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Ray Bradbury's Independent Mind: an Inquiry Into Public Intellectualism”

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RAY BRADBURY’S INDEPENDENT MIND: AN INQUIRY INTO PUBLIC INTELLECTUALISM Ethan Ryan Chitty Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in the Department of History, Indiana University December 2017 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. Master’s Thesis Committee Raymond J. Haberski, Ph.D., Chair Jonathan R. Eller, Ph.D. Marianne S. Wokeck, Ph.D. ii DEDICATION This work is dedicated to my wife, Kristen Louise Downey Chitty, and to our daughter, Bellah Louise Chitty. You both make the journey of life so much richer. iii When we think of all the people who come into our lives and out of them, we begin to recognize that much of what we do is dependent upon the generosity, talent, and willingness of others. This work, and whatever value it may hold for those who read it, does not consti- tute a singular work, built in a vacuum. Rather, it is my effort to contribute to a field which has immeasurably given to me. There are many participants in the story of the how it came to be, and no matter my attempts, I scarcely believe myself capable of capturing and ade- quately expressing the great debt I owe to those who’ve helped along the way. I shall try to at least share some gratitude to those principal persons who participated in this work’s fashion- ing. First, I would like to thank the members of my committee. Dr. Ray Haberski, Chair: Thank you for your guidance, assistance, and overall pa- tience. You’ve introduced me to a whole world of work and thinking that has fundamentally changed the way that I look at history and the world around me. You forced me to focus, to refine, and to push the boundaries of what I thought I could do. Dr. Jonathan Eller: Thank you for your tireless devotion to making this project better. You once referred to your position as both “a vocation, and an avocation.” Your tenacity and experience provided the inspiration, and physical possibility of this project to be undertaken, along with the lesson that you can indeed make what you love what you do. Dr. Marianne Wokeck: Thank you for your sagacious guidance as I worked through this project from conception to completion. Thank you for helping me to develop my scholarly voice and for always pushing me to “make it more history.” Thank you as well for providing the keen hand at the rudder on this project, and others which have enabled me to become a better historian and editor. Additional thanks to Drs. Jennifer Guiliano and Madupe Labode for their expertise on some of the earlier, and unfortunately abandoned, project elements of this thesis. Thank you to the institutions which have provided financial, professional, and intellectu- al support during this graduate school journey including the Santayana Edition, Indiana His- torical Society Press, and IUPUI Department of History. You’ve provided the means for me iv to undertake this study, many of you have provided guidance on draft material, navigating the graduate school system, and explaining how to balance being a grad student, employee, co-worker, and person all at the same time. Special thanks to my supervisors along the way, Dr. Kellie Dawson and Teresa Baer. A special place in my heart is saved for the folks who’ve taken their time to read my drafted work and provide some independent counsel. In IUPUI’s Department of History, this includes Drs. Bob Barrows, Liz Monroe, and Nancy Robertson, all of whom read my “s***** first-drafts” and were nice enough not to throw them away. At some point, almost our entire cohort of students has provided feedback on parts of this work, but particular thanks goes to Jyoti Verderame, Justin Clark, and Nicholas Johnson. They’ve read and cri- tiqued entire chapters, some of which were left in tatters. Thanks as well to go to several outside folks for their help with different elements of the graduate school and thesis process. Thanks to L.D. Burnett and Audra J. Wolfe with the Society for United States Intellectual History for providing material and a different perspec- tive on quite a few items along the way, as well as to all of the S-USIH bloggers and contrib- utors for the many voices focused on what intellectual history is and how it should be done. Thank you to the staff people of the Institute for American Thought at IUPUI and the Indiana Historical Society for your assistance and support. Additionally, thanks to Dr. Susan Curtis of Purdue University for providing my first, and many more along the way, experienc- es of intellectual history. Thank you to my family and friends for sticking with me through all the craziness and pushing me to continuously do better. Many thanks in particular to my parents, Deidre and Alvin Chitty, for their assistance in so many forms along the way. Special thanks for the family and friends who were willing to provide questions and feedback on drafted material even when you weren’t quite sure what you were looking at. Most