To study the us history in the 21st century: challenges, research optics, opportunities. Interview with professor Jennifer Klein

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Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

To study the us history in the 21st century: challenges, research optics, opportunities. Interview with professor Jennifer Klein

Oleksandra Kotliar, Ph.D. Student (History)

Kyiv, Ukraine

Abstract

In 2021 Joe Biden came to power under the slogan «Battle for the Soul of the Nation». In the election campaign, his team saw it necessary to emphasize the idea of national unity around American democratic institutions and values. These values are interpreted quite traditionally for the U.S. -- from the national exceptionalism ideology prism. History plays a significant role here: it increasingly fills ideological vacuums and becomes a tool for legitimizing political or economic action. Such political rhetoric today is only one of the symptoms of a general turn. A new revisionist wave in academic history is currently underway in the U.S. It reflects not only the topical debatable issues of American national history but also the ideological and constitutional crisis in the country. The content of discussions surrounding history teaching in educational institutions demonstrates the continuity and durability of this problem, which has been ongoing for more than 70 years. The transnational turn in American Studies increased attention to scientists' research outside the U.S. and initiated the distancing of academic research from the dominant national mythos. However, in Ukraine, most research remains in the outdated Myth and Symbol School paradigm. Jennifer Klein, Professor of History in the field of 20th Century U.S. history at Yale University, specializes in social history and considers its approaches and methodology the most promising in understanding the origins of modern socio-economic and political trends. This article presents the interview with Professor Klein conducted in July 2022. We discussed the challenges to understanding the multi-ethnic history of the U.S., functions of history in social life, the problem of constructing a modern national American historical narrative, forms of its dependence on the political conjuncture, and the prospects of contemporary research on U.S. history.

Key words: Jennifer Klein; U.S. History; American Studies; Transnational turn; «The 1619 Project»; social history.

The political trends of recent years, in particular the BLM movement, caused the development of a revisionist wave in American history. This challenge to existing and rooted concepts reflected the country's internal ideological and constitutional crisis. One of the planes of discussion became the problem of teaching history in educational institutions. In 2021, American journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones developed «The 1619 Project». This is a large text, published in The New York Times Magazine in August 2019 [1], designed to shift the focus in the national historical narrative. The project recognizes the existence of the slavery institution and its destruction in the U.S. as the main factor in the American nation's formation. The establishment of the project was an attempt to negate the leading thought regarding the decisive role of democratic political ideas in building and developing the U.S. state.

The described problem is not new to the U.S. «The 1619 Project» continues the controversy going on since the second half of the 20th century. However, in many cases, the issue is not so much the variations of historical projects as their goals, articulations, and promotion methods. In August 2022, James H. Sweet, the president of the AHA, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote the column «Is History History? Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present» on the «Perspectives on History» resource [2]. James H. Sweet criticized the trend toward presentism which is the intention to «actualize» historical topics, but in fact -- its interpretation through the prism of the present. He later had to write an apology for his assessment of «The 1619 Project».

It should be noted that it is difficult to disagree with the article's main point about the negative impact of attempts to «control» history. Most contemporary political debates are strongly historicist by nature and vocation [3, p. 29]. James H. Sweet writes that American people «have become accustomed to the idea of history as an evidentiary grab bag to articulate their political positions» and turned history into a «heuristic tool for the articulation of an ideal imagined future.» This problem is also familiar to Ukraine. The transnational turn in American Studies that began in the 1990s was designed to distance discipline from colonial controls of pure national mythos [4, p. іх] and bring a different range of institutional, disciplinary, and cultural perspectives on it [5, p. 382]. The transnational turn creates increased attention to scientists' research outside the U.S. Unfortunately, the result did not live up to expectations. U.S. national myths weave into the historiographical tradition of different countries and form the axis of American history. The rest of the issues (including racial ones) remain on the periphery or are adjacent to the main narrative. Due to these contradictory tendencies complex, I interviewed Jennifer Klein, an American professor of 20th-century U.S. history at Yale University. We talked about the functions of history in social life, the problem of constructing a modern national American historical narrative, its dependence on political conjuncture, and the perspectives of contemporary research on U.S. history.

