Locating and Evaluating Academic Secondary Sources for Essay 3: Historical Analysis

Transcription

1 Humanities Core Course, Winter 2016 Tamara Beauchamp, Instructor Locating and Evaluating Academic Secondary Sources for Essay 3: Historical Analysis A quick review: Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. They include letters, manuscripts, diaries, journals, newspapers, speeches, interviews, memoirs, documents produced by government agencies, photographs, audio recordings, moving pictures or video recordings, research data, and objects or artifacts such as works of art, maps, buildings, tools, and weapons. These sources serve as the raw material to interpret the past, and when they are used along with previous interpretations by historians, they provide the resources necessary for historical research. Secondary sources are works that interpret or analyze after the event has occurred, often based on an examination of primary sources. Secondary sources can be for a general audience (Wikipedia, blogs, documentary films and television, nonfiction written for the public). Secondary sources can also be academic (published in monographs or peer reviewed academic journals indexed on databases like Jstor and Project Muse). We suggested that you start trying to locate secondary sources with the America: History & Life database (hosted by EBSCO) for this particular paper, as it searches many of the most important academic journals on American History. Say, for instance, you are writing about one of Thomas Nast s postbellum cartoons (a primary source) from Harper s Weekly, like the wood engraving print "This is a white man's government" of 1868 to the left (held in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division). On America: History and Life, I don t arrive at much from the search terms postbellum or Reconstruction. However, the combination of Thomas Nast and cartoons, I arrive at 44 search results. I ll have to refine that search to the Reconstruction period by assessing individual search results. Some of these results are labelled Review, which indicates a book review of a scholarly monograph. These may provide useful historical context and also can give you a sense if you want to pursue the book that is being reviewed at the library. Some of these are labelled Academic Journal, which means they are scholarly articles in an academic journal. These are the the kinds of scholarly secondary sources that we hope you will use to supplement/refine/develop your own interpretation of the image. If the source s description has an Abstract, it can help you to quickly ascertain if the source is relevant to your topic. Pay attention to the Historical Period and Subject Terms of relevant results these terms can often help you to search more effectively for other topical material. 1

2 Let s examine two of the top two academic journal hits in our Nash search (the first pages of each are attached): 1. Thomas Nast and the President Author(s): Wendy Wick Reaves Source: The American Art Journal, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1987), pp Published by: Kennedy Galleries, Inc. Stable URL: 2. The Graphic Art of Thomas Nast: Politics and Propriety in Postbellum Publishing Author(s): Baird Jarman Source: American Periodicals, Vol. 20, No. 2, Special Issue: American Periodicals and Visual Culture (2010), pp Published by: Ohio State University Press Stable URL: Determine disciplinary perspective Reaves s article tells us on the front page that she is a curator at the Smithsonian Museum. The EBSCO search information page tells us that Jarman is an art history professor at Carleton College. So they are both art historians, but perhaps with different professional approaches to their disciplines.! Determine interpretive methodology. From what you understand about a given humanistic discipline, is this a typical approach? We know that art history studies visual objects in terms of their historical development and stylistic contexts (i.e., their genre, design, format, and style). It seems that both Jarman and Reaves take a distinctly cultural history approach to these visual artifacts, foregrounding how politics of the era are embedded in Nash s representations.! Evaluate the type of evidence is the scholar employing. How does the scholar interpret that evidence? By situating it within a historical context? Through close reading or visual analysis? By discussing how contemporary readers or viewers received or understood the evidence?! Identify key claims and situate those claims in relationship to your own interpretive thesis. Group Writing Activity Read and annotate the attached excerpts of the two academic secondary sources. In small groups, first summarize each scholar s central claim in a few sentences. Your summary should introduce the disciplinary perspective of each scholar (e.g., German scholar John Smith, cultural historian Alice Fahs, literary critic Oren Izenberg, etc.) and an active signal verb. The majority of your summary should be in your own words, but you certainly may cite key terms or important turns of phrase, in which case you should give the appropriate page number in MLA format. Second, isolate how each article might usefully supplement an argument about the meaning-making of the image above. While neither excerpt addresses the print This is a white man's government directly, both do make interpretive claims about the period in which Nast produced that image. What can we learn about the meaning-making context of this image from these two secondary sources? In your own words, describe how Reaves and Jarman each can supplement/complicate/develop a reading of that image. 2

