Teachers will have two opportunities to explore the work of writer Ernest Hemingway in the upcoming weeks. Professor Dan Monroe, who is the John C. Griswold Distinguished Professor of History at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, sees Hemingway not only as the most important American literary voice of the twentieth century but also as a window into an era of war and social upheaval. Monroe will offer both an Ashbrook Saturday Webinar on selected short stories of Hemingway and a weeklong summer seminar covering these and longer works.

The webinar, the last of this school year’s series of free online continuing education opportunities, will be offered Saturday, May 18. Webinars are not only excellent opportunities to explore topics of historical interest; they afford a taste of the text-driven, interactive experience of our Master of Arts in American History and Government program, taught partly online and partly in residence on the Ashland University campus. During the fourth on-campus session this summer, Monroe will offer a study of Hemingway as one of the newest of our program’s Great Texts courses. We asked Professor Monroe to chat with us about his interest in this iconic American author.

What inspires you to offer a course on Hemingway in the MAHG program?

I find Hemingway endlessly fascinating both as literature and for his portrait of the first half of the 20^th century. I have a minor in American literature. But as a historian, I believe I can offer a richer and deeper analysis of Hemingway’s fiction than that offered in many literature seminars; I can tease out the cultural and historical ethos reflected in Hemingway’s fiction. “Wine of Wyoming” offers a good example. The story describes a French couple who has immigrated to the US and moved to Wyoming, where they open a hotel and make wine. Prohibition comes along, and they are prevented from doing this anymore. The story illustrates the social and historical background at the end of the 1920s and the struggles immigrants faced in assimilating into a Puritanical cultural environment.

What texts will you ask students to read for the summer MAHG course?

Two novels: A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls, plus selections from Hemingway’s short stories.

For the Saturday webinar, will you ask teachers to read some of Hemingway’s work ahead of time?

Five short stories are recommended reading: “Soldier’s Home,” “Big Two-Hearted River, Part 1,” “Wine of Wyoming,” “One Trip Across,” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” If participants read these ahead of time, the webinar will be more productive, since we’ll be able to discuss them together.

Have you done research on Hemingway?

There is an international conference on him every two years, and I try to go to as many as I can and present papers on the historical and cultural context of his work. I’ve published an article based on a presentation I made at a conference at Key West. As you know, in the literary field for the last 25 or 30 years, it’s all about deconstructing texts—finding implicit racism or sexism or some other “ism” in the writing. I think the historical context I can bring to Hemingway is more interesting and less tiresome to people.

What is an example of the history Hemingway’s work illuminates?

A Farewell to Arms shows the post-World War I disillusionment with war. So many casualties came out of the war, yet there was no fundamental change in European borders, so it seems that nothing was achieved by the conflict. In the little-known short story, “Black Ass at the Crossroads,” Hemingway describes the carnage associated with an ambush set-up to kill German soldiers retreating to Aachen, Germany, in the closing months of World War II. It is a melancholy reflection on the awfulness of war, even amidst the triumphalism usually associated with that just war.

Hemingway’s spare style now seems pretty natural to us, but he’s largely responsible for changing our sensibility on that. How was his style received when he began writing?

His work was subject to a mixed critical reception. Many found it wonderful and gripping, although there were a few—I think they were wrong—who found it too spare, like he had denuded the trees of leaves and clipped off the branches. There were also those who thought his subject matter stepped over the boundaries of propriety and the accepted mores, since he alludes to subjects like abortion and homosexuality and gives cryptic descriptions of sexual activity—subjects not treated in polite literature of the time.

In understanding Hemingway, is it important to know that he worked first as a journalist?

Absolutely. If you look at Hemingway’s journalism in the 1920s, you will see a lot of his stylistic experimentation there. He is using simple declarative sentences, without a lot of adjectives and adverbs. He is actually doing what journalism should do, reporting rather than commenting. Occasionally, however, he cannot resist a comment. Hemingway was asked to interview Mussolini for The Toronto Star. He found Mussolini a kind of buffoon. He comments on what Mussolini was wearing, saying “It is hard to take seriously a man who wears a black shirt with white spats.” Mussolini was dressed like a clown—and yet by this time he was ruling Italy and would soon be dictator.

Hemingway spent a lot of time overseas. Why? What do you see as his relationship to the land of his birth? Was he uncomfortable here, or is it rather that he sought experience he could not get here?

