Unexpected Lessons in Empowerment
My Humanities Moment involves a connection between two individuals that might not initially seem to have anything in common: Jane Austen and Quentin Tarantino. One of the first places I found inspiration for the tenacity that has always kept me going through numerous personal and professional challenges was in the novels of Jane Austen. The rather conventional Austen can hardly be called a feminist since her strongest characters ultimately bend to the social and gender expectations of their time. When I was in middle school, however, I didn’t know that. I read for pleasure, rather than analysis, and had a greater desire to accept a much more romantic vision of the world. This caused me to see characters like Elizabeth Bennett and Elinor Dashwood as strong women who faced difficult circumstances with grace and determination and spoke up for the things they believed in. I remember admiring their ability to put actions behind their words and positions—they seemed to fight hardest when things got tough. <br /><br />Flash forward about fifteen years to the first time I saw Tarantino’s <em>Kill Bill</em> series. Ironically, The Bride (Beatrix Kiddo) spoke to me in the same way as the Austen characters. Kiddo is attacked by people she considered her allies and left for dead in a way that pretty much should have assured her demise. The most inspiring scene for me has always been in the second movie, which depicts her escape from a grave in which she has been buried alive. I found her will to survive circumstances that would have destroyed another person—both literally and figuratively—incredibly motivating. <br /><br />Getting my masters’ degrees and my PhD has been a struggle to say the least. When I began my quest for an advanced education, I was a young mother who lived in a tiny rural town, fighting for a way to effectively express my value system in an environment that was much more conservative than I was. But whenever I felt like giving up—like when I was overwhelmed with work, life, or whatever—I tried to remember these fictional women. They refused to wallow in self-pity, but simply picked themselves up, reorganized, or even crawled out of the dirt to face the next moment with purpose and resolve. I still think of them when I find myself faltering and credit them for giving me the willpower to fight my own battles. They truly have made me the person I am today.
Books and Films
Throughout my life
Melissa Young, Archivist and Historian
unexpected-lessons-empowerment
Spellbound by a Sleeper
Musician Dave Wilson describes being struck by the legacy of <em>The Night of the Hunter</em>, a film essentially ignored directly after its release in 1955 but celebrated by critics decades later. (In fact, in 1998 the magazine <em>Cahiers du Cinema</em> listed it as the second most beautiful film of all time.)
<em>The Night of the Hunter</em> (1955), directed by Charles Laughton
Dave Wilson, lead singer-songwriter of bluegrass group Chatham County Line
spellbound-by-a-sleeper
Don't Close Your Eyes
When I saw <em>Beautiful Boy</em>, I found myself closing my eyes every time a lighter and spoon appeared. I would sneak one eye open and look through blurred eyelashes to see if the scene had changed, often shutting my eye more quickly than I’d opened it. When I accidentally saw anything “too graphic,” my neck grew hot and my stomach churned. As my friends and I left the theatre, someone asked me, “Did you like the movie?” “No, I did not like the movie. It made me sick and anxious.” <br /><br />I had my Humanities Moment on the drive home, when I thought about my immediate response; my emotional response. As I gave myself time to consider what the movie provided audiences who have never been exposed to someone battling addiction, my intellectual response emerged. The movie was not made to be liked or disliked; it intentionally revealed the darkest side of addiction with the intention of making the audience uncomfortable. I find that oftentimes the Humanities does the same. <br /><br />Studying the human condition through various disciplines can reveal dark truths that make us want to close our eyes, but the Humanities challenges us to keep our eyes open. Unearthing all stories, even the darkest of them, allows us to understand our neighbors and grow in compassion. The power of the Humanities is in the moment when we wish to close our eyes, but we keep them open in order to learn.
The film "Beautiful Boy"
This Moment happened last week when I went to the movies with a group of friends.
Julie Rakowitz, 21, Programs Coordinator Assistant at the Glasscock Center for Humanities Research
dont-close-your-eyes
Chronicling a Summer in Cinéma Vérité
For Peter Galison, an influential moment was seeing a film made in 1961 by an anthropologist and a sociologist, featuring a series of estival interviews with people on the sidewalks of France. With its innovations in sound technology, <em>Chronicle of a Summer</em> opened Galison’s eyes to the possibilities of documentary film. The film illuminated the interplay between image and text, revealing how the humanities can “open up a world.”
