History Department, Metropolitan State University, 700 East Seventh Street, Saint Paul, Minnesota, 55106-5000

History Department Newsletter

Notes from the Chair: The Future, the Past, and the Present

Doug Rossinow, department chair

Spring 2013 Onward with Clio.

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” This famous line from George Orwell’s great novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, long has graced the top of the fact sheet the Department of History at Metropolitan State University uses to explain our history program to students. Orwell placed these words in the collective mouth of a totalitarian political regime, a regime so sure of its hold on power that it could advertise its methods openly. Its minions reminded themselves that by managing a society’s historical memory, they would help their rulers to map a plan for future control.

How we recall the past does have a major impact on how we can imagine the future, and on the decisions we make (or the decisions made by those we elect to positions of power) about our future path as a society. Think about the economic trauma that the world as a whole is experiencing. In some places it is worse than others. But even in the United States, whose economy is stronger than those in most other wealthy countries—the American economy is actually growing, while Europe’s is shrinking—young adults face a difficult future. Their lifetime earnings and prospects will be impaired permanently by the struggles they face now to gain employment and to begin earning decent incomes, even if robust economic growth should return.

This should distress all of us. But we need to realize that it is completely avoidable. If our leaders learn the lessons of the past, and if the populace learns them well enough to demand action from above, then government can take action to undo the damage to the future of the young. But it will need to be government action, and it will need to take the form of stimulus or investment. Unfortunately, the only time such action was taken on the needed scale was during World War II. Earlier, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the United States made a halfway effort to compensate for economic contraction with President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program, only dictatorial states made a better try in that same direction. The war finally restored the American future. The war killed over 400,000 Americans, but those who survived had their fortunes enhanced beyond what they would have been, even in the absence of a Great Depression.

Thank goodness, we don’t seem to be on the verge of another world war. However, we, as a

Notes from the Chair continues on page 2.

History 490 just once a year

History majors should take note that History 490 will be offered just once a year starting in spring 2014. It will not be offered in the fall. The department monitors enrollment in courses to determine how often they need to be offered.

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country, have never mustered the will to restore the dashed dreams of the future in the absence of mobilization for war. Meanwhile, today’s European leaders seem hell-bent on repeating the mistakes their predecessors made during the 1930s, when the Continent’s democracies practiced budgetary stringency and never really had their own versions of the New Deal. This was one major reason why such a powerful demand emerged at the end of World War II for a full-scale welfare state and for social democracy in Great Britain and other countries: their New Deals were delayed until fascism was defeated. Today, ironically, the two props holding the world economy’s head above water are China and the United States, two countries with radically different political systems. A better future is possible; the fortunes of the young needn’t be mortgaged to selfish or short-term thinking by others. It is a question of doing more of what we know we can do (without going to war).

I must admit, in this post-election season, that another relationship between the future and present, one different than that framed by Orwell, comes to mind. Since the reelection of President Barack Obama, commentators have stated incessantly that the country’s demographic trends—with the electorate becoming less white—spell good news for the Democrats and a gloomy future for Republicans. Maybe, or maybe not.

The accuracy of such predictions interests me less than the present-day power of the notion that one political party owns the future. It has been a long time since Democrats, or political liberals, made a plausible claim on the future. This was very common in the 1930s and 1940s; the American working class, the wise men of that era said with great certainty, would desire more and better versions of the New Deal’s limited welfare state as the years passed. Long story short: this kind of talk ended abruptly in the late 1960s. By the 1980s, conservatives boldly laid claim to America’s political future, and many believed them. The conservative doctrines of economic deregulation and tax-cutting, social individualism, and national reliance on overwhelming military strength, seemed to command the allegiance of an impressive majority.

Where is this conservative confidence now? Dashed, at least temporarily. The apparent victory of moderate liberalism rests only partly, and tentatively, on a widespread embrace of liberal doctrine. Obama has not explicitly called his policy proposals liberal ones. Contrast this with President Ronald Reagan, who, in the 1980s, regularly explained his program as a conservative one. The supposedly rosy future of Obama’s party is characterized, roughly speaking, as one part doctrine and two parts demography. There is some connection, however, between the two, since the component elements of Obama’s winning coalition seem relatively friendly to government intervention in the economy to equalize opportunity and create widespread security.

To some extent, the exact reasons why Democrats supposedly own the political future don’t matter. What matters is that many people, for now (I emphasize), believe that they do. This by itself emboldens liberals and sets off panic among conservatives. Few things are more powerful in political life than credibly claiming the future. Perhaps we should complete the circle that Orwell began and add: “Whoever controls the future (or appears to) controls the present.”