Hemingway does live an expatriate life, not only in Paris in the 1920s. I think he was always in search of evocative places. But also, like many writers and intellectuals, he liked to go off by himself—to the isolated island of Key West in the 1930s, which might as well have been a foreign country at that time, or to a home in the hills in Cuba in the 40s and 50s. I’ve been through his published letters, and I don’t find any distaste for the US; and, indeed, in some of his stories you see loving descriptions of the landscape of the American West or of Michigan. Hemingway was not like some expatriate writers—say, Ezra Pound—who chose life abroad because they hated the American political system and American culture.

Does Hemingway take an American perspective with him when he goes abroad?

If you talk to Europeans, you find that they view Hemingway as the archetypal American writer. They see A Farewell to Arms as a distinctly American reaction to Italy at the time of World War I.

For teachers – the annual Founders Fellowship workshop will be July 22 – 26, 2013. Attending teachers will explore the Founding Era and the intersections of civil and economic liberty. There are 60 spots available. Apply today and take advantage of this exclusive opportunity! See the complete program details here

Participants will receive:

• Hotel accommodations, transportation during the program, and most meals during the week.
• A $400 travel stipend will be provided at the conclusion of the program. An additional $100 will be available upon completion of all post-program activities.
• A certificate for 30 seat hours.

Application Deadline: March 26th

For students – the annual Constitutional Academy will be held July 15-20, 2013. This program is free of charge to students. Attending students will learn from college professors and subject-matter experts about how history, economics, politics, and current events connect. Encourage your students to apply today!

This program will:

• Allow students to participate in a dynamic week-long campus residential program in Washington, D.C. that will prepare them for college-level learning.
• Provide advice about college and career opportunities in politics, journalism, economics, and other fields that rely on a firm grasp of history.
• Impart knowledge on how to be an effective citizen and principled leader.
• Expand student’s world view, provide new friends, and renew their patriotism.

Application deadline: May 1st.

Have questions about either program? Email events@billofrightsinstitute.org

Writing her capstone project, Julia Rae Fuette wanted to synthesize the most important concepts she’d learned in her coursework as a Masters student in American History and Government. At the same time she wanted to design a project that she could put directly to use in her teaching at Cornerstone Christian School in Wildomar, California, a community in California’s southern central valley. At this small K-12 school, Fuette is chair of the history and English departments and teaches a range of high school courses, including American history, American government, American literature, and AP US history.

Fuette selected a theme that she could follow from the Founding to the Civil War. She wrote a 115-page narrative of six different moments in American history when the Constitution’s tacit allowance of slavery in the new American republic became a point of contention in American political life. Each “moment” was defined by primary documents that show the Founders and their successors struggling to reconcile their quest for liberty with the shameful fact of their country’s acceptance of slave labor.

Then she designed seven lesson plans, so that her students, too, might explore those six moments through original documents, after first considering short meditations by Founder John Jay and Civil War leader Abraham Lincoln that set the context for the entire story.  In December, her capstone was honored with the Chairman’s award.

Fuette’s advisor, Professor Pete Myers, calls her capstone project “a remarkably well conceived, well researched, and well executed work. Its narrative component tells the complicated, vitally important story of slavery and the Constitution briskly, clearly, and fairly, and her series of accompanying lesson plans should serve her for years to come as a small treasure of pedagogical resources.”

“My work in the Masters program at Ashland taught me to focus on thematic-based teaching,” Fuette said. “Ashbrook’s TeachingAmericanHistory.org website opened my eyes to the wealth of primary sources I could share with my students. This helped me to pull away from the textbook, which simply bombards students with names, dates and facts.”

Fuette had nearly completed another Masters in history at California State University in Long Beach when she found the Ashland University program. She had earned 30 credits at Cal State, but hit a snag when advisors rejected her proposals for a thesis. She enjoyed the three summers she spent in Ashland immersing herself in study of primary sources. In contrast to the focus on historiography at Cal State, which elevates the arguments among contemporary historians, Ashbrook’s program invites one into the minds of American statesmen by asking students to read the documents they wrote while arguing for principles, forging compromises, and shaping law and policy.

“Today, the Constitution and the Declaration provide the themes I use to teach American history. I was not taught that at Cal State.” In government class, Fuette’s students spend a semester going through the first three articles of the Constitution, reading excerpts from “three quarters of the Federalist papers to understand the design of our government. I would never have attempted this if it hadn’t been for the Ashbrook program,” Fuette says.

