ALBION TOURGÉE SEMINAR
IN AMERICAN CULTURAL HISTORY
The
Albion Tourgée Seminar meets monthly during the academic year on selected
Thursday evenings to discuss scholarly papers on American cultural history.
Although designed for faculty, students, and local alumni of the graduate
program in history of the University, anyone in the greater Rochester area
interested in the topic at hand is welcome to attend. The seminar will be held at the home of Karen McCally and Daniel Borus from 7-9 pm, and will
include refreshments conducive to animated discussions. Please see this link for directions.
The
seminar is named for one of the most luminous of University alumni, Albion W.
Tourgée (1838-1905). Civil War veteran, lawyer, judge, journalist, novelist,
and unwavering advocate of racial equality, Tourgée was a leader of the forces
of radical Republicanism in North Carolina and a fierce opponent of the Ku Klux
Klan. He also wrote perhaps the best novel to emerge from Reconstruction, A Fool's Errand (1879), which was a huge
commercial success as well. With the waning of Radical fortunes in North
Carolina, Tourgée returned north to Chautauqua County New York in 1881, where
he nonetheless continued to press the cause of racial equality. In 1896 he
served as plantiff's counsel in Plessy v.
Ferguson and his passionate brief in the case is credited with providing
Justice John Marshall Harlan with the phrase "color-blind" justice prominent
in his famous dissent. In his later years, Tourgée extended his egalitarian
radicalism to the struggle between capital and labor as well ("The power
of wealth is just as properly subject to restraint as that of the biceps and is
even more liable to abuse"). In sum, Tourgée was, as he himself might have
put it, among the most distinguished fools for equality and justice in American
history.
Papers for the seminar will be
posted here at least a week in advance of each session, and participants are
urged to read them beforehand, since the sessions will assume as much. For inquiries
about the Seminar, please contact Daniel Borus (daniel.borus@rochester.edu) or
Robert Westbrook (robert.westbrook@rochester.edu).
SEMINAR SCHEDULE
September 27, 2012 - Drew Maciag, "The Edmund Burke Revival: Contrarian Visions of American Civilization." If you are interested in this paper, contact Drew Maciag at dmaciag0@zimbra.naz.edu.
October 25, 2012 - Jordan Kleiman, "Greening 'Fort Apache': Appropriate Technology as Environmental Justice in the South Bronx." If you are interested in this paper, contact Jordan Kleiman at kleiman@geneseo.edu.
November 29, 2012 - Consuelo Angiò, "It's Not a Revolt, It's a Revolution: The Farmer's Alliance Debate on Founding a New Commonwealth."
January 31, 2013 - Michael Brown, "'Gentleman Rebel': The 1962 H. Stuart Hughes Senate Campaign and the Uncertain Place of the Political Intellectual in Cold War America." If you are interested in this paper, contact Michael Brown at mjbrown55@gmail.com
February 28, 2013- Sarah Seidman, "SNCC Comes to Cuba." If you are interested in this paper, contact Sarah Seidman at sseidma2@z.rochester.edu
March 28, 2013 - Rebecca Edwards, "A Tale of Two Umpires." If you are interested in this paper, contact Rebecca Edwards at rregsm@rit.edu.
April 25, 2013- Amy Negley, "Big Disappointments and Small Successes: American Playwrights
Begin to Crack the Surface"