My first trip to Birming-ham, England coin-cided with the 2006

World Cup. As luck would haveit, I arrived the day after Eng-land had been eliminated fromthe quarterfinals, and, quitefrankly, it seemed like the entirecountry was in a bad mood. Butnot Pete. Peter James is the headof photographic collections atthe Birmingham City Archives.It was Pete who had unearthedthe collection of historical pho-tography that I had come to thearchive to see, when he rang thedoorbell of a desolate lookingbuilding he believed to have pre-viously housed a photographystudio that had served the Blackand Asian communities in Birm-ingham’s Balsall Heath for nearlyhalf a century.

An older woman hadanswered the door on that unre-markable day in 1990. WhenPete explained he was research-ing the Dyche Photography Stu-dio, she had insisted he come in.Moments later, she introducedhim to her husband, Ernest Mal-colm Dyche. Malcolm Dychehad learned photography fromhis father, Ernest Dyche, Sr.,who had opened the first of twoDyche Studios in 1910. Onceinside, Pete realized that the stu-dio he had researched was stillmore or less in tact. Althoughthe business had closed almostten years before, the rooms that

had once served as the studiowere filled with thousands ofprints, film and glass plate nega-tives, and photography equip-ment dating back to the teensand twenties. Malcolm Dychedied only a short time afterPete’s initial visit; he had beendelighted by the interest in thestudio and, shortly before hisdeath, had agreed to donate itscontents to the City Archives.

On my first day in Birming-ham, and over the course of sev-eral visits back, Pete Jamesreconstructed for me this historyof the studio and the fascinatingphotographs it had produced.Following the success of the firststudio, which initially cateredprimarily to entertainers andmusicians in the theatre districtaround Bordesley Palace, ErnestDyche, Sr. had opened a secondstudio in 1913 in Balsall Heath.The clientele of the studiosshifted in the late 1940s andearly 1950s, when waves ofCaribbean migrants began tak-ing up residence in Birminghamin response to postwar Britishimmigration policies and emplo-yment opportunities. Alongsidestudios such as the Harry JacobsStudio in Brixton, the BellevueStudio in Bradford, or Plant’s,Sam’s or the Oriental Studio inBirmingham, the Dyches werepart of a group of studio pho-tographers sought out by post-war Black and Asian migrants

THE S EM I ANNUA L NEWS L E T T E R O F THE ROB ERT P ENN WARR EN CENTER FOR THE HUMAN I T I E S

VOL . 1 6 , NO . 2 • SPR ING 2008 • VANDERB ILT UNIVERS ITY

Letters • Spring 2008 • 1

Imaging Diaspora: Race, Photography,and the Ernest Dyche Archive

By Tina Campt

InsideImaging Diaspora: Race,Photography, and the ErnestDyche Archive…................1-7

The Robert PennWarren Center: A Place forthe Humanities...................8-9

What We Are Writing.. ...........11

External Grants andFellowships..........................12

Robert Penn Warren and theUniversity in its Time.....13-15

2007-2008 Robert Penn WarrenCenter Faculty Fellows.........16

2007-2008 Robert Penn WarrenCenter Graduate StudentFellows.................................16

Tina Campt

sive cultural practice. As art his-torians and cultural theoristshave shown, visual culture is keyto understanding the experi-ences of blacks in diaspora(Willis 1996, 2000; Mercer1994; Hall 1992, 1997; Powell1997; Bailey 1992, 2005). Thephotographic image has playeda dual role in rendering the his-tory of African diasporic com-munities through its ability todocument and, at the sametime, pathologize the history,culture, and struggles of thesecommunities. Indeed, it is theequally powerful positive andnegative impact of photographythat has made it an importantvehicle for articulating blackpeople’s complex relationshipsto cultural identity and nationalbelonging.

Yet when and how does animage of a Black European, or,more specifically for my ownwork, a Black Briton or Afro-German emerge as part of, ratherthan deviant from, his or her

Letters • Spring 2008 • 2 Letters • Spring 2008 • 3

who produced portraits ofmembers of these communitiesthat were circulated among fam-ilies in Britain, the Indian sub-continent, and the Caribbean.Until its closure in the mid-1980s, the Dyche Studio servedas a pivotal, albeit unintended,site of documentation for post-war British colonial migrationduring this critical phase in thecreation of Black Britain.

Back at the archives, Pete ledme downstairs into the stacks.We gathered box after box ofimages and brought themupstairs to the office, where Icombed through countless pho-tos with awe and admiration. Inthe coming days and weeks, Isorted, stared at, scanned, andruminated over hundreds of por-traits that rapidly began to blurin my mind. Face after face ofmen, women, boy and girl chil-dren; parents, siblings, andfriends; work portraits, weddingportraits, family portraits; headshots, standing shots, seatedshots; close-up, full body, stand-ing pensively, seated demurely—portraits that seemed to form anendless, interchangeable litany.

From the moment I first laideyes on them, I’ve been capti-vated by the insights theseimages give us into the culturaldynamics of diaspora. Thesephotos witness black communi-ties practicing forms ofself-presentation that revealthe inextricable relationshipbetween how black people‘image’ and how they ‘imagine’themselves; they draw attentionto the role of photography andportraiture as forms of expres-

national cultures? I would sug-gest that we can, in fact, locatethe visual emergence of suchBlack European national sub-jects within the frames of someof the seemingly most mundaneexamples of historical photogra-phy—images that are frequentlyoverlooked or taken for granted.That site of emergence is familyphotography: both informalsnapshots and professional stu-dio portraits. My currentresearch engages the familyphoto as a dynamic and con-tested site of black cultural for-mation. It charts the emergenceof a Black European subjectthrough the medium of photog-raphy by counterposing howtwo different Black Europeancommunities—Black Britonsand Black Germans—used pho-tography to create positiveforms of identification andcommunity in the first half ofthe twentieth century in waysthat challenged the racist stereo-types that Blacks in Germany

and the UK confronted in theirdaily lives.

Focusing on the family pho-tography of Black Germansfrom the turn of the centurythrough the 1950s and on thestudio portrait photography ofAfro-Caribbean Britons in theimmediate postwar period, mybook in progress, Capturing theBlack European Subject, exam-ines how photography became avehicle through which Afro-Germans and Black Britonswrote themselves into historicalnarratives of nation and culture.It contrasts the British and Ger-man contexts in ways that artic-ulate differences among therespective colonial, post-colo-nial, and diasporic histories ofeach country. In each of thesecontexts, photographic technol-ogy became an important site ofcultural formation for BlackEuropean diasporic subjects.

At the center of my inquiryare three sets of images. PartOne focuses on the family pho-tographs (formal portraits, insti-tutional photos, and informalsnapshots) of five Black Germanfamilies in the interwar yearsand during the Third Reich.Part Two examines two sets ofphotographs of Afro-CaribbeanBritons: first, the 1950s photo-journalism of postwar arrivalpictures taken of the Windrushgeneration of migrants from theCaribbean to the UK publishedin British newspapers (in partic-ular Picture Post), and, second,an archive of images that exem-plifies the portraits this commu-nity created once established inBritain—portraits produced by

the father and son team ofErnest Dyche, Sr. and ErnestMalcolm Dyche. Each of thesephotographic archives marks aqualitative shift in the represen-tation of Black Europeans, forthese images compose alterna-tive meanings of Britishness andGermanness in ways that weredecidedly against the grain ofdominant notions of the purityof British and German culturalidentity. During my residencethis year at the Robert PennWarren Center, my work willfocus primarily on the secondsection of the project, “ImagingBlack Britain: Archive, Photog-raphy and the African Diasporain Europe,” and, in particular,on a close analysis of the DycheStudio’s archive.