“From Fuette’s example and those of similarly gifted teachers we are fortunate to assist,” Professor Myers says, he and others who commit their energies to the program “find encouragement in the knowledge that secondary school students in at least some parts of the nation are yet receiving able instruction in the principles and statecraft of the Founders.”

In the waning days of the Adams Administration in early 1801, the Federalist Congress tried to strengthen the federal judiciary and soften its defeat in the election of 1800 by creating a number of federal judgeships, including justice of the peace positions in Washington DC. President Adams signed one of those justice of the peace commissions for William Marbury, but the commission did not make it from Secretary of State John Marshall to Marbury before the new Jefferson Administration took over in March 1801. In the meantime, Marshall had been confirmed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. When the new Administration took office, Secretary of State James Madison refused to give Marbury his commission; Marbury thereupon sued Madison and asked the Supreme Court to issue Madison a writ of mandamus, a judicial order requiring Madison to hand over the commission. The Court had been given the power to issue such writs in Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789.

Eventually, the Supreme Court took Marbury’s case, and in 1803 it handed down what has been widely viewed as one of its most important decisions. Many people believe that Marshall’s opinion established the practice of judicial review — the power of the federal courts to strike down unconstitutional laws and executive actions. Others go further and contend that Marbury declared the Supreme Court to be the final, authoritative interpreter of the Constitution.Neither is true. As one scholar has noted, the Supreme Court had already been practicing judicial review before Marshall arrived: from 1789-1801, it decided eight cases involving a constitutional challenge to federal laws, and did the same in at least three cases involving state laws. While President Thomas Jefferson did not like the part of Marshall’s opinion declaring that Marbury had a right to receive his commission from Madison, Jefferson did not object to the opinion’s argument that the Supreme Court could declare an act of Congress unconstitutional and therefore void.

Perhaps that is because Marshall did not declare the Court supreme over the other branches in its interpretation of the Constitution. In Marshall’s view, declaring a law “void” simply meant that it did not operate in a federal court; so in this case, the Supreme Court could not follow Section 13, which Marshall interpreted as unconstitutionally giving the Court original jurisdiction to issue a writ of mandamus to executive officials like Madison. Marshall did not say that the Court’s constitutional interpretation bound the other branches; he simply denied that the other branches’ interpretation bound the Court. It had the power to interpret the Supreme Law of the land for itself in order to decide the legal case in front of it.

So why then was Marbury v. Madison so important? It established the Supreme Court as a politically and constitutionally independent branch of the federal government, which was by no means clear in the early days of the Republic. In 1803, the Supreme Court was a weak institution facing great political pressure from the High Federalists on one side (who wanted the Court to assert its authority and embarrass Jefferson politically by forcing him to give Marbury his commission) and the victorious Republicans on the other side (who wanted Jefferson to refuse to comply and thus weaken the federal judiciary in favor of state courts). Marshall skillfully avoided both extremes: he pleased the Federalists by declaring that Madison owed Marbury his commission, but he avoided a unwinnable confrontation with Jefferson by saying that the Court could not legally issue the order to Madison. Instead of using the case to establish the practice of judicial review, Marshall articulated the doctrine of judicial review to decide the case in a way that protected and strengthened the independence of the federal judiciary, which he believed to be essential for a national republic governed by the rule of law and respect for the rights of individuals.

Dr. Jeffrey Sikkenga, Department of History and Political Science, Ashland University

By examining King’s famous essay in defense of nonviolent protest, along with two significant criticisms of his direct action campaign, this Edsitement lesson will help students assess various alternatives for securing civil rights for black Americans in a self-governing society.

At the time Paine wrote “Common Sense,” most colonists considered themselves to be Englishmen.  Paine fundamentally changed the tenor of colonists’ argument with the crown when he wrote the following:  “Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America.  This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.  Hither they have fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still.”

This Edsitement lesson looks at Thomas Paine and at some of the ideas presented in Common Sense, such as national unity, natural rights, the illegitimacy of the monarchy and of hereditary aristocracy, and the necessity for independence and the revolutionary struggle.

Why take this course? What can students learn from a survey of the presidency that they do not learn as well from courses on historical periods?

You get to isolate one institution and one concept and follow it through time. The Presidency, and how it functions as an institution, is such an important variable within various historical periods. You can learn a lot about LBJ by studying the sixties, but you won’t understand as much without studying the changes in the presidency between FDR and LBJ.

