Writing Across the Curriculum… on to the 50Th

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Writing Across the Curriculum… on to the 50th

SELECTED PAPERS, POETRY AND ESSAYS FROM GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES STUDENTS, ALUMNI, FACULTY

VOLUME VII - 2015

Writing Across the Curriculum… on to the 50th

Volume VII – 2015

GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES AT GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

JOHN DOLAN, PH.D. ASSOCIATE DEAN

ANNE RIDDER, MALS ‘82 EDITOR

John Dolan, Ph.D.

John Dolan is the Associate Dean of Liberal Studies programs at Georgetown University’s School of Con- tinuing Studies. Dr. Dolan brings a wealth of experience in academic program development and oversight, as well as in non-traditional learning environments. Be- fore he began his career in academia, he worked in private industry from 1989 to 2003 for major media companies, such as the Washington Post Company and Knight Ridder, as well as AT&T and BellSouth. He joined his alma mater, Pennsylvania State Uni- versity, in 2003, and served as an instructor and administrative leader for a variety of marketing, public relations, and media concentrations, as well as professional education programs for corporate audiences. He spent his last three years at Penn State as a senior administra- tor in the College of the Liberal Arts. He joined The George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs in 2013 as Director of Executive and Professional Education. At GW, he was responsible for the development, execution, and overall management of an executive education program with both open en- rollment and customized professional education programs, bringing the unique expertise of the School’s faculty to audiences all over the world.

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Writing Across the Curriculum…on to the 50th

Associate Dean’s Note

The publication of this latest volume of Writing Across the Curriculum comes early in my tenure as Associate Dean of Liberal Studies at Georgetown’s School of Continuing Studies, and at a time when some in the mainstream media are asking why the liberal arts are still relevant. I hope that this edition helps answer that question in no uncertain terms. In my short time here, it has been very rewarding to get to know our students, faculty and alumni, and to see our program in action through observing our courses, workshops and thesis defenses and through this collection of essays, reading their work. It is clear we have an abundance of committed faculty, students and alumni in our program, and the schol- arship they are producing is inspiring. Our scholars are being recognized for their contributions to the field through association awards, journal publications and even book contracts. I am proud to be part of a program that encourages the study and dissemination of research around these important topics and issues. This collection of works represents but a small sample of the interdisciplinary, values-based study that is taking place in Georgetown’s Graduate Liberal Studies community, as well as some reflective pieces that illustrate the transformative impact our program has had on some of our faculty and alumni during its forty year history. I am grateful to those who have shared their work as part of this collection. This commitment to excellence is but one example of the strength of our Graduate Liberal Studies program, and an exemplification of what has sustained its forward momentum for more than forty years. We hope you enjoy it.

— John Dolan, Associate Dean Liberal Studies

Writing Across the Curriculum…on to the 50th

Editor’s Note

Reflecting on the culmination of the 40th anniversary of the Graduate Liberal Studies degree program, we gathered course papers recommended by our faculty and short essays and poems contributed by our alumni and faculty to produce the 7th volume of Writing Across the Cur- riculum. Dr. John Dolan, Associate Dean, joined us mid-year celebrating where we have been and more importantly mapping out our trek to the 50th anniversary and beyond. Scholarly writing documents our mastery of ideas, our understanding of the past, and dictates hope for the future. Assisting students with pen on paper or fingers on the keyboard are our faculty, the librarians, and Dr. Kathryn Temple and her Writing Services. Together they provide the students tools to strengthen their research skills, organize their notes, and tackle the art of good writing. Toolbox in hand, students complete short and long papers, answers to doctoral qualifying examination questions, theses, and more. Students and graduates whose course papers were recommended for this publication took the next step to polish and update their papers. Fac- ulty and alumni submitted varied styles of writing and content, representative of the Program’s interdisciplinary curriculum and focus on human values and ethics, to express their ideas for the future. Together we strived to have the commas, colons, and indents “in line and in order” to show off each fine piece of research and writing. May our readers join me in congratulating the student writers and thanking the faculty who recommended their course papers. Also, my gratitude goes to the alumni and faculty whose contributions provide a great send-off for Liberal Studies’ journey, “on to the fiftieth.”

