered as compelling and succinct a rationale for historic preservation as one could hope to attain: “We need the familiar; without reminders of the past we could not function in the present. Our structures and artifacts affirm our sense of identity through continuity with forebears, enrich our life by making memory and history vivid, and provide a desirable contrast with, if not refuge from, the new” (Lowenthal 1983, 229). Even more to the point: “A past lacking tangible relics seems too tenuous to be credible ” (Lowenthal 2015, 392). At the same time, our relationship with the past is filled with ambiguities, even contradictions . In an early salvo of the ideas he would investigate in detail in The Past Is a Foreign Country, he asserted that “the American past is not permitted to coexist with the present. It is always in quotation marks and fancy dress . . . an isolated object of reverence and pleasure . . . detached, remote, and essentially lifeless” (Lowenthal 1966, 31). More than most scholars, Lowenthal’s sensibilities were shaped...