Faculty Highlights Notes from the Chair continues:

Three highlights from Dr. Sumiko Otsubo’s recent work are: a chapter entitled, “Emperor, Family, and Modernity: The Passage of the 1940 National Eugenics Law,” in Tumultuous Decade: Japan’s Challenge to the International System, 1931-41, edited by Kimura Masato and Tosh Minohara (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 69-100; a chapter in an anthology, "Nichibei yuseigaku no setten: Shokubutsu gakusha Yamanouchi Shigeo o chushin ni shite [An intersection of U.S. and Japanese eugenics focusing on botanist Yamanouchi Shigeo]," Yusei seisaku no keifu [Genealogies of Eugenic Policies], edited by Kiyoko Yamasaki, Seimei no rinri [Life Ethics] 3 (Fukuoka: Kyushu Daigaku Shuppankai, 2013), 131-160; and a book review of Women’s Movements in Asia, edited by Roces and Edwards, Women’s History Review, 2013, which can be accessed online. (http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/dhwZCkHjMPVQQavhhqYJ/full)

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Faculty Highlights Matt Reicher (current history major) had an article entitled, “End of an Era: the Cottage View Drive-in” published by Preservation Alliance of Minnesota; the article can be found online (http://www.mnpreservation.org/2013/02/19/end-of-an-era-the-cottage-view-drive-in/).

Dr. Kathleen Laughlin’s publications on women and politics will be featured in the upcoming book, Artists of the Possible: Governing Networks and American Policy Change Since 1945, Oxford University Press, by Matt Grossman. The book is about the historiography of U.S. public policy between 1945 and 2000. Matt Grossman has discussed her work in an article for the Journal of Politics and Interest Groups and Advocacy. Dr. Laughlin is also writing a book review for the Journal of American History, working as a consultant on a public history project on the history of 3M, and writing a biographical essay on Mary Dublin Keyserling, Director of the Women’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, in the 1960s for American National Biography. At the Third Annual Midwest World History Association Conference in August 2012, Dr. Jeanne Grant presented a paper entitled, “Death Practices and Landscapes,” which was a pedagogical exploration of a theme-based, semester-long assignment designed for an introductory world history survey. Dr. Doug Rossinow is the keynote speaker for the Fifth Annual Graduate Student Conference convened by the Department of History at Boston University, March 22-23, 2013. The theme for the conference is “The Sixties at Fifty.” Additionally, C-SPAN filmed Dr. Doug Rossinow’s HIST 344 class on February 26, 2013. The course is “From Reagan to Obama: America Since 1980,” and the particular class was on the Iran-Contra Scandal. An article in Lillie News describes the experience. (http://www.lillienews.com/articles/2013/03/04/c-

span-descends-upon-metro-state). This spring semester, five resident and community history faculty received the Teaching Service Award, a recognition made by the university for every five years of service. The history faculty recognized this year are: Jeanne Grant (5 years), Christopher Tassava (10 years), Sumiko Otsubo (10 years), Rebecca Lowen (15 years), and Kathleen Laughlin (20 years). Beginning fall 2013 Dr. Laughlin will serve as department chair.

History Student Highlights

Recommended Reading Dr. Jeanne Grant recommends Worlds Made by Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West by Anthony Grafton (Harvard University Press, 2009). I found this a challenging book that caused me to seek out more books and to look at old books anew. The book provides the novice a strong foundational impression of the Republic of Letters and how it has changed over the centuries and it provides the specialist with plenty of new perspectives on personages and ideas from the sixteenth century to the present. Grafton interweaves the lives and intellectual work of the famous and the less famous to show how different individuals, such as artists, scientists, historians, linguists, philosophers, and others, influenced each other and were influenced by traditions and trends. He even works in some personal history between his father and Hannah Arendt. If it causes you to want more about the persons, then Anthony Grafton has breathed new life into the Republic of Letters.

The department is introducing a law, politics, and public policy track within the major. The track is a selection of history courses that students may use to fulfill the history major in a way that reflects their emphasized interest in these areas. Students who plan on going on to graduate school, to law school, or into public service, or other areas of study will find this track helpful. For more information, please contact the department chair.

Law, Politics, and Public Policy

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If you have news you would like to share in the department newsletter,

please email Dr. Jeanne Grant (jeanne.grant@metrostate.edu).

Dr. Jeanne Grant serves as an assistant editor for the peer-reviewed online world history journal, The Middle Ground. She invites students and faculty and others interested in world history to consider writing a piece for The Middle Ground or students to consider working as an intern for the journal. For an internship application, please contact Dr. Grant. Students can earn history credits for an internship! The journal accepts submissions from a wide range of contributors and on a wide range of historical topics. Please, visit the online journal by going to MWWHA’s website (www.mwwha.org/).

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