— Anne Ridder, Assistant Dean Graduate Liberal Studies

WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH

CONTENTS

PREFACE The LSP Is the Place to Be! by William A. Douglas ...... 11

ALUMNI: “Who Do You Say That I Am?” by Jeanne Anastasi ...... 13

One Winter Day in Washington, A Brilliant Autumn Day on Tallinn by Jill Marie Dougherty ...... 17

Liberal Studies: No Longer a Luxury, but a Necessity? by Matthew D. Lewis ...... 21

Not Only Explorers by John S. McClenahen ...... 25

Now Voyageur, into 2016 by Robert F. Murray ...... 27

Trail Cairns by Christy Wise ...... 33

ALUMNI/FACULTY: Roads Taken and not Taken: Thoughts on “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” Plus-70 by Michael Duggan ...... 37

Professional Life and Liberal Studies by Charles A. O’Connor III ...... 47

FACULTY: Educating Public Intellectuals by Francis J. Ambrosio ...... 51

ix A Historian’s Reflections on Liberal Studies by James H. Hershman ...... 55

Liberal Studies: The Time of Your Life in the Present – in the Future by William J. O’Brien ...... 59

Writing as a Way of Knowing: Twenty Years of Writing Services by Kathryn Temple ...... 63

Graduate Liberal Studies: Future Tense by Gladys B. White ...... 67

STUDENTS: Women’s Empowerment and Peacebuilding A Case Study: Women’s Role in Tunisia’s Revolution and Democratization Process by Stephanie J. Bagot ...... 71

The Bolshevik Revolution as Seen through Art: Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev by Linda H. Buckley ...... 97

Personalizing Medicine and Protecting Health Data: An Ethical Analysis by William A. Cessato ...... 115

Humanity Needs the Humanities by Alicia Tenuta Cohen ...... 127

Liminal Space: Moments of Grace in Annie Dillard’s The Maytrees by Joanne Rutkowski ...... 135

Justice Brandeis and the American Workplace by Michael Schuman ...... 145

From Early Renaissance to High Renaissance - Changing Visions of Female Beauty Between Piero Della Francesca's “Madonna Del Parto” and Titian's “Sacred and Profane Love” by Iryna Sirota-Basso ...... 169 x WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH

PREFACE

The LSP Is the Place to Be!

by William A. Douglas, Ph.D.

William Douglas is an educator who is trained in the field of International Relations and specializes in democracy in developing countries, international ethics, and international labor affairs. He has lived and worked in Germany, Korea, Peru, and China and has three decades of experience in developing, and teaching in, labor education programs throughout Latin America. He has been a Professorial Lecturer for 34 years in Georgetown University’s Liberal Studies Program. As a Professorial Lecturer at SAIS since 1992, he has taught courses on International Ethics and on Labor in Developing Countries. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the Uni- versity of Washington, an M.A. from SAIS at Johns Hopkins, and a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton Uni- versity.

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11 PREFACE – DOUGLAS GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES

THE LSP IS THE PLACE TO BE!

College grads, at a certain age, Often enter into a stage In which they will begin to question The prevailing widely-held suggestion That the fact that they have graduated Means that they are “educated.”

Chemists, lawyers, and physicians, Occupying high positions, In their fields know lots of stuff – But, is knowing their own fields enough? Their minds are crammed with useful facts – But are they all just high-tech hacks? Midst intellectual patricians, are they just plebians, Unlike the cultured Europeans?

From literature, history, and fine art The lives they live are quite apart. Of philosophy and such, They really don’t know very much. Their grasp of values and ideals is minimal, Their own beliefs are oft’ subliminal. They need to think these issues through, So they will know what they should do.

As what once seemed clear becomes more muddy, They feel a need for further study, And so at Georgetown they arrive, Where in Liberal Studies they can strive To expand their breadth of knowledge Beyond just what they learned in college.

