As we mark 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we're reflecting on the complicated history and character of the American democratic experiment. We asked several of our authors to reflect on how their books intersect with this important anniversary. In this post, Prisoners of Congress author Norman E. Donoghue II ponders the irony that can be found in America's 250 years.
As the author of Prisoners of Congress, I see a lot of irony in the nation’s celebration of 250 years of independence. It is ironic, for instance, that in 1777–78 the people of Pennsylvania, at Congress’s insistence, arrested and punished peaceful Quaker leaders whose families had largely founded and ruled over the colony’s first century of rapid progress. Indeed, the patriots charged them with no crimes but persecuted them in ways similar to those by which Parliament harassed and persecuted the thirteen colonies. Moreover, the patriots harassed the Quakers with political strategies from the playbook Parliament had used in previous centuries to support divine-right monarchs: bullying, political chicanery, suspending habeas corpus, denying them a hearing, preventive detention, and fake news (as in the Spanktown Papers).
It is also ironic that for 250 years, almost no one has written about the Quaker Exile of 1777. It was a story that escaped the attention of both historians and the general public. Even Quakers scarcely wrote about it, though it was the worst episode in the history of their political life in North America and the worst case of religious persecution during the American Revolution. The patriots made Quaker leaders political prisoners, though no one would use that term for two more centuries. And one other irony: the same John Adams who had represented the British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre of 1770, standing up for those soldiers’ individual rights, recommended to the Congress in September 1777 that the Quakers—who were never charged with any crime—not be afforded any rights to be heard in their own defense. These were perilous times, not unlike today’s political atmosphere.
Prisoners of Congress: Philadelphia's Quakers in Exile, 1777–1778 by Norman E. Donoghue II is available from Penn State University Press. Learn more and find the book here: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09507-3.html. Take 50% off with discount code 036USA250.
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America 250: Double Trouble in the American Revolution
As we mark 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we're reflecting on the complicated history and character of the American democratic experiment. We asked several of our authors to reflect on how their books intersect with this important anniversary. In this post, Quaker, Whaler, Traitor, Spy! author Sarah Crabtree considers the roles of William and Francis Rotch in the Revolution.
At first glance, it seems that the fortunes of the Rotch brothers diverged dramatically during the American Revolution. William, the elder, believed his Quaker pacifism required him not just to remain neutral but to take bold, public, and decisive stances condemning the war that engulfed his Nantucket home. The with-us-or-against-us patriots of Revolutionary Boston felt otherwise and indicted him for high treason, a crime punishable by death. Insisting that only God could judge him, William refused to answer the charges, telling his accusers he accepted his fate.
His younger brother Francis, however, took his fate into his own hands. His earlier negotiations to spare his family’s ships, the Dartmouth and Beaver, during the Boston Tea Party had taught him the value of a different kind of neutrality: playing both sides. As war engulfed the whaling industry, Francis salvaged the family business by illicitly obtaining permits from Massachusetts and Great Britain. He relocated to the neutral Falkland Islands, where he made a fortune sailing illegally under two flags.
As I dug deeper into the brothers’ stories, the lines between these dueling portraits—one about religion and the other, revenue—began to blur. Quaker, Whaler, Traitor, Spy! traces the big, broad, messy lives that took William and Francis from the United States to France, where the brothers faced another set of treason charges amid another revolution. This graphic history uses comics both to reflect on how the Rotches made history and to interrogate how history is made.
Quaker, Whaler, Traitor, Spy!: The Trials of William Rotch with text by Sarah Crabtree and art by Melissa Philley is available from Penn State University Press. Learn more and find the book here: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-10151-4.html. Take 50% off with discount code 036USA250.
As we mark 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we're reflecting on the complicated history and character of the American democratic experiment. We asked several of our authors to reflect on how their books intersect with this important anniversary. In this post, The Declaration in Script and Print author John Bidwell discusses America's founding document itself.
Americans were thinking about anniversaries right from the beginning. After voting for independence on July 2, 1776, a jubilant John Adams predicted to his wife that future generations would observe that date with parades, gun salutes, bonfires, and illuminations. He was right about the festivities but wrong about the date. Not the vote but the Declaration of Independence, two days later, was what caught the public's imagination. Friends and enemies of Adams debated which should be the proper day of commemoration although it was clear from the outset that the anniversary celebrations would be predicated on the famous broadside printed by John Dunlap and titled In Congress, July 4, 1776.
The printed broadside is duly revered, but even more so the manuscript version of the text, the engrossed parchment now on display in the National Archives. The manuscript bears fifty-six signatures of Founding Fathers who pledged their fealty to the newly created nation and its founding principles of liberty and justice. Copiously ornamented facsimile editions construed new meanings in the manuscript during the nineteenth century. Engravings, lithographs, and letterpress broadsides displayed portraits, allegorical illustrations, and patriotic emblems intended to evoke the moral values and living presence of the signers. The Declaration in Script and Print shows how that style developed and why it flourished up through the Centennial.
The Declaration in Script and Print: A Visual History of America's Founding Document by John Bidwell is available from Penn State University Press. Learn more and find the book here: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09730-5.html. Take 50% off with discount code 036USA250.
America 250: Art in America's Past, Present, and Future
As we mark 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we're reflecting on the complicated history and character of the American democratic experiment. We asked several of our authors to reflect on how their books intersect with this important anniversary. In this post, Iconoclasm in New York author Wendy Bellion muses on the tearing down of the statue of King George III and iconoclasm's role in our nation's origin.
There are few works of art so immediately tied to the Declaration of Independence as the statue of King George III that came crashing down in New York in July 1776. Hours after the Declaration was read aloud uptown at the city’s Commons, a crowd gathered downtown at Bowling Green and destroyed the huge, gilded figure of the monarch and his horse. Some of the parts were melted down for ammunition. Others were buried, concealed, and transported back to England.
But as I demonstrate in Iconoclasm in New York, the statue never really went away. Artists kept its image and its demolition alive in paintings, prints, and sculptural reproductions, and historical reenactors performed its destruction all over again in parades and pageants that continued well into the twentieth century. Museums acquired fragments, and auctions sold pieces to collectors. Even today, a new digital installation at the Museum of the City of New York invites visitors to take a turn tugging at ropes attached to an image of the statue.
As the United States prepares to mark the Declaration’s 250th anniversary, this vibrant history reminds us that iconoclasm is part of the nation’s origin story. We need only consider today’s debates over monuments, erasure, and removal to remember that national identity is continually formed and reformed in public spaces. In 2026, a colonial-era statue is still telling new stories. In so doing, it reveals how art has always shaped our understandings of the American past, present, and future.
Iconoclasm in New York: Revolution to Reenactment by Wendy Bellion is available from Penn State University Press. Learn more and find the book here: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08364-3.html. Take 50% off with discount code 036USA250.
Q&A: Confederate Feminism, Tradwives, and Aspirational White Womanhood
“In the essay, I show that Confederate nostalgia is not just remembered; it is continually reenacted. And in the present, contemporary Tradwife culture, far-right femininity continues to frame racial hierarchy through Christian virtue, domesticity, and white womanhood.”—Rebecca Jackson, PhD
Hank Willenbrink, editor of Ecumenica: Performance and Religion, speaks to Rebecca Jackson, PhD, about her essay “White Power Brokers: Confederate Feminism, Tradwives, and Aspirational White Womanhood” from Ecumenica 18:2 (November 2025). The essay is free to read through July 15, 2026.
Jackson is a public memory and performance studies scholar whose work explores how white supremacy is embodied and transmitted through cultural rituals, heritage performances, and social media platforms in the United States.
Hank Willenbrink (HW): Rebecca, thanks for making some time to speak with me. What have you been up to since your essay was published? Not starting your own home-churned butter company, I hope!
Rebecca Jackson (RJ): Hahaha—yes, how did you know? Becca’s Homechurned Butters has a GoFundMe we can link at the end of the interview.
Life has been full in the best ways. I am busy-busy-busy and grateful for it! This past spring I was honored with the Robert A. Schanke Award for Theatre Research at the Mid-America Theatre Conference for “Confederate Christmas: Performing the Politics of Belonging”—research I conducted alongside my family, which makes the recognition especially meaningful. “Confederate Christmas” is also where I’ve begun articulating a concept Dr. Harvey Young encouraged me to pursue: white joy. What does white joy look like? How does it operate? Those questions are threading directly into the monograph I’m writing for the University of Michigan Press, tentatively titled Confederacy Now! Confederacy Always? Alongside the book, I’ve been developing new performance work. I recently debuted Daughter of White Power: An Autopsy Party at MSU Denver, in which I autopsy a life-size cabbage-patch-style effigy of white power. It is quite the spectacle, and it will find its way into the monograph as well. I’m also traveling to the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art to meet with MOCA’s head curator about Kara Walker’s Monuments exhibition. I’m consistently in awe of Walker’s work, and her Monuments show will be an important ingredient in the book’s first chapter.
On the teaching side, I was deeply moved to receive a student-nominated prize at MSU Denver—the Faculty Career Catalyst Award—and Regis University has enthusiastically accepted my “Southern Identities: Race, Place, and the Making of the American South” course for the 2027–2028 schedule.
And because the work-life balance is real, I’m training for an Olympic-distance triathlon in Boulder at the end of August. Training helps me think. Training helps me destress.
HW: Growing up in the South, your essay really resonated with me. I still recall Confederate flags with “Heritage Not Hate” written on them at the houses of classmates. How did you come into this area of study?
RJ: I came to this work through art.
Oh, the flags. People love flags, don’t they? I remember the “Heritage Not Hate” flags—they still fly in some places. Have you seen its new incarnation, “Conquered, Not Stolen”? Or “Don’t Tread on Me” imagery, which has been adopted by Neo-Confederates and liberal feminists alike, the latter swapping in uterine imagery to protest anti-abortion laws. Whether liberal, conservative, or anything in between, we use flags to signal messages, convey pride, and claim our heritages and identities. White Southerners have historically used visuality as a means of racialized demarcation—who belongs and who doesn’t—and a lot of that work gets done through visual culture.