Oleksandra Kotliar (next -- O.K.): Today, Vladimir Putin is trying to justify Russia's policy through history. Thus, he is trying to legitimize his actions contrary to international law. However, not only Russia appeals to history. Russian rhetoric finds its counter-answers from another side. For example, a lot of people compare Russians with Nazists. Joe Biden symbolically signed the Lend-Lease Act for Ukraine on May 9, 2022. In the same way, Germany supplied military equipment to help Ukraine on June 22, 2000. What do you think these allusions in political language indicate?

Jennifer Klein (next -- J.K.): If we talk about the United States and the attempt to generate something distinct and unique that was going to be called U.S. history and American history, we need to start with Civil War and a project to try to knit the country back together after the North and South had split. Enfranchising former slaves made them part of civil society, but it turned out to be destructive to the nation. And so the historians of the late 19th century tried to create a U.S. history that would just push that out of the way and create a U.S. history that would put the imperative on national unity. The 20th century, since the 1930s and 40s, was a struggle to come to grips with the multi-ethnic history of the U.S. So I think, in terms of the uses and abuses of history, one problem is «cherry-picking» -- when you try to go into the past, pick out the facts that seem to serve you, and put them into the present context. That tendency of «cherry- picking» can be noted even in the U.S. Supreme Court. They claim to be making their judicial decisions based on originalism, the original moment of the Constitution's inception and implementation. But again, they pick what's beneficial for them out of context. We must understand changes over time and that the people in the past are not us. Understanding the legacies of the past and its usage are different things.

The other thing with the widespread sense of history that's always surprising to me is when people think history can predict the future. Unfortunately, that is one of the conceits of social science which has let them stray. Economics can come up with a model that they believe is predictive, but they don't seem to have predicted the chaos of the 2008 financial meltdown across the world. The same is true with political science. But I think historians can enable us to understand our present.

O. K.: How do you feel that many historians insist on the didactic function of history or the «lessons of history»? Often this leads to a vain search for «recipes» from the past to solve modern problems.

J. K.: I think we should distinguish the idea of historical lessons from the predictive «function» of history. For example, if we're going to understand social inequality, we need to understand why particular groups of people did not have access to education or housing over time. So, if we can look at those processes over time, we can understand why so much inequality is manifesting in our society or even globally.

O. K.: Yes, but you said it's essential to divide present politics and history. And political leaders often resort to using the «language» of the past. For example, in 2016, Donald Trump used Warren Harding's terminology and took his slogan «America first!» And this phrase wasn't just a resort in a new context. He tried to emphasize a twist to another historical period. In turn, Harding in 1920 proclaimed the new «Era of Good Feelings,» appealing to James Monroe's presidency and consolidation around internal problems, not international relations. History is constantly being instrumentalized. What to do with this phenomenon?

J. K.: I think it's fine to have a political agenda, but first, one has to be upfront about it. History took shape as a professional scholarly endeavor as a science in the late 19th century and early 20th century. At that time, the idea of the objectivity principle was developed. Therefore, history was «objective» because it -- was beyond critique. And whatever it was saying was an objective description of reality. So once everybody becomes invested in the objectivity principles, they become blind to their ideological biases. This is how the «white» narrative of American history was written, distorted black rights' history.

What is being presented must be rooted in the evidence. I'm a diehard empiricist. I also think there is a constructive and important use of history by political leaders, but it can't be a propaganda fantasy. The latter also includes euphemistic buzzwords Donald Trump says to white male audiences. Looking back historically at Chinese exclusion in the late 19th century, we'll see how that language was used and its implications. The modern public needs to understand that this ideological language has been used repeatedly for a couple of centuries. So we need to understand American history to see the roots of this language and the reasons why some people still resort to it.

O. K.: At this juncture, I want to move on to your research, which directly connects with the American present. You work in the social history field and research the history of healthcare provision. Social history provides not only theory and research tools but also material for work. Your research is very applied. It concerns issues of labor, legislation, health, gender, etc. What new requests in social history have appeared in recent years in the U.S.?