African American culturaltheorist Fred Moten articulatesan approach to images thatemphasizes an attentiveness to“the whole sensual ensemble ofwhat is looked at,” for, as hewrites, “the meaning of a photo-graph is cut and augmented bya sound or noise that surroundsor pierces its frame” (2003 210,205). Engaging the broader“sensual ensembles” of theseparticular images helps usaccount for some of the mostimportant, yet ever elusive,dimensions of the image-mak-ing practices of black families indiaspora by focusing on howphotography operates in excessof vision and sight. Put anotherway, what if we set our sightsbeyond ‘what we see’ as the soleregister for understanding theimpact of the photo? What ifwe consider the work these

images do (or were intended todo) as more than visual docu-ments? What interests me aboutthese portraits, in fact, are thevery things that mark theirsimplicity and lack of sophisti-cation as visual artifacts—

specifically, a seriality andfamiliarity that makes them reg-ister profoundly.

Here, my reference to ‘regis-ter’ refers not only to how theseimages evoke affective connec-tions visually, but also, andequally importantly, to howthey resonate and enunciatediasporically in ways that often

exceed the sensory range of thevisual. In the vocabulary ofmusicology, “register” is a mea-surement of the highness orlowness of the pitch of a sound;register is always relative to aninstrument’s or voice’s specific

capacity to pro-duce a limitedrange of pitches.For example, onemight speak of asoprano’s use ofthe high, middle,or low registers ofher voice, orremark that thelow registers of abassoon rattled thetable. Adaptingthis concept to thefield of visual cul-ture, we mightsimilarly think ofthe photograph asan instrument witha distinct set ofcultural, affective,and semiotic regis-ters, which map arange of sensibili-ties within a givencommunity or cul-ture and that indexand evoke theinvestments andattachments of

individual subjects as well. Likethe vocabulary of music moregenerally, the concept of registeroffers an alternative, extendedway of understanding the cul-tural work of the photographicimage.

These photographs citefamiliar tropes of individualsattempting to project and por-

tray success, respectability, andprosperity. As an archive ofanonymous images that lackbiographical information, dates,or other identifying material,these photos register not somuch as narratives of individualaccounts, but, instead, throughthe ways they evoke and corre-spond with things we’ve seenbefore. What registers first andforemost is their genre: the pho-tographic portrait, which repro-duces portraiture techniquesand conventions utilized sincethe late nineteenth century. Aspart of this larger historical tra-jectory, they closely resemblesimilar portraits taken by pho-tographers in former colonialterritories in Africa, the Ameri-cas, the Caribbean, Asia, andthe Pacific Rim—photographsused at the time to validate so-called ‘scientific’ theories ofracial and cultural difference.Such images circulated widelythroughout Europe (andbeyond) as objects traffickedbetween lay collectors andtrained scholars who traded andcommissioned them as visualproof of racial distinctions andtaxonomies, and they trace theirorigins to the earliest uses ofportrait photography as evi-dence for hierarchical social andracial differences (Green 1986;Pinney/Peterson 2003; Poole1997; Edwards 1992, 2001).iThese different but related setsof portraits share striking com-positional continuities that dis-play photographic techniquescommon to a generationof photographers—techniquesthat structured the Western

These photos witness black communities practicing forms of self-presentationthat reveal the inextricable relationship between how black people ‘image’

and how they ‘imagine’ themselves.

What if we set our sights beyond ‘what we see’ as the sole registerfor understanding the impact of the photo? What if we consider the workthese images do (or were intended to do) as more than visual documents?

African Caribbean Portraits, Ernest Dyche Collection, BCA

African Caribbean Couples, Ernest Dyche Collection, BCA

photographic gaze in portraitureof this period.

In contrast to these earlierinstances of the transnationalcirculation of black photo-graphic portraits, postwar por-trait photography of AfricanCaribbeans in Britain was circu-lated not by photographers,scholars, or collectors, but byand among West Indians them-selves as a way of connectingthem to families and friendsseparated by oceanic geographicspans. These photographs dis-play a more agential practice ofportraiture that resignifies thehistorical uses of this genre thatsought to objectify and silencetheir non-white, subaltern sub-jects. The portraits made andcirculated within this commu-nity display their subjectsappropriating photography inways that witness their attemptsto represent themselves as par-ticular kinds of modern agents.

Elaborating on Moten’s con-cept of “the musics of theimage,” these photos are‘pitched’ to register histories andexperiences that activate andanticipate our assumptions andassociations. In this way, theymap a “structure of feeling”ii

that makes these images makesense according to multiple, butquite particular, cultural andhistorical contexts. That struc-ture of feeling, and one of theirmost powerful registers, is aspi-ration: an aspiration to be some-one, to be proud andgood-looking, respectable andupstanding—an aspiration tomiddle-class prosperity. Theiraspirations preceded these indi-viduals’ migrations but were

enabled in new ways throughthe forms of autonomy transat-lantic resettlement produced.These portraits’ register exceedswhat they show, as they evokedmoments of recognition andaffective responses within thecircuits of exchange in whichthey circulated.

If genre is one significantrange of these photographs’ reg-ister, then what coordinates as alower range counterpart is thehistorical register of generationand the use of portraiture as anexpressive diasporic practice byWest Indian migrants. Thisarchive of portraits featuresmembers of the much-cele-brated Windrush migration—an event that the arrival of theHMS Windrush, the first of aseries of ships that broughtcountless Caribbean migrants toBritain, inaugurated in 1948,initiating one of the largest andmost visible waves of collectivemigration of West Indians tothe UK and ultimately reshap-ing the iconography of BlackBritain in fundamental ways.For, beyond its demographicimpact, this migration is distin-guished by its extensive docu-mentation as a visual eventheralded at an unparalleled pop-ular level.iii From the late 1940sonward, numerous publishedphotographs featured AfricanCaribbean migrants poised totake up the promises of employ-ment and economic prosperitymany felt they had earnedthrough their support of Britainin two World Wars. Photojour-nalism played a critical role indefining how this new popula-tion was seen and portrayed.

Photographs of Windrusharrivals were published widely inmainstream UK newspapers andmagazines—most famously inPicture Post, whose significancein shaping British public per-ception has been examined indepth most notably by Stuart

Hall (Hall 1972, 1992). Theimages of Afro-Carribeanmigrants produced by journal-ists in their documentation ofthis population’s arrival, settle-ment, and ‘homemaking’ have

made the Windrush migrationone of the most iconic represen-tations of Britain’s multi-cul-tural history in a manner thatinscribed these individuals inparticular ways in the visual his-tory of postwar Britain.

