Introduction

The vitriolic Presidential campaign of 2016 and the new Trump Presidency have suddenly made many old issues newly, even insistently, relevant again. The constant promise to put "America First," plans to build a border wall, executive orders intended to keep out "dangerous" immigrants (overwhelmingly from Islamic countries), and White House photo ops featuring only white male lawmakers and administrators all have re-sparked long standing conceptual debates about the place of race, ethnicity, religion, and gender in American identity. They have also raised, for many, recollections of the harrowing rise of the fascist movements of the 1930s and the horrors that they unleashed. It is therefore appropriate that we feature essays in this issue of Soundings that directly or indirectly address each of these topics, connecting the past and the present, ethics with politics.

We continue our year-long series "Resoundings"—reexamining central writings from past issues of this journal—with a pair of contrapuntal essays by two influential scholars from 1973, another deeply divided time in America. Social philosopher Michael Novak's "How American Are You If Your Grandparents Came from Serbia in 1888?" and activist-educator Agnes Moreland Jackson's "To See the 'Me' in 'Thee': Challenge to All White Americans, or, White Ethnicity from a Black Perspective and a Sometimes Response to Michael Novak" debate the place of race and ethnicity in American life and the degree to which a broadening conception of "whiteness" allows for or continues to deny full recognition of African American identity. In his reassessment of these essays, "1973 Redux," historian Jason Mellard marvels that these contributions, particularly Jackson's, still seem so current that "my first impulse was simply to suggest [it] … be run again without comment." Mellard's nuanced and pointed commentary fully explores the issues these essays raise and their implications, both for their historical time and our own.

We then follow the "Resoundings" section with two articles that speak in different ways to the contemporary rhetoric of the need for powerful male leaders to ensure social stability and advancement. Nathan Bracher's "The Twentieth Century and the Lessons of History" focuses on reconsiderations of the Holocaust and the proper place of morality and ethics in its assessment. Revisiting a perpetually central question, he thoughtfully explores what students of history can and cannot learn from the past, concluding that ethics "prove to be inescapable and desirable." Paul Maltby's essay on the Christian-infused art of Ron DiCianni, particularly his highly popular "Heroes" series tied to the events of 9-11, illuminates the themes of evangelicalism and hypermasculinity in DiCianni's work. He argues such themes are central to its broad appeal among many religiously conservative Americans.

Collectively, all these essays reveal the contributions the interdisciplinary humanities can make to better understanding the deep historical roots of our current debates and rhetoric, and to recognizing the intersections between narrow racialized, gendered, and religious constructions of American identity and hierarchy.