<em>Chronicle of a Summer (Chronique d'un été)</em>
<a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/meet-the-fellows/peter-galison/">Peter Galison</a>, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor in History of Science and Physics at Harvard University
peter-galison-chronicling-a-summer-in-cinema-verite
A Lifetime of Humanities Moments
<p>Some years ago, I was asked to give a lecture to students enrolled in a small university’s humanities program describing the personal epiphany I experienced which led to my passion for the humanities. Try as I might, I could not think of an isolated, single experience but rather a series of moments that stretch back to my childhood and have “stuck to my ribs” over a lifetime.</p>
<p>A very early memory: perhaps at the age of six or seven, I became mesmerized by Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony” and repeatedly played it on the phonograph (several 78 discs), deeply affected by the contrast between the brooding, dark and the happier, lighter themes.</p>
<p>Quite obviously, I was drawn to classical music. Some five or six years later, I had my heart set to hear Rudolph Serkin perform Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. An ear infection, quite painful, almost prevented the experience. Against doctor’s orders, my aunt took me. I clearly recall how thrilled I was by the crescendo-decrescendo passage in the last movement—leaving the concert hall pain-free with the infection gone!</p>
<p>During these early years, I was somewhat of a bookworm, transported to different times and places by books which provided delight, wonderment and a number of deeply poignant moments. Initially, adventure stories such as James Fennimore Cooper’s <em>The Deerslayer</em> and <em>The Last of the Mohicans</em>, Alexander Dumas’ <em>The Three Musketeers</em> and Jules Verne’s <em>The Mysterious Island</em> were my fare, followed by Mark Twain’s <em>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer</em>, <em>A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court</em> and <em>Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc</em> and Willa Cather’s evocative novels <em>My Antonia</em> and <em>O Pioneers!</em></p>
<p>I also had the good fortune of being taken to theater in my pre-adolescent years, thrilling to the performances of Ethel Barrymore in <em>How Green Was My Valley</em>, Walter Hampton in <em>The Patriots</em> and a bit later, José Ferrer in Edmond Rostand’s romantic masterpiece, <em>Cyrano de Bergerac</em>. In my later adolescence, I experienced unforgettable performances of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in back-to-back performances of Shakespeare’s <em>Anthony and Cleopatra</em> and George Bernard Shaw’s <em>Caesar and Cleopatra</em>. I was bowled over by Vivien Leigh playing Cleopatra as the young, adoring female in awe of Julius Caesar in the Shaw play and her brilliantly played, contrasting characterization as a mature and majestic woman facing her demise in Shakespeare.</p>
<p>A life of theater-going has followed. Naturally, the works of the Bard—<em>Henry V</em>, <em>Macbeth</em>, <em>Hamlet</em>, <em>Merchant of Venice</em>, <em>Midsummer Night’s Dream</em>, <em>Othello</em> and <em>King Lear</em>—have been at the core. Perhaps one of my most memorable nights of theater-going was a performance by the great husband-wife team of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s <em>The Visit</em>—a dramatization of greed, revenge and the power of money among people of rectitude.</p>
<p>The visual arts, particularly painting, was an important part of my childhood, which continues to be nurtured by museum-going in my own city and around the world. Collecting has also been a joyous endeavor, centered on prints with a focus on Ukiyo-e. Two most memorable moments were encountering Goya’s paintings and prints in the Prado Museum in Madrid. These works riveted me, and I spent a whole day with them alone. Some years apart on a visit to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, I found myself in a small gallery, just five paintings by Rembrandt—four self-portraits and one of his mother. I was overcome and could not contain tears—they spoke so deeply of the human condition.</p>
<p>Coming back to adolescent years and literature, Dickens, Thackeray, Melville, O’Henry, Herman Hesse, again Twain, were sources of adventure and insights to the human condition and heart. College years introduced me to Homer, the Greek playwrights, and the Roman poets, particularly Virgil, Horace and Catullus. A lifetime of reading followed—English and American novelists and essayists, German, Italian, French, Japanese and Russian authors, particularly Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Pages and pages of humanities moments!!</p>
<ul>
<li>Who can forget Hector’s farewell to his infant son in the <em>Iliad</em>?</li>
<li>Or be struck by George Elliott observing in <em>Middlemarch</em>, “No age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.” Or, “There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our mortality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.”</li>
<li>Who can forget Huck Finn introducing himself on the opening page of the eponymous novel and then later wrestling with his conscience and eschatology whether to report Jim as a runaway slave?</li>