I come to this work through art—because art often disrupts the moral assumptions embedded in visual culture. I’m inspired by artists challenging Confederate public memory and performing miracles of performance art in public spaces, such as Bree Newsome’s 2015 scaling of the South Carolina State Capitol’s flagpole to remove the Confederate Battle flag, a flag that had flown over the capitol since 1961. I had assumed these symbols were forever—that monuments were forever, that Scarlett O’Hara was forever. Those beliefs were affirmed in both the private and public spheres of my childhood. So I was completely wrecked when my sense of culture and heritage came into question and then started unraveling. That revolutionary and chaotic unbraiding of Confederate public memory occurred simultaneously with my doctoral work. I often describe the impetus of my dissertation journey as an existential crisis that resulted in a spiritual transformation—dramatic, I know, but also true. Dr. Emily Sahakian was the best possible person to lead me on that journey, and I remain grateful for her inspired and enduring mentorship. (Hi, Emily! <3)
I come to this work through art—and I mean that literally, as a practice. I’m a visual artist. I originally imagined writing a dissertation about media aesthetics and performance. I chose the University of Georgia’s PhD program because of a special assistantship that expected me to produce works in relation to Athens’s art scene—a dream come true. My first projects were film based: an experimental short inspired by Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, and then a documentary about monumental aesthetics because I have always enjoyed a love affair with monuments and memorials. I like thinking about memory and power. As I became more and more obsessed with performance art and activism, I ventured further into performance work in public places. Newsome’s performance protest kept lingering in my heart and mind even as I was still producing visual art. In 2017, I shifted gears and began constructing what would become Alternative Monuments, a monumental public performance exhibition that expanded the definition of Confederate monuments to include stories of abolition and, primarily, escape. The show ran in UGA’s President’s Garden—an intentional and significant site on campus—for two weeks each semester across four consecutive semesters. So from fall 2018 to spring 2020 I was out there, exposed in a way I had never experienced. For the most part it was great. But I also had some wild things screamed at me. Parents on campus tours with their would-be-Bulldog kids: Why do you want to erase our history! Heritage Not Hate! Learn your history! That sort of thing. I even received a letter from an older student expressing her contempt for my work. That obviously feels terrible. And it did—it felt terrible. Alternative Monuments changed the stakes for me and forced me to confront uncomfortable feedback with courage and empathy. Now I really like that courage, vulnerability, and empathy are the armatures of my scholarship and performance art. That wasn’t intentional; it is just who I became during the dissertation process. Or maybe I always was this person, and Emily liberated me through her mentorship.
So I will come to this work through art—through a desire to understand the passions associated with Confederate culture, both its legacies and its subversions, articulated through my own performance aesthetic, which leans monumental and spectacular.
HW: What is “Confederate religiosity”? Why is it so important for women in particular?
RJ: Something I appreciate about your work, Hank, is the way you treat religiosity not simply as belief or devotion but as something staged, embodied, circulated, and politically useful. Your concept of “theatres of faith” has been especially helpful to me because it names those spaces where religiosity is choreographed and cultivated so that belief becomes publicly visible and politically effective. I’ve recently returned to your second monograph, Performing for the Don, and I find myself drawn again to your discussion of how masculinity functions in Trump’s gendered performances of Christianity—how his Christian manliness draws power from a nostalgia for John Wayne–style masculinity rooted in visual culture and “God-and-country” nationalism.
That is one bridge between our work. You show how faith is performed to cultivate belief in Trump. I’m interested in how a related political theatre works through Confederate feminism to cultivate belief in white womanhood as a moral and historical authority. This is especially important for women because women are so often not read as the obvious agents of political power. That apparent distance from power is precisely what makes feminized power so effective—we can fly under the radar that way. And, for those of us who study power, this is when power is at its most effective: when it appears to be doing nothing at all. White femininity can present itself as innocent, nurturing, vulnerable, and morally upright while still doing serious ideological labor. That was true of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and I argue it remains true in contemporary white Christian nationalist culture. Women become crucial carriers of sacred memory, moral legitimacy, and racial order precisely because their authority is often “naturalized” as care rather than recognized as power.
When I talk about Confederate religiosity, then, I mean the way Confederate public memory is ritualized, aestheticized, and made sacred through Christian language, mourning practices, innocence, purity, submission, and moral spectacle. In the essay, I show that Confederate nostalgia is not just remembered; it is continually reenacted. And in the present, contemporary Tradwife culture, far-right femininity continues to frame racial hierarchy through Christian virtue, domesticity, and white womanhood.
Think about Erika Kirk—the new “it girl” of far-right femininity. I’m working on a comparative analysis right now between Erika Kirk and Glinda the Good Witch from Wicked (2024) and Wicked: For Good (2025), because Kirk is fascinating to me as a live example of how goodness itself gets mobilized as propaganda. My argument is that Glinda is not simply the narrator of Oz; she is its chief evangelist. Her charm, her moral legibility, and her proclamation of “Good News” are how she restores and preserves public faith in a corrupt regime—even after she knows the regime is corrupt. Kirk is doing something structurally similar. Her grief, her femininity, her biblical language, and her intimate, morally legible public presence all work to keep faith in a particular order alive. Kirk’s celebrity authority rests not on coercion but on the kind of performed goodness that makes propaganda feel like testimony. She rallies women to yearn for a nostalgic fantasy of “when America was great”—a fantasy built on an idealized collective memory of the 1950s, and one that, like Glinda’s proclamations, depends on its audience wanting very badly to believe.
I also think this connects to the nostalgia you trace in Performing for the Don: the longing for a fantasized social order organized around strong fathers, stable families, patriotic certainty, and clear gender roles. My essay shows how women help reproduce that order by making it feel intimate, familiar, righteous, and even beautiful. So while our archives are different, I think both of our projects are interested in how theatres of faith make ideology feel morally true, emotionally intimate, and sacred.
HW: I’m curious about your experience during the development and editing process. As I recall, this essay emerges out of your dissertation, had a strong reception at the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) in 2024, and was reshaped for the journal. I’d imagine we’re also going to see some echoes in your book.
RJ: Yes. This piece comes from my dissertation’s very lengthy second chapter, which got cut in half and became two things: the ASTR 2024 plenary and then “White Power Brokers” for Ecumenica 18:2. The plenary focused on what I’m calling “Confederate performative time” and its effects on American Christian nationalism today, analyzed through the 2021 Confederate Memorial Day at the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library in Biloxi, Mississippi. That presentation looked at how both men and women carry the legacies of Confederate public memory through ritual, dress, mannerisms, and a dedication to religious warfare and chivalry. That is where my articulation of Confederate feminism really crystallized as a feminized performance of white supremacist ideology that uses womanhood, innocence, heritage, and domestic virtue to legitimize racial hierarchy and patriarchal authority. The Ecumenica article then took that framework and ran it forward into far-right and Neo-Confederate chatrooms, which is where the Tradwife throughline really took shape.
ASTR 2024 was my scholarly coming-out conference. Who could have seen that coming?! Not me! Well, Emily predicted people would be interested in my work, but I had no idea the reception would be so overwhelmingly positive. The validation felt so good in part because I had really grappled with whether to tell people about my own white Christian nationalist upbringing and my own connections to Confederate heritage. Maybe that is part of what people responded to, that I’m not running away from those connections—I’m running toward the ways my own body affirms white supremacy in the United States.
Another gift from ASTR 2024 was our pairing as mentor and mentee, and during that mentorship I started sharing my thoughts about Tradwives and Confederate feminism with you. We’ve talked about how our research methods sometimes put us, both in real life and virtually, in dangerous places. These spaces are not easily or safely accessed by scholars of color and/or queer scholars—but we answer the call, don’t we? And what an immense responsibility that carries. My tone here is cheery, maybe even a little cheeky, but this is serious work. Risky work, too. The chatrooms can be very dark, as you know, and so I was happy to shift to Tradwives because their content is much more upbeat and positive—that is part of what makes it effective propaganda. I’ve been obsessed with Tradwives for a while now because of how precisely they reenact aspirational white womanhood and perpetuate the performance logics of Confederate “Ladies’ Memorial Associations.” It’s a sausage-getting-made situation—once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
The book—another wonderful thing to emerge from ASTR 2024, tentatively titled Confederacy Now! Confederacy Always?—will absolutely keep working on Confederate feminism, but as I mentioned earlier, Harvey Young has also asked me to think seriously about white joy, which has really lit me up. “Confederate Christmas: Performing the Politics of Belonging” is the first place I’ve started articulating those ideas, and they are threading into the book in ways I’m still discovering. This gets at the development question. Honestly, my process is very meditative. I journal a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. I take a lot of walks. I’m basically a Mary Oliver type: walking, journaling, being outdoors, and practicing mindful attention as a form of prayer. She inspires me—her essays and poetry continue to shape me.
HW: What’s it like to do research on very contemporary characters like Laura Loomer? As someone who looks at “heritage,” how do you think of the many relationships between the past and the present?
RJ: I really love writing about contemporary characters. They are just as intriguing to me as fictional ones. There is something exhilarating about trying to think carefully and critically about figures who are still actively performing themselves in public. At the same time, it’s risky work because the ground is always shifting. People rebrand, movements fracture, alliances change, and what feels politically central one month may look different the next. When I was writing “White Power Brokers,” for example, I was nervous about including Marjorie Taylor Greene because she was beginning to split with MAGA and, as of last week, is questioning whether or not she is still a Republican. So part of the challenge is accepting that this kind of scholarship does not have the benefit of long historical or critical distance. We are making arguments in real time based on the patterns, genealogies, and performances we can identify now. In that sense, I sometimes feel like a performance scholar reporting from the front lines of a bizarre political theatre and asking, “Are y’all seeing this too?!” But I mean that seriously: Performance studies gives us powerful tools for reading spectacle, embodiment, ritual, repetition, and public sentiment as they are unfolding.
That is also how I think about “heritage” and the relationship between past and present. For me, the present is never simply the present. Contemporary figures like Laura Loomer, Erika Kirk, and/or Tradwife influencers matter because they are not new in any simple sense; they are reactivating older scripts, older affects, older fantasies of belonging, innocence, hierarchy, and white womanhood. That is why genealogy matters so much to my work. I am interested in how the past survives not only in texts or monuments, but in gestures, aesthetics, moods, rituals, and political desires. When I write about the present, I am really writing about the long afterlives of the past—especially in a Saidiya Hartman–esque sense, because I’m concerned with racialized supremacy. And when I write about the past, I am always asking how it is being performed again now—especially in a Tracy C. Davis and/or Rebecca Schneider kind of way. There is immense human potential in spending time between and among these two temporalities because they help us imagine and mine possible futures. I visit the past in the present quite a bit and I imagine futures based on the infinite potential of memory’s relationships to power in the present. Time and memory are at the heart of my life’s work—endeavors to understand both my place and my ancestors’ place in this world, and how we might move together in its current era.