J. K.: Yes, it is an interesting question because policy issues are often dominant in historical research. Social scientists are writing about the present, but I am writing about social policy, healthcare or welfare policy, pensions and old age policy, and labor policy as a historian. I am looking at the questions of the welfare state and public policy through the lens of labor, politics, and political economy. For example, my research on health insurance, which is entirely dysfunctional in the U.S., does not cover people adequately and does not give Americans access to sufficient healthcare or equal healthcare. We have private insurance through private and for-profit commercial enterprises and businesses because Americans believe in free markets. But if we go back and explore this issue historically and investigate it from before the moment when anything existed, there was nothing inevitable about this. There was not an ideological reason that healthcare inevitably ended up in the hands of private companies and markets. Instead, we have to understand the political struggle that took place. If we go back to the 1930s and 40s, we will see much more equitable, financially efficient, and effective healthcare models. Why is it that those options didn't win out? So we have to look at what happened to the contestations between unions and big companies and the changing role of the federal government in the 1940s and 1950s.

O. K.: In one of your recent articles, «Inoculations: The Social Politics of Time, Labor, and Public Good in COVID-America», you raise many sensitive issues for the U.S. The pandemic has exposed many limitations in democratic mechanisms, and apparatuses of violence came out. What challenges does this pose for American democracy? And what is the role of historical research in these problems?

J. K.: I think we finally have been pushed to think about policing in terms of violence rather than merely as protection. Police in the United States certainly had their origins in violence and the enforcement first of slavery. The forced labor of plantations was possible through the perpetual use of violence. But even the racial segregation system of Jim Crow post-slavery was enforced by violence, and likewise police violence.

With the onset of the pandemic, we were unprepared for it in terms of infrastructure. We are back to the unequal health insurance system again. And this takes a historical understanding. We had an Occupational Safety and Health Administration that was supposed to protect workers on the job; unions and collective bargaining had a fair Labor Standards Act in place. We had these things. And yet, the ability to enforce and apply them to American workers had been increasingly minimized. And so that is a politics we need to understand that got us to that moment. And so that is a politics we need to understand that got us to that moment. Again, I'm not talking about predicting the future. Still, it will enable us to understand why so many people work in dangerous places where they are particularly susceptible to COVID. The boss's insistence that they remain at work and they could not protect themselves is a historical outcome, and that is something we need to understand if we're going to confront political and social challenges today.

O. K.: I would also like to discuss the revisionist wave in American history. «The Project 1619» became symptomatic in this context. Discussions around the mythologization of national history have been unfolding in the United States for a long time. But the BLM movement, in particular, raised the problem that large groups of people are excluded from American national history. What do you think national history should be?

J. K.: «The Project 1619» is something the public has long needed. Historians have been doing the research that has laid the groundwork for this, but the public doesn't see our work often. Especially if people don't get into the national parks or the public museums, although it's starting now with, for example, the new African American History Museum in Washington, and the National Museum of the American Indian and Museum of Indigenous People, which is an incredible project. And there would be no nation, no the U.S., without those slave ships that first arrived on the continent. They made the colonies so productive and enabled colonists even to imagine having a nation that could be independent of the British Empire.

And it has spilled into this Trump moment. Now, states in the South are banning this project and prohibiting teaching it in primary and secondary schools. Ironically, there's a widespread fascination with the U.S. Civil War. A lot of Americans go out and do reenactments of Civil War battles. But they don't want to talk about Reconstruction, and they don't want to talk about the 13th and 14th Amendments. And they don't want to talk about the southern rejection of the fact that the Civil War ended with the defeat of not only southern slavery but southern anti-liberalism. The fact that the South wanted to create an anti-democratic illiberal society. That idea was defeated, and the South has not come to terms with that. «The Project 1619» has dropped into a moment where Trump had figured out again how to fan the flames of that white resentment in the South. He tried to say again that the problems Americans are experiencing are due to African Americans and Jews who don't belong as part of the body politic.

Related to this are the fights around the school history now. Part of the political forces don't want lynching, violent policing, Mexicans, taking land away from Native Americans, etc., discussed in textbooks. And they are trying to grab control of the narrative of national history by using market and political power. For example, Texas is a huge state, so textbooks for children in school are bought centrally. And so authorities have the ability to put pressure on the publishers.