<li>Of a different nature but just as memorable are the exquisite and subtle emotions experienced and described by Virginia Wolff in <em>Mrs. Dalloway</em> and <em>To the Lighthouse</em>.</li>
<li>And, most recently for me, the moment in Proust’s last volume, <em>Le Temps Retrouvé of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu</em> where he describes his epiphany that enables him to be a writer and thus realize his literary ambitions.</li>
<li>Finally, mention must be made of poignant moments so touching to me in Japanese literary gems. To read Shikibu Murasaki’s masterpiece <em>Genji Monogatari</em> is to be transported to another time (11th century), another world (medieval Japan) and sensibilities to be treasured. Love poems two centuries earlier capture the mood and the feeling. Consider these two gems by Ono no Komachi:<br />
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="border-bottom: none;"><em>Did he appear<br />because I fell asleep<br />thinking of him?<br />If only I’d known I was dreaming,<br />I’d never have wakened.</em></td>
<td style="border-bottom: none;"><em>I thought to pick<br />the flower of forgetting<br />for myself,<br />but I found it<br />already growing in his heart.</em></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Philosophy I came to in college through the suggestion of my father. What better introduction than Plato’s <em>Apology</em> and <em>Phaedo</em>? Socrates’ acceptance of the Athenian Assembly’s death sentence and later his refusal to delay drinking the hemlock spoke to me of transcendent self-possession and wisdom.</p>
<p>These stoic strains were fully developed over the ensuing five hundred years and come full-blown with the appearance of the stoic philosophers—Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. How can one forget the admonishment in the <em>Enchiridion</em> of Epictetus to behave in private as one would want to be seen in public, and later the Roman Emperor Aurelius in his <em>Meditations</em> advising, “No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.” These words speak deeply to such as myself who has been so greatly privileged. I went on to major in philosophy and have continued my interest over a lifetime, initially with special focus on Spinoza and Schopenhauer, and in later life centered on political and moral questions.</p>
<p>As can be surmised, music—orchestral, chamber, vocal and opera—has been my greatest passion. As I entered my adolescent years, my musical horizons were expanding, particularly with my introduction to Baroque music—J.S. Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Corelli and Telemann. Handel’s <em>Messiah</em> was an early favorite, and the joy I felt on hearing the aria and chorus “O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion” is indescribable. This lead to Bach cantatas, his Passions, the Mass in B minor and the Christmas Oratorio with its joyful and triumphant opening chorus. No Christmas is complete without that ringing in my ears, and who cannot be moved by the opening aria, “Ich habe Genug” from the Cantata of the same name.</p>
<p>Then came opera, with a proliferation of humanities moments:</p>
<ul>
<li>Cherobino’s incomparable profession of adolescent love “Non so pia cosa son” and the Contessa’s “Dove sono I bei momenti” lamenting her lost love—both from Mozart’s <em>Le Nozze di Figaro</em></li>
<li>Wotan’s “Farewell” bringing to a close <em>Die Valkyrie</em>, the second opera of Wagner’s <em>Der Ring des Nibelungen</em></li>
<li>Hans Sachs “Wahn, wahn” monologue from this same composer’s <em>Die Meistersinger</em></li>
<li>Iago’s great aria “Credo in un Dio crudel” from the second act of Verdi’s <em>Otello</em></li>
<li>Schaunard, the philosopher, bidding farewell to his cloak in order to purchase medicines for the dying Mimi in Puccini’s <em>La Bohème</em></li>
<li>The transcendent trio sung by the Marschallin, Octavian and Sophie in the last act of Richard Strauss’s <em>Der Rosenkavalier</em>.</li>
</ul>
<p>Finally, in my more adult years, I am blessed to hear and play (violin) chamber music—string quartets, piano trios, various combinations of strings, winds and keyboard. The list of profound and touching moments is endless. I have only to mention Mozart’s Viola Quintets K.415 & 416, Beethoven’s late string quartets Op. 127-135; and Schubert’s quintessential Cello Quintet in C major as examples.</p>
<p>How fortunate am I to have lived, from earliest memory to present old age, a life filled with such a richness of Humanities Moments!</p>
Peter A. Benoliel, Chairman Emeritus, Quaker Chemical Corporation
benoliel-lifetime-humanities-moments
A Requirement I Started to Love
To get an ALP (Arts, Literature, & Philosophy) credit I took an English class about books and short stories that were turned into movies. What I thought would be a fun, lighthearted class, led to an immense appreciation of the details that authors and directors choose to include in their work (while being fun of course). Anything I watch now causes me to think about the choices behind every aspect of production and allows me to explore a creative side that I never thought I would be interested in.
