Krumpled doesn't believe I am a History Major.
An announcement has been added in the "HISTORY C187 LEC 001 Fa12" site at bSpace
(https://bspace.berkeley.edu/portal/site/bc785a6d-53c1-46d2-aca5-bcae7cba7afc)
Subject: Some announcements for the first week of class
Dear all,
We want to welcome you to C187, The History and Practice of Human Rights!
Sections will start on the week of the 27th.
However, please make sure to read for the first lecture (on 8/23) H.
Weston Burns's article on human rights from Encyclopedia Britannica.
Here is the link:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/275840/human-rights/.
Since there's high enrollment for the class, please note we've added two
more sections: Please make sure to come to a section during the first week of classes.
The registration system is automatic, and so unfortunately we cannot
help with switching sections. But we advise you not to drop out of one
section before you have made sure you have a spot in another. You can
get further advice on changing sections from the undergraduate adviser
in LSC or in the History Department. Again, we cannot change sections
manually.
We've made a reader for the class, which you can purchase at ZeeZee copies. The reader costs around $41 and we highly recommend you get it. You will need to bring the reading for each week with you to section and it can save the costs of individual printouts. You can also find all the
readings and more on bspace.
The bspace site also includes optional readings. We didn't include them in the reader to save you the costs, but please make sure to look at
them online. Please note that you will also need to purchase the following books (and bring them to section when we will discuss them):
Moyn, Samuel. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Reprint. Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 2012. ISBN 0674064348
Power, Samantha. A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.
3rd ed. Harper Perennial, 2003. ISBN 0060541644
Partnoy, Alicia. The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival.
2nd ed. Cleis Press, 1998. ISBN 1573440299
Levi, Primo. Drowned & the Saved. First edition & printing in this form.
Abacus Books, 1991. ISBN 0349100470
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Edited by Stanley Appelbaum. 1St ed.
Dover Publications, 1990. ISBN 0486264645
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At a university, rather than a state college, another thing students is engage in research. Investigating holocaust denial, or perhaps, more broadly, genocide denial, might be interesting.
Here is an excerpt from one of my papers (done for a Rhetoric class)
The Speech Progressives Wish Obama Would Give: FDR’s 1936 “ I welcome their hatred speech.” A Neo Aristotelian Analysis
September 18, 2011
Copyright 2011 Harper Nicole Anderson, University of California Berkeley
While he stood at the Madison Square Garden podium on October 31, 1936, about to deliver a speech that some say is one of the greatest political speeches in United States history, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was angry. Angry not only towards his political opponents who were desperately using any tactic that might dethrone FDR in the 1936 presidential election but “almost angry” too at his supporters who applauded for fifteen minutes, preventing the president from beginning his speech.
Even though war was brewing in Europe. Even though the economy was still foundering. Even though unemployment figures reached the twenty percentile. Even though a conservative Supreme Court had attempted to derail the New Deal. Even though a major poll had predicted a landslide for his Republican opponent Alf Landon, most astute political observers predicted, even assumed, an FDR victory in the election that was to take place in a few days. Still, the president was angry.
A Neo-Aristotelian criticism suggests that the rhetorican address the canons of Aristotle ethos, pathos and logos. FDR’s 1936 speech contains all of these elements and I will address all of these but as emotions, the emotions of the rhetor and the auditors, played such a large part in this speech, I will focus on pathos. I will look at how the rhetor’s projected anger motivated his auditors, potential voters who were to, days later, give FDR the largest landslide, in modern American history. I will also concentrate considerable analysis on how FDR’s style and delivery motivated his audience.
As President Barack Obama begins his presidential campaign—it should be noted that today’s presidential campaigns begin much earlier than in FDR’s era—he faces some of the same obstacles as FDR. In a sense, more obstacles. While the economic situation today is not nearly as dire as that of 1936, Obama, unlike FDR’s Democrats controlling both houses of Congress, faces the political gridlock of a Republican controlled House of Republicans and a Senate which under today’s rules require a sixty vote super majority to get anything passed. The Democratic caucus currently falls short of that majority by three votes and that is assuming that the so-called Blue Dog Democrats—conservative leaning Democrats, will vote the president’s way. Barack Obama has a multitude of reasons that he should be angry, at least as angry as FDR was in 1936. Some of that presumed anger might have been displayed in Obama’s speech before Congress on announcing his job’s bill and while there was a considerable urgency, the current president’s delivery fell far short of what was heard in FDR’s speech that progressives still wish Obama would give. Before looking at the FDR’s “I welcome their hatred” campaign speech of 1936, a brief background of the rhetor is in order.
“People just idolized him. The most astounding thing was the pictures of Roosevelt you saw everywhere. Bus stations, libraries, barbershops, homes — there were pictures of Roosevelt. And the entire country decided he was the savior.” —Alistair Cooke, journalist.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 31, 1882 in “a place like no other” Hyde Park, New York on a “large, forested estate called Springwood” and “spent his childhood among people so unlike ordinary Americans they modeled themselves after the lords and ladies of England,” the PBS documentary on FDR begins, “…the world of wealth and privilege that FDR grew up with was one that was essentially very comfortable for everybody,” but especially for young Franklin as Springwood “was a beautiful, isolated place. It was its own world, and it was entirely built around this privileged little boy.” Virtually every detail of young Franklin’s childhood “was recorded with single-minded devotion by his mother Sarah Delano Roosevelt. She kept his baby clothes, every childish drawing, each golden curl.” Biographer Geoffrey Ward posits, “If it’s the job of a mother to make her child feel that he or she can do anything, then Sarah Delano Roosevelt was surely one of the great mothers in American history.” ( )
At 14, Franklin was sent to boarding school and then to Harvard University. While there, he fell in love with his distant cousin. “E is an angel.” FDR wrote in his diary. “E” was Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman, according to Doris Kearnes Goodwin, from the same social class as Franklin yet different in almost every other way. The daughter of an alcoholic father who deserted the family when she was six, Eleanor’s life, unlike the charmed childhood of Franklin, was a “series of losses.” Two years after her father left, Eleanor’s mother died. A year later, her brother died. Her drunken father died the following year. Doris Kearns Goodwin: “From the melancholy lives of both of her parents, Eleanor took away the feeling that love never lasts, that the world is a dark and forbidding place and that you never can count on anything.” ( ) Eleanor Roosevelt was to become not only one of the most celebrated First Ladies in American history but one of the most noteworthy figures in the Twentieth Century. Mrs. Roosevelt supplied FDR, in the view of many historians, with his “liberal conscience.”