Thank you for this opportunity, Hank. It is always a treat working with you. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I’m hoping “Confederate Christmas” will be published in a journal just in time for the holidays this year, so please be on the lookout.
And please find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-jackson-phd-uga/
Read Jackson’s article “White Power Brokers: Confederate Feminism, Tradwives, and Aspirational White Womanhood” from Ecumenica 18:2 for free through July 15, 2026.
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Unlocked Book of the Month: The Pennsylvania-German in the Revolutionary War, 1775–1783
Each month we’re highlighting a book available through PSU Press Unlocked, an open access initiative featuring scholarly digital books and journals in the humanities and social sciences.
About our June pick:
Published by the Pennsylvania German Society in 1908, this volume is one among many compiled to help illuminate the achievements of the Pennsylvania Germans during our nation’s early years. In the pre–World War I era, such works were written to dismiss the common belief that “the German element of this country has been practically a non-entity in its development” and to lift the “curtain of ignorance” on the subject. In this volume, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg Richards takes on this task by examining the role played by Pennsylvania Germans during the American Revolution.
In eighteen chapters, Richards details the involvement of Pennsylvania Germans in every aspect of the war, from the raising of battalions to the battles in which they fought. He recounts their activities on the home front, in public life, and on the frontier, and he also writes about prisoners and the noncombatant pacifists who contributed to the war effort. Richards pays significant attention to the Pennsylvania German contribution to Pennsylvania’s battalions and line, reproducing regimental rosters and profiling prominent men both in and outside of military service during the war. This name-heavy volume also includes substantial surname and general indexes.
Read more and access the book here: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-05386-8.html
See the full list of Unlocked titles here: https://www.psupress.org/unlocked/unlocked_gallery.html
Q&A with Chad Anderson and Remy Burke, the creators of Gay Mormon Dad
The latest publication from our Graphic Mundi imprint, Gay Mormon Dad is the story of one man learning to love himself in a complicated world. This inspiring autobiography unfolds in two parts, “Then” and “Now,” woven together in a way that will hit you right in the heart. In honor of Pride Month, author Chad Anderson and artist Remy Burke interviewed each other about the creation of the book.
Remy Burke: When did you first start thinking of adapting your memoir into a graphic novel? What was the adaptation process like?
Chad Anderson: I have a lot of creative energy, and I often process through emotional and spiritual events in my life by writing. In 2019, I had finished all the work on my documentary, Dog Valley, and I started writing essays about some old childhood wounds. That led me to revisit the memoir I'd published in 2017, and I started thinking about color palettes for the then and now parts of the story. I took a week away from home and started writing the script for the book in what turned out to be a deeply emotional and healing week.
RB: Likewise, has there been any notable differences between self-publishing the original memoir, versus currently publishing with Graphic Mundi?
CA: Working with the team at Graphic Mundi has been a tremendous joy. I've been so pleased with having a team invested in helping me tell my story. I'm deeply grateful. It's hard doing something all on your own.
RB: How did you go about finding an artist for the novel? What were some of your goals and considerations while doing so?
CA: One of my best friends, artist Seth Martel, directed me toward Remy Burke's work when I was first finishing up the graphic memoir script--he was aware of their work and sent me to their social media pages. I'm now Remy's biggest fan! After talking to them about the book and seeing how talented they are--and how wonderful to collaborate with--well, I'd work with Remy over and over again.
RB: Lastly--sharing your life story, not once, but twice, is immensely brave! Were there any parts you were worried about laying bare in a visual medium? What brings you your courage to share your experiences, and what keeps giving you hope for the future?
CA: I think my story comes across as pretty vulnerable to readers--and it is all real--but there are so many parts of the story, the specifics of things, that I leave out, either to protect someone I care about or to avoid sharing parts of my pain that feel too scary to share. But I carefully selected the parts of my story that I feel safe sharing. That, and I wanted my mom to be able to read this book, and someday I'm sure my kids will read it too! As far as hope goes, I spent a lot of time in those blues, and I let them take up the right amount of space, but I work hard to keep those oranges and reds in my life.
Chad Anderson: Remy, it must have been WILD to be asked to draw the life story of another person. How did you approach this unique challenge of drawing one person's story over so many time periods in their life?
Remy Burke: When I began, I wasn't sure where to start! Chad gave me photos from his life that really helped me nail down his character design. Otherwise, I asked questions and researched--I knew very little about Mormonism going in, so I spent a lot of time learning about it and finding visual references. I also had the benefit of the original memoir as a footprint: whenever I started new pages, I'd reread that part in the memoir and note anything I could include to enrich the story, such as setting details or imagery. These were loose guides rather than rigid rules, though--the graphic novel is its own book, so I would exercise artistic license wherever it benefited the narrative. It was a balancing act between accuracy, privacy, and creativity. I wanted to treat every part of his story with the care it deserved, so I hope I did it justice!
CA: Did you have a single favorite page to draw, and what was one you found most challenging?
RB: It's hard to pick just one! I think the vast timeline lent itself to a lot of variety, so there was always something new to draw or interpret. I quite enjoyed eighty-seven, the page where the tree is cut down, and Chrysalis was a particular favorite of the poem pages. Many pages I found challenging also turned out to be some of my favorite to make! The page that took the longest was easily thirty-five--the page with the collage of pride history--but it was also very rewarding.
CA: Life in 2026 is crazier than ever for our queer friends . . . what is a message you hope readers take from this book in these intense times?
RB: These days, it's far too easy to sink into bleakness and nihilism. Because of that, showing yourself kindness, living for yourself and what you love, is in itself a form of resistance. Chad's story shows us that It's never too late to become who you want to be. Don't be afraid to choose your own happiness; find your own normal and do it proudly. Nothing will change if you never take that plunge.
Gay Mormon Dad is now available from Graphic Mundi. Learn more here, and find the book wherever books are sold.
Since 2021, Graphic Mundi has been publishing innovative and award-winning graphic novels for adults and young adults on a range of topics that affect how we live in today’s world. Genres include graphic medicine, graphic journalism, graphic justice, graphic memoir, and graphic history. View the complete catalog here.
“The experience of publishing my first article in The Chaucer Review was transformative for me: the mentorship of editors David Raybin and Susanna Fein, as well as the anonymous readers, truly enabled me to cross the frontier from student to scholar. It confirmed my sense that Chaucer studies, and this journal in particular, was my intellectual home, while also modeling for me how I could welcome others into that home.”—Dr. Megan E. Murton, The Catholic University of America
Penn State University Press is excited to welcome Dr. Megan E. Murton, associate professor of English and director of graduate studies for English and Medieval Studies at The Catholic University of America, and Dr. Leah Schwebel, professor of English at Texas State University, as the new editors of The Chaucer Review!
Founded in 1966, The Chaucer Review publishes studies of language, sources, social and political contexts, aesthetics, and associated meanings of Chaucer’s poetry and acts as a forum for the presentation and discussion of research and concepts about Chaucer and the literature of the Middle Ages. In this Q&A, Murton and Schwebel share a bit about their backgrounds, the Chaucer Review articles that have helped shape their understanding of Chaucer, and their vision for the journal. Select Chaucer Review articles (indicated below) will be free to read through June 30, 2026.
Can you tell us about your backgrounds? How did you enter the field of Chaucerian studies?
Megan Murton (MM): I disliked Chaucer when I first read a few Canterbury Tales as a prudish fifteen-year-old, so I would never have guessed that I would end up spending my adult life studying his writings! My path was a circuitous one: I arrived at Harvard to study French and linguistics but then became fascinated by the Middle Ages thanks to an elective course taken almost at random. Another elective in my junior year—this one a seminar on “Chaucer and His Books” taught by Nicholas Watson—sealed the deal: I couldn’t stop thinking about Chaucer’s complicated relationship to prior authors and to his own authority. I had always loved being a student, but in Chaucer I found something I could happily keep studying indefinitely.
Leah Schwebel (LS): I was one of those undergraduates who discover their academic interests by following around their favorite professors. It was Jamie Fumo’s class on The Canterbury Tales at McGill University that first made me a Chaucer devotee. I took every course she offered! Simultaneously, I was enrolled in Elena Lombardi’s courses on trecento Italian poetry, and the experience of reading Chaucer alongside his primary sources was really mind- blowing. That intersection of authors defined my MA thesis, and then my dissertation, when I was able to benefit from David Benson’s wonderfully wise and witty mentorship. All of that resulted, ultimately, in my first book. As I often tell my students at Texas State, I’ve been a Chaucerian for over twenty years, and the field remains as exciting to me now as it was in those first seminars.
What led you to become editors of The Chaucer Review?
MM: The experience of publishing my first article in The Chaucer Review was transformative for me: the mentorship of editors David Raybin and Susanna Fein, as well as the anonymous readers, truly enabled me to cross the frontier from student to scholar. It confirmed my sense that Chaucer studies, and this journal in particular, was my intellectual home, while also modeling for me how I could welcome others into that home. In the years since, reviewing articles for the journal has only strengthened my sense of how important and rewarding it is to be a steward of a scholarly conversation for the benefit of students and teachers throughout the field.
LS: For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a part of The Chaucer Review and to have a hand in shaping its future, just as it has shaped and supported me as a scholar. I remember approaching David and Susanna while still a graduate student to ask how I might be involved in the evolution of the journal. (With characteristic wisdom, they suggested I might wait until I actually held an academic job.) I feel incredibly fortunate to be taking on this editorship alongside Megan Murton; we work exceptionally well together, and I look forward to this next chapter in the journal’s history.
Which articles published in the journal have helped shape your view of Chaucer and/or have left a lasting impression on you?