3 THOMAS NAST AND THE PRESIDENT Wendy Wick Reaves /T HE PRESIDENT FOUND out that I was here and he sent word that he would like to see me," Thomas Nast ( ) wrote to his wife from Washington in His letters describing this visit document an extraordinary friendship between the famous cartoonist and the President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant ( ). The National Portrait Gallery's recent acquisition of Nast's 1872 watercolor of Grant (Fig. 1), made for publication in London's Vanity Fair, brings to light an unusual presidential portraithat offers a revealing insight into the relationship between these two influential national figures. Thomas Nast first developed a great admiration for General Grant during the Civil War. Having started with Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper in the mid-1850s, the young German-born artist was working for Harper's Weekly by There Nast's first image of his hero, Columbia Decorating Grant, referring to the vote of thanks and the gold medal just awarded Grant by Congress, appeared on February 6, The affiliation with Harper's during the war marked the beginning of Nast's success, but although much of his work was strong, pro-union propaganda, heavily laden with patriotism and pathos, at this point in his career he was not primarily a political cartoonist. His war pictures were often multiple vignettes on a single theme and were usually more emblematic than satiric. Sentimental pictures such as Christmas Eve - with a soldier by the campfire in one vignette and his wife and sleeping babies in the other - and patriotic subjects such as the Gallant Color Bearer attracted much attention. "Thomas Nast has been our best recruiting sergeant," President Abraham Lincoln reportedly claimed, and Grant himself commented that the artist "did as much as any one man to preserve the Union and bring the war to an end." ' There were two factors in the mid-1860s that probably influenced Nast to turn away from these decorative, WENDY WICK REAVES, Curator of Prints at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, has written several publications on American prints. She is the author of George Washington, An American Icon: The Eighteenth-Century Graphic Portraits (1982), that accompanied the exhibition of the same title sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and the National Portrait Gallery, and the editor of and a contributor to American Portrait Prints: Proceedings of the Tenth Annual American Print Conference (1984). sentimental, and patriotic pictures and to focus instead on the biting caricature portraits for which he became justly famous. The first was the use of two of his Harper's pictures in 1864 for separately published, widely distributed, campaign propaganda.2 Nast's Compromise with the South depicted a slick, Southern soldier shaking hands with a decrepit Union veteran across a grave of federal soldiers killed "in a useless war." Appearing shortly after the Chicago convention nominating General George B. McClellan as the "peace party" candidate, it created a sensation. Not only was the press run of this issue of the newspaper increased, but also the cartoon was reprinted for separate, campaign distribution. Another Nast picture, The Chicago Platform, featuring candidate McClellan surrounded by critical vignettes, was also circulated separately. These successes must have convinced Nast of the direct effect his pictures could have in the electioneering process, and they launched him into presidential politics where he would be an important player for the next twenty years. The second factor that sharpened Nast's wit and his pencil for satire was his intense hatred of President Andrew Johnson, whose bitter battle with radical Republicans over reconstruction policies and executive powers was leading towards an impeachment trial. The emotional heat of this great clash between the executive and legislative branches of government brought out the worst of Nast's enmity and the best of his biting wit. Nast's depictions of Johnson as Nero, as Iago, and as "King Andy" showed his mastery of the caricature likeness and the focused, political attack. From this point on, Nast excelled at creating such cartoons, combining keen political intuition, deftly exaggerated but identifiable portraits, and apt literary analogies or humorous situations. Nast was thus well prepared to lead Harper's Weekly and its readership into the 1868 presidential contest, in which Grant was the obvious candidate for the Republican Party. Knowing that the General would win the nomination, Nast painted for the Chicago Republican Convention a large curtain (unlocated) depicting the entrance to the White House flanked by two pedestals. Seating Grant on the "Republican Nominee" pedestal, he drew Columbia pointing to the empty one with the words "Match Him" below. The curtain, hidden on the convention stage, was revealed at the very moment of Grant's nomination.3 It was a dramatic The American Art Journal/Volume XIX * Number I 61

