Genealogies of Our Concerns, Early (African) American Print Culture, and Transcending Tough Times

To our common concerns we have added survival of our species as human beings and humanities scholars, not simply in terms of ecological or terrorist foreboding but also as tenured professors. Entities such as the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Modern Language Association give us statistics about fewer jobs, lower salaries, and increasing disrespect for humanists. "In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth" (Cohen), one of many such articles to appear in the New York Times and other prominent venues, advises that merely considering "what it means to be a human being" does not clearly convey our practical and economic value. Quiet as it is kept, such ideas exist within as well as without the Halls of Academe. We can, and do, ascribe this situation to various origins and motives. But one source is, in fact, ourselves. Sometimes, we become so caught up in our specific areas of research, teaching, and citizenship that we lose perspective on our actual responsibilities and opportunities in the university, if not the universe itself. In one of his addresses designed to foster collegiality (without, of course, abandoning competition), our president described such preoccupational circumscription as living within "academic silos."

Current trends toward interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, thematic, and team teaching and research are obvious attempts to bridge silos. In the process of expanding focus, however, often the tendency is to scan across and focus forward, forgetting that contemporary concerns have a history and a common genealogy that influence our present and future. For example, some really intelligent and educated folk have not yet realized or confronted the implications of knowing that Jamestown was not the first colony in North America or that neither the Daughters of the American Revolution nor the Sons of the Confederacy are the only legitimate descendants of early Americans. In our own increasingly diversified professional conferences and communications, we tend to ignore the intellectual implications of concurrent sessions, nationalization, and periodicity that amount to mini conferences and parallel conversations. This may not be deliberate or conscious, but neither is it purely accidental nor harmless.

As are others in this volume, I am thinking about implications for Americanists whose eyes search Britannia's shores for origins and archetype, whose interests fade as the nineteenth century proceeds, who focus on contemporary issues and tend to historicize their ideas no further in US history than the canon wars, World War I, or at most the war between the States. From my perspective as a scholar of African-American culture and of women's studies who earned a Ph.D. when courses in either were rare if not nonexistent, I now believe the silver lining in that cloudy time was that we were forced to learn about lives and literatures beyond our direct interests. Today, though we have some small silos that serve our professional needs, we do have a reservoir of understanding about what is going on in other circular structures. I think that we all should increase our interest in our intellectual neighborhoods. I essay here to offer a peek into a portion of one of my silos by highlighting two advice columns for the lovelorn and socially confused which appeared in Freedom's Journal, an African-American newspaper published in New York City from 1827 to 1829. This may seem esoteric if not downright self-serving coming as it is from someone currently specializing in early African-American print culture. However, bear with me. I intend this as an example, not an exemplar.

An immediate question, for which I have no definitive answer but hope this discussion will help, is: how far back or beyond do we need to explore when we have, as we ought to, specific limits of time and place? To begin at "The Beginning," in this cultural moment especially, is a nonstarter. Time, or lack thereof, is obviously a factor; but, as a global community, we have many origin stories and little consensus about "Who's on First?" Still, there is considerable purchase for us sometimes to recall that our theories and methods are mostly based...