The works we read and watched all caused me to consider the different perspectives of the characters but also of the authors and directors that have to portray their message through techniques.
Alice Walker, Mario Puzo, Annie Proulx, Tod Robbins
<em>The Color Purple</em>, <em>The Godfather</em>, <em>Brokeback Mountain</em>, "Spurs"
Fall 2017
Liv McKinney, Duke '20, Biology Major
requirement-started-to-love
Story-Making and the Fault Lines of American Capitalism
This documentary film prompted historian Edward Balleisen to reflect on the powerful and protean role of storytelling in the American imagination, specifically in the realm of modern capitalism. An appreciation of the humanities may provide us with a deeper understanding of the shape-shifting role that stories play in the economic realm. This understanding, in turn, may serve as a compass as we, in Balleisen’s words, “navigate” the world around us.
<p>Several weeks ago I had occasion to watch the new documentary, <em>Betting on Zero</em>. This fascinating film presents several interlinked stories, all related to the founding and growth of Herbalife, a multi-level-marketing company that sells nutritional supplements, weight loss concoctions, and the “business opportunity” to distribute these products. Among the narrative threads:</p>
<ul>
<li>the basic business model of this enterprise, which depends on the perpetual recruitment of new salespeople (this task is facilitated by revival-style meetings in which the company’s leading pitchmen and women preach a prosperity ethos, a faith that identification with the company and enthusiastic hard work will generate product sales and recruitment of new sellers, regardless of one’s background);</li>
<li>Herbalife’s subsidiary strategies of sponsoring sports teams and paying for a wide array of celebrity endorsements;</li>
<li>the attractiveness of Herbalife’s prosperity gospel to immigrant communities in the US, and especially Latinos;</li>
<li>increasing suspicions among journalists and some members of the investment community about Herbalife’s business practices, which have struck many who have examined the company closely as akin to a pyramid scheme;</li>
<li>a now five-year-long effort by a prominent hedge fund investor, Bill Ackman, to short Herbalife stock (convinced by intensive research that the company’s pyramid-like dependence on the recruitment of new sales agents doomed it to eventual collapse, Ackman not only bet hundreds of millions of dollars against Herbalife, but orchestrated a series of public attacks on the company’s methods and valuation);</li>
<li>the vigorous defense of Herbalife by its executives, including its longtime CEO Mark Johnson, along with billionaire investor and long-time Ackman nemesis Carl Icahn;</li>
<li>growing opposition to Herbalife by some activists within Latino communities, such as Chicagoan Julie Contreras, along with disgruntled former sales agents who felt they had been ripped off, culminating in public campaigns and lawsuits; and</li>
<li><span>a slew of investigations by regulatory authorities, including a Federal Trade Commission inquiry that led to a 2016 settlement with Herbalife, imposing a $200 million fine on the company and requiring far-reaching reform of its business practices in the US;</span></li>
<li>the extraordinary growth of Herbalife abroad, especially in the gargantuan markets of India and China, which may blunt the impact of the FTC settlement.</li>
</ul>
<p>At issue in <em>Betting on Zero</em> is the primary question of which story about Herbalife would stick, whether with its sales agents, throughout the communities in which it operated, within the financial markets, or in courtrooms and regulatory agencies. What would become the prevalent, even official story about Herbalife’s purposes, practices, and impacts? Was the firm a vehicle for social and economic uplift, a mechanism for individuals with minimal education and social capital to build a proprietary business that would deliver the American dream, even make them wealthy? Or was it an especially cruel confidence game that separated the vast majority of its sellers from initial capital investments, and, even worse, turned them into recruiters who ensnared fellow community members in a losing proposition? This debate has been and remains a hotly contested one.</p>