Picture Post’s visualizations

of this generation of WestIndian migrants oscillatebetween the depiction of indi-viduals and groups, shifting rest-lessly between huddled massesand lone travelers. Both group

Letters • Spring 2008 • 4 Letters • Spring 2008 • 5

and individual figurations havedeeper gendered articulations.The figure of the lone Blackman depicted in these urban(land)scapes is a man alone inhe world, yet a man making hisown way. Despite the accompa-nying captions and headlines ofconcern that ventriloquize theanxieties of a white British pub-lic, the gender of his isolationsituates him as the agent of hisown destiny. These images offera compelling visual accompani-ment to Mary Chamberlain’sacclaimed 1997 oral history ofintergenerational Barbadianmigration to the UK and of thehighly gendered narrative struc-tures revealed in their accounts.Chamberlain highlights the factthat many of her male infor-mants emphasized the spon-taneity of their decisions tomigrate, which they narrated astales of heroic adventure or ofmasculine camaraderie againstall odds. Their vivid accounts ofagential autonomy retrospec-tively justified the travails theyencountered on arrival inBritain with a happy endof accomplishment throughcleverness and self-reliance.

These images extend thistheme through the atmospher-ics of shadow and light (whichmimic the jazz bar and its illicitsignifications) and amplify therisks and loneliness of diasporathat such accounts oftenattempt to filter out. Thisimage confirms a similar scriptwhere the lone male diasporicsignifies autonomy, albeit with-out the economic opportunitiesthat fueled his migration. Onthe one hand, in the British

popular imagination, such animage situates the black malediasporic as perpetually at riskand illustrates the potentialdangers of diasporic failure.Those black migrants who didnot attain the employment theysought became objects of con-cern and distrust, as idlenessthreatened an availability towhite femininity in other sitesof urban sociality—a threat thatreinvoked older discourses ofmoral panic about the dangersposed by black populations inthe metropole and in thecolonies (Carby 1992). Thesejournalistic images of the Win-drush generation providedanother vehicle for the circula-tion of such moral panics. Atthe same time, they material-ized an older script ofCaribbean masculinity in dias-pora in which the black malefinds affirmation through repu-tation and the male crew. Here,a sense of self bound up inautonomy and activity links thelone male, as a daring andadventurous sexual agent, to theanonymity of the city and tothe culture of the street as a siteof asserting difference andautonomy.

Unlike photojournalism’sportrayal of arriving Caribbeanmigrants, or earlier anthropo-logical photographic depictionsof Blacks as social problems orracial pathologies, the images ofAfrican Caribbeans taken bystudio photographers in thisperiod witness their black sub-jects engaging and adapting thisvisual technology as a mediumfor rendering a positive accountof their history. Against the

backdrop of numerous imagesproduced by photojournalists inthe postwar period, West Indianmigrants attempted to tell theirown stories of their experiencesin Britain through the imagesthey commissioned from privatestudio photographers. As one ofmy informants commented:

“When we arrived here inEngland it was horrible. It wascold and miserable. But we alwayslooked good. Even if you only hadone suit or one nice outfit, it wasclean. We taught the English howto dress. They used to wear thesame clothes everywhere. You don’twear the same thing everywhere!We had work clothes, and goingout clothes, and Sunday Best.Those teddy-boys used to beat upour boys because they looked sosharp. It was not just about race.It was about style!”

We see ‘Sunday best’ all overthese images; it is, perhaps, theembodiment of this generationof Caribbean migrants’ aspira-tions to middle class respectabil-ity. Sunday best were literallychurch clothes, but they were

also dress clothes with a differ-ence. They were clothes meantfor worship in a communitywith a deeply religious sensibil-ity. Sunday best was attire thatstood apart from both the work-week and from leisure time.Sunday best was dressing up,but not showing off; it wasclothing intended to be reverentand to show respect for theplace and practice of worship, aswell as gratitude and humility inthe presence of God. Sundaybest was a demonstration offaith that signified the fact that,for West Indians in this period,respectability was not just aquestion of class but also had anequally important spiritualdimension. The version of Sun-day best in these images wasintended to harmonize backhome as a familiar register forthe loved ones left behind whoreceived them; it ‘placed’ rela-tives and friends in a visual con-text of people ‘keeping faith’oceans away. These portraitsprojected upright folk who, inwhat was seen as the highly sec-

Journalists’ documentation of this population’s arrival, settlement,and ‘home-making’ via images of Afro-Caribbean migrants have made

the Windrush migration one of the most iconic representations ofBritain’s multicultural history, and it inscribed these individuals

in particular ways in the visual history of postwar Britain.

Against the backdrop of numerous images produced by photojournalistsin the postwar period, West Indian migrants attempted to tell theirown stories of their experiences in Britain through the images they

commissioned from private studio photographers.

“Is There a British Colour Bar?” Picture Post, July 1949.

African Caribbean Portraits, Ernest Dyche Collection, BCA

redemption. Those invocationsdo not merely reference theexperience of families and com-munities separated and dis-persed through the Atlanticslave trade, but they produceaffective connections betweenand among them. The imagingpractices of black families indiaspora mirror these invoca-tions and these connections. Inthis way, they enact the paralleltensions of diasporic aspirationand its discontents.

Moreover, if these portraitsregister the tensions withindiasporic aspirations, then thephotography studio itself func-tioned as a space that refractedthese dynamics in interestingways. While the sitters oftenexperienced thwarted aspira-tions in their daily lives, theDyche Studio served as amomentary space of exceptionthat pampered and put them incharge. The photographers’wives received Caribbean

migrants at the studio; the Mrs.Dyches, Jr. and Sr., sat withthem and solicited their visionsof how they wanted to appear.They were offered dressingfacilities and accessories to helpthem achieve their desired look,then were ushered into the stu-dio, where their wishes werecommunicated to the photog-rapher as part of a collaborativeimage-making practice. Thephotographers catered to andcrafted their visions of them-selves both during the shootand afterward, when theyreceived proofs that wereretouched according to theirwishes. These sitters were notonly paying customers; theywere also empowered con-sumers and agential subjects.

The studio and these dias-poric imaging practices werethus not outside the politics ofrace and class, but, instead,were a space where race, class,and nation were creative and

collaborative enactments thatresignified diaspora in both itsaspirations and its discontents.As the groundwork for a futuregeneration of Black Britons andthe social transformation theywould struggle for decades laterin the streets of Handsworth,Toxteth, Lewisham, and Brix-ton. As images intended to pre-sent a visual account of theirsubjects’ successful establish-ment in Britain, they are multi-faceted historical texts thatdepict the image of life ‘overthere’ that these individualswanted their communities‘back home’ to see.

These portraits offer analternate historical account tothat of the photojournalism of

this period—a story of how,despite the challenges theyfaced, a proud Black Britishcommunity emerged thatchanged the face of postwarEngland. Photography served adistinctly diasporic function asa bridge that allowed this com-munity to maintain its affilia-tions to its origins, while alsorecording its transition from‘migrants’ to ‘Britons.’ In thisway, the Dyche Collectionconstitutes an invaluable visualarchive that demonstrateshow and why photographybecame one of the chosenmedia through which AfricanCaribbeans forged diasporicidentities in Britain.

