In thinking about the Filson seminar paper proposal, it struck me that thinking about Turner in a new way is a good starting point for framing the paper. If you think about it, Turner was in essence staking a "contributions of midestern ethnic identity" claim to the larger national (and perhaps International) context. This was, after all, the Columbian exposition address, a global context event, and here's Turner expressing, essentially, "midwestern frontier pride" not unlike the "dixie pride" stuff going on recently here in the south in the face of globalization, "Yankee professors," etc. The origins and creativity of the American nation, he is saying, lie with us. So this begs the question of originality, innovation, and Indiana and Mississippi. Lincoln, perhaps, exemplifies this "new nationalism" that makes midwest the "heartland" and the "non-region." So why not Mississippi? And how does this factor into the (metropolis-controlled) publishing industry?

And (since we're working stream-of-consciousness here) if the "heartland America" core middle-class values Muncie and Peoria as "everyplace" thing is true, (and the idealized hearthlike lack of contentiousness argument is true, as the normative ideal was constructed) what does that say about an argument for Mississippi as "less contentious and fractious" than Indiana, that has been a core interpretation of my book? And what does it say about the "authoritarian conformity" argument as an attractive leadership style? And what about the "frontier as voluntary suburb" idea? Authority, social control, and communitarian alternatives, filtered through a metropolitan consensus, perhaps?

Labels: authority, comparative history, frontier, global context, metropolitan control., Turner

posted by Lloyd at 9:23 AM

Anya Jabour. "Male Friendship and Masculinity in the Early National South: William Writ and His Friends." Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 20, No. 1. (Spring, 2000), pp. 83-111.

posted by Lloyd at 8:13 AM