To avoid an unexamined life, Which with moral dilemmas oft is rife, To know themselves becomes their goal, So that, through searching, they’re made whole, Combining heart, and soul, and mind, What they came to seek, they now can find.

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“Who Do You Say That I Am?”

by Jeanne M. Anastasi, MALS ’01

Jeanne Anastasi serves as a senior program specialist with the National Action Partnership to Promote Safe Sleep (NAPPSS) at Georgetown University. During more than two decades at Georgetown’s National Cen- ter for Education in Maternal and Child Health, Jeanne has worked with a number of child health projects, including researching and developing materials for the Bright Futures Guidelines, co-authoring online distance learning curricula in children’s health, and creating publications for the National SIDS Resource Cen- ter. Jeanne especially enjoyed staffing the SIDS Re- source Center helpline, where she had many opportunities to provide information and support to families as well as technical assistance to health professionals and state health departments.

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13 ALUMNI - 2015 - ANASTASI GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES

I realized during the Master of Liberal Studies Program’s 40th celebration this Spring, when I stood alone as the graduate who took the longest time (15+ years) to complete the requirements, that I had a dubious claim to fame in the annals of the Program. I began the Program when my youngest child went off to kindergar- ten in 1979, and completed five courses; however, as tuition and fees increased, I could no longer afford to participate. I had been a legislative analyst early in my career and was interested in taking Professor Phyllis O’Callaghan’s course on legislation, but could not afford the costs. I’ll never forget her generous offer to lend me her own textbooks and materials to help defray mounting costs. I took a 16-year hiatus then, but when I finally became a GU employee with tuition benefits, I asked to be allowed to finish the program. Dr. O’Callaghan retrieved my records and graciously gave permission for me to take up what I had put down so many years before. I entered the program before there were “fields,” and upon my return many of my professors had moved on to other directions-- some to a heavenly direction. But the kindness and support I received from my professors will stay with me forever. I remember speaking with Dr. Terry Reynolds (my “Sex, Lies and Theology” professor) whom I encountered after-hours near Dahlgren Chapel one evening, and so appreciated the time he shared with me talking about the Program and my own aspira- tions. I remember Dr. Chester Gillis, who taught so many important lessons during my thesis workshop – lessons and skills that I have applied continually during my career in researching and writing. During thesis time, my oldest daughter rode what she called “thesis patrol” on weekends when I was overwhelmed with deadlines at work and responsibilities at home. Bookending my earlier conversations with Dr. O’Callaghan, I’ll never forget her calling me at work and urging me (in no uncertain terms) to complete my thesis. That was the semester I definitively submitted my thesis, thanks to the good graces and infinite patience of Anne Ridder, who painstakingly reviewed each margin, page number position, and binding requirement. One of my colleagues called Anne “every student’s best friend,” especially during thesis review.

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My thesis topic focused on Jesus’s question: “Who do you say that I am?” from the perspective of psychological and spiritual identity. My journey with the Liberal Studies Program has enriched my pursuit of that question over the years, and continues to nurture deeper understandings of my answer.

WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH

One Winter Day in Washington, A Brilliant Autumn Day in Tallinn

by Jill Marie Dougherty, MALS ’13

Jill Marie Dougherty, recipient of the SCS Out-standing Student Award, pursued her degree while serving as the Foreign Affairs Correspondent for CNN covering the State Department and international issues. A CNN correspondent for over three decades, she departed CNN in January, 2014, upon her selection as a Fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Gov- ernment. Next, as a Public Policy scholar at the Wood- row Wilson Center in DC, she continued her research and writing on the Russian media. Her research takes her to Tallinn, Estonia where she is working with an Estoni- an think tank, The International Centre for Defense and Security, researching the issue of Russian-speakers in Estonia and how they are influenced by Russian media and propaganda. From her first courses in Russian at age 13, through her bachelor’s study in Slavic languages and literature from the University of Michigan, study at Len- ingrad State University, to her MALS thesis on Russia’s Soft Power Diplomacy, her primary academic focus has been on Russia. Professionally, her range of reporting has reached more than 50 countries, including Afghani- stan, Iraq, Libya, Russia, and north Korea serving as Moscow Bureau Chief and Correspondent; White House Correspondent; and U.S. Affairs Editor. A graduate, re- porter, consultant, researcher – she wears all four hats as she continues her research and writing “on the ground” in Estonia. — ∞ —