4 The Graphic Art of Thomas Nast: Politics and Propriety in Postbellum Publishing Baird Jarman For two decades after the Civil War, the political cartoons of Thomas Nast remained the most recognizable visual feature of Harper's Weekly, at the time one of the most widely circulated magazines in the United States. But despite his considerable fame, his dominance over the pictorial content of a successful periodi cal, and his unprecedented salary among American illustrators, Nast often felt beleaguered and disgruntled at Harper & Brothers. At the end of 1886, after nearly quitting on several earlier occasions, he de clined to renew his contract with his publishers. Writers on Nast have commonly blamed his dissatisfaction and waning influence at the firm upon political feuding with the management, allegedly an increasingly conservative group reluctant to tolerate Nast's radical, reformist views. But this ubiquitous explanation greatly exaggerates any such political rift while ignoring a crucial shift in cultural attitudes towards height ened civility in mainstream journalism that did far more to fuel re sentments between the artist and his editorial board. Nast's alienation from his longtime employer stemmed less from divergent political goals and more from differing approaches to the niceties of political debate, most notably his failure to adapt his distinctly violent cartoons to stan dards of decorum embraced by his publishing house during the 1870s. The mounting dissension between Nast and his colleagues should be contextualized within a larger cultural shift in American middle-class society toward a renewed interest in civility and gentility, a trend be gun early in the century but interrupted by the sectional conflicts that escalated into the Civil War. At midcentury magazines existed as a somewhat nebulous cultural formation, caught between two markedly different productions of the publishing world, the newspaper and the book. Newspapers operated within the unruly public sphere with its raw market forces and parti san politics, whereas books accessed more polite realms of history and literature. Though some journalists espoused high ideals, newspapers were often viewed either as prejudiced political organs or as salacious "retailers of filth."1 Books on the other hand were widely linked with the edifying influence of cultured civility. As Richard Bushman notes, American Periodicals, Vol. 20 No. 2 (2010) Copyright 2010 by the Ohio State University

5 The Graphic Art of Thomas Nast 157 "No single item was more essential to a respectable household than a collection of books, and no activity more effectual for refinement and personal improvement than reading."2 And books not magazines formed the bedrock of the Harper & Brothers business; indeed Harp er's Weekly and Harper's Monthly were both launched originally as at tempts to bolster book sales. These two journals, along with Atlantic Monthly, Putnam's Magazine, and a few others, constituted a new class of high-minded, independent publications whose shared aspirations resound in the Weekly's subtitle, "A Journal of Civilization." Nast's embattled position at Harper's Weekly primarily stemmed not from his political opinions but rather from the uncivil manner in which he presented them. As the Weekly sought to emphasize aesthet ics, urbanity, and gentility, Nast's violent style of cartooning reminded people more of the old newspaper world, rife with character assassins and "journalistic knife-throwers."3 Especially after the cultural mile stone of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, Nast's brutal style of carica ture appeared out of step with an increasingly popular new school of illustrators at Harper & Brothers who, in tandem with leading editorial voices, helped revive the sentiment of civility and sought a return to genteel discourse after the necessarily charged rhetoric and imagery of the Civil War years. Nast & Curtis: The Firebrand and the Conciliator During the 1850s Fletcher Harper, youngest of the four Harper broth ers, founded two magazines, Harper's Monthly and Harper's Weekly. Both magazines quickly developed large readerships throughout the country. Though never an official organ of the Republican Party, the Weekly evolved into a highly influential advocate of Republican prin ciples during the war. By the late 1860s the periodical had established a consistent political viewpoint anchored by the contributions of two dominant personalities, Thomas Nast, who provided political cartoons and other illustrations, and George William Curtis, who supplied po litical editorials and other commentaries. Though both men also oc casionally contributed to other periodicals, their public personas re mained indelibly linked with the Weekly. Most writers on Nast have explained his resignation from the Week ly by pointing to mounting frustration that purportedly stemmed from profound political disagreements with Curtis, who held sway over the journal after Fletcher Harper's death in During Nast's various vacations from active cartooning in the Weekly, rumors arose that "cer tain political differences between proprietor and artist constitute the cause."4 And towards the end of his life Nast told his biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, that relations with his employer soured because the firm