English 585 is a graduate seminar at Texas A&M University-Commerce about representations of race in public histories about everyday, ordinary life. For the first half of the semester, we’ll focus on the New-Deal Era Federal Writers’ Project during the Great Depression, which we’ll call “FWP 1.0”). In the second half, we’ll take up a 2020 version of the unprecedented project from nearly 100 years ago (“FWP 2.0”). At its root (heart), our collective project is an exercise in what what critical race theorists call “counterstories,” stories that “challenge mainstream society’s denial of the ongoing significance of race and racism” (Yosso, 2006, p. 10).
This is the first half of our two-part “lecture” for English 585 (see “Lectures: Week One). As you take up the following post, please keep this week’s assigned readings in mind (Aja Y. Martinez’s “A Plea for Critical Race Theory Counterstory” and Paul Studevant’s article about how one “race” has been represented historically in stories told about a controversial sign in Greenville, Texas.
OBJECTIVES
FIRST: I offer a general overview of the course design, materials, assignments, and expectations. Next, you’ll watch a thirty-minute video about the history and legacy of the Federal Writers’ project. The FINAL section of this first lecture will introduce one of our primary concepts: counterstories (FWP 2.0!), designed to disrupt those dominant narratives we’ve already mentioned and will continue to explore throughout the term. This final section sets the stage/foundation for the second and final part of our Week One Lecture (hint: the controversial sign referenced above).
- Dolinar, Brian, ed. The Negro in Illinois: the WPA Papers. U of Illinois P, 2015.
- Griswold, Wendy. American Guides: The Federal Writers’ Project and the Casting of American Culture. U of Chicago P, 2016.
- Hirsch, Jerrold. Portrait of America: A Cultural History of the Federal Writers’ Project. U of North Carolina P, 2006.
- Stewart, Catherine. Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers’ Project. U of North Carolina P, 2016.*
- Wright, Richard. 12 Million Black Voices. 1941. Basic Books, 2008.
- Terkel, Studs. Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression.
PART I: “Take a Tour”
The best starting place for your “tour” of our course is the “Course Overview” at our course website (focus, goals, objectives, and overview). A screenshot to get you oriented to our our goings-on. 🙂
As you look over the course materials available at our website, please linger a bit longer on the following pages. This is the most pertinent information you’ll need for now. Other materials will be increasingly important in the coming weeks. For now, though, just drill down into these. Well, the syllabus is important, too. But beyond the syllabus, these:
- CALENDAR: We’re using Google Calendar to keep up with deadlines and assigned readings. I attached our first two readings to their corresponding calendar entries, though I’m not entirely certain how well that will work on your end. If not, no worries. Just return to my first reference to these readings at the top of this very post. They’re right there, too.
NOTE: This week (Week One), your only readings will be Martinez’s “A Plea for Counterstories” (2018) and a history of the controversial sign in Greenville, Texas (2004). Aha! There they are again, the two articles I’ve assigned for you to read this week. :
- LECTURES: Each week, you’ll have at least one “Lecture.” As they come available, I’ll gather them together here. Before that can happen, however, I’ll need to write them/record them/deliver them. “)
- ACCOUNTABILITY GROUPS: This week, you’ll sign up for an “accountability group.” This link takes you to a page that explains this means/is, what an accountability group (can) look like, and why I think becoming part of one can be so incredibly helpful. In short, an “accountability group” is way to connect with each other in ways that can be difficult in online courses in the best of circumstances. In these uncertain times, “connections” have never seemed more important nor more entirely out of reach. Let’s fix that–in this course, at least–for now, as we can, where we can.
THAT’S THE END OF THE TOUR. There’s more, of course. And there’s more to come. That quick tour should get us started, however. This website will function as our central repository. If you’re having difficulty locating something you need for this course, expect to find it there. If you don’t, of course please let me know. What’s there now is only a portion of what will be there as the semester moves forward.
PART II: Introducing the Federal Writers’ Project
Again, our first several weeks together will focus largely on the history, accomplishments, and cultural legacy of the Federal Writers’ Project. To start, watch the following excerpt from the documentary Soul of a People (2009). I tried to queue it up so the needle drop right into place. That means it should pick up at about the 11:59. If it doesn’t, no worries. You’ll just need to scrub past the introductory remarks yourself. The complete except ends at about the 38:00 mark. Total viewing time: about 30 minutes.