17 ALUMNI - 2015 - DOUGHERTY GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES

I am sitting in a small apartment in Tallinn, Estonia, my home for two months. I am working with an Estonian think tank, the International Cen- tre for Defense and Security, researching the issue of Russianspeakers in Estonia and how they are influenced by Russian media and propaganda. It's a continuation of an issue that I began to look at approximately five years ago when I started my graduate studies in the MALS program at Georgetown. At that time, I was working as a correspondent for CNN, traveling a lot, with an intense schedule. A friend told me about the program and I began to think about going back to school. One reason—to open up my brain and begin to think in a different way. Yes, I thought a lot at work but it was often under deadline, with a specific purpose. School, I figured, would give me more free rein to explore things I was interested in and Russia was at the top of the list. The MALS program did much more than that. In a course taught by Fr. Francis X. Winters I was challenged to decide, in a paper I wrote, whether it was right to bomb Hiroshima. In other courses I examined the influence of art in propaganda. I studied early Soviet films. Always, at the core of those courses, was the moral dimension. Because of my work and travel schedule, I could take only one course at a time. There were moments when I almost threw in the towel, thinking I just didn't have the time to balance work and school. But I kept at it, encouraged by other students and by Assistant Dean Anne Ridder. I read textbooks on the plane as I followed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to China. I wrote papers early in the morning, before I left for work. Somehow, it came together. Somehow, one course followed another and, eventually, I had enough credits for my master's degree. Getting my master's opened up new possibilities and gave me the courage to explore them. I decided to follow my heart and plunge into more studies and work in the field of Russia and propaganda. I eventually left CNN, after thirty years, and was accepted for a fellowship at Harvard University. I became a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. Now, I am in Tallinn, talking with Russian speakers in towns across this small nation, trying to understand which “mental world” they inhabit, as they watch a steady stream of Russian TV channels from Moscow. And just as happened when full of doubts about whether I could do it I put one foot in front of the other to write my thesis, I am collecting information, thinking about what it all means, and writing a paper that, I hope, will make a contribution to the field of communications and media. And that, I am sure, will, in turn, lead to other avenues where I can explore even more ideas. None of this would have been possible if I hadn't decided, one winter day in

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Washington, to apply for the MALS program. Here I am, on a brilliant autumn day in Tallinn, thousands of miles away, but inspired by the same inner conviction: the challenges are endless. And so are the opportunities to let our minds take us wherever we want to go now and in the future.

WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH

Liberal Studies: No Longer a Luxury, but a Necessity?

by Matthew D. Lewis, COL ’99; MALS ’06

Matthew Lewis has been a Hoya for 20+ years and a Georgetown employee for the past sixteen. As Assis- tant Dean in the Office of Student Financial Services, he is responsible for the data analysis and decision support to help sustain Georgetown's commitment to meeting the full demonstrated need of its undergraduate student body. Matt’s current research interests focus on loan indebtedness among graduating George- town seniors, as well as the increased use of parental retirement assets to finance undergraduate education. Matt has also been an undergraduate Alumni Admis- sions Program interviewer for nearly fifteen years, and with what spare time is not eaten up literally and fig- uratively by his six year old son (himself a hopeful future Hoya), enjoys following the Orioles, gardening, and photography.

