History Happenings

History Happenings A newsletter published by the Department of History The University of Memphis Vol. 6, no. 3 April 2010 In This Issue . Glimpse into the eyes of the young women on the cover, students from West Tennessee State Normal School, the forerunner of what is now the University of Memphis. There is a determination there, a stoic understanding of lessons learned and applied into these young women’s own, future classrooms. Dr. Basil Georgiadis, an alumnus of the department, tells us in this newsletter’s pages that “learning is a life-long endeavor.” We see this passion for education in Jim Blythe’s description of his impressive two-volume work on a critical medieval thinker, in tales by our recent Ph.D.s about the joys and struggles of dissertation writing, in the accounts of our graduate students as they pursue research and outreach, and in Beverly Bond’s chronicle of some amazing women from Tennessee’s history. Enjoy! Writing About Thinking By Jim Blythe I have been studying Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca)(1236–1327) for over ten years, much longer than I expected. Unlike most scholars, I began my career with a big, synthetic work—about medieval and Renaissance political science treatises—and then moved to a more specific subject. My first book disproved the myth that all medieval thinkers favored absolute monarchy. It showed their wide support for mixed constitutions: governments combining monarchy, aristocracy, and/or democracy. The United States constitution was so intended, but Greek, Roman, and Renaissance thinkers got most of the credit. Researching that project, I discovered Tolomeo, a student and confessor of Thomas Aquinas, Dominican prior of San Romano in Lucca and Santa Maria Novella in Florence, resident at the papal court in Avignon, acquaintance of the saintly Pope Clement V and the reviled Pope John XXII, European traveler, and author of works of history, political thought, and biblical exegesis. Little was written about him, but I believed that he was extremely important and influential. Unlike all other contemporary writers, he detested kingship as inherently despotic. While others praised the HISTORY HAPPENINGS— Roman Empire, he lauded Republican Rome and called Caesar tyrannical. Unusually, he wrote about contemporary governments and compared Italian city-states to Republican Rome and Greek city-states. Strangely, he also supported absolute papal monarchy. I could have written a book about these ideas in a few years, but I decided to do more: to write his first real biography and describe his worldview, views on women and gender, theory of God’s plan for history, and various contradictory influences that he tried to harmonize: natural vs. supernatural causation, government for the common good vs. repressing evil, papal vs. republican rule, active vs. contemplative life, and gender complementarity vs. gender polarity. The biography required the most work. Intellectual historians’ primary sources are typically printed books or microfilms of manuscripts. But now I needed archival documents. Tolomeo came from a Luccan commercial family, and he appears in many transactions and as executor of many wills. All survive, often damaged, in a highly abbreviated and difficult gothic Latin script. The good part is that I had to travel for two summers to Lucca, Florence, Venice, and Rome. Since I needed only to gather photocopies for later deciphering, my wife and I had time to see the beautiful sights and eat a lot of great food—little pizza, although The only known autograph of Tolomeo Fiodoni most Americans ate that habitually (one Venetian restaurant proclaimed: No Pizza! No Lasagna! No Tourist Menu!). I also spent many hours taking photographs. I’m especially happy with my series of graffiti close-ups. There were some surprises. After Pope John made him Bishop of Torcello in the Venetian Lagoon, the octogenarian Tolomeo’s archbishop excommunicated and jailed him, forcing the pope to intervene. Earlier, he was punished for hosting an inappropriate feast in his convent, and he supervised the devotions and wills of several important women, including Countess Capoana, widow of Ugolino of Pisa, whom Dante depicted gnawing on the head of an archbishop in hell. Instead of one book, I ended up with two. The first,The Life and Works of Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca), is the biography and discussion of Tolomeo’s works—complicated by questions of dating, authenticity, and interpolation. The second, The Worldview and Thought of Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca), analyzes his thought. I got great images for the covers, from a thirteenth-century manuscript reflecting Tolomeo’s republican and papal views, and an inside photo of his only known autograph. I’m very pleased with the result, but don’t want to be remembered only as