A Tale of Two Lectures, by Charles Dickens

At long last (again), I have returned to the land of blog. Seeing as I can never manage to play my violin or answer my emails, I'm not sure why I thought being a co-blogger was a good idea. Oh, well. And if you are reading this and are one of the people to whom I owe an email, I'm slowly but surely working on them.

Anyway, an odd twist of events brought me to two phenomenal lectures today of a historical nature, and I thought I'd share them. My discourse will probably be long, which is fitting, since Dickens is one of my favorite writers. Let me first say that if I have misremembered anything, please feel free to comment to set me straight.

This evening, I attended the annual Conrad M. Wingate Memorial Lecture, which this year featured Dr. Vladislav Zubok, Associate Professor of History at Temple University (for more info about him, visit his Meet the Faculty page on Temple's website). His lecture was entitled, The Soviet Union: America's Worst Enemy? and it was extremely fascinating. His main points of consideration were: why did the Cold War start?, why did it end the way it did?, and that the USSR was actually America's best enemy.

Dr. Zubok talked about how Stalin was the cause of the Cold War. At the end of World War II, which was an incredibly devastating war for the USSR, the Soviet people generally wanted peace. They did not want to engage in another war because they were exhausted from the Great Patriotic War against the Nazis. Stalin also found himself in the midst of a Cold War of sorts internally; the war had brought liberal, Western ideas to Russia, and he feared losing his own power to the notion of a better life. He actually had to work to convert his leadership, military, and then the Soviet people back to his version of Socialism. But then he noticed that Britain had access to oil drawn from the oil fields of southern Iran (as part of their sphere of influence) and he wanted it. The Americans then weighed in and told Stalin to stay out of Iran, pushing the Iranian question to the top of the agenda for the newly formed United Nations. And thus began the Cold War between the most powerful country and strongest economy in the world and the exhausted USSR whose people didn't want another conflict, even if they had the means to take on the strongest economy in the world.

After Stalin was Khruschev, and it was under his leadership that the Soviets finally reached the technological capacity, marked by Sputnik, to even reach the US with weapons. Khruschev was also generally well liked by Americans. However, in 1962, Soviet missiles appeared in Cuba. American history generally states that they were poised for attack, being only a few miles off of Florida, but, according to Dr. Zubok, the Soviets sent the missiles there to deter the US from attacking them. Khruschev knew in advance that Kennedy planned to make a speech on October 22, and he was terrified that it would be a declaration of war. Because the USSR still did not want to go to war with the United States.

Dr. Zubok commented that no one predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse in the way that it did. By the 1980s, the food lines and other shortages (like toilet paper) were called "temporary difficulties," but they didn't go away. In Dr. Zubok's estimation, Gorbachev was not able to effectively lead the USSR because he didn't have a clear sense of direction and he could not hold the country together. The USSR was the best enemy America could have had, because over the course of the Cold War, both sides had a diplomatic and political understanding and knew what the rules of engagement were, even when they broke those rules. Americans were also provided with a profound sense of identity and a black and white understanding of the world, all of which are lacking in today's war against terror.

I was really glad I was able to go to Dr. Zubok's lecture, and I think I might have to read his book, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. There were many interesting questions posed after the lecture; the question I had but didn't get a chance to ask was as follows: in light of the misperceptions of both sides, were there any ways in which the Cold War could have progressed differently? Feel free to weigh in on that one.

The second lecture I went to today was actually a lunch time lecture sponsored by the Literary House as part of their series, Storytelling in the Digital Age. Today's talk was given by our own Prof. Corey Olsen, English professor, expert in medieval literature, and currently my professor for Foundations of Western Literature. His talk was entitled Breaking the Silence: Literature Before the Book. From his lecture, I think we can say that some of what we believe about the Middle Ages is true: books were rare and expensive, and there were very few literate people. However, as Prof. Olsen explained, the people had access to ideas, and literacy was not necessarily synonymous with education, the possession of ideas, or even of civilization. He showed us some images from the stained glass windows of Canterbury Cathedral that illustrated popular Bible stories, such as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and even complex theological ideas, exemplified by a panel showing the crucifixion of Christ, the (almost) sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, and Joshua and the other Israelite spy bringing food back from the Promised Land to show the Israelites before they entered. These latter two images become typologically related to the Crucifixion, as the sacrifice of Isaac anticipates the sacrifice of Christ, and the association with Joshua, the one who led Israel into the Promised Land, shows how through the cross, Christ leads His people into the Promised Land (and as an added bonus, Joshua and Jesus are the same name in Hebrew). Medieval people were very well aware of these teachings, gaining this awareness namely through homilies preached to them.

Even though books were rare, reading and books were a huge part of Medieval culture. In monasteries, one monk would read to the rest of the monks while they worked, and in families, one family member, usually a daughter, would read to the rest of her family; therefore, people were aware of textual ideas. Reading aloud was the preferred method; Prof. Olsen pointed to St. Augustine's account in Confessions of St. Ambrose, who would read silently so as not to invite commentary and questioning from listeners and in order to read a greater number of books. This practice of silent reading was out of the ordinary, and Prof. Olsen explained the great effort to which Augustine went to explain Ambrose's actions. Reading was arguably a much more intellectual effort in the Middle Ages, as punctuation and paragraphing were not standardized yet, and readers were lucky to have even spaces between words. Therefore, readers had to study the texts before they read them aloud in order to make sense of the text and to prepare an effective reading.

Finally, Prof. Olsen gave us two examples from Sir Thomas Malory's writings to show us some of the challenges to understanding the texts and some of the literary conventions used. Repetition was a major device, and Malory used repetition of ideas to remind readers of details as he set his scene and to connect various points and to introduce new ideas into his schema. We also looked at the different ways the text could be interpreted, as the lack of punctuation requires us to determine where clauses and ideas end, and there are always some different options. Thus, it is up to us to distill the author's meaning and to insert breaks accordingly.

Prof. Olsen's lecture was wonderful and was filled with humor, as his lectures always are. I'm really glad I was able to go to both of these lectures; it made for a busy day, but it was well worth it, as my busy days usually turn out to be. Tomorrow, Brenna will probably enlighten the blog with a discourse on Huey Long, and at some point I will return to relate the tale of our adventure to a conference a few weeks back. It's a wonderful story, and it will be illustrated! Stay tuned!

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