I think national history should be able to understand the ideas of our founding. You know we were founded in contradistinction to a monarchy and an empire. And we also need to understand the points of change over time. The different groups of people could compel America to reach aspirations of being equal or freer.

What did it mean to develop? What do we know about things that happen worldwide, like urbanization? How did it take particular shape in the United States? And then how did we impact the world? So I think we need to understand our place in the world and how our ideas, institutions, and corporations have impacted people. It's taken a long time to come to social history. Social history helped to realize that people gain some self-determination over their lives or become part of American democracy after being excluded from it. Answering your question about the trends that I think have now been developing. I guess social history became dominant within U.S. history, and I would say within British and French history, too, for a couple of decades.

O. K.: I want to return to your national history statement. In 2022 discussions around the school history programs were burned. Over 50 bills were designed to limit teaching and learning about race, sex, and gender issues in U.S. history in schools, universities, and state agencies last year. As politician Glenn Youngkin, now governor of Virginia, said, «slavery was abhorrent, but it doesn't mean that we have to actually drive division into our schools» [6]. Do such questions work against civic unity?

J. K.: Proponents of this approach say: «Well, if we're going to have to teach slavery, we should teach both sides.» What are both sides? But it is used in political strategy effectively. Education is controlled at the local level for the most part by Local or County School Boards. And they can start passing these rules about what will be included in the curriculum or excluded from it. This kind of censorship is happening in the South.

It is also related to the fact that the Civil War, in a way, never ended for them, just like the Cold War didn't end for Vladimir Putin. Studying history would be useful because the same situation happened during McCarthy's time and resulted in the purges of teachers and books. So it would be useful to go back to see why this happened and what the consequences were.

O. K.: Permanent intensification of globalization processes affect the development of American Studies. Is the focus of research in this field now shifting? The transnational turn that began in the 1990s is also criticized now. Such studies have not led American Studies away from the colonial controls of the national mythos.

The development of decolonial thought now again requires a search for an adequate approach. In Ukraine, the actualization of American history issues and their interpretations largely depend on our internal requests. What is the value of studying American history and culture in other countries for the United States?

J. K.: I think it's very hard for Americans to get out of the framework of American exceptionalism even when we're aware of it. It's still the habit of thinking. So, first of all, for people in other countries to study the development of the American nation and culture without being stuck within that mindset would be very helpful because it's hard for us to see our blinders. The first stage of so-called transnational history is the field called «America in the World.» In addition to U.S. history, it answered questions about what we imposed on other countries, how we intervened in them, and what we did to them. Finally, transnational history has gotten much more to the point where it's more of a two- or three-way street where you can have any book referring to where the thinkers in Columbia do influence what happens in the US or what happens in other places and applied here. This also applies to the Cold War. Unfortunately, this is so regrettable that a historian who knew only English taught the Cold War history for the last 20 years at Yale University. He convinced American students that there was no need to study Eastern European or Chinese languages. I am talking about John Gaddis. Now he finally stopped teaching that course. Hopefully, we can start teaching Cold War history more complex.

The other thing is the assumption that either the US is able to project democratic models and institutions to other countries or the United States comes in a very destructive way and undermines it. Usually talk about the CIA, a coup, or military intervention... But less often people look at the regional dialogues about democracy and globalism, happening in Southeast Asia, South Asia, or Latin America for example. They are happening independently from the US. It's so interesting to think about something like the Bandung Conference in Indonesia in 1955, where the key players are India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other nations. They talked not only about democracy but a non-hierarchical world order. And the idea that the conversation originates in the Caribbean and Africa. It wasn't «exported» by the US. After understanding this you can see where the Americans come into the conversation. american klein exceptionalism political

The problem of myths' dominance and a strong ideological line in US history, despite decades of approaches revision, including transnational, remains relevant. Myths continue to control not only politics but also scientific discourse. This is not least due to the fear of losing national unity, which prevents freeing history optics from the layers of narratives and visions of the 19th -- еarly 20th centuries. Therefore, the revision touches on the early stages of nation-building issues, the politics of national historical memory, and the place of the US in modern processes in the world. «Transnationalization» of history should not become a part of geopolitics and introduce history into the borders of hierarchies built by it. This is opportunely for Ukrainian researchers as well: going beyond obsolete paradigms, still visible due to the unfolding of a new global confrontation in the 21st century, will allow us to make a fresh look at the current problems of American history and politics in a different way. The same is topical of our own history.