MM: Several Chaucer Review articles that I read early in my graduate study gave me a sense of the vast, underexplored territory of Chaucer and religion. These are:
“Wonder and Immanent Justice in the ‘Man of Law’s Tale’” by Helen Cooney (vol. 33, no. 3, 1999)
“Theological Sophistication and the Middle English Religious Lyric: A Polemic” by Michael P. Kuczynski (vol. 45, no. 3, 2011) —free to read through 6/30
“Apprehending the Divine and Choosing to Believe: Voluntarist Free Will in Chaucer’s Second Nun’s Tale” by Elizabeth Robertson (vol. 46, no. 2, 2011) — free to read through 6/30
Chaucer Review articles that showed me the fascinating complexities of courtly love, specifically in its religious, philosophical, and meta-literary dimensions, include the following:
“Secularizing the Word: Conversion Models in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde” by Dabney Anderson Bankert (vol. 37, no. 3, 2003)
“Hating Criseyde: Last Words on a Heroine from Chaucer to Henryson” by Jamie C. Fumo (vol. 46, no. 1, 2011) — free to read through 6/30
“The Countervailing Aesthetic of Joy in Troilus and Criseyde” by John M. Hill (vol. 39, no. 3, 2005)
The Chaucer Review has been an especially valuable resource for my undergraduate students, because the articles are lucidly and accessibly written without any sacrifice of rigor. My list of articles for students centers on tightly focused single-tale studies, such as those listed below. The last two are useful for offering contrasting perspectives on the same tale:
“Performative Passivity and Fantasies of Masculinity in the Merchant’s Tale” by Holly A. Crocker (vol. 38, no. 2, 2003)
“The Knight’s Tale: The Dialogue of Romance, Epic, and Philosophy” by John Finlayson (vol. 27, no. 2, 1992)
“Boccaccio’s Filocolo and the Moral Argument of he Franklin’s Tale” by Gerald Morgan (vol. 20, no. 4, 1986)
“What of Dorigen? Agency and Ambivalence in he Franklin’s Tale” by Francine McGregor (vol. 31, no. 4, 1997)
LS: It is a long and diverse list! Like Megan, I’ve selected these articles because they teach exceptionally well, have been foundational to my own research, or simply caused me to see a work I’ve read multiple times with fresh eyes.
“Literary Value and the Customs House: The Axiological Logic of the House of Fame” by Robert J. Meyer-Lee (vol. 48, no. 4, 2014) — free to read through 6/30
“Why Marquis Walter Treats His Wife So Badly” by Richard Firth Green (vol. 47, no. 1, 2012) — free to read through 6/30
“The Griselda Game” by Amy W. Goodwin (vol. 39, no. 1, 2004)
“Thinking upon the Crow: The Manciples Tale and Ovidian Mythography” by Jamie C. Fumo (vol. 38, no. 4, 2004) (Although I’m with Megan—“Hating Criseyde” would be on my list as well!)“Hating Criseyde” would be on my list as well!)
“The Boethian Reader of Troilus and Criseyde” by Frank Grady (vol. 33, no. 3, 1999)
“Transgressing the Borderline of Gender: Zenobia in the Monk’s Tale” by Keiko Hamaguchi (vol. 40, no. 2, 2005) — free to read through 6/30
“Succession and Sovereignty in Lydgates Prologue to The Troy Book” by Alan S. Ambrisco and Paul Strohm (vol. 30, no. 1, 1995)
“The Book of the Duchess as a Memorial Monument” by Phillipa Hardman (vol. 28, no. 3, 1994)
“Pregnant Desire: Eyes and Appetites in the Merchant’s Tale” by Samantha Katz Seal (vol. 48, no. 3, 2014) — free to read through 6/30
Are there special topics you are hoping to explore in the journal?
MM: I would love to see more work on the intersections of religious, devotional, and philosophical writings with Middle English literature. For Chaucer especially, I think there is more to say on these intersections as a corrective to an entrenched view of Chaucer as secular. Relatedly, I would welcome new work on lyric, prayers, and other short-form texts that open windows onto the more ephemeral forms of medieval textuality that exist alongside (sometimes literally) the canonical texts we tend to privilege.
LS: Off the top of my head, I would love to see The Chaucer Review offer more micro-focused studies on particular works by Chaucer and his contemporaries, perhaps on the model of Boccaccio scholars, who have dedicated edited collections to specific days of the Decameron, or Dante scholars, with focused works on individual cantos.
I’d be eager to devote a full issue to the Boece, the Reeve’s Tale, the Pardoner’s Tale, or Pearl, to name several examples. I find this format incredibly generative; it allows for a kind of critical reckoning that encourages us to look back at a text’s scholarly history—a retrospective that is essential, to my mind, when it comes to texts like the Reeve’s Tale and Pardoner’s Tale—while simultaneously bringing a wide range of critical perspectives and new methodologies to bear on it.
What is your vision for The Chaucer Review in the coming years?
MM: I see The Chaucer Review maintaining a broad remit across Middle English literary studies while also remaining the go-to resource for the classic cruxes of Chaucer scholarship: the essential questions (on topics like authority, influence, genre, closure, narrative voice, etc.) that every reader has to engage with, and therefore, that new readers will constantly see with fresh eyes. It’s a balancing act to acknowledge Chaucer’s prominence as the most widely read and taught Middle English author in the world today while also acknowledging his historical position within a complex literary landscape extending across England into Europe. I see finding that balance as an important part of our role at The Chaucer Review.
LS: One of my immediate priorities is resuscitating the Chaucer Review dinner at Kalamazoo. Some of my happiest memories as a graduate student and junior scholar took place at those dinners. I remember sitting across from Derek Pearsall when he asked me to show him how to put a lime in a bottle of Corona and flip it. I gave him the instructions, but he pulled his thumb out at precisely the wrong moment, spraying a table full of senior Chaucerians with beer.
I also remember writing an article on the Clerk’s Tale and meeting my bibliography at the dinner. When I saw Tom Farrell’s nametag, I introduced myself by saying: ‘Hi, I’m Leah, and I think you’re wrong about Chaucer’s use of Boccaccio.’ We’ve been friends ever since! In fact, I met so many lifelong friends at those gatherings. I recall them fondly as spaces where independent scholars, students, junior scholars, and emeritus faculty could share a meal. More generally, I hope we can honor David Raybin and Susanna Fein by continuing their legacy of mentorship and outreach and the welcoming and intellectually vibrant community they built around the journal.
Check out the Chaucer Review free-to-read article collection, which will be free to read through June 30, 2026.
Visit The Chaucer Review page on the Penn State University Press website for information on how to read the latest research, submit your paper, and subscribe! Enter promo code PSUJ20 at checkout to receive 20% off individual journal subscriptions.
National Poetry Month: “The Bells”: Poe’s Multimodality Explored
“The poem does communicate something vital and in quite a sophisticated way, but it does so in ways typical of a musical composition.”
We’re celebrating National Poetry Month with a special Q&A series! Each week, an author of a poetry-related journal article will discuss a related topic, including Hurricane Katrina and environmental racism, Black women college students and YouTube poetry, and parody as resistance in nineteenth-century poetry. You can then read their journal article for free for the week!
To finish our series, Dr. Sławomir Studniarz, associate professor at the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland, speaks to us about his article “Multimodality in ‘The Bells’: New Explorations in Poe’s Symphonic Poem” from The Edgar Allan Poe Review 26:1 (2025), which recently received the prestigious James Gargano Award for the best article on Poe’s work written in 2025, given by the Poe Studies Association. The article will be free to read through May 6.
Your article focuses on the sound structure of “The Bells” to explore the ties between the poem’s themes and its musicality. What first drew you to “The Bells?” How can reevaluating Edgar Allan Poe’s multimodality change our modern understanding of his works?
My initial critical engagement with “The Bells” was part of a larger project examining Poe’s poetic output. The fruits of my labor were two books published on Poe’s poetry, the first one in 2011 in Poland and the second one in 2016 in the United States. Since my concern was with the relation between sound and sense, which I perceive as crucial in Poe’s poems, “The Bells” presented itself as an obvious choice, since it thematizes this relation. However, in time, I came to the conclusion that this particular poem deserved a separate and more in-depth treatment, and when I became aware of the concept of multimodality, I thought it would provide an ideal framework for tackling “The Bells.” I believe that multimodality is the key to appreciating Poe’s artistic aspiration, which, in my view, was achieving in words the closest possible approximation of music.
What is “verbal musical ekphrasis” and how did this term inform your analysis of “The Bells?”
“Verbal musical ekphrasis” is an important term that fills the critical gap. It basically refers to descriptions of musical or of quasi-musical events in poetry and in fiction, where there is also an element of dense verbal play that foregrounds the sound component. It was indispensable for my analysis, as I approached “The Bells” as a very elaborate, but also successful, instance of verbal musical ekphrasis.
Why are there so many skeptics of this specific poem? How do your findings contrast with previous academic consensus?
The poem has not fared well in the critical reception perhaps because of the perceived excess of the sound patterning, supposedly drowning the sense. There are, however, some appreciative comments on the poems, which I relied on to support my central argument that the poem does communicate something vital and in quite a sophisticated way, but it does so in ways typical of a musical composition.
In your opinion, is the poem “an experimental masterpiece or mere verse in full jingling motley?”
Obviously, I consider it an experimental masterpiece, a tour de force when it comes to phonetic orchestration.
You mention “Poe’s famous preoccupation with musicality in his poetry.” Have you examined more of his poems through a musical lens?
I have examined most of his poems pursuing the connection between sonority and semantics. As I have stated above, I have written two monographs devoted exclusively to Poe’s poems; the one in Polish bears the title Brzmienie i sens w wierszach Edgara Allana Poego—that is, Sound and Sense in Edgar Allan Poe’s Poetry. There are also two articles published in The Edgar Allan Poe Review several years ago, one on “Annabel Lee” and one on “The Conqueror Worm” and “To One in Paradise.”
Citations:
Studniarz, Sławomir. Brzmienie I Sens W Wierszach Edgara Allana Poego [Sound and Sense in Edgar Allan Poe’s Poetry]. Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, 2011.
Studniarz, Sławomir. “Poetry as ‘An Inferior or Less Apable Music’: Sound and Meaning in ‘The Conqueror Worm’ and ‘To One in Paradise.’” The Edgar Allan Poe Review 15:1 (2014): 59–81.
Studniarz, Sławomir. “Sonority and Semantics in ‘Annabel Lee.’” The Edgar Allan Poe Review 16:1 (2015): 107–125.
Studniarz, Sławomir. Time Transcending Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe: An Explanation of the Mechanics of His Poetic Speech. The Edwin Mellen Press, 2016.
National Poetry Month: Parody as Nineteenth-Century Resistance
“Nineteenth-century women poets used humor to argue for real social and political change. They used humor and parody as many do today—to raise awareness about social and political causes that deserve attention.”