<p>After watching this cinematic engagement with a contentious recent episode in the annals of American consumer capitalism, I found myself coming back again and again to a single scene. A few years into the battle waged by Bill Ackman, the camera zooms in on Herbalife CEO Mark Johnson as he addresses a sports stadium filled with Herbalife acolytes. Portraying the company as inevitably beset by establishment naysayers out to destroy Herbalife and the avenues of opportunity that it provided, Johnson proclaimed that he and the Herbalife family would fend off its enemies. The multi-level marketing firm, Johnson explained, would always “seize the narrative.” That might mean shining the public spotlight on hardworking, charismatic Herbalifers who had recruited so many other sales agents that they had ascended into the company’s Millionaire Team. Or proclaiming that in the household where Johnson was raised, the abiding parental message stressed the importance of “integrity” to sustain “trust.” Or reframing the motives of a financial operator like Ackman, implying that his short position undercut any arguments or analysis that he might put forward about the company’s mode of operations. Johnson offered a brash forecast of narrative dominance—that Herbalife would identify the narrative high ground, occupy it, and hold it against all comers.</p>
<p>This declaration struck me so forcibly in part because one rarely sees such candor about the role of stories and story-telling in the hurly burly world of American capitalism. Surrounded by insiders, Johnson was willing to pull back the curtain on how corporations approach public relations in the broadest sense—not just through the messages of advertisements and endorsements, but through the wider management of reputation and popular belief.</p>
<p>The comment from Johnson also resonated for me because it encapsulates so much of my own work as a historian of American law, policy, and business culture. For a quarter-century, I’ve been writing about fault-lines in American capitalism, the zones of instability created by an economic system depending on widespread trust in economic counterparties. For much of the 1990s, I focused on the legal, social, economic, and cultural problems posed by business failure in the nineteenth-century—those dislocating moments when the era’s firms could not pay their debts. Since then, I have been wrestling with the American flim-flam man (and woman), chasing after alleged and actual business frauds from the early nineteenth-century to the present, as well as investigating the shifting institutional responses to the problem of marketplace deceptions.</p>
<p>Stories, of course, help to grease the wheels of modern capitalism. Would be entrepreneurs construct them as they seek to persuade friends and relatives, banks, or venture capital firms to supply them with the funds they need to launch businesses. Advertisers dream up fantasies to convince consumers that some good or service truly offers a crucial need or fulfills some deeply felt want. Even without the prompting of some crisis or scandal, corporate public relations departments construct tales about corporate origins and the essential elements of a firm’s business culture, all to foster employees’ identification with their employer and customers’ identification with the firm’s products or services. In recent decades, business executives have spun yarns about their heroic contributions to financial results to justify gargantuan pay packages. For more than a century now, societies have also confronted a host of meta-stories about the workings of capitalism, such as descriptions (or forecasts) of the business cycle’s predictable arc, moving from growth to boom to bust and recession.</p>
<p>Hardly any of this story-making and telling goes uncontested. Savvy investors and lenders do not uncritically embrace the projections of those who seek after capital and credit. In competitive markets, firms challenge each other’s marketing narratives, as do consumer watchdogs and the business press. Labor unions usually offer a very different take on a company’s history and practices from that laid out by management. The same surely goes for social activists and journalistic muckrakers who seek to expose the negative consequences of corporate activity, whether for workers, consumers, or the environment. At least occasionally, stockholders express qualms about the munificence of executive compensation. And even if there is broad consensus about how to describe the business cycle, politicians and pundits hardly have achieved consensus about how much government can or should seek to moderate its swings. These opposing groups usually tell very different stories about the impacts of counter-cyclical monetary and fiscal policy.</p>
<p>The business narratives prompted by moments of failure or alleged deception tend to have an especially great urgency about them. For the proprietors, managers, and operators caught in the eye of a given storm, they involve questions of social standing, legitimacy, legal liability, economic future, even personal honor. They turn on interpretations of personal motivation, as well as understandings of the social norms, cultural values, and legal standards that structure economic exchange. And they have a collective dimension. As individual stories of bankruptcy and fraud multiply in a given era, they draw on prevailing macro-stories with familiar plotlines. As those macro-stories evolve in new circumstances, they can also help to establish reform agendas that seek to reconfigure social norms, cultural values, and legal standards.</p>