PART III: Who Controls the Narrative?
Humans are storytelling creatures. It’s in our nature. That’s who/how we are. That’s how we know who we are, about the world around us, and our place within that world.
I think [that the need for a narrative] is absolutely primal. Children understand stories long before they understand trigonometry. –Oliver Sacks (neurologist)
A man is always a teller of tales. He lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others. He sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it.–Jean-Paul Sartre
A key problem with telling any story about who “we” are, even about events that have occurred in our collective past. . . well, all history is interpretation. We can’t get around that established fact. We’ll talk much more about what that means and why that matters as we go. For now, let’s take up that claim as “settled.” From there, we can begin to understand the complexities involved in a seemingly benign, commendable project like the FWP’s efforts to “write America’s story.”
Who controls the narrative?
“Written history. . . is a representation of the past, not the past itself”
Rosenstone, Robert A. “History in Images/History in Words: Reflections on the Possibility of Really Putting History onto Film.” The American Historical Review, vol. 93, no. 5, 1988, pp. 1173–1185. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1873532. Accessed 19 Aug. 2020.
What are ambiguities of representation that inevitably arise when telling “our” story? How might they emerge, whether intended or not? Whose stories are told? Which stories are missing? Who is included? Who is excluded? How can we know? How can we tell? And what in the world are we to do about it?
This course features counterstories designed to “write/right democracy” in response to problematic representations of “America’s story”–Who gets to tell this story, by what means, forms, and genres? A key facet of this effort hinges on the ambiguities of representation, especially with respect to racial, economic, and environmental justice. This is our collective project.
Who controls the narrative?
What happens when stories that contradict that seemingly “commonsense” narrative start to make themselves heard?
Take, for example, the incredible storytelling mechanism that is Black Lives Matter.
THESE are counterstories.
The dominant narrative:
The criminal justice system is “fair and balanced”; police are out there to “protect and serve” everyone and equally; if you “do the crime, you’ll serve the time”; violence committed by law enforcement officers is either “necessary” or, if not, treated an unfortunate byproduct perpetrated by “a few bad apples” rather than a pattern of injustice reproduced not by individuals but systemically.
Counterstories:
Breanna Taylor (murdered by police in Louisville, Kentucky), Atianna Jefferson (murdered by police in Fort Worth, Texas), Sandra Bland (died in police custody after a brutal, unlawful arrest in the small Texas town of her alma mater and recent employer, the historic HBCU Prairie View), and, of course, George Floyd (killed by a police officer, his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for seven minutes and forty-five seconds, while his fellow offers look on). The list goes on and on.
COUNTERSTORIES “challenge mainstream society’s denial of the ongoing significance of race and racism” (Yosso, 2006, p. 10).
COUNTERSTORIES “help us imagine the outside in America, a place where some of us have never been and some of us have always been, and where a few of us . . . shift-shape, like the trickster, asking the hard questions . . . without answers, questions about what it means to be outside, what it means to be inside, and what it means to be in-between in America” (Williams in a forward to Richard Delgado’s The Rodrigo Chronicles).
COUNTERSTORIES create “a kind of counter-reality” created/experienced by “outgroups” subordinate to those
atop the racial and gendered hierarchy. While those in power (aka the“ingroup”) craft stock stories to establish a shared sense of identity, reality, and naturalization of their superior position, the “outgroup aims to subvert that ingroup reality” (Delgado, 2412–2413).
. . . of Part I. That means you’re already halfway through the Week One Lecture!
That means we’ve now set the groundwork necessary to take up a much more specific example of a history that’s far from settled, where the question of “who controls the narrative?” has been very much in play for more than a century. It’s a local story, and one we’ll continue to chase through the coming weeks. That concludes the first part of this week’s two-part lecture. Now on to the second and final part of our “Week One Lecture.”
Before you go, some sage advice from the beloved Bette Davis (All About Eve, 1950)
SHANNON CARTER 
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