We’re celebrating National Poetry Month with a special Q&A series! Each week, an author of a poetry-related journal article will discuss a related topic, including Hurricane Katrina and environmental racism, Black women college students and YouTube poetry, and parody as resistance in nineteenth-century poetry. You can then read their journal article for free for the week!
This week, Dr. Elizabeth A. Petrino, professor of English and director of the associate degree program in liberal studies for Fairfield Bellarmine at Fairfield University, shares her thoughts on her article “Speaking Double: Parody as Resistance in Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Poetry” from Studies in American Humor 10:2 (2024). The article will be free to read through May 4.
Your article focuses on the use of parody by nineteenth-century women poets to express political resistance without damaging their submissive public appearances. Can any parallels be drawn to the work of women poets today? How do you think poets like Lydia Sigourney and Phoebe Cary would engage with today’s political climate?
Part of what intrigued me about Sigourney and Cary was their innovativeness in using parody that was meant to take down the literary elites by a notch or two. At the same time, they could be perceived as paying homage to and mollifying their literary peers. They brilliantly took poems or literary passages that were widely familiar—Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha,” for instance—and reworked them. They were disrupters and resisters, but they had the benefit of knowing readers would recognize the original literary works. Among contemporary female poets, Carol Ann Duffy (a former UK Poet Laureate) wrote a collection of poems, The World’s Wife, in the voices of women who were associated with male mythological figures, authors, or characters. Such writing demonstrates that the idea of drawing from well-known, authoritative figures can still be deployed for its humor and wit.
I think a major difference today is that female poets no longer have to worry about maintaining their role in the public sphere. They can be outspoken in ways that were not possible in the nineteenth century. Comedians and humorists—such as Tina Fey or Amy Pohler, for instance—brilliantly parody figures in their SNL political sketches. Margaret Cho and Wanda Sykes are also incredibly adept wielders of humor, yet they demonstrate how women are still confined by perceptions of race and sexuality. If Sigourney and Cary were alive today, they would undoubtedly be shocked by how little has changed in roughly 200 years.
What drew you to Sigourney and Cary? What advice would you give to others who are interested in learning about parody as political resistance in poetry?
While I was reading for my dissertation on Emily Dickinson, I asked the question: Who might Dickinson have read among other American women poets? Both Sigourney and Cary were her contemporaries and offer us a window onto the circumscribed literary careers and subject matter of women poets. But their innovation, social consciousness, and formal intricacy also intrigued me. Even though no one had written very much about them, I knew they deserved some critical attention. Among the many contemporary theorists worth consulting on parody, I would recommend Linda Hutcheon, whose books offer a nuanced view of how parody and irony function in art and literature.
What unexpected discoveries (or connections, revelations, etc.) did you make when working on this article?
From the beginnings of the nation through the nineteenth century, American women were writing humor, satire, skits, pastiche, and parody. I discovered just how many American women—like Fanny Fern, Caroline Kirkland, and Frances Whitcher—were using humor to sweeten their rather biting comments about American society. Humor has always been used by the dispossessed and disaffected to survive. It shines attention on the injustices we see and pass by every day. As Langston Hughes comments in The Book of Negro Humor, “Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it.”
If you had to pick, what are one or two key ideas you hope readers will take away from your article?
I’m tempted to quote Mark Twain, who said that a good book “explains itself.” If there is one main idea that arises from my article, it is that nineteenth-century women poets used humor to argue for real social and political change. They used humor and parody as many do today—to raise awareness about social and political causes that deserve attention. Because they were women within the Christian Protestant tradition, they also felt not only inclined but also obligated to improve the lives of others by fighting for their legal and social equality.
What are you working on or planning to work on next?
My current projects is a coedited collection of essays on Global Dickinson. I’m also a co-founder of the Lydia Sigourney Digital Archive, which will create a digital hub for published and unpublished materials by Sigourney. Many of her works are only now being discussed in a critical light. I’m always so grateful to hear about what others are discovering and thinking about women writers. We need to know our own history and the tradition of women’s writing more than ever.
Citations:
“Discovery: Linda Hutcheon.” Utoronto.ca, 2026. https://discover.research.utoronto.ca/26119-linda-hutcheon.
Duffy, Carol Ann. The World’s Wife: Poems. 1999. Repr., Farrer Straus and Giroux, 2001.
epetrino. “The Lydia Sigourney Digital Archive.” GitHub, 2025 https://github.com/epetrino/Lydia_Sigourney_Digital_Archive.
Hughes, Langston. The Book of Negro Humor. Dodd, Mead, 1966.
Longfellow, Henry W. The Song of Hiawatha. Ticknor and Fields, 1855.
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“Wharton’s depiction of the sunrise is splendid—clearly, she was someone who had seen many sunrises—and she is equally a writer who took pains to convey how magical that time of day can be! The sunrise passage also makes her deep awareness of literature so clear—it resonates with everything from the Greek myths to Emerson and Thoreau.”
We’re celebrating National Poetry Month with a special Q&A series! Each week, an author of a poetry-related journal article will discuss a related topic, including Hurricane Katrina and environmental racism, Black women college students and YouTube poetry, and parody as resistance in nineteenth-century poetry. You can then read their journal article for free for the week!
This week, Dr. Julie Olin-Ammentorp, professor emerita of English at Le Moyne College, speaks to us about her article “Wharton, Writing, and Nature” from Edith Wharton Review, 38:2 (2022). The article will be free to read through April 29.
Your article evaluates Edith Wharton's works through an environmental lens. What drew you to the evaluation of nature in Wharton's works?
I have long appreciated the beautiful descriptions of nature that Wharton incorporates into so many of her writings but that have rarely been commented on. Before the emergence of coherent environmental criticism in the 1990s (broadly speaking), there wasn’t a theoretical approach to “nature writing,” so writing about nature in Wharton’s work would have been difficult to publish—it would have been seen as a “nontopic.” Even with the rise of environmental criticism, attention is usually focused on writers who are more clearly in the vein of classic nature writing.
While I was working on my comparative study of Wharton and Willa Cather (Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and the Place of Culture, 2019), however, I increasingly noticed how similar their works were in many previously unremarked ways. Cather, for instance, is often admired for her depictions of natural places, whether the Nebraska prairie in O Pioneers! And My Ántonia or the Blue Mesa (based on Mesa Verde) in The Professor’s House. But Wharton, too, writes lyrically of nature. Often this is more “civilized” nature—for instance, the autumn walk up the hillsides that Lily Bart and Lawrence Selden take early in The House of Mirth. At other times, she writes of nature that is much wilder, and even of actual wilderness. In her late novel The Gods Arrive, for instance, she depicts some scenes in rural Wisconsin—in the winter, no less.
My first conference paper on this topic was “Edith Wharton in the Wild,” given in 2014. I was glad to be able to find a coherent theoretical framework for some of those ideas, and to expand on them, in “Wharton, Writing, and Nature.”
How has your perspective of Wharton's works changed after viewing her writing in this different light?
As I worked on this article and on “Edith Wharton’s Flowers” (Letterature D’America 41, no. 184 [2021]), which is almost a companion piece to this one, I became increasingly aware of how deeply Wharton was attached to nature. She was a passionate and knowledgeable gardener as well as a devoted hiker; some photos of her late in her life were taken as she hiked with friends through some fairly rugged country in southern France. Her poetry and letters also show her deep sense of connection to the planet on which we all live.
What unexpected discoveries (connections, revelations, etc.) did you make when working on this article?
My work on “Wharton, Writing, and Nature” made me much more aware of Wharton’s connections to a less-civilized world. For instance, I now treasure the scene in Hudson River Bracketed in which Halo Tarrant and Vance Weston get up before dawn to watch the sun rise over the Hudson River Valley. (I comment on this scene in the article.) Wharton’s depiction of the sunrise is splendid—clearly, she was someone who had seen many sunrises—and she is equally a writer who took pains to convey how magical that time of day can be! The sunrise passage also makes her deep awareness of literature so clear—it resonates with everything from the Greek myths to Emerson and Thoreau. After the sunrise, Halo and Vance have a picnic breakfast of coffee (which is mercifully hot—coffee lovers, rejoice!), ham on stale bread, and raw eggs, because they can’t get their little campfire started! It’s great stuff, which also suggests the outdoorsy, adventurous side to Wharton. Even if she never had raw eggs outdoors for breakfast (I know I haven’t, which is fine with me), she could imagine doing so.
Do you know of any modern poets who engage with the environment in a similar way? And how do you think Wharton would engage with today's climate?
Mary Oliver’s fine, observant writing about the natural world comes immediately to mind. I’m sure there are other poets whose work Wharton would also appreciate.
Wharton died in 1937, almost 90 years ago; it can be hard to transfer beliefs from that period to today’s world. Yet I am sure that she would have been very worried about climate change. She was profoundly attached to both of her gardens in France, a northern one near Paris and a southern one on the Mediterranean; she was heartbroken when an unusual winter storm devastated her southern garden, writing a friend that she was “intertwined with all those roots and tendrils. . . . Everything is killed.” She would be deeply concerned about climate alterations today for their effect not only on her own gardens but on agriculture, wilderness, and the planet as a whole.
Do you have anything else you'd like to share about this article or your current work?
I’m currently at work on vol. 16, War Writings: Fiction, which will include The Marne and A Son at the Front. This is part of The Complete Works of Edith Wharton, an ambitious, multivolume scholarly project to be published by Oxford University Press. For more information, see https://whartoncompleteworks.org/about.
In light of National Poetry Month, I’ll mention that my article “Edith Wharton’s Flowers” (see above) considers quite a few of Wharton’s poems, several of which were published for the first time in Selected Poems of Edith Wharton, edited by Irene Goldman-Price (2019). This beautifully annotated volume is the first to establish fully what a fine poet Wharton was. I highly recommend it!
To learn more, check out "Wharton, Writing, and Nature" from Edith Wharton Review 38:2 (2022) for free through April 29.
Olin-Ammentorp is the author of Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and the Place of Culture (2019; paperback, 2025) and of Edith Wharton's Writings from the Great War (2004; paperback, 2026), as well as of many other essays about Wharton, Cather, and occasionally other authors. She lives in Minnesota.
National Poetry Month: Mel Weisburd as a “Smog Inspector by Day, Poet by Night”
“Weisburd was such a poetic misfit as a creative writing student, as well as a multifaceted individual with lots of varied interests (ecology, hallucinogens, jazz). His papers reveal him to be an enthusiastic amateur about a lot of it, in ways that make it easy to relate to him.”