Letters • Spring 2008 • 7Letters • Spring 2008 • 6

ular world far away from theirfamilies and community, gavethe appearance of maintainingsimilar values. These imagesaspire to ‘the good life,’ yet theyalso perform encoded variationson the tropes of respectabilitythey compose and project. Assuch they represent aspirationas anything but simple orstraightforward. These pho-tographs enunciate stylistic vari-ations in a kind of freestylingthat disrupts a desire to hearthem playing solely in a gender-neutral register of respectability.In these portraits we see elegantfedoras—yet fedoras oftencocked carefully to one side. Wesee cigarettes and zoot suits thatstraddle the line between Sun-day best and ‘Friday nightfinest.’ We see pens, watches,and other adornments, yet theseaccessories were frequently notthe property of their sitters.Often borrowed or supplied asprops by the studios sitterspatronized, they were utilized asindividual stylizations andcoded performances that suggestthe bad boys and not-always-so-good girls beneath Sunday best:men and women making theirown way on the other side ofthe Atlantic. We often see rhine-stones and other forms of jew-elry that appear a bit flashier orat odds with Sunday best. Wenotice the absence of a usuallyubiquitous accessory in thiscommunity: crosses. Sometimeswe see hems that show a bitmore leg than would ordinarilybe displayed in and around thepews. In these images, Sundaybest often reflects the secularity

and autonomy that migrationachieved. As much as theyimage reverent and respectableCaribbean men and women,they also show covertly fly girlsand boys winking at the cameraand flaunting their autonomythrough style.

Unlike in the journalisticportrayals, many of thesemigrants arrived with the confi-dence of their accomplishmentsin the Caribbean, responding toBritain’s calls to employmentbecause they felt they had some-thing to offer as British subjects.The negative reception theyencountered was both a surpriseand a disappointment. It is thetensions of thwarted diasporicaspiration that these images alsoreflect. Sandra Courtman pointsout in her reading of these pho-tos that such images articulatethe tensions of diasporic aspira-tion, as many West Indiansfailed to find employment at thelevel they were promised or atequivalent levels to those ofwhite British workers. She citesnursing, one of the primaryoccupations of migrant labor, asone notorious example of suchdiscrimination:

A Dyche photograph shows anurse in a starched and immacu-late uniform; she proudly carries apile of textbooks to suggest she ison the way up, advancing herknowledge and training. But it isunclear whether her uniformmight be that of a State Registeredor State Enrolled nurse […] Toread this image culturally wouldbe to acknowledge contradictoryevidence about a profession thatwas to become a prime example of

bitterness and disillusionment.Having fought hard in theCaribbean to become properlytrained and qualified, womenwere recruited to nursing, testedin advance of joining and assuredof proper career structure. Onarrival in England, however,many nurses found themselves rel-egated to lower status jobs as aux-iliaries or cleaners […A]photograph taken in a nursinguniform is [thus] a token ofimmense pride and a symbol of itswearer’s successful fight againstinstitutional racism. (Courtman140).

These images express boththe hopeful aspirations of dias-pora as well as the disappoint-ments that inevitably accom-panied them. At the same time,the practice of creating and cir-culating visual accounts ofimprovised configurations of selfand identity demonstrate a tena-cious pride in and retention ofthose aspirations nevertheless.These portraits’ dissonancesthus offer coded indications ofthe fact that many were notdoing quite as well as they’dhoped or appeared. Neverthe-less, they wanted to capture andproclaim the often ambivalentaccomplishments they didachieve.

The relationship betweendiasporic musical cultures andimage-making practices, and thenecessary linkage between thesonic and the visual, offers aparticularly illuminating aper-ture for thinking through dias-pora. Similar to Paul Gilroy’sconception of music as a cathar-tic vehicle of transcendence,

these photographs’ aspirationalqualities demonstrate a redemp-tive practice, albeit one wheretranscendence and redemptionare neither escapist nor naïve,but, instead, are pragmaticallyutopian. The subjects consti-tuted in/through these imagesaspired to transcend the pres-ence of racism and discrimina-tion—not as an erasure of thoserealities, but as the foundationfor building a better future forothers. For what motivated themigration of both this genera-tion and so many others was anexplicit and unyielding invest-ment in futurity—a future thatwould create more possibilitiesfor their children and their com-munities, as well as for them-selves.

The version of diasporic self-making that these images com-pose parallels the call andresponse lyrics and rhythms ofgospel in the black church.Gospel music hails its congrega-tions as both subjects of faithand as subjects of a racializedcultural formation that directlyand indirectly references theMiddle Passage, enslavement,and racial domination. Gospelarticulates a tenacious faith inthe face of overlapping historiesof hope and despair—historiesin which music was a culturalpractice of communication andconnection, mourning and affir-mation. As scholars and practi-tioners of black music havenoted, music, and the cadencesof gospel in particular, provideda site of lament and resistancewhose rhythms invoked a rela-tionality of struggle and

Sunday best was a demonstration of faith that signified the fact that,for West Indians in this period, respectability was not just a question

of class but also had an equally important spiritual dimension.

Photography served a distinctly diasporic function as a bridgethat allowed this community to maintain its affiliations to its origins,

while also recording its transition from ‘migrants’ to ‘Britons.’

Dyche Studio Exterior, Ernest Dyche Collection,Birmingham City Archives (BCA)

iThese are photographic practices that date back to the pioneering, yet pernicious, work ofcriminologist Alphonse Bertillon and eugenicist Francis Galton and their development of thecriminal mug shot and composite photo, respectively. Each used photography as evidence toclassify, document, and distinguish ‘innate’ human differences defined as deviant or raciallyinferior. See Alan Sekula’s seminal essay, “The Body and the Archive,” October 39 (Winter1986), 3-64.ii“[A] felt sense of the quality of life at a particular place and time … a sense of the ways inwhich the particular activities combined into a way of thinking and living … a common ele-ment we cannot easily place.” Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution, Pelican: London,1975, 63-64. See also: Mary Chamberlain’s explication of Williams in the context of Caribbeanmigration to Britain in Narratives of Exile and Return, Macmillan: London, 1997, 32-33.iiiThe 1948 Nationality Act gave all members of the Commonwealth the right of British citi-zenship and made the prospect of traveling to the UK a more attractive option for residents ofthe British Caribbean. Nevertheless, the U.S. continued to be the preferred migrant destina-tion until the implementation of the McCarren-Walter Act in 1952, which restricted entry tothe U.S. and led to an increase in immigration to Britain. Prior to the 1952 Act, annual immi-gration to the UK from the Caribbean numbered in the high hundreds. These figures doubledthe following year to 2,200, leaping to 10,000 in 1954, to 27,550 in 1955, and peaking even-tually at 66,300 in 1961.

Letters • Spring 2008 • 8

was also a participant in his cul-ture to the end of his life. Herepresents an engaged, multiva-lent capacity that fits andinspires the Center’s work andthat aligns with Vanderbilt’s owndevelopment as an institution.

Since the Center is not domi-nated or owned by any one disci-plinary strain, and since it iswhole-heartedly supportive ofthe research of its participants,every faculty member who walksthrough the heavy wooden doorof the Vaughn Home can feelthat she is entering her ownplace. When, in 2000, a centralfund—the Academic VentureCapital Fund, which furnishedresources to transinstitutional‘startups’ throughout our univer-sity’s colleges and schools—wascreated out of Vanderbilt’sendowment, the Warren Centerserved as a model and a bench-mark for successful interdiscipli-nary collaboration. Because theCenter had been so successful,we were able to know what tolook for to gauge progress andachievement in our new transin-stitutional centers. As we movetoward even larger efforts ininterdisciplinary humanitiesstudy at Vanderbilt, we continueto look to the Warren Center asa model; since its inception, andjust like its namesake, the RobertPenn Warren Center has neverceased in its own evolution.