the one who devoted his life to Tolomeo. So I’m beginning a very different project, about apocalyptic movements. HISTORY HAPPENINGS— Thinking About Writing During the Fall 2009 Commencement services, four of our graduate students received their Ph.D. diplomas. We asked two of them — John Bass and Kim Nichols — what they considered their greatest challenge in completing their dissertation. John’s dissertation, entitled “Bolsheviks on the Bluff — A History of the Memphis Communists and their Labor and Civil Rights Contributions, 1930-1957,” was written under the direction of Dr. Charles Crawford. Kim’s dissertation, entitled “The Civil Rights Underground: The Movement for Compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” was written under the direction of Dr. Janann Sherman. Dr. John Bass One of the questions that I am asked most often is how I chose my topic. Most of my early graduate study had concentrated on Russia and the Soviet Union, but I wanted to round out my understanding of history by working on other areas of the world. As an undergraduate at Union University, I had taken an interest in the history of the United States in the 20th century. One of the first classes that I enrolled in at the University of Memphis was Dr. Crawford’s research seminar. Trying to come up with a topic that could make the transition from my area of familiarity to Memphis history, I decided to examine what role, if any, the Communist Party USA may have played in the Memphis area. To be honest, I did not expect to find very much, but Dr. Crawford encouraged me to leave no stone unturned. I soon found enough material to write an acceptable paper. With the support of Dr. Crawford, this paper developed into my PhD dissertation. For my dissertation, I made use of a variety of sources, traveling to what was then the Reference Center for Marxist Studies. This center was the library of the Communist Party USA. (In 2006, the Reference Center closed and, in 2008, its papers were donated, along with the post World War II files of the CPUSA, to New York University’s Bobst Library). I also visited archives at the University of Texas at Arlington, Duke University, Atlanta University, Emory University, and the University of Georgia (where I found a great deal of information on the Communist-organized Memphis union for agricultural processing workers “Local 19”). I also Dr. Michael Honey was a big help, providing advice and went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, loaning me some of the interviews of deceased Memphis the location of not only oral histories of various African- Communists that he used in his book Southern Labor American Communists, but also the archival collections of and Black Civil Rights. I also made use of the William Junius Scales, a regional organizer of the Communist Party, Amberson, Southern Tenant Farmers Union, and Earl the Communist-allied National Negro Congress, and the Browder collections from our own library, as well as the E. Civil Rights Congress. H. Crump papers and the Socialist Party Scrapbook from HISTORY HAPPENINGS— the Memphis Public Library. The most memorable and of my work involved editing and reorganization. In fact, my most helpful sources were two interviews with one of the problem was that I wrote too much. I kept wanting to write last surviving former Memphis Communists, Lawrence more, but my committee and other faculty I worked with McGurty, arranged with the assistance of Southern CPUSA did an excellent job in keeping me focused on the task at Director, Scott Marshall. hand. The interesting part is that the dissertation is only the beginning. By the time the post-World War II CPUSA files Obtaining the material took a great deal of time. Once I got became available, I was almost finished and did not have the all the material organized and started writing, the fact that I time to go to New York and research them. In addition, there had grown very interested in a little-known subject kept me are archives in Moscow that may be worth investigating. I’m well-motivated. Once I had typed up the first draft, the rest hoping to research all of these in the near future. Dr. Kim Nichols The most significant challenge I faced in completing my dissertation was being employed full-time outside the realm of academia. It was as if I was leading two separate lives. My primary existence was parading as a corporate citizen, working 8:00 to 5:00 (or longer) and yielding to the demands of others like a worker bee. My secondary existence was as a scholar. There was a constant struggle between these two identities, and I would often surrender one to the detriment of the other. If I focused on my job, my dissertation suffered. And if I focused on my dissertation, my job suffered. W.E.B. Du Bois’s ideas about the “twoness” that one feels has merit.

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