We’re celebrating National Poetry Month with a special Q&A series! Each week, an author of a poetry-related journal article will discuss a related topic, including Hurricane Katrina and environmental racism, Black women college students and YouTube poetry, and parody as resistance in nineteenth-century poetry. You can then read their journal article for free for the week!
This week, Dr. Andrew Lyndon Knighton, professor of English at California State University, Los Angeles, speaks to us about his article “Mel Weisburd: Secret Engineer of the Non-Existent City” from Resources for American Literary Study 45:1 (2023). The article will be free to read through April 22.
Your article focuses on Mel Weisburd’s double life as a “smog inspector by day, poet by night.” How does his poetry reflect his struggle to reconcile his conflicting roles? How might living through the McCarthy era have impacted Weisburd’s poetry?
Weisburd’s understanding of the relationship between poetry and politics was forged through and through by the McCarthy era, with his mentor and teacher Thomas McGrath recalcitrantly rebuffing questioning in a House Un-American Activities Committee hearing—and losing his teaching job as a result. Weisburd’s papers report on how government agents surveilled their poetry workshops at McGrath’s house, and McGrath’s FBI file reveals the degree to which the government was attempting to collect information on the poet’s far-left attitudes, as well as those of his wife, Alice (herself a legendary Los Angeles activist).
There is no doubt that this atmosphere shaped Weisburd’s work, but I think this was expressed less through directly political statements than it was via an admiration for the underlying philosophical principles that animated McGrath’s teaching. Most important were McGrath’s lessons about the collective nature of work—an ideal incubated in the militant upper plains farming community from which he came—rather than open-throated calls for revolutionary action. My research stresses how Weisburd incorporated that thinking about collectivity and praxis into both his writing and his other forms of leadership in the Los Angeles poetry community.
Weisburd nonetheless harbored a somewhat romantic idea of himself as a poet, and spent much of his career trying to reconcile that with the self-described inauthenticity and the bureaucratic realities of his work as an environmental consultant. Later in his life he attempted many memoirs, in an array of experimental forms, that expressed this tension. Consider the working titles of his efforts at a literary memoir: “The Smog Inspector,” “Smog: A Literary Memoir,” and “The Smog Inspector: The Poems of a Corporate President Based on Interviews Conducted by a Management Consultant,” among others! Despite penning hundreds of pages on these projects, none were ever completed or published. This captures something of his inability to come to terms with what he felt was a paralyzing professional and psychological contradiction.
What drew you to Weisburd?
My interest in Weisburd grew out of my earlier research on the years that poet Thomas McGrath spent in Los Angeles in the 1950s—the latter, better-known poet was Weisburd’s teacher and mentor at Los Angeles State College (which is now Cal State LA, where I, too, teach). After Weisburd’s passing in 2015, I received an email out of the blue from Stefi Weisburd, who wondered if I might be interested in sorting through her father’s papers. When I arrived at his home—which was to be demolished in just a few days, adding a certain urgency to this situation—I discovered in the backyard office an incredible trove of correspondence and manuscript material that gave texture to my imaginings about how poetry was lived in Los Angeles in the 1950s. We were able to bring those materials to Cal State LA, and I’ve spent much of the last decade making sense of them.
You mention in your article that critical attention to the emergence of the poetry scene in midcentury Los Angeles was largely ignored for decades. Why do you think it has gained more critical attention in recent years?
For Los Angeles’s poetry to gain attention, critics and readers needed to overcome certain prejudices about LA being a wasteland of anti-intellectualism and to nudge it out of the shadow of the scenes that made the Bay area so prominent for decades. A new attitude toward LA poetry became possible in part thanks to the endurance of a number of local literary institutions (e.g., the Beyond Baroque center in Venice) as well as the increasing embrace of the city’s abundant cultural and stylistic diversity. Revisit the energy of the first “multicultural” anthology of Los Angeles poetry—Invocation L. A. (edited by Michelle T. Clinton, Sesshu Foster, and Naomi Quiñonez [1989])—and you can see the twining together of work from poets of color, working-class perspectives, immigrant experiences . . . it’s all presented with an unflinching grit and yet an unapologetic optimism. That is what Los Angeles continues to do best.
What unexpected discoveries (connections, revelations, etc.) did you make when working on this article?
At first, much of what motivated me in this project was very local to the campus at which I teach (Cal State LA). But then, somewhat unexpectedly, developing this history further really helped me to clarify some of my thinking about the relationship of poetry to politics, and demanded that I reset some assumptions about where California’s poetic center of gravity was during those decades.
My most moving insights came from exploring the unacknowledged degree to which my own English department was at the center of all this activity in the 1950s—whether through McGrath’s teaching, or the founding of our long-running literary magazine, Statement (first published in 1950 and featuring these poets as editors and contributors), or the involvement of poets like Henri Coulette, who came out of that scene and went on to teach here for decades thereafter. I have found it rewarding to contribute to an emerging narrative about the importance of these poets to the city and to account for what was compelling about their poetics.
Have you learned anything new about Weisburd’s role in the midcentury LA poetry scene since this article came out?
I see my piece in Resources for American Literary Study as something like my culminating statement on the research I have devoted to Weisburd—though there is a trove of other material in this archive that remains unexplored (including some compelling audio recordings made on Weisburd’s reel-to-reel tape machine!). I am excited that other scholars are starting to dig into this collection; it complements well an array of other related archival materials that have recently been made available at other local and regional institutions.
That said, one welcome development following from my research on Weisburd has been the effort to bring his story into the classroom, and discovering there how his legacy resonates with the students I teach. Weisburd was such a poetic misfit as a creative writing student, as well as a multifaceted individual with lots of varied interests (ecology, hallucinogens, jazz). His papers reveal him to be an enthusiastic amateur about a lot of it, in ways that make it easy to relate to him. And it all becomes that much more interesting when students see him as a peer—a fellow writing student, however historically remote, on our own campus. All this has been the basis for lots of experimentation on my part with incorporating these materials into my classroom. One can hope that in this way Weisburd’s impact on Los Angeles poetry will persevere with future generations of readers and writers.
To learn more, check out “Mel Weisburd: Secret Engineer of the Non-Existent City” from Resources for American Literary Study 45:1 (2023) for free through April 22.
National Poetry Month: Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler
“I’m indebted to [Patricia] Smith, who showed me how to remember and mourn the victims of the storm while simultaneously fighting the nationalistic, sexist, and racist policies of our former and current administration.”
We’re celebrating National Poetry Month with a special Q&A series! Each week, an author of a poetry-related journal article will discuss a related topic, including Hurricane Katrina and environmental racism, Black women college students and YouTube poetry, and parody as resistance in nineteenth-century poetry. You can then read their journal article for free for the week!
This week, Dr. Sarah Giragosian, a creative writer and lecturer in the Department of Writing and Critical Inquiry at University at Albany–SUNY, speaks to us about her article “Slow Violence and the Anti-elegy in Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler” from Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 24:4 (2022). The article will be free to read through April 15.
Your article focuses on how Patricia Smith's post–Hurricane Katrina poetry collection Blood Dazzler (2008) uses “anti-elegy” to explore the politics of mourning and how environmental racism exacerbates the impacts of natural disasters. What is an “anti-elegy,” and why is it an effective format for Smith to use to tell the story of pre- and post-Katrina New Orleans?
Traditionally, the elegy is a lyric poem of mourning with a trajectory that includes lament, praise, and some principle of consolation for the dead subject. However, Jahan Ramazani defines the anti-elegy as a poem of mourning that interrupts the psychological trajectory toward consolation. Similarly, in Modernism and Mourning (2007), Patricia Rae suggests that the modern elegy between the First and Second World War also resisted consolatory mourning, noting that anti-elegies were characteristic of the cultural zeitgeist, as more poets sustained an ongoing concern for future losses and deemed as unethical the false comforts of the traditional elegy. As I note in my essay, Patricia Smith is in conversation with such poets as Claudia Rankine and Lucille Clifton, who also resist the Western temporal and affective conventions of the Western elegy.
The anti-elegy, as I see it, moves private mourning to the public realm. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is still felt today. It was a natural disaster with devastating impacts on the population of New Orleans and its environs that could have been mitigated had the levee system been built to withstand a category 5 hurricane and had the survivors received the disaster relief that they needed. Instead, the racism and classism of the Bush administration prevented people from getting relief in any sort of timely way, resulting in a scale of human tragedy that could have been largely avoided.
Using persona poems, Smith’s kaleidoscopic text, which cycles through the voices of survivors, New Orleans, Bush, and Hurricane Katrina, is anti-elegiac in the ways that Ramazani and Rae theorize. It’s a brilliant collection that redefines the genre of the elegy by addressing the political implications of the storm and its aftermath, the calamitous impact of natural disaster compounded by environmental racism and federal malfeasance. Smith contributes to the elegy as a structure that is capacious enough for “unruly affects”: desire, ambivalence, irony, and sadism. Smith’s elegy moves past the affective stasis of consolatory mourning and makes me think about how grief and anger can help people mobilize against a racist and negligent federal government.
What is “slow violence?” Do you know of any other modern poets who speak on environmental racism and "slow violence" in the way Smith does?
In Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (2013), Rob Nixon theorizes slow violence as “accretive” and “incremental,” rather than “spectacular.” He refers to it as “a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all.” According to Nixon, climate change and its related ecological crises are exemplars of a sort of violence that requires new forms of theorizing, as well as new narrative, temporal, and representational strategies. The multiple and intersecting vectors of toxic threats, environmental racism, indigence, widespread addiction crises, and extreme weather events mark New Orleans as a site compromised by slow violence.
What drew you to Smith’s Blood Dazzler and its themes of mourning, racism, and climate change?
As a poet, I’ve always been drawn to Smith’s writings as mentor texts, and Blood Dazzler touches upon so many of the issues that I care about: political uses for personal and collective grief, climate change and environmental racism, and how to build resilience under a white supremacist and climate change–denying national agenda.
I was in college at the time when Katrina hit, and the televised aftermath of the storm continues to be a traumatic memory for me on par with the September 11 attacks. I was devastated when I saw the scale of suffering, and I still think about the tragedy as part of what stokes me to work against structural racism today.