I barely had a chance to knowVanderbilt before the birth of theRobert Penn Warren Center forthe Humanities. But since I havebeen here, and the Center hasbeen here, I have never witnessedanything less than the fullest and

highest achievement that Van-derbilt has to offer; much of thatimmense achievement has beenempowered by the Warren Cen-ter. To imagine humanities atVanderbilt without it is notreally impossible, but it isdepressing, because the WarrenCenter and Vanderbilt havegrown together in such a waythat the former is simply inextri-cable from the latter.

The interface between theRobert Penn Warren Center andVanderbilt’s other humanitiesdepartments and centers is soporous, so vascularized, that it isimpossible to tell where one pro-gram ends and another begins.That is as it should be. Over thetwenty years of its existence, theWarren Center has made itselfindispensable to the practice ofthe study of the humanities here.The expectations it has estab-lished continue to inform andinspire our faculty’s style of inter-action with each other as col-leagues and collaborators inmaking connections and raisingconsiderations that expand thepossibilities of the human mindand of human culture.

If you looked at an aerial mapof the campus, you would see theRobert Penn Warren Center rightat the campus’s cartographicheart. The Center is also withinthis university’s subtle heart.Humanities has become part ofwho we are, part of how we arerecognizable to ourselves as Van-derbilt. Over its two decades onour campus, the Robert PennWarren Center has helped makeall of Vanderbilt University aplace for the humanities.

As we move toward even larger efforts in interdisciplinary humanitiesstudy at Vanderbilt, we continue to look to the Warren Center

as a model; since its inception, and just like its namesake,the Robert Penn Warren Center has never ceased in its own evolution.

Letters • Spring 2008 • 9

As someone who recentlycelebrated his own twen-tieth anniversary as a

member of Vanderbilt’s faculty,and who, this past year, wasappointed to serve as Vanderbilt’sInterim Chancellor, I am acutelyaware that composing a retro-spective can be difficult. To sumup two decades of an individualcareer full of many differentphases is daunting enough—tocharacterize and pay tribute totwo decades of a Center for theHumanities that has intersectedand interwoven with multipleaspects of Vanderbilt’s life is a truefeat, but an important one if onewants to understand the signifi-cance of the humanities and itsfaculty to Vanderbilt University.

Vanderbilt’s own faculty offi-cially proposed a Center for theHumanities in 1987 with thepurpose of fomenting andencouraging research and accom-plishment in humanistic studyon Vanderbilt’s campus. Fromthe very moment of its incep-tion, in its very conception, theWarren Center has been interdis-ciplinary and collaborative: theinitiative which created it wasthe product of the minds ofEnrique Pupo-Walker fromSpanish and Portuguese, GeorgeGraham from political science,Paul Conkin from history, andAlisdair MacIntyre from philoso-phy. Jacque Voegeli, Dean of theCollege of Arts and Science, wasinstrumental in seeing the pro-gram brought to manifestation.The Center began its program-ming in 1988 with Charles Scottfrom the Department of Philoso-phy as the first faculty director.

The post of Faculty Director hassubsequently been fulfilled byPaul Freedman from the Depart-ment of History, Paul Elledgefrom the Department of English,and Helmut Smith from history.Mona Frederick, the Center’sExecutive Director, arrived atVanderbilt with experiencefrom the National Human-ities Center, and she hasproven essential to the figu-ration of the Center’s pro-grams and its identity as awhole; her ongoing influ-ence and leadership haveensured the Center’s pro-grammatic continuity andintegrity.

The original intentionof the faculty memberswho created the Center wasto create and cultivate aplace, an actual physicalspace, in which scholarscould discuss their work inan interdisciplinary environ-ment—in which scholars wouldlearn, with curiosity and respect,the tools of one another’smethodologies in order to beable to apply those methodolo-gies to their own work whenappropriate. The original ideasfor the program were so funda-mental and so necessary thatthey are still present and func-tioning within the Center’s coretwenty years later: the Centerwould have a Fellows program; itwould support ongoing facultystudy groups; it would offer andsponsor opportunities for specialprograms within the University.

Since spring of 1988, theCenter has been home to dozensupon dozens of programs, pro-

jects, and reading groups. Bookshave arisen out of the collabora-tive work of the Warren Center,and original art has been com-missioned and debuted. Thesheer volume and disciplinaryarray of programs in the Center’shistory gives any observer an idea

of the Center’s reach and range,and it is demonstrated easily bythe scope of the projects that willcelebrate its twentieth year: a lec-ture by the Chair of the NationalEndowment for the Humanities;a working conversation withFranz Rosenzweig; a collabora-tion with the Center for Latinand Iberian Studies; a co-spon-sorship with the Blair Appal-achian Concert Series that willdebut in performance musicfrom the novels of Laura IngallsWilder; and, most spectacularlyand significantly, a series ofevents considering Robert PennWarren’s Who Speaks for theNegro?, a collection of the poet’sinterviews with individuals

involved in the Civil Rightsmovement, that will address civilrights issues in our own dawningcentury.

Following Robert Penn War-ren’s death in 1989, the Centerwas named in his honor. RobertPenn Warren, as much as any

person, could be an emblem ofVanderbilt University’s traditionof humanistic study. He was acollector of voices and a chroni-cler of cultural moments, butthroughout his whole life as awriter we see his own mind andhis own ideas continue to takeshape. He wrote an accurate andconsidered response to the pivotof time he inhabited within hisown century. He was of hismoment but also had a poet’sconsciousness of himself as aninhabitant of a much longer,broader history. As well as col-lecting voices and creating cul-tural documents, he added hisown voice; as well as serving as amediator and as a narrator, he

The Robert Penn Warren Center: A Place for the HumanitiesBy Nicholas S. Zeppos, Interim Chancellor, Vanderbilt University

The Robert Penn Warren Center

The spring of 2008 will mark the20th anniversary of the foundingof the Robert Penn Warren Cen-ter for the Humanities at Vander-bilt University. To celebrate thisachievement, the Center hasplanned a series of diverse activi-ties throughout the semester. Theseries, entitled “A Place for theHumanities,” features five eventsthat demonstrate the centrality ofthe humanities on our campus.

1First, on Thursday, February7, the Warren Center willco-sponsor a presentation

by the human rights activist and1992 Nobel Peace Prize recipientRigoberta Menchu. Menchu iswidely known as a leading advo-cate of human rights and ethno-cultural reconciliation, not onlyin her native Guatemala butaround the world. Menchucomes to Vanderbilt thanks to theefforts of the Center for LatinAmerican and Iberian Studies,with whom the Warren Center issponsoring her talk.

2On Tuesday, February 26,the Warren Center, in con-junction with the Chancel-

lor’s Office, will present a publiclecture by Bruce Cole, eighthchairman of the NationalEndowment for the Humanities.Cole, a scholar of Renaissance arthistory and literature, has servedas chairman since 2001; duringhis tenure at the NEH, he haslaunched several significant initia-tives, including We the People, aprogram to encourage the teach-ing, study, and understanding ofAmerican history and culture. A

reception for Chairman Cole is at5:00 p.m., and his lecture willbegin at 6:00 p.m. Both eventswill take place in Ingram Hall atthe Blair School of Music.