<p>To make these rather abstract points more concrete, consider the following primary sources, each involving a determined effort to “seize the narrative” about a specific enterprise facing existential threats.</p>
<p>The first source comes from a New York City bankruptcy case under the 1841 National Bankruptcy Act, the subject of my first book, <em>Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America</em> (2001). This short-lived legislation (Congress repealed it in 1843, just thirteen months after it went into operation) gave individuals the chance to petition for a discharge from their debts. Doing so required that petitioners offer a comprehensive list of their assets (most of which they would have to surrender to the federal court where they applied for relief) and their debts (which, if they successfully navigated the legal proceedings, they would no longer have to pay). One can infer a story of failure from this snapshot of property holdings and financial obligations, but such fragmentary evidence poses lots of interpretive challenges. One can of course dig for other relevant evidence about specific paths to insolvency. Occasionally, moreover, petitioners voluntarily offered a fuller account of their troubles as part of their bankruptcy filings. Such moves represented, at least in part, attempts to take out insurance against any counter-stories from creditors, who possessed the right to lodge formal objections to the granting of a bankruptcy discharge, or against eventual misconceptions by lawyers and the judiciary.</p>
<p>The document in question comes from the voluntary <a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/site-dev/wp-content/uploads/pattison-bankruptcy-petition.pdf" title="Pattison bankruptcy petition">bankruptcy petition of Granville Sharpe Pattison</a>, a New York City physician who found himself ensnared in complex and allegedly fraudulent land deals during the “mania” of the mid-1830s. Not content to offer up just a list of assets and debts, Pattison offered a detailed story that placed his insolvency in the context of the general asset craze that took hold in the run-up to the Panic of 1837. Describing himself as “excited by the spirit of speculation,” the doctor recounted his eager purchases of Illinois town lots and stock in a copper mining company on the basis of false claims about their value. Sometimes he paid by liquidating other assets. More frequently, amid the heady atmosphere of boom times, the transactions rested on his mere promises to pay in the future.</p>
<p>Pattison further explained that he could not raise challenge the legality of his debts in court, because the sellers had immediately transferred his obligations to “innocent third parties.” He also assured the court that he had never indulged in any “extravagance, having always lived within his income.”</p>
<p>Most importantly, Pattison insisted that he might have avoided insolvency had he been willing to look out only for himself, since he subsequently sold most of the property “to English capitalists at immense advances.” But once he discovered that the sales rested on outright misrepresentations, he claimed that “he spontaneously cancelled all the contracts of sale ... without having been asked to do so,” despite the fact that doing so left him unable to make good on his own debts. As Pattison described his thinking, he would rather “be a Bankrupt in fortune” than allow “the shadow of a suspicion ... [to] rest on the uprightness and rectitude of his character.” Even the handwriting that produced this self-exoneration told a story of sorts, conveying a firm, clear penmanship that invited trust from readers.</p>
<p>The next two sources come from twentieth-century entrepreneurs who confronted highly publicized allegations of business fraud, each of whom received some attention in my most recent book, <em>Fraud: An American History from Barnum to Madoff</em>. Edward Lewis, a key figure in Chapter Six of <em>Fraud</em>, developed a cluster of businesses from his early twentieth-century base outside Saint Louis, including a subscription magazine that targeted rural women, a mail order bank, and a correspondence university. His legal troubles began with administrative fraud orders that damaged his core businesses and eventually led to criminal mail fraud proceedings. Glenn W. Turner, who makes a cameo appearance in Chapter Ten of <em>Fraud</em>, ran multi-level marketing schemes in the early 1970s that offered self-help literature/records and cosmetics, as well as opportunities to make income through recruitment of sales agents. His businesses attracted civil actions by a slew of state Attorneys General, as well as the Federal Trade Commission.</p>