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21 ALUMNI - 2015 - LEWIS GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES

It is an honor, and yet still somewhat strange for me to be asked to write this piece on the Liberal Studies program with the benefit of the passage of time, as I never really pictured myself a Liberal Studies student. I graduated from Georgetown’s undergraduate College of Arts and Scienc- es in 1999, and went to work for the university straightaway after gradua- tion, thinking I would work for a year or so before going back to school full-time to do a graduate degree. A lot of things happened during this time – I was promoted very quickly at the University, and more importantly, I found I liked academic administration a lot - enough to want to stick around for a while and not go back to school full-time. In the personal sphere, I got married and became a suburbanite. Very quickly, I became the type of student that the Liberal Studies program typically attracted – the working professional for whom a degree program is certainly important, but a piece of a more complex puzzle. As an undergraduate, I knew of the Liberal Studies program, but didn’t fully understand it – I was under the impression that one either worked or went to school, but certainly not both. Added to this was the fact that through my work I had become familiar with the program - I was already working very closely with the Liber- al Studies program in my position, where I was responsible for integrating the then-SSCE into the University’s registration systems. Admittedly, it was a daunting task to take on Dr. O’Callaghan as a 23 year old (I fondly remember hearing, admittedly secondhand, that she inquired, of me, “what is that little boy is going to teach us about computers?”). Nonetheless, we became simpatico very quickly, and she was very much instrumental in my joining the program. Interestingly, though, what really fired my interest in the Liberal Studies program was 9/11. It was a transformational moment in the American consciousness, and certainly in my own psyche, watching the Pentagon burn from the top floor of the White-Gravenor building here on campus. I was shattered by the disruption of life as we had heretofore known it, and I needed to make sense of what had happened in a real, and meaningful way. At a certain point that fall, I had just stopped reading the paper, because there was nothing gained by the endless drone of bad news. My boss at the time, Scott Campbell (MALS ’04), had just begun his own studies in the program, and was engaged in the International Affairs track. His own studies seemed to be so engaged in what was happening in the larger world, in a real way, that it seemed to me that this was a way of trying to make sense of a post 9/11 world. So I joined the program, and though I took a slower path than many - mostly out of

22 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH commuting and tax considerations - it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. It helped me out of a post-9/11 funk, it gave me a means of reengaging myself with the life of the mind, and in working with the program professionally at the same time that I was studying in the program, I feel I was able to help my fellow students with their concerns that much better. The Liberal Studies degree has been a very important part of my adult life. The best categorization I have ever heard of it was Dr. O’Callaghan referring to the Liberal Studies degree a “luxury degree,”. I didn’t know if I fully believed that at first, but in retrospect, it is absolutely true and the best description of the program that I have heard. The Liberal Studies program allowed me – and others - the ability to cobble together a curriculum of my own choosing, tailored to understanding Islam and national security issues, in a very topical way, and on my timeframe, while allowing me to balance my career, my own personal life, and my studies – and continue my own intellectual development in a very profound, forward-thinking way. I do not think any other program would have allowed me to as effectively triangulate these concerns. At the same time, as we wind down the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the program, and look forward to the 50th, the importance of a liberal education such as that offered by the Liberal Studies Program, has never been more important. Almost – dare I say (and with apologies to Dr. O’Callaghan) – less of a luxury, and more of a necessity. In this era of specialization, of emphasis on STEM education, on professional certif- icates and degrees – the value of the liberal thinker has never been greater. This is not to downplay the importance of understanding of technology or science; but those who are able to understand the human values and ethical issues in technology and science, who are able to write meaning- fully, and who are capable of maintaining healthy skepticism – these are going to be the truly valuable human capital of this new era. The ability to write will truly be the great differentiator of our new age! From my work with the Georgetown undergraduate admissions interviewing process, it is amazing how the written word has been devalued even among the best and brightest who would come here as undergrads. If anything, I would say that the Liberal Studies degree and all of its associated liberal skills is perhaps more “marketable” today than ever before. I am still at the university today, as an Assistant Dean in Student Fi- nancial Services. While my own degree in international affairs was more of an intellectual interest than a direct tie-in with my career, I tie my own work in financial aid to a lot of the human values issues raised in my

23 ALUMNI - 2015 - LEWIS GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES liberal studies coursework. What has been interesting to see over the years is how many co-workers – many younger than even I was back in 2002 – have gone into the program and followed the same experience, for which we, as a University, ultimately benefit. I know that personally and professionally I am forever richer for the experience, and I look forward to seeing much of the next 40 years of Liberal Studies at Georgetown up close and seeing the program evolve to suit the times, but have its core remain much the same, for therein lies the real draw and the real power of this extraordinary degree.