3On March 13 and 14, sev-eral influential scholars fromEurope and the United

States will convene for the War-ren Center’s symposium “Think-ing with Franz Rosenzweig.”This international gathering willfocus on Franz Rosenzweig, oneof the most trenchant intellectu-als, religious or secular, Jewish ornon-Jewish, of the twentiethcentury. The symposium is pre-sented in association with theVanderbilt University Library, theProgram in Jewish Studies, theMax Kade Center for Europeanand German Studies, and theCenter for the Study of Religionand Culture. Although much ofthe symposium will take the formof a working discussion for schol-ars, some key events will be opento the public. Further informa-tion will soon be available.

4Friday, April 4, will markthe 40th anniversary of theassassination of Dr. Martin

Luther King, Jr., and the WarrenCenter will commemorate thisoccasion with a two-day civilrights conference on April 4-5.The conference takes as its start-ing point Robert Penn Warren’s1965 volume Who Speaks for theNegro?, in which Warren recordsinterviews he conducted withdozens of major Civil Rights lead-ers, including King. At the con-ference, the Warren Center will

bring together many of the figureswhom Warren interviewed, aswell as other activists, scholars,and community leaders workingon civil rights issues today. Thetwo-day conference has both apublic dimension as well as aworking dimension, and it willexamine the history of the CivilRights movement as well as thefuture work that must be done tobegin healing the legacy of racismin the 21st century. The eventsand lectures on April 4 will beopen to the public, and detailswill be released in the spring.

5Finally, on April 12 we closeour 20th anniversary cele-brations with a rousing con-

cert at the Blair School of Music.Dale Cockrell, professor of musi-cology, has worked for many yearsto produce faithful recordings ofthe music documented in LauraIngalls Wilder’s Little House on

the Prairie books. His effortsresulted in two albums, HappyLand: Musical Tributes to LauraIngalls Wilder and The ArkansasTraveler: Music from Little Houseon the Prairie. On April 12, theWarren Center and the BlairSchool of Music will bringtogether talented musicians andspecial guests to give a publicconcert of these historicAppalachian songs. The event isfree and open to the public, butguests should reserve tickets inadvance.

Information about these events,including times, locations,and registration, will be postedon our website as soon as itbecomes available. Please visitwww.vanderbilt.edu/rpw_centerthroughout the spring to checkfor updates.

Letters • Spring 2008 • 11

What books are our col-leagues in the Collegeof Arts and Science

writing and editing? LETTERShas asked Vanderbilt University’shumanities and social sciencesdepartments to share their facultymembers’ 2007 publications.Their answers give us a glimpseinto an active and diverse schol-arly community.

Houston Baker. I Don’t Hatethe South: Reflections onFaulkner, Family, and the South.Oxford University Press.

Robert Barsky. The ChomskyEffect: A Radical Works Beyondthe Ivory Tower. MIT Press.

Katherine Crawford. EuropeanSexualities, 1400-1800. Cam-bridge University Press.

Nathalie Debrauwere-Miller.Envisager Dieu avec EdmondJabès. Les Editions du Cerf.

Marshall C. Eakin. The His-tory of Latin America: Collisionof Cultures. Palgrave MacMillan.

Florence Faucher-King andPatrick Le Galès. Tony Blair1997-2007: Bilan des réformes.Presses de Sciences Po.

Lenn E. Goodman. Love ThyNeighbor as Thyself. OxfordUniversity Press.

Lenn E. Goodman and RobertB. Talisse, editors. Aristotle’sPolitics Today. State Universityof New York Press.

John W. Janusek. AncientTiwanaku. Cambridge Univer-sity Press.

Mark Jarman. Epistles. Sara-bande Books.

Jane G. Landers, Douglas R.Egerton, Alison Games, KrisLane, and Donald R. Wright.The Atlantic World: A History,1400-1888. Harlan Davidson.

Elizabeth Lunbeck, Angela N.H. Creager, and M. NortonWise, editors. Science withoutLaws: Model Systems, Cases,Exemplary Narratives. DukeUniversity Press.

Tracy Miller. The DivineNature of Power: Chinese RitualArchitecture at the Sacred Site ofJinci. Harvard University AsiaCenter.

Kelly Oliver. Women asWeapons of War: Iraq, Sex, andthe Media. Columbia UniversityPress.

Kelly Oliver, Alice A. Jardine,and Shannon Lundeen, edi-tors. Living Attention: On TeresaBrennan. State University ofNew York Press.

Lynn Ramey and Tison Pugh,editors. Race, Class, and Genderin “Medieval” Cinema. PalgraveMacMillan.

Charles E. Scott. Living withIndifference. Indiana UniversityPress.

Dieter Sevin, editor. GeorgBüchner: Neue Perspektiven zurinternationalen Rezeption. ErichSchmidt Verlag.

Dieter Sevin, and Richard E.Schade, editors. PracticingProgress: The Promise and Limi-tations of Enlightenment.Rodopi.

Tracy Sharpley-Whiting.Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’sHold on Young Black Women.NYU Press.

Robert B. Talisse. A PragmatistPhilosophy of Democracy. Rout-ledge.

Robert B. Talisse and D.Micah Hester, editors. JohnDewey's Essays in ExperimentalLogic. Southern Illinois Univer-sity Press.

Jeffrey Tlumak. Classical Mod-ern Philosophy. Routledge.

David Wood. Time After Time.Indiana University Press.

What We Are Writing

Letters • Spring 2008 • 10

A Place for the Humanities:20th Anniversary Events for the Warren Center

POSTPONED

Letters • Spring 2008 • 13Letters • Spring 2008 • 12

Robert Penn Warren and the University in its TimeHelmut Walser Smith

We are in the year2008, and we cele-brate the 20th

anniversary of the Robert PennWarren Center among the fore-runners of humanities centersthroughout the country and,indeed, throughout the English-speaking world. The celebrationof the Warren Center necessarilyevokes the name of Robert PennWarren himself. An undergradu-ate at Vanderbilt, he also taughtbriefly in the English Depart-ment before moving on to postsat LSU, Minnesota, and Yale. Toa significant degree, Warrenderives his connection with Van-derbilt from a group of poets andintellectuals known as the Fugi-tives, and, in a different constel-lation, from the SouthernAgrarians. The manifesto of theSouthern Agrarians, “I’ll Take myStand,” counts as one of the mostcomplex and interesting docu-ments of southern literature. It isalso a defense of racial segrega-tion—“let the Negro sit beneathhis own vine and fig tree,” asWarren put it in “The BriarPatch,” his contribution to themanifesto.