<p><a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/site-dev/wp-content/uploads/order-number-ten-excerpt.pdf" title="Lewis, Order Number Ten, excerpt"></a> Though separated by more than six decades and pursuing different businesses, the two businessmen adopted similar strategies in the effort to shape public perceptions and deflect allegations off fraudulent behavior. Lewis vigorously defended himself through his magazine, political and journalistic allies, and an eventual book, published in 1911, <em>Order Number Ten: Being Cursory Comments on Some of the Effects of the Great American Fraud Order</em>, which collected a series of editorials from Lewis’s <em>Woman’s Magazine</em>. I include here <a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/site-dev/wp-content/uploads/order-number-ten-excerpt.pdf" title="Lewis, Order Number Ten, excerpt">the text of the fraud order against Lewis</a> that he placed at the beginning of the volume, the publisher’s preface, Lewis’s “Introductory,” one illustration conveying popular skepticism toward new ideas, his “Afterthoughts,” and a hard-sell recruiting plea at the back of the volume for book agents to market a related volume. These excerpts hit many recurring themes in the narratives offered up by alleged fraudsters: the difficulty of distinguishing economic deception from enthusiastic promotion at the forefront of innovation; the tendency of powerful, entrenched interests—in this case, the Post Office—to discredit competitors that threatened their position; and declarations of deep affection for those investors and customers who stood by him despite unjust persecution.</p>
<p><a href="http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/fullsize/glenn-turner-better-your-best-1000.jpg" title="Turner, Better Your Best"></a> Glenn W. Turner similarly expended considerable effort to convince the public that he, in the words of his authorized biographer, was a “saint” rather than a “con man.” I offer here <a href="http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/fullsize/glenn-turner-better-your-best-1000.jpg" title="Turner, Better Your Best">the text from the back cover of Turner’s 1975 promotional album</a>, “Glenn W. Turner SPEAKS OUT: ‘You Can Better Your Best.’” In this concise marketing pitch, Turner put forward a common rendering from American entrepreneurs of all stripes—the remarkable rise from difficult circumstances—as well as the persistent theme of uplift through a mutualistic sharing of opportunity to others who lack advantages.</p>
<p>The authors of these such stories themselves depended deeply on humanistic modes of thought and action. They put forward arguments, evoked sentiments, and sought to influence public opinion and/or official decision-making through personal accounts that drew on widely shared metaphors, tropes, and narrative arcs. For Granville Sharpe Pattison, the voluntary narrative of honorable failure may not have been necessary, since no creditors appeared to challenge his version of events. For both Edward Lewis and Glenn Tucker, tales of innovative striving helped their inveterate investors and customers keep the faith, but lacked punch with officialdom. Each had business empires upended as a result of legal actions; each ended up doing stints in jail as a result of criminal fraud convictions.</p>
<p>We are storytellers and consumers of stories, all of us, and not just in the realm of culture or family or other social relations or politics, but also in our economic and legal lives. The sharpest conflicts within modern capitalism turn in large measure on contending efforts to seize the narrative. Granville Sharpe Pattison, Edward Lewis, Glenn Turner, Michael Johnson, Julie Contreras, Bill Ackman and countless others have crafted stories in order to shape agendas, define the realm of the possible, assign blame or credit, justify or undermine, move themselves and others to action. These endeavors may not accord with all or even most of the relevant facts. They do not always manage to attain the highest narrative ground, nor hold it against all the counter-stories pressing up the slopes of our collective culture. But they reflect our essential nature as story-making, story-telling, and story-craving beings, who inevitably construct narratives to render our world intelligible.</p>
<p>This basic humanistic insight is crucial for clear-eyed understandings of how modern societies have handled thorny problems such as bankruptcy or business fraud. Indeed, this insight is crucial for making sense of wider questions about how modern capitalism works, who enjoys the fruits of its bounty, who has to bear its risks and costs, and how its mechanics and outcomes accord with our sense of justice.</p>
<p>Recognition of this essential perspective also can make us savvier consumers and investors, more thoughtful workers, professionals, managers, owners, and retirees, and more deliberative citizens. If we understand the ubiquity and power of stories in the economic realm, we will be better armed to identify them, to evaluate their basis in fact, and to appreciate their emotional pull. And that level of understanding can only help us as we navigate the complexities of a capitalist society.</p>