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Not Only Explorers

by John S. McClenahen, MALS ’98

John McClenahen, an award-winning writer and photo- grapher, received his MALS from Georgetown Univer- sity in 1998. He is the author of three books of poetry, several books of photographs, and a children’s book. His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was displayed in the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work. Five of his photographs are in the permanent fine arts collection of St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York.

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25 ALUMNI - 2015 - MCCLENAHEN GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES

Not Only Explorers

A corporate commercial, in post-Columbian context, celebrates us human beings as explorers.

We are not only explorers.

We are also seekers of a different sort.

We seek to discover truths and values and moral principles. We seek to validate them—and ourselves— in post-Enlightenment context.

Exploring and seeking and discovering and validating— each is more than a method, more than a process, more than an appeal to a single aspect of being human.

Exploring and seeking and discovering and validating animate us, inspire us, and compel us. And define our beings and our becomings.

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Now Voyageur, into 2016

by Robert F. Murray, BLS ’76; MALS ’91

Robert Murray: The von Brahler Ltd/Gallery, Founder, Director 1983-2015; Assn. of Alexandria Art Galleries (AAAG), Founder, Director, 1983-1995. (Function: the promotion of Professional Artists; writing for the Art Media; art exhibitions). Writer of “Art Beat” for the Zebra Press, circulation of 30,000 in Alexandria and Arlington; Art Consultant to the McAllister Architects, Alex. VA; Association with the Office of Scholarly Publications, Georgetown University; Writing book concerning the building of St. Aloysius Church, Wash., D.C. by Jesuit Architect, Benedict Sestini S.J., along with Master Artist of the Capitol, Constantino Brumidi.

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27 ALUMNI - 2015 - MURRAY GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES

Early in the days of dramatic black and white filmmaking, Betty Davis made her favorite movie, “Now, Voyageur,” wherein she assumed the role of a maternally repressed, wealthy, to-a-manner-born, rather homely young woman who takes an Atlantic cruise that changes her perspective on herself and the world around her. Her experiences in her personal inner actions with fellow passengers offered me somewhat the same transforming experience related to my work with immigrant Russia artists when I first launched my gallery business in 1983 that paralleled my structured studies in the Georgetown Liberal Studies Program – from which I emerged one of the first three to graduate in the Bachelor’s degree in 1976. I was honored to carry the banner/standard as the newest- created Department at Georgetown and received the transforming ap- plause of all the graduates as we marched into the vast sea of degree re- cipients in front of Healy that day. I was 41 years old navigating my way to my Master’s Degree. Since I had chosen the specialty of handling the art of contemporary, living Russian artists, those who had already emigrated to the West and a few still working in the Soviet Union, I found myself floundering a bit in my understanding of these artists and about what their work represented and how I could promote it to an American art public. I needed more help than I was already receiving from established Russian art experts in my field. I needed a broader, more in depth perspective on the intercultural exchanges happening, and I found that perspective in my courses and faculty recommendations in the Liberal Studies Degree Program. I navigated into that ocean of awareness that made it clear that the art of any nation, of Russia in particular, had a huge bearing on the understanding of the nation, its people, and how they chose to express themselves to all who made the attempt to see and learn. The question always remains: how does one read art, a painting, etc.? Art is not merely for decorative purposes. Many “real” artists intend something otherwise. I knew how to look, or better to see, art. I had honed that innate ability throughout my earlier schooling and international travels abroad visiting many museums and galleries. I assumed that the reason people acquired art was the pleasure it would buy over many years. The art, then, must have something special, an inner life that holds the attention of the viewer in seeing nuances and differences. Poor art is art that is stagnant. It may have some meaning and sensibility, but is unchanging. Really good art is a source of satisfaction of human needs. I learned in Liberal Studies that fine art encompasses the need for beauty, for spiritual