Every university has itsmoment, and this was, for goodor ill, a significant moment forthe humanities at Vanderbilt. “I’llTake my Stand” was a publicpronouncement by southernintellectuals, almost all of whomhad been either students or pro-fessors at Vanderbilt. The mostprominent figures, in addition toWarren (who was at Oxford atthe time) and the poet Allen

Tate, hailed from the Depart-ment of English; they includedJohn Crowe Ransom, DonaldDavidson, and John DonaldWade. Herman Clarence Nixonhad taught in the Department ofPolitical Science, and Lyle HicksLanier in the Department of Psy-chology, then a discipline closerto the humanities. History alsohad representatives. FrankLawrence Owsley came from theDepartment of History, and thebook was dedicated to Walter L.Fleming, then the history depart-ment chair. Not all faculty mem-bers at Vanderbilt supported themanifesto, and some, like EnglishDepartment Chairman EdwardMims, publicly opposed theviews of the Agrarians. Nor didthe administration officially sup-port it. Still, “I’ll Take my Stand”was a document that had becomeassociated with Vanderbilt Uni-versity. When I arrived in 1991, Iremember reading recommenda-tion letters that referred to it—positively.

But Vanderbilt was not theonly university which, whencalled upon, called it wrong.

There is the far more famouscase of the University of Sala-manca, whose professors deliber-ated in 1491 on a proposaloffered by Christopher Colum-bus. If we believe WashingtonIrving, and we should not, thescholars quoted scripture andconjured a flat earth, whileColumbus cited science andcourageously planned to sail theconvex of the earth all the way tothe Indies. “You cannot do it,”

the scholars harrumphed. Thescholars, of course, were deadright. Columbus’s calculationswere based on the second-cen-tury coordinates of Ptolemy, whoimagined the earth as smaller incircumference than it actually

was. Columbus, the scholarsrightly maintained, would havesailed his ships and crew into avast nothingness, where—ill-pro-visioned—they would have dis-appeared without trace. Thescholars did not believe that theearth was flat—almost no onedid; rather, they knew itsexpanse. But a group ofunknown islands and two conti-nent-sized land masses savedColumbus and his crew from thefate the scholars grimly foresaw.Now, however, we remember the

collective obstinacy of the facultyof the University of Salamanca,and we chalk it up to the timid-ity of their erudition.

Erudition is not besides thepoint, however, for it speaks to akind of intellectual patience

prized by the SouthernAgrarians, whose sting-ing critiques were alsodirected against the fre-netic pace of modernindustrial society. TheSouthern Agrarians didmore than prize erudi-tion: they powerfullydeveloped an approachto literature that focusedon the text itself, anapproach whose namederives from JohnCrowe Ransom’s “TheNew Criticism,” pub-lished in 1941. NewCriticism, though alsodeveloped by I.A.Richards and T.S. Eliot,constitutes one of theremarkable contribu-tions of Vanderbilt’s

humanities to scholarship; here,Robert Penn Warren was of cen-tral importance, in particular,through two works—penned atLSU but partly conceived atOxford—entitled UnderstandingPoetry (1938, coauthored withCleanth Brooks), and Under-standing Fiction (1943). Against aprevalent tendency to emphasizethe biography of authors, thesocial context of writing, and lit-erary history, Warren and theNew Critics focused on the for-mal aspects of poetry and writ-

Robert F. Barsky, French & Italian, English:Canadian Embassy in Washington, DCCanadian Studies Program Enhancement Grant

William P. Caferro, history:Institute for Advanced Study, PrincetonResearch FellowshipWar, Economy, and Culture in Italy, 1350-1450

Katherine B. Crawford, history:Folger Shakespeare LibraryResearch FellowshipThe Sexual Culture of the French Renaissance

Edward H. Friedman, Spanish & Portuguese,comparative literature:

Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at theUniversity of Texas at Austin

Research FellowshipThe Narrative Fictions of Gerald Brenan

Gregg M. Horowitz, philosophy:American Academy in BerlinBerthold Leibinger Berlin PrizeOld Media

Mark B. Hosford, art:Frans Masereel CentrumArtist’s Residency

John A. McCarthy, comparative literature, Germanic & SlavicLanguages, and Director of the Max Kade Center forEuropean and German Studies:

Council for International Exchange of ScholarsFulbright German Studies Summer Seminar GrantGermany and the European Union

Moses E. Ochonu, history:American Council of Learned SocietiesInternational and Area Studies FellowshipColonial Meltdown: Northern Nigeria in the Great Depression

David E. Petrain, classical studies:National Endowment for the HumanitiesSummer StipendThe Tabulae Iliacae and the Development of Visual Storytelling

in the Early Roman Empire

Thomas A. Schwartz, history:Nobel InstituteResearch FellowshipHenry Kissinger and the Dilemmas of American Power

Hortense J. Spillers, English:Council for International Exchange of ScholarsFulbright American Studies Summer Seminar GrantAmerican Religion

John J. Stuhr, philosophy:Society for the Advancement of American PhilosophyResearch GrantAmerican Philosophy in National and International Perspectives

Arleen M. Tuchman, history and Center for Medicine,Health, and Society:

American Council of Learned SocietiesResearch FellowshipDiabetes: A Cultural History

Steven A. Wernke, anthropology:National Science FoundationResearch GrantConversion or Synthesis? Investigating Early Colonial Negotiations of

New Religious and Social Forms at Malata, an Inka ProvincialVillage and Mission Settlement in Highland Peru

External Grants and FellowshipsWe extend congratulations to our colleagues in the College of Arts and Science for

receiving the following external grants and fellowships as a result of applications submittedin the 2006 calendar year. We rely on departments to provide us with this information.

Helmut Walser Smith

Letters • Spring 2008 • 15Letters • Spring 2008 • 14

ing, and they underscored theaesthetic unity of literary works.This approach powerfully influ-enced subsequent criticism, andit came to represent a mainstreamposition in English departmentsfor the next quarter century. Atonce elitist and serious, NewCriticism was also a potent sci-ence of erudition. A Vanderbiltcontribution, it was also a contri-bution that, like most scholarlycontributions, bears the mark ofa far wider republic of letters,including Oxford University,Louisiana State University, theUniversity of Minnesota, andYale. Universities in their timerarely stand alone.

Just over fifty years after itsdeliberations on Columbus, theUniversity of Salamanca facedanother question. The faculty oftheology was asked to commentupon a Latin-language dialoguewritten by Ginés de Sepúlvedaand intended to justify the Span-ish decimation of the Indians.Sepúlveda argued that the Indi-ans were subhuman “Homun-culi” with “hardly a vestige ofhumanity.” Cannibals, dirty anduncouth, the brutish Indians,Sepúlveda averred, were “like pigswith their eyes always fixed onthe ground.” Closer to animalsthan to men, they were naturalslaves—so Sepúlveda argued. Thefaculty found the argumentunsound and voted to censor thebook, which, in fact, did notappear until the nineteenth cen-tury. But Sepúlveda was a courthistorian with significant influ-ence, and he managed to com-

mute the censorship into adebate, which was then held inValladolid from 1550 to 1551.His opponent was Bartolomé deLas Casas, who had eloquentlyargued that the Indians wereamong God’s children, and thatthe Spanish devastation of thenative populations was a crime.Las Casas, it is true, provided jus-tification for the colonization ofthe new world in the name of theChurch, and he had not theslightest doubt that eternaldamnation awaited natives whodid not see the light. He alsooffered an early justification forpaternal colonization of “back-wards” peoples, and argued, longbefore Rudyard Kipling, that col-onization imposed a moral dutyon the colonizers. We may nowlook back on Las Casas’s argu-ments critically; but, within theterms of the debate, his was themore humane position. Thedebate, alas, was a draw, but thetheologians of the University ofSalamanca sided with Las Casas,and, two hundred years later,Samuel Johnson could still say, “Ilove the University of Salamanca,for when the Spaniards were indoubt as to the lawfulnessof their conquering America,the University of Salamanca gaveit as their opinion that it wasnot lawful.”