List of sources and literature

1. Hannah-Jones N. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story / Nikole Hannah-Jones. - New York: Random House, 2021. - 624 p.

2. James S. Is History History? Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present [Electronic Resource] / Sweet James // Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association. Perspectives on History. - 2022. - Mode to Access: http://surl.li/cyeng.

3. Cattini G. Historical revisionism / Giovanni Cattini // Transfer: Journal of Contemporary Culture. - 2011. - №6. - C. 28-38.

4. Herlihy-Mera J. After American Studies. Rethinking the Legacies of Transnational Exceptionalism / Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera. - London: Routledge, 2018. - 198 с.

5. Heise U. Ecocriticism and the Transnational Turn in American Studies / Ursula Heise // American Literary History. - 2008. - № 20. - С. 382-404.

6. American Bridge 21st Century [Electronic Resource] // Twitter. - 2021. - Mode to Access: http: //surl .li/cyhkb.

References

1. Hannah-Jones, N. (2021). The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. New York: Random House. [In English].

2. Sweet, J. (2022). Is History History? Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present. Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association. Perspectives on History. http://surl.li/cyeng. [In English].

3. Cattini, G. (2011). Historical revisionism. Transfer: Journal of Contemporary Culture, 6, 28-38. [In English].

4. Herlihy-Mera, J. (2018). After American Studies. Rethinking the Legacies of Transnational Exceptionalism. London: Routledge. [In English] .

5. Heise, U. (2008). Ecocriticism and the Transnational Turn in American Studies. American Literary History, 20(1-2), 382-404. [In English].

6. American Bridge 21st Century Twitter (2021). http://surl.li/cyhkb. [In English].

Анотація

Вивчати історію США у ХХІ ст.: виклики, дослідницькі оптики, можливості. Інтерв'ю з проф. Дженніфер Кляйн

Олександра Котляр, аспірантка історичного факультету, Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка, м. Київ, Україна

У 2021 р. Джо Байден прийшов до влади під гаслом «Битва за душу нації». У передвиборчій кампанії його команда вважала за необхідне підкреслити ідею національної єдності навколо американських демократичних інститутів і цінностей. Останні потрактовані цілком традиційно для США - крізь призму ідеології національної винятковості. Історія у ній відіграє центральну роль: вона все більше заповнює ідеологічні вакууми й використовується як інструмент для обґрунтування або легітимації політичних та економічних дій.

Така політична риторика сьогодні є лише одним із симптомів загальної тенденції. Нині у США триває нова ревізіоністська хвиля в академічній історії, що віддзеркалює як актуальні дискусійні питання американської національної історії, так і ідеологічну та конституційну кризу в країні. Зміст дискусій навколо викладання історії в навчальних закладах свідчить про тяглість цієї проблеми, що триває вже більше 70 років. Транснаціональний поворот в американістиці сконцентрував увагу на наукових досліджень поза межами США з метою дистанціювання академічних досліджень від домінуючих національних міфів. Однак в Україні більшість досліджень надалі залишаються у застарілій парадигмі школи «Міфів і символів». Дженніфер Кляйн, професорка історії в Єльському університеті, дослідниця історії США ХХ ст., спеціалізується у соціальній історії і вважає її підходи та методологію найбільш перспективними у розумінні витоків сучасних соціально-економічних і політичних тенденцій. У статті представлено інтерв'ю з проф. Дженніфер Кляйн, проведене в липні 2022 р. В інтерв'ю обговорюються виклики, пов'язані із розумінням поліетнічної історії США, функції історії в суспільному житті, проблема конструювання сучасного національного американського історичного наративу, прояви його залежності від політичної кон'юнктури, а також перспективи сучасних досліджень історії США.

Ключові слова: Дженніфер Кляйн; історія США; американські студії; транснаціональний поворот; «Проект 1619»; соціальна історія.

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