The Earlham Historical Journal Volume IX: Issue II
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The Earlham Historical Journal Volume IX: Issue II AN UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL INQUIRY Spring 2017 EHJVolume IX: Issue IISpring 2017 The Earlham Historical Journal Established in 2008, we are an interdisciplinary journal that aims to publish works of outstanding research that employs a historical slant in any academic field. For more information contact: Justin Ko ([email protected]) or Tyler Tolman ([email protected]) Editorial Board: Justin Ko, Convening Editor Tyler Tolman, Convening Editor Karen Breece Simon Dickerson Peter Kashatus Emily Lim Victoria Maras Kudzai Mushongahande Sierra Newby-Smith Anh Nguyen Sonia Norton Brittani Reno ii Faculty Advisor Ryan Murphy Acknowledgements We would like to thank the President’s Office, the Department of History, the Student Organizations Council, Dave Knight, Donna Sykes, Greg Mahler, this issue’s student contributors, and their advisors for supporting the journal’s work. Cover Image Bird's eye view of the Bund in 1930. Displayed at the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, 1930, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bund_in_1930_- _Shanghai_Urban_Planning_Exhibition_Center.JPG iii EHJVolume IX: Issue IISpring 2017 Table of Contents ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Letter of Introduction By Justin Ko and Tyler Tolman 1 Gender (Bi)Sexuality 8 By Laura Honsig Being and Becoming Human: Weheliye’s Radical Emancipation Theory and the Flesh and Body of Black Studies 24 By James Johnson Orientalism Versus Organization: The Professionalization of American and Chinese Women Artists in China, 1900-1949 67 By Karen Breece Witches and New Christians in the Viceroyalty of Peru 86 By Lydia Lichtiger Crime and Security in Shanghai’s French Concession, 1919-1937 105 By Olivia Hunter iv The Earlham Historical Journal ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Letter of Introduction This semester’s issue of the Earlham Historical Journal focuses on a variety scholarship among Earlham students, including (Bi)Sexuality, an analysis of radicality in Black Studies, the intersectionality between orientalism and feminism, witches in the Viceroyalty of Peru, and perceptions of crime and security in Shanghai’s French Concession. This issue begins with Laura Honsig’s “Gendering (Bi)Sexuality.” Honsig connects the Sexual Freedom League, the women’s movement, lesbian cultural feminism, and gay liberation to current circumstances within the LGBT movement. Honsig reveals shifting conceptions regarding race, gender, sexuality, and how the three have been ideologically grouped and distanced between the 1970s and present day. It continues with James Johnson’s “Being and Becoming Human: Weheliye’s Radical Emancipation Theory and the Flesh and Body of Black Studies”, an analysis of radicality in Black Studies. Johnson draws upon Alexander Weheliye’s notion of the “flesh” that reconciles Giorgio Agamben’s notion of bare life and biopolitics in the context of Black Studies. In doing so, Johnson finds a shifting conception of race characterized by the detached static results produced by state solutions, revealing the field’s efforts to decenter the racist forces of the state as a site of liberation. In “Orientalism Versus Organization: The Professionalization of American and Chinese Women Artists in China, 1900-1949,” Karen Breece compares American and Chinese women’s experiences acquiring professional careers in the arts through an orientalist lens. During a time of rapid change and intensified foreign contact for China, both American and Chinese women artists advanced in their field. Breece asserts that, while Chinese women navigated changing perceptions of gender roles to assert their place in the professional sphere as artists, American women achieved recognition by perpetuating negative perceptions of the Orient. In “Witches and New Christians in the Viceroyalty of Peru”, Lydia Lichtiger analyzes Spanish anxiety on Jews and indigenous witches in early colonial Peru. Lichtiger finds that such anxieties were based on imagined threats that these groups posed to the Spanish colonial order. Both Jews and Andean women, by being non- 5 EHJVolume IX: Issue IISpring 2017 Christian, were antithetical to the Spanish logic of colonization, thus perceived by the Spanish to threaten Christianity and colonial state formation We conclude our journal with Olivia Hunter’s “Crime and Security in Shanghai’s French Concession, 1919-1937.” Hunter assesses how the French reconciled perceptions of crime in Shanghai’s French Concession with an emphasis on national pride and military strength. Through an analysis of French and British documentation, Hunter reveals differences and discrepancies in the rhetoric regarding crime and immoral activity in Shanghai. The paper attempts to demonstrate that the French based their national pride on maintaining the physical borders of Shanghai versus cleansing the concession of internal, immoral threats. The intent of this issue of the journal is to draw attention to a variety of historical narratives, specifically those that have been oversimplified. These papers attempt to shed light on narratives that have been excluded from adequate dialogue. This semester, the journal has received papers of exceptional quality and intellectual work. We are excited to share their work with our readers. This issue of the Earlham Historical Journal represents the hard work of searching for truth that is at the core of research amongst students at Earlham College. It is our aim to highlight the diversity of scholarship and narratives within history. On behalf of the editorial board, Justin Ko and Tyler Tolman Convening Editors Anyone interested in submitting articles for the Fall 2017 issue should contact Tyler Tolman at ([email protected]). 6 7 EHJVolume IX: Issue IISpring 2017 Gendering (Bi)Sexuality ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Laura Honsig In the United States we often associate the decade of the 1960’s with “free love” and radically liberated notions of gender and sexuality. Yet fascinating discussions around gender and sexuality were also happening in the early- and mid- 1970’s, ones that illuminate not only the evolution of movements and ideas during these decades, but also our own historical moment. This paper, which relies on primary sources, situates questions of sexual object choice, gender non-conformity, racialization, and “bisexuality” in the historical moment(s) of the 1970’s. These histories also have important connections to the contemporary moment of LGBT identities. I argue that today both bisexuality and transgender, while certainly acknowledged as labels that fit with lesbian and gay in a certain sense, are treated discursively and materially differently than the latter two, so often violently. For this reason, the last section of my paper draws connections between the 1970’s and the present. The decade of the 1970’s provides important perspectives for understanding how the currents of this earlier decade have contributed to the present situation of the LGBT movement. The women’s movement, lesbian cultural feminism, gay liberation, and the Sexual Freedom League (SFL) are important here because of their respective ideas about sexual object choice and bisexuality, as well as accompanying assumptions about race and gender. I would like to tell a story about the SFL using a genealogical approach to history; this will reveal interesting conceptions of gender, race, and sexuality in order to identify one point in a web of historical ideas, people, communities, and movements that inform our current moment today. In this vein, my analysis suggests that these ideas constitute one piece of a historical puzzle that have brought us contemporary LGBT issues and ideas, but are not necessarily causally related. In addition, more than to elucidate truths about people in the archive, I use their voices to explore what structural forces are at play during this time period. The research for this project involves a series of primary sources from the Sexual Freedom League’s file at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute. The materials in the SFL box span the time period of 1971-1977, with the majority coming from the early part of the decade. They can roughly be generalized as 1) internal notes, memos, letters, and flyers that pertain to the work and perspectives of the organization itself, and 2) newspaper clippings, articles, pamphlets, brochures, and 8 publications collected from other external resources that are associated