Also, it’s easy to reduce the presidency to biography, and end up relying on amateur psychological assessments to understand why Presidents did what they did. In fact, however, the only people a president is really comparable to are other presidents.

You’ve written on the presidency yourself, notably in Thomas Jefferson and Executive Power. Do you often work on the presidency in your research? What are your current research interests?

The presidency—and changes to the presidency over time—is one of my two or three research interests. I study executive power and what it is: how much of it is a legal puzzle, and how much is a political phenomenon calling on the partisan strengths of the person holding the office?

There are three different conversations I’m involved in on the presidency. In addition to the above, I’m making a particular inquiry into who has the power to fire executive officials. I co-authored a book, The Removal Power, on this with David Alvis (also a MAHG teacher) and Flagg Taylor (married to Natalie Taylor, another teacher in the MAHG program). We met at Ashland a couple of times to work on aspects of the book. We like to call the removal power “the most important controversy you’ve never heard of.” The book will be published around Labor Day in 2013.

A third interest is in presidential proclamations. With a colleague here, I am working to compile the only complete set of presidential proclamations. We want to collect and code them so that members of the general public who need to know will be able to find them. If you were trying to find a list of every executive veto that’s ever been issued, you could easily do it. But proclamations are an area of history that has been overlooked, perhaps because the assumption is that most presidential proclamations are merely ceremonial. Nevertheless, before the 1930s, presidential proclamations carried a lot of policy significance. It is interesting to study the extent to which presidents have used proclamations to make policy unilaterally. Sometimes proclamations are used to alert the public to a power the president is using that is indisputably his; sometimes the power exercised in the proclamation has been delegated by Congress; sometimes it has been delegated by Congress but used in a way not intended by Congress.

A proclamation is distinguished from an executive order in that it goes to people outside of government, to the citizens. For example, Truman could desegregate the military through an executive order, but Washington issued the neutrality proclamation (1793) to announce to Americans at large that the country was at peace.

How important is the presidency in American government overall? Has it gained in importance since the Founding?

It has absolutely gained in importance. We now rely on the President to provide a budget for the entire government. We also assume that when we elect a president we are electing the leader of the free world. This means that contemporary presidents hold a power via the war power that far exceeds what early Americans would have expected of the presidency. For example, using the war power, George Bush sent about 500,000 soldiers to Iraq.

In our political discussions at present, are we in danger of overestimating the importance of the executive?

The budget standoff shows that on the one hand, with the growth of attention and focus on the presidency, we now have an expectations gap in domestic policy. Presidents can only do so much. It’s very hard for the President to get the policy he wants. And in foreign affairs, there are new constraints: NGOs, the international legal community—that limit the president’s power. Bush and Obama haven’t had the same flexibility that FDR had.

What will prove to be most historically important about the election we just went through?

The first thing that comes to mind is that now we have to have a national election every couple of years just to achieve one policy! Another question we’re asking about the election, of course, is whether it is a sign that the country is aligning with the Democratic Party.

You taught the first half of the course on the presidency in the fall online program, and you’ve taught both surveys of the presidency, the early and later, in the summer program. How does the online course differ from the summer course?

The summer course allows for a different dynamic. You have one very intense week. But there is a lot that cannot happen in that week. The online course, with its more traditional pacing, allows time for an idea to be introduced one week and to percolate for a couple of weeks after that. Time always brings out the best questions. So the summer courses offer intensity, while the online courses offer time for reflection.

This podcast of a lecture devlivered at the Ashbrook Center by Professor Allen Guelzo from February 28th of 2004 tells of the complicated story of the first of January, 1863, Lincoln’s “Emancipation Moment,” and the greatest moment of the American Civil War.

 

Nancie Lindblom, Arizona Teacher of the Year

Nancie Lindblom believes the study of American history can inspire positive civic action. On the walls of her classroom at Skyline High School in Mesa, Arizona, she has hung three simple exhortations: “Take a stand,” “Use your voice,” and “Make a difference.” Around each slogan she has grouped photos of American historical figures. “Not all of them are presidents,” she says. Many are humbler figures, people such as any of her students may aspire to become.

Named in November as Arizona’s Teacher of the Year, this teacher of AP US history and American government is a third-year MAHG student. She decided to pursue a Master of American History and Government at Ashland because the program combined a teacher-friendly schedule with the content focus that would strengthen her knowledge base for the classroom.