Smith’s collection still moves me each time I reread it, and it continues to prod me to think about resilience-building as we face more natural disasters caused by climate change. I’m indebted to Smith for showing me how to remember and mourn the victims of the storm while simultaneously fighting the nationalistic, sexist, and racist policies of our former and current administrations.
What unexpected discoveries (connections, revelations, etc.) did you make when working on this article?
While writing the article, I read Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster (2010) and discovered just how racist the media’s representation of Katrina’s survivors was. While the media said the police were “requisitioning” items from stores without consequence, people of color were represented by both the police and the media as “looters” of the city—in both cases where they did and cases where they did not seek to requisition food and other necessary items to survive (Solnit 2010, 240–41). Of course, there’s a significant difference between looting unnecessary items and requisitioning items for survival, yet in many cases the media failed to parse such differences. The media often failed to represent the resilience of Black survivors. Instead, they exacerbated tensions between the police and survivors by basing their reporting on rumors and giving credence to the country’s deeply embedded racist biases. False reports of rape, murder, and looting among Katrina’s disaster victims were picked up even by so-called reputable media outlets like CNN (Solnit 311).
What are the 1–2 key ideas you hope readers will take away from your article?
In the conclusion of my article, I write my mission for my paper: “Blood Dazzler not merely bears witness to the psychological and physical violence experienced by people of color who been ‘othered,’ but it also activates more unruly affects than consolation. In this way, the elegy becomes a genre supple enough for resistance and unresolved ire, resources needed both for an antiracist and ecopoetic consciousness.”
What are you working on/planning to work on next?
In terms of my scholarly work, I’m finishing up an article on Reginald Shepherd’s contributions to queer Black ecopoetry. As a creative writer, I am working on two projects simultaneously: a memoir about my volunteer work rehabbing injured wildlife and a poetry collection entitled By Wind By Fur By Fin: For the Animals When the Revolution Comes, which I understand as a manual for processing personal and collective grief, finding succor in the gifts of the natural world, and channeling my anger against the fascist state. I wear multiple hats as a poet–prose writer–scholar, but I’m indebted in my thinking to works like Blood Dazzler.
To learn more about Patricia Smith’s use of slow violence and anti-elegy in her poetry collection, Blood Dazzler (2008), check out Dr. Giragosian’s “Slow Violence and the Anti-elegy in Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler” from Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 24:4 (2022) for free through April 15.
Citation:
Gallagher, Maureen. 2020. “The Didactic and Elegiac Modes of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric.” In Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era. Edited by Tiffany Austin et al. Routledge.
Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press.
Rae, Patricia. 2007. Modernism and Mourning. Bucknell University Press.
Ramazani, Jahan. 1994. Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney. University of Chicago Press.
Rashid, Anne M. 2020. “Lucille Clifton’s and Claudia Rankine’s Elegiac Poetics of Nature.” In Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era. Edited by Tiffany Austin et al. Routledge.
National Poetry Month: “Collegiate Black Women and YouTube Poems”
“For many of [my students], encountering poetry through video performances created a more immediate and emotionally resonant connection to literary art than reading poems solely on the printed page.”
We’re celebrating National Poetry Month with a special Q&A series! Each week, an author of a poetry-related journal article will discuss a related topic, including Hurricane Katrina and environmental racism, Black women college students and YouTube poetry, and parody as resistance in nineteenth-century poetry. You can then read their journal article for free for the week!
To kick off the series, Dr. Howard Ramsby II, distinguished research professor of literature at Southern Illinois University, speaks to us about his article “Collegiate Black Women and YouTube Poems" from The Langston Hughes Review 29:1 (2023). The article will be free to read through April 8.
Your article focuses on your experiences with using YouTube poems to help Black women college students engage with literary art. What are “YouTube poems,” and how have they changed the way your students connect with poetry?
I came up with the phrase “YouTube poems” to describe the tens of thousands of poems available on that video-sharing platform. The rise of high-speed internet, smartphones, social media link sharing, and widespread laptop ownership over the last two decades has made YouTube, among other things, the largest and most widely viewed poetry archive the world has ever known. My students were engaging poems on YouTube far more than in conventional literature anthologies, and I wanted to chart some of what that meant. For many of them, encountering poetry through video performances created a more immediate and emotionally resonant connection to literary art than reading poems solely on the printed page.
What led you to share your experiences with inserting nonwritten media into your literary courses?
For almost two decades now, I have lived in two somewhat separate publishing worlds: scholarly article writing, on the one hand, and blogging, on the other. My scholarly articles tend to address African American literary history and major or more established or major authors, while my blog often explores timely issues about students and new developments related to technology and reading.
When Tony Bolden, the editor of the Langston Hughes Review, indicated that he wanted to push the boundaries of conventional scholarly discourse, it felt like an invitation to write the article “Collegiate Black Women and YouTube Poems.” That topic would have been the kind of thing I usually presented on my blog, Cultural Front, and I assumed most scholarly journals would be less interested because they tend to privilege major authors and canonical texts. No shade, but they rarely foreground collegiate Black women as readers.
Jae Nichelle’s poem “Friends with Benefits” deeply resonated with many of the students in your article. What YouTube poems have most impacted your students since this article was published back in 2023? Are there other platforms beyond YouTube that you now use in your classes?
Yes, Jae Nichelle’s poem really is a major standout. The poem speaks directly to large numbers of Black women students in ways that many other poems, even revered canonical poems, do not. Students are also captivated by Mahogany L. Browne’s “Black Girl Magic,” and they frequently arrive to class already familiar with and highly fond of Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” and “Phenomenal Woman.”
Beyond YouTube, I have noticed an interesting pattern. Every semester for nearly twenty years now, I have taught one African American literature course composed of first-semester collegiate Black women and another composed of first-semester collegiate Black men. What’s striking is that the young women frequently tell me about poems they encounter on Instagram and TikTok, while the young men tend to focus on freestyle rap performances they watch on YouTube and Twitter. These differences reveal how various digital platforms shape the poetic performances students encounter and engage with outside of class.
In the article, you mention “the declining number of English majors over the decades and the paucity of Black English majors.” Have you seen an increase in students majoring in English after taking this Black Poetry class?
What we covered on YouTube and through other varied formats seemed to raise interest in students taking additional African American literary studies courses. They were less interested in majoring in English in part because there had been no clear options or routes for them to take multiple Black literature courses within the major. We are addressing that now as we finalize plans for an African American literary studies pathway, a curriculum that allows students to move through the English major while focusing on courses that foreground Black literary art and culture. For my colleagues and me, that means engaging with compositions in a variety of formats, including YouTube poems, whiteboard animations, and visual art, alongside conventional literature.
Do you have anything else you'd like to share about this article or your current work?
For years, I have marveled at the popularity of Jae Nichelle’s “Friends with Benefits” and wondered about the reasons the poem resonated so strongly with the young sisters in my classes. I gained additional insight when I read Jonathan Haidt’s recent book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2024). His compelling research on the mental health effects, especially rising anxiety, among a generation raised on smartphones and social media helps explain why Jae Nichelle’s reflections on anxiety resonate so powerfully with so many young women today.
To learn more, check out “Collegiate Black Women and YouTube Poems” from The Langston Hughes Review 29:1 (2023) for free through April 8.
Further Reading:
Haidt, Jonathan. 2024. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Penguin Press.
Women’s History Month Q&A: Vivian Davidson Hewitt, Pittsburgh’s First Black Librarian
In a past issue of Libraries: Culture, History, and Society, Tara Murray Grove writes about Vivian Davidson Hewitt—the first Black librarian in Pittsburgh, the first Black president of the Special Library Association (SLA), a career-long advocate for Black librarianship, and a collector of Black art. To celebrate Women’s History Month, Grove reflects on Hewitt’s legacy, the field of special librarianship, and the women librarians who are carrying Hewitt’s torch of advocacy forward today.
Learn more about Vivian Davidson Hewitt below, and read “Vivian Davidson Hewitt: A Special Librarian’s Advocacy” from Libraries 7:2 for free through April 25, 2026.
Tara Murray Grove is associate librarian for Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures at Penn State University.
Vivian Davidson Hewitt was the first Black librarian in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as well as the first Black president of the Special Libraries Association. Why has Hewitt largely been left out of histories of Black librarianship, despite her many contributions to the field?
Despite her remarkable achievements, I think Hewitt’s story is overlooked because she spent most of her career in special libraries. These are the libraries embedded in larger organizations—in museums, hospitals, associations, corporations, government agencies, laboratories, and so on. Hewitt worked at the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Most people get to experience public, school, and academic libraries directly, but far fewer know about special libraries. Even among librarians, special librarianship is less well known and there is much less research about it.
In special librarianship, Hewitt did not often face the kinds of overt discrimination that many of her peers did. While the much larger American Library Association held a national conference in a segregated city and supported state library associations that did not allow Black members, Hewitt said that she saw no such issues in the Special Libraries Association. She did experience both discrimination and public attention early in her career in Pittsburgh, and that experience motivated her to push for more opportunities for Black librarians. Many librarians reported the impact of her support on their own careers.
What are “special libraries” and what role do they play in the library ecosystem?
The definition of special libraries is slippery. I wrote an article about how difficult the special library is to define, and there is a master’s thesis on the history of its definition. Even the founder of the Special Libraries Association, John Cotton Dana, said that the term was “chosen with some hesitation, and rather in default of a better,” and librarians don’t all agree on a single definition.
They are often defined by what they are not—not public libraries, not school libraries, and not academic libraries. I prefer to focus on what they are, which is libraries with a specialized subject focus and serving a specific population, usually as part of a larger organization. For example, many law firms have libraries that provide legal information services to attorneys. Botanical gardens have libraries with resources on horticulture and landscape architecture.
Special libraries play an important role in collecting and describing materials in a specialized area. Because of their focus, they are able to collect more comprehensively than general libraries, and they have played an important role in developing classification systems for specialized materials.
Special librarians have also been at the forefront of new kinds of information work, including embedded librarianship, where the librarian is part of a team outside of the library, knowledge management, and competitive intelligence.
What first sparked your interest in Hewitt?
I think the role of public, school, and academic librarians in social justice is better known, and as someone who spent many years in special libraries, I became interested in how special librarians have approached advocacy. Hewitt provides an example of how to use professional associations and personal relationships to push for change within the profession and beyond.