<p>For those interested in additional reading about story-making and its impact on how we make sense of the history of economic life (and the past, present, and future more generally), see:</p>
<ul>
<li>William Cronon, “<a href="http://www.williamcronon.net/writing/cronon_place_for_stories_1991.pdf">A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative</a>,” <i>Journal of American History </i> 78 (1992): 1347-76.</li>
<li>Per Hansen, “<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/572609/pdf">From Finance Capitalism to Financialization: A Cultural and Narrative Perspective on 150 Years of Financial History</a>,” <i>Enterprise & Society</i> 15 (2014): 605-42.</li>
<li>Frederick Mayer, <i><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/narrative-politics-9780199324460?cc=us&lang=en&">Narrative Politics: Stories and Collective Action</a></i> (New York, 2014).</li>
</ul>
Ted Braun
<em>Betting on Zero</em>
June 9, 2017
Edward J. Balleisen, professor of history at Duke University
balleisen-story-making-fault-lines-american-capitalism
Seeing Fellini’s <em>Amarcord</em> Was the Greatest Cultural Moment of My Life
Looking back, Doyle reflects that <em>Amarcord</em> was there, in the back of his head, “nudging” him in his own creative work as a writer. Though he can never “really pin it down,” seeing the film remains “the greatest cultural moment” of his life.
In this video, author Roddy Doyle describes the experience of seeing Fellini’s <em>Amarcord</em> for the first time as a boy in Dublin. Growing up in Ireland, at that time a strict Catholic country, it was revelatory for him to see the religion ridiculed in the subversive comedy-drama. The combination of the beautiful and the grotesque mesmerized the young Doyle, who found the film “a great antidote” to the strict environment of his own religious high school.
<em>Amarcord</em> by Federico Fellini
<em>Amarcord</em>
1974
Roddy Doyle, author
roddy-doyle-fellini-amarcord
Eyes on the Mockingbird
Without <em>Eyes on the Prize</em>, I would have never seen what was happening outside of my little hometown. I knew there were different cultures, ethnicities, and nationalities surrounding Durand, but I never came in contact with them. I certainly never knew that people had to fight to be able to go to school or that fire hoses were used to deter people from going to school. It also taught me that minority does not indicate a color or even social grouping; rather it indicates a lack of political power. By Lee showing that people in the minority were being harmed by those with power, I was able to see how important it is for me to stand up for human rights. Without the humanities, I would have been blind to the world.
I grew up in a very small town in rural Wisconsin. When I looked at my classmates it was like looking in a mirror. Because of that, I never realized that there were many people who were facing hardships because of their minority status and people who were taking advantage of them. Fast forward to my sophomore year of high school. Mrs. Shaw made it her mission to open our eyes. She wanted to expose us to the realities of this world. While I questioned it at the time, she showed us the entire <em>Eyes on the Prize</em> documentary. She would allow us to watch, and then she would force us to talk about it and face the facts. We had to face the fact that people could be cruel, especially if they felt they had power over others. The curriculum then went on to <em>To Kill a Mockingbird</em>. Mrs. Shaw made sure to show us that skin color is not the only way to dictate belonging in the minority. She made us see the importance of standing up for the fact that people are people, no matter what, no matter their political power.<br /><br />Without <em>Eyes on the Prize</em>, I would have never seen what was happening outside of my little hometown. I knew there were different cultures, ethnicities, and nationalities surrounding Durand, but I never came in contact with them. I certainly never knew that people had to fight to be able to go to school or that fire hoses were used to deter people from going to school. It also taught me that minority does not indicate a color or even social grouping; rather it indicates a lack of political power. By Lee showing that people in the minority were being harmed by those with power, I was able to see how important it is for me to stand up for human rights. Without the humanities, I would have been blind to the world.
Hampton, Henry; Harper Lee
<em>Eyes on the Prize</em> and <em>To Kill a Mockingbird</em>
1995
<a href="http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/education-programs/teacher-advisory-council-2017-2018/">Sarah Arnold</a>, 38, English Teacher
eyes-on-the-mockingbird