Franklin and Eleanor married on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, 1905. He was 23, she was 20. At 28, largely because of the Roosevelt name recognition forged by his Republican cousin Theodore, FDR was invited to run for the New York State Senate. Although running in a traditional Republican district, FDR ran as a Democrat. The task would be “difficult,” according to Eleanor, no Democrat had won there in 32 years and FDR then was a “horrible speaker.” But, under the tutelage of Louis Howe, a seasoned political observer who was to become FDR’s most trusted advisor until his death in 1936—just before FDR was to official launch his re-election campaign—Roosevelt won.
After only two years in Albany, President Woodrow Wilson summoned FDR to Washington to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy. This phenomenal political rise was seemingly doomed in 1921 when FDR contracted polio, a disease that claimed the lives of twenty-five percent of those who contracted it. FDR’s mother, Sarah, decided that FDR would quit politics and return to Hyde Park where she would care for him. But Eleanor would have none of it. Eleanor would do something she had never done: confront Sarah. “You’re wrong and I’m not going to let this happen. He’s going to be able to get out of this house, he’s going to walk again, he’s going to get into politics, and I don’t care what you say.” FDR spent the next seven years just getting on his feet. Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith invited FDR, who had recently announced that he would run for Governor of New York, to speak at the 1928 Democratic National Convention and was able to walk to the podium. Six months later, Smith lost but FDR won his election as governor. Just as FDR political fortunes began to rise, the economic fortune of the country began to fall. On “Black Friday” October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed, an event that marked the beginning of the Great Depression. As the depression worsened in 1932, FDR became the Democratic nominee and was elected to the office, promising a “new deal for the forgotten man.” In Roosevelt’s first term, the president attempted to implement his “first New Deal.” Yet many of his efforts were repelled by a conservative Supreme Court that defended corporate interests. Still, the 1934 midterm election, which traditionally results in gains by the opposing party, resulted in a Democratic landslide in both the House and the Senate. But, as the election of 1936 loomed, FDR’s first New Deal was floundering. Despite this, perhaps primarily due to the weakness of his opponent Alf Landon, FDR’s re-election prospects were high. In the last months of the campaign, his corporate opponents became desperate. A conservative magazine published a bogus write-in poll predicting a Landon landslide and corporations began inserting messages in worker’s paychecks claiming that FDR’s social security program would be robbing the workers of their earnings. Under this scenario, FDR was to stand at the Madison Square podium and wait for fifteen minutes for the applause to subside so that he could begin. Remarkable, one might think, but perhaps even more remarkable was that this cripple—as people with his affliction were insensitively called in those pre-politcally correct days—could stand at all.
Although no video of the October 31st speech exists, a video of another similar 1936 speech is available. In this video, the grey haired, bespectacled “cripple” stands tall at the podium—a complaint press never published film or photographs that would reveal FDR’s handicap. Dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and dark tie, FDR’s face displays a wry, good humor as he effectively rips the hypocrisy of his opponent. The audience laughs as FDR bobs his head back and forth sarcastically while describing how the Republicans claim that they can solve all the nation’s problems without spending any money. FDR extends his right arm several times as he makes his points then leans back as he finishes to the delight of his audience that responds with wild laughter and applause. Although this one minute clip cannot be extrapolated to interpret FDR’s entire October 31st speech, it does reveal one important face of the president’s style: FDR’s good humor and wry smile enabled him to effectively use sarcasm against his opponents without appearing mean-spirited.
Effectively using sarcasm is but one of the many facets of FDR’s delivery, there are many. Listening to the Madison Square Garden speech, the first thing that stands out to me is the presidents early twentieth century non-rhotic Aristocratic accent, one which pronounces again to rhyme with pain not pen. (Most American adults can instantly recall how Roosevelt pronounces fear as in “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” This typifies non-rhotic speech.) This upper class accent, a Wiki entry calls it a Mid-Atlantic blend of British and English, gives FDR a manner of speaking that insinuates considerable authority. The accent, popular in American films of the 1930s, has virtually disappeared as speakers of it such as George Plimpton, Katherine Hepburn and Norman Mailer have now passed away. When its few remaining speakers such as Gore Vidal pass on, it will be presumably gone forever.
FDR’s delivery in this speech might best be described as rhythmic legato: FDR maintains a steady, rhythmic pace until wanting to make an important point in which the rhetor elongates his vowels. And effectively pauses for wild applause. In all, the speech was interrupted by applause and sometimes mixed with derisive—derisive toward FDR opponents- booing, no less than 32 times. FDR’s pitch remains firmly in the baritone range and although FDR only varies the pitch slightly- lowering his voice only slightly to connote gravity and slightly raising it to delivery irony or levity—it is in no way “monotone.” While FDR’s delivery style contributed vastly to the effectiveness of the speech. The next Neo-Aristotelian canon I’ll explore perhaps contributed even more...