I first learned about Hewitt when her autobiography was published in 2014 and the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Special Libraries Association released a video of her 2009 visit with them. At the time, I was on the board of SLA and increasingly interested in the history of the association and its leaders. I was curious about Hewitt’s experience as the first Black president of SLA, and the more I learned about her, the more fascinated I became. She did not always enjoy being a pioneer, and she talked about experiencing “battle fatigue” and longing to be “just plain me” during her early years in the Pittsburgh library system. Later on, though, she embraced her legacy of “firsts,” titling her autobiography The One and Only.
How did W.E.B. DuBois’s idea of the “Talented Tenth” shape Hewitt’s relationship with mentorship and advocacy?
DuBois’s “Talented Tenth” referred to the 10 percent of Black Americans who attained a college education. Hewitt recognized the privilege that helped her pursue an education and a career, and she heeded DuBois’s call to give back to the community throughout her life. In her library career, we can see this through her contributions to the literature, especially in the chapters she contributed to her good friend E. J. Josey’s works on Black librarianship, in her mentorship of other librarians, and in her leadership. She maintained ties with the educational institutions she attended and the professional associations she belonged to and continued to make visits and give talks well after her retirement.
While my article focuses on her library career, this same dedication to the community is clear in her personal life. She and her husband collected the works of Black American artists, and the collection is now at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Are there women librarians working today who you feel are carrying Hewitt’s torch of advocacy forward?
This is a tricky question, because I will undoubtedly leave out some important people. However, a few names come to mind.
In the special library world, I admire the work of Seema Rampersad, head of the Business and IP Centre at the British Library and president of SLA in 2023. If I am counting correctly, she was the fifth Black president of SLA. Like Hewitt, she is invested in her cultural heritage and in providing leadership in her communities.
Emily Drabinski, who served as president of the American Library Association in 2023–2024, has been vocal about the power of organizing and an advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and against censorship.
Kathleen de la Peña McCook has built a career around human rights, equity in libraries, and community building. Currently, together with Brett Spencer, she’s leading an effort to collect stories of “Librarians We Have Lost” as part of the American Library Association’s sesquicentennial celebration. This collection has many stories of librarian advocacy.
Fobazi Ettarh tragically passed away earlier this year, but she remains a strong influence in librarianship. She coined the term “vocational awe” to highlight the harm caused by viewing libraries as inherently good institutions. Her work has inspired important conversations about the role of librarians and the importance of protecting library workers.
There are so many more names I could mention, but these are a few that inspire me. As much as I want to celebrate libraries and librarians, it is also important to note that libraries and library associations have contributed to systems of injustice. Learning about stories like Hewitt’s exposes these injustices while also providing examples of how to work from within for a better future.
For more information, read “Vivian Davidson Hewitt: A Special Librarian’s Advocacy” from Libraries 7:2 for free through April 25, 2026.
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Unlocked Book of the Month: Memorializing the Unsung
Each month we’re highlighting a book available through PSU Press Unlocked, an open access initiative featuring scholarly digital books and journals in the humanities and social sciences.
About our March pick:
By the time the Capuchins arrived in the seventeenth century, Kongo had been Catholic for nearly two hundred years. The European mission could not be conversion, then, but reinforcement; the Capuchins sought to establish the sacraments and a line to Rome in a lay-led church already suffused with an enduring, creative, and complex theological culture. In Memorializing the Unsung, Elochukwu Uzukwu uses the framework of this “ancient” Kongo Catholicism to explore European dependence on enslaved Kongo Catholics and the unconscionable Capuchin and Spiritan participation in the slave trade at large—a practice denounced by the lone voices of Capuchin Epifanio de Moirans and Spiritan Alexandre Monnet.
Reconstructing the church that missionaries and Kongo Catholics built together on the foundations of local religion, Memorializing the Unsung contrasts the dignity denied the Kongo Catholics with the freedom they nonetheless performed. Uzukwu is particularly deft in tracing the agency of Kongo elites and laypeople from the fifteenth century through the nineteenth, carefully evaluating their deliberate engagements with southern Europeans, the role of the maestri (translator-catechists) in guiding the faithful, and the ultimate development of a unique theological vocabulary endorsed by the Kikongo catechism.
Without the support and creativity of these unsung lay Catholics across west-central and eastern Africa, Uzukwu shows, the European missions in the region would have failed. Even while enslaved, the Kongo Slaves of the Church and the eastern African Slaves of the Mission served as mediators, co-creators, and reinventors of their world.
Read more and access the book here: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09698-8.html
See the full list of Unlocked titles here: https://www.psupress.org/unlocked/unlocked_gallery.html
The common date given for the settlement of Philadelphia is 1682, when William Penn established a Quaker colony, providing it with a name that means “one who loves his brother.” Penn intended an idyllic “greene country towne,” one that was well ordered, with large open spaces within its twelve hundred acres. It “was the first major American town to be planned.” Penn envisioned his “towne” as a place of freedom, particularly in terms of religion. As with a certain amount of history, much of this is myth. The land, of course, had been settled by the Lenape Indians long before the Europeans arrived. Additionally, Penn’s “greene country towne” soon became a highly congested city, plagued by disease, crime, and fires. Its vaunted freedom was largely limited to White Protestants, and its “brotherly love” certainly did not extend to most immigrants, to non-Christians, or, in particular, to its Black residents.
Blacks have been at the center of Philadelphia’s history since before it was even known by that name. More than two thousand Blacks lived in the area once called New Sweden between 1638 and 1655. The fledgling colony encompassed parts of western Delaware and parts of Pennsylvania that now include Philadelphia. One of the most famous of these settlers was Antoni Swart (Black Anthony), a West Indian who arrived in the colony in 1639 aboard a Swedish vessel. Though initially enslaved, records indicate he eventually became free and was employed by Governor Johan Printz.
The history of Black Philadelphians has been one fraught with both great promise and shattered dreams from its beginnings until today. Philadelphia was, as historian Gary Nash observes, “created in an atmosphere of growing Negrophobia”; still, despite ongoing racial prejudice, “it continues to this day to be one of the vital urban locations of black Americans.” It is this paradoxical condition that is the most characteristic dynamic of the city’s relationship with its Black citizens. One facet of this relationship has been constant: whether African Americans have thrived here or suffered egregious oppression, they have never remained silent, never letting anyone else define their situation for them. They have always voiced their own opinions about their condition in their city through fiction, poetry, plays, essays, diaries, letters, or memoirs. The city has been blessed with a number of significant authors, ranging, among others, from Richard Allen to W. E. B. Du Bois to Jessie Fauset to Sonia Sanchez to John Edgar Wideman to Lorene Cary. In addition, there have been numerous lesser known but also forceful figures as well, including the enslaved people Alice and Cato, who were only known by those names. Whether they were native sons and daughters or spent significant time in the city or were there only long enough to experience the city in an impactful moment, Philadelphia has touched them all deeply. This anthology is a documentation of and a tribute to their collective voice. The focus here is not just on writers with a Philadelphia connection but on the authors’ views on the city itself. The hope is to provide a wide variety of Black perspectives on the city.
There is something special about what leading African American intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois once labeled “the Philadelphia Negro.” One reason for this uniqueness is the city’s relationship to its Black inhabitants, in part caused by their intertwined, virtually symbiotic, history. No other major Northern city in the country has had such a long connection with African Americans, one forged in the seventeenth century, and Blacks have never stopped coming. They first settled largely in what are now called the Old City and Center City, where some Blacks still live. They have since scattered throughout the city, sometimes by choice but often by necessity and force, today mostly residing in Northern and Western Philadelphia. Migration patterns have changed over the years, as in other cities, but the Black population in the city has rarely declined and has often increased in number. Philadelphia was, as of 2020, the sixth-largest metropolis in the nation, and Blacks make up more than 40 percent of the population there, more than the percentage of any of the other top ten cities in the country.
Philadelphia has a vibrant and culturally rich history, offering enormous promise to its inhabitants since its beginnings. It was founded with the premise of religious freedom and steeped in the radical independence movement that created this country. The city was settled by Quakers, perhaps the religious group that, in popular opinion if not always in fact, has most vociferously been associated with opposition to slavery. The “peculiar institution” was, in fact, almost nonexistent there by the early years of the nineteenth century. Philadelphia was the center of the Underground Railroad, with such legendary conductors as William Still. As the closest major city situated above the Mason-Dixon line, symbolically separating the North from the South, many fugitives from enslavement passed through Philadelphia. Some moved on, but a large number stayed, as the city seemed like the promised land for many African Americans. This is the powerful narrative of the city’s history that still holds true for numerous people today when they think of Philadelphia.
There is also something unique about the Black experience in this city. Blacks have had a nominal freedom throughout most of their existence in Philadelphia, yet when we look under the surface, Philadelphia’s treatment of African Americans has hardly been benign. The city has held out promises, but unfortunately many of these promises were not kept. Philadelphia may be situated in the North, but as Sonia Sanchez so eloquently writes in her poem “elegy (For MOVE and Philadelphia),” in many ways “philadelphia / [is] a disguised southern city.” There were Quakers, many of whom were abolitionists and worked for the Underground Railroad, but there were many others of the faith who were slaveholders, including the colony’s founder, William Penn. And even if the city was replete with abolitionists, it did not ensure that they viewed African Americans as equals. Blacks were, in fact, disfranchised from the vote in 1838, never to regain it until the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. Although the city was the center of the antislavery movement, not all of its White residents opposed slavery, and even if they did, the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850 hampered efforts to keep Blacks out of bondage. Before and after the Civil War, as demonstrated throughout this text, the city experienced a series of violent racial conflicts and has continue to practice an ugly pattern of segregation in housing, transportation, education, and employment, severely limiting the prospects of improvement for its Black citizens. There is a long history of racial injustice practiced by Philadelphia’s police as well as Black residents being ignored, at best, by the city government.
A Black Philadelphia Reader: African American Writings About the City of Brotherly Love is available for pre-order from Penn State University Press. Learn more and order the book here: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09731-2.html. Take 30% off with discount code NR24.
In honor of Black History Month, we are sharing excerpts from several of the books on our African American Studies list. For further reading, find related free journal articles and open-access books here: https://bit.ly/4kgkEK5.
A Black Philadelphia Reader: African American Writings About the City of Brotherly Love edited by Louis J. Parascandola is available from Penn State University Press. Learn more and find the book here: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09731-2.html. Receive a discount with code BHM26.
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