Nancie was named Arizona Teacher of the year by the Arizona Education Foundation in a thorough selection process that involved a lengthy written application, an hour-long interview, and a visit to her classroom by a camera crew who not only recorded her teaching but also interviewed the students and administrators she works with. Both students and administrators say they are inspired by Nancie’s energetic teaching style.

She has been engaged in this work for 17 years, ten of these at the high school level. When she began teaching, at Brimhall Junior High School in Mesa, she at first worried that she may have contracted a serious illness, she said, because she returned home each evening thoroughly exhausted. Soon she figured out that the teaching profession simply demands a maximal daily output of energy.

Accepting the award, Nancie agrees to serve during 2013 as an advocate for the teaching profession, speaking before professional, business, civic, educational, parent, and student groups throughout the state. As one of 52 state, District of Columbia, and US territory Teachers of the Year, she will attend national education conferences, meet with President Obama in the Oval Office, attend Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, and be considered for the honor of National Teacher of the Year, a role that entails a year of full-time education advocacy. The National Teacher of the Year program—of which the Arizona Teacher of the Year program is a part—is the oldest and most prestigious American teacher recognition program. It is a project of the Council of Chief State School Officers, a nonprofit organization located in Washington, D.C.

In her teaching, Nancie sees her immediate role as conveying the content knowledge of history while preparing the juniors and seniors in her AP history and government classes for college. But this preparation is also life-preparation:  “I have to put rigor into the classroom, guiding students in analytical writing and critical thinking. They must form their own opinions and back these opinions up with facts and analysis. I hope to teach them problem-solving skills that will help them be successful in their lives.”

Nancie uses primary texts as much as possible in her history and government classes. The MAHG program has helped a great deal with this. “Every class I have ever taken there has provided primary material for my teaching. We leave each course with a binder of primary sources. The program also sponsors a great website, TeachingAmericanHistory.org, with links to other documents.”

Nancie was interested in the MAHG program for several years before she enrolled in it. “I randomly audited a MAHG course on the Supreme Court and had a good experience, but I didn’t know how I could afford the program. So I started looking at Arizona State University’s MA program in history. I didn’t like it; it was focused on historical research, and I wanted a program that would help me as a teacher. Then I learned about theTAH grant program and received a grant to take the Progressive Era course.  When I saw that the grant could pay for the graduate credit, I realized the program could work for me. I applied for the Madison Fellow program with my fingers crossed, and was selected in 2011.” While the Madison program covers tuition, room and board, “I cover the cost of travel to Ashland. To me it’s worth it. The program makes me a better teacher because of the resources it provides, the historical content knowledge I gain, and the community of teachers I tap into.”

Nancie values the “community of teachers” who participate in MAHG courses. She finds she meets them elsewhere: “This past summer at the James Madison Fellow program at Georgetown, probably a third of those participating were Ashland students. In 2011, when I attended the last of the Ashbrook sponsored Presidential Academies, many of those teachers were Ashland students as well. It is great to make connections with all these teachers. We use social networking to stay in touch, and when acceptances go out for such programs as the seminars on the Ratification of the Constitution, Ashland students are checking with each other to see who will be attending. I met a woman in the Presidential Academy I was able to meet up with again at the (Ashbrook sponsored) Ratification seminar in Boston, so I went sightseeing with her while there. This spring I’ll be traveling to Springfield, Illinois for a conference on Lincoln,and I’ve already learned that I’ll see a MAHG friend there.”

“A friend in Arizona asked me, when I told her I was traveling to Ashland for a summer seminar, if I had arranged to room with a person I liked. ‘What if you get stuck with a person you can’t talk to?’ she wanted to know. I told her we do not have a problem with that in the MAHG program! You know automatically that you all share the same passion for teaching history and for learning about the founding of American government.”

The summer schedule of the original MAHG program appealed to Nancie, whose teaching year is very busy. As an AP teacher, she spends most evenings grading student essays. But “at the same time I can’t spend four weeks every summer at Ashland,” so she has enrolled in the new online courses, taking Professor Ken Masugi’s course on Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. “Studying face-to-face with the professor is obviously best, but this online format allows us to study face-to-face through the computer. I’ve never been successful at the usual online format, because I really need the classroom interaction.” In the webinar format, “we can share opinions and hear what others have to say.”

Nancie hopes to finish her MAHG coursework this summer and begin a capstone, so as to graduate in December 2013. Given this goal, and her ambassadorial duties as Arizona Teacher of the Year, she faces a challenging and exciting year.