This is the university in itstime. There are other examples:when the University of Paduabecame the center of humanisticlearning in the 1450s, or when,in the 1580s, the University ofLeiden developed neo-stoicism—

formidable moral and politicaldoctrines for a Europe torn bywar and plague; other possibili-ties include 1699, when Cam-bridge elected Sir Isaac Newtonas Lucasian Professor of Mathe-matics, even though he was notactive in the Anglican church, orwhen, in the mid-eighteenth cen-tury, the Universities of Glasgowand of Edinburgh became thecenters of an Enlightenmentwhose luminaries include, amongothers, Francis Hutcheson, AdamFerguson, and Adam Smith. Sucha list could be easily extended—to include the University ofBerlin at the beginning of thenineteenth century, when itdeveloped seminar education anda new understanding of scholar-ship and science; the Universityof Basel in mid-century, withwhich we associate the names ofJacob Burckhardt and FriedrichNietzsche; and Johns HopkinsUniversity at the end of the cen-tury, which adopted Europeanmodels of graduate educationand, in this way, influenced thedynamic world of higher educa-tion in the United States. Thetwentieth century, too, is repletewith instances of universities intheir time: Peking University,from which the bulk of studentsof the anti-imperialist Mayfourth Movement of 1919 came;Brooklyn College, which, findingitself in the epicenter of Euro-pean immigration in the 1930s,became a hothouse of new ideas;the New School of SocialResearch, set up in the 1940s and1950s as the haven for critical

theorists once associated with theUniversity of Frankfurt; the Uni-versity of Paris X, Nanterre, a rev-olutionary hot spot in 1968, butalso the university of EmmanuelLévinas, Jean Baudrillard, andPaul Ricouer; Yale University inthe 1970s and 1980s, whenFrench-influenced deconstructionturned the university’s gentile iflearned literary debates into pro-ductive acrimony; and PekingUniversity, again, from whosehalls came many of the studentswho formed the largest singleinstance of student protest inworld history—on TiananmenSquare in 1989.

It seems to me that the careerof Robert Penn Warren tells ussomething about Vanderbilt in itstime. By the 1950s, Warrenrecanted his earlier political views(but not New Criticism), and, asa public intellectual, he embracednot only desegregation but theCivil Rights movement. In 1965,he published a highly influentialbook, entitled Who Speaks for theNegro? The book interlaces com-mentary with a series of printedinterviews with leading civilrights leaders (the audio tran-scripts of these interviews cansoon be heard at the VanderbiltUniversity Library). In crucialways, Who Speaks for the Negro?contributed to the opening of adialogue between white and blackintellectuals. Warren also wrote aseries of essays reflecting on thedivergent paths of north andsouth after the Civil War. Inthese capacities, he representedsimultaneously the most empa-

thetic and withering critic of thewhite south.

The Robert Penn WarrenCenter was founded twenty yearsafter 1968, a turning point forcivil rights and for political cul-ture in this country more gener-ally. At the time of the Center’sfounding, in 1988, Vanderbiltstill confronted the political lega-cies of agrarianism, which wasstill largely regional in focus, andthe university counted fewminorities in its student body. Italso remained a hierarchicallyorganized university in whichassistant professors could notspeak to deans (to say nothing ofprovosts and chancellors) with-out the accompaniment ofdepartment chairs. It had a smallnumber of brilliant professors

and a small number of outstand-ing students. Much of this hassince changed, and the WarrenCenter has helped by creating anatmosphere of open criticismand interdisciplinary thinking. Ithas, in other words, been animportant part of a remarkabletransformation which, in the lasttwenty years, has seen the cre-ation of top-flight faculties in thehumanities—a number of which,whatever the official rankingssay—are genuinely in the toptwenty in the country, and someof which are in the top ten. Moreimportantly, the faculty in thehumanities has become morediverse, and the density of cut-ting-edge scholarship in thehumanities more impressive.Better students have followed.

Is it possible that Vanderbiltwill again have its time—a sec-ond moment like that of theUniversity of Salamanca? Perhapsit will, as a part of a wider repub-lic of letters—the way that uni-versities almost always maketheir marks. Perhaps it will bybuilding on elements of its tradi-tion—on the remarkable atten-tion to textually immanentinterpretation that defined NewCriticism, which might now bereinterpreted as a trans-discipli-nary philology. Or perhaps dis-tinction will arise from theimmensely productive domain ofmedicine and society, or of reli-gion and culture, or of ethics andthe environment, or for ourremarkable focus on the Ameri-cas. Perhaps it will come from

scholars who conceptualize thecategory of race anew. Or, per-haps it will come from a scholarworking alone.

It is October 12; the oldColumbus Day. The BBCreports that Al Gore and theUnited Nations’ Intergovern-mental Panel for ClimateChange (IPCC) have beenawarded the Nobel Peace Prize“for their efforts to build up anddisseminate greater knowledgeabout man-made climate change,and to lay the foundations forthe measures that are needed tocounteract such change.” It is thesecond year in a row, followingMuhammad Yunus, that some-one with ties to Vanderbilt haswon the Peace Prize. Is this theUniversity in its Time?

Universities in their time rarely stand alone.

The Warren Center has helped by creating an atmosphere of opencriticism and interdisciplinary thinking. It has, in other words,

been an important part of a remarkable transformation.

Warren Center StaffHelmut Walser Smith, DirectorMona C. Frederick,Executive Director

Galyn Glick Martin,Activities Coordinator

Sarah Harper Nobles,Administrative Assistant

Miranda Garno Nesler,LETTERS editor

LETTERS is the semiannual newsletterof the Robert Penn Warren Center forthe Humanities at Vanderbilt Univer-sity, VU Station B #351534, Nashville,Tennessee 37235-1534. (615) 343-6060, Fax (615) 343-2248. For a list-ing of Warren Center programs andactivities, please contact the aboveaddress or visit our Web site atwww.vanderbilt.edu/rpw_center.

Statement of PurposeEstablished under the sponsorship ofthe College of Arts and Science in1987 and renamed the Robert PennWarren Center for the Humanities in1989 in honor of Robert Penn Warren,Vanderbilt alumnus class of 1925, theCenter promotes interdisciplinaryresearch and study in the humanities,social sciences, and, when appropriate,natural sciences. Members of the

Vanderbilt community representing awide variety of specializations take partin the Warren Center’s programs,which are designed to intensify andincrease interdisciplinary discussion ofacademic, social, and cultural issues.

Vanderbilt University is committed to principles of equalopportunity and affirmative action.

Published by University Design and Publishing,Creative Services.

Photos by Daniel Dubois and Steve Green.

THE ROBERT PENN WARREN CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES

2007-2008 Robert Penn Warren Center Graduate Student Fellows

2007-2008 Robert Penn Warren Center Faculty Fellows

Letters • Spring 2008 • 16

Robert Penn Warren Center for the HumanitiesVU Station B #351534Vanderbilt UniversityNashville, Tennessee 37235-1534

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