significantly, many thanks to my wife, Kristen, for encouraging me to return to my studies, and then for staying on me to finish them promptly (I may have failed in that v last part). Without your steadfast support, willingness to read through countless drafts of “that history gunk,” and forcing me to stay locked in our cave-like office for hours on end, I would not have been able to do this. A Note: Special thanks also are due to two special scholars who are sadly no longer with us. Dr. William Touponce (of IUPUI) and Dr. Michael Morrison (of Purdue) both provided invaluable feedback on material, provided guidance both textual and professional, and took the time to help a sometimes lost grad student find his way towards finishing his graduate work. I am forever indebted for their kindnesses and will miss them both. vi Ethan R Chitty RAY BRADBURY’S INDEPENDENT MIND: AN INQUIRY INTO PUBLIC INTELLECTUALISM Current models of public intellectualism rely upon arbitrary and oftentimes elitist criteria. The work of Corey Robin, when combined with that of Antonio Gramsci, provides a reproducable, and scalable, series of tests for consideration of indivduals as public intellectuals. This work takes author Ray Bradbury as an example of public intellectuals who are often missed using current schemas . Bradbury serves as a test case of public intellectualism in the early Cold War period in the United States based upon this new formulation. It examines Bradbury’s work in light of the historical situation in which Bradbury operated, his work’s comparitive arguments in relation to contemporary intellectuals, and reviews some of the influence Bradbury exerted on future generations. Raymond J. Haberski, PhD, Chair vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Bradbury and the Problems of Academic Vision ................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: The Possibilities and Pessimisms of Postwar America ............................................................. 8 Chapter 2: Bradbury’s Cold War—Anti-Elite Intellectualism ................................................................... 31 Chapter 3: The Golden Apples of His Labor—Bradbury’s Future Publics ........................................... 81 Bibliography .....................................................................................................................................................100 Curriculum Vitae vii INTRODUCTION: BRADBURY AND THE PROBLEMS OF ACADEMIC VISION Ray Douglas Bradbury was born in Waukegan, IL (a city north of Chicago on Lake Michigan) on August 22, 1920. Leonard Spaulding Bradbury— Ray’s father— was a worker for the city’s Bureau of Power and Light, while mother Esther Moberg Bradbury, a Swedish immigrant, took care of Ray and his older brother Leonard Jr. Unlike his outdoorsman father, Ray spent substantial periods taking in films and perusing books in his local library. After spending a brief stint in the American Southwest (related to his father’s work), the family moved back to Waukegan, and eventually to Los Angeles (where Bradbury spent the rest of his life). Bradbury would experience the city from its lower income neighborhoods, seeing Black, Latino, and Asian neighbors, as well as low-income white residents, struggling with the problems of the time. Barred from military service due to poor eyesight, Bradbury instead spent his early adulthood days selling newspapers on Los Angeles’ street corners. Along the way, Bradbury developed a keen interest in science fiction through his participa- tion in the Los Angeles Science Fiction League (LASFL), and connected to a fascinating col- lection of future noteworthy persons who created science fiction, fantasy, and comic books that reached across the world.1 Over the course of his career, Bradbury would come to write well over 600 short stories and create several novels and anthologies. He would become one of the voices that helped Americans understand the problems and issues of the early cold war period. Until now, Bradbury’s contributions have received little but passing interest by intellectual historians. His works are certainly ripe for exploration, as are the rationales for this neglect. The Problem of Academic Perception Efforts by historians, particularly those associated with the Society for U.S. Intellectual History (S-USIH), have attempted to identify and investigate the role of science fiction and fantasy in American society, yet even among these scholars, most of these inquiries remain primarily informal. Though serious scholarly inquiry into science fiction and fantasy appear 1. Jonathan Eller, Becoming Ray Bradbury (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 54. 1 as a conscious effort in S-USIH’s blog entries, notably including reviews of Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr. Who, and even a post or two mentioning Bradbury, which would indicate a defi- nite interest, there has not been a significant amount of more formal work from the group on these topics.
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