28 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH growth, for a feeling of community, caring and fellowship, and as we propose, values across the board of life. Proceeding through Liberal Studies, course, by course, exhibition by exhibition, artist by artist, I found myself getting more professional. As I became more intimately involved with Russian artists, as persons, I knew I would learn much more about their roles in their art. This translated and carried me into the lives of art collectors and discovered what they really needed to know. For me, becoming an art collector, it was no longer about selling art; it was about offering art with content as well as value. Two artists in particular, are among many others from Russia, who gave my Liberal Studies special meaning - Igor Zhurkov from St. Peters- burg and Nikolai Antyuchin from Moscow, both still living and working in Russia. I cannot elaborate as much as I would like about each, but I offer brief indications of how poignantly their associations and roles in their art came to be. I also preview the importance to the global art world of another Russian art entrepreneur in Russia, Mikhail Ovvchinnikov, who will come to lecture in the ICC next April. For me, this happening will celebrate the close of my engaging professional life of thirty-four years in the business of art while sailing along in my eightieth year. Nikolai Antyuchin, in his 60’s, has been in my life for over a decade, since he came here on a visit. I have represented him in several exhibits and managed several commissions. We have gone on outings to paint together. It is quite remarkable how communicative we are since neither of us knows how to speak or read each other’s native tongue. Art is our common language, and it worked so well for us that we never bothered to learn the other’s language. We may have missed a lot about one another and our thoughts, but we know enough to keep us very content. In Antyuchin’s own words at his first solo show here, Everybody lives in the present with a view to the future. I want you to stop for a minute and look into the past of Russia that stands alongside the present-day Russia. What I paint is my Homeland with its expansive vistas and remote cor- ners. Our landscape has “soul” and I invite you to uncover it. I want to show it to you. It is for you to decide whether my paintings are convinc- ing. I assure you that what I do, I do with sincerity.” Nicolai says that I was sent to him by God. I think it may be the other way around. Completely opposite in personality and messages in his art, is the cu- rious, Igor Zhurkov. He shared with me and my fellow students, at the time of his exhibitions here, new understandings of his and the role of the dissident artists in Soviet times. My personal relationship with Igor, in

29 ALUMNI - 2015 - MURRAY GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES his 60’s also, was wonderfully difficult, professionally challenging, full of mystery and enigmas, and just plain awesome and cool for this Ameri- can attempting to promote a real live Russian artist who worked hard and waited to get permission to leave the Soviet Union. Along with working with Zhurkov came my structured study of him and his art under the guidance of Georgetown’s Dr. David M. Robinson. I did a study entitled, “The Living Mechanisms of Igor Zhurkov, Avant Garde Artist.” Igor was, originally, a highly respected experimental phys- icist in the Soviet Union. He had acted as a translator for the American Consulate Staff in Leningrad as he was fluent in writing and speaking English. His transition to artist/painter finished his career as a scientist in Russian and sent him into the ranks of artists known as the “unofficial or dissident artists.” This group was an intellectually vibrant strata of Rus- sian society for almost ten years. Then, quite unexpectedly, he was granted an emigrant visa in the harsh winter of 1987 and dropped into the immigrant camps in Italy. A little later he and his wife received an invitation from American friends to come to Sheepshead Bay, New York, a well-known Russian community today. The drama and hardships of his earlier days in New York, getting settled and finding recognition for his art, comprise a book I would like to write. I was a part of that difficult transition time in the ‘80s. Out of all the human interest, however, the stand-out features of his art and the role it had played in the Soviet Union was most important to my collectors of contemporary Russian Art, art that had been, up until the early ‘80’s, virtually unknown in America. I studied in Igor’s paintings their representational function, their reflections on the man himself, their humanly aggressive aesthetical qualities and, above all, the reinforcement of intellectual novelty and the immigrant’s radicalism rolled up in the canvases he managed to bring with him. To put it more simply, Igor’s paintings (as well as his provocative art books) reflected the chaos and social disruption Communism had caused in Russia. He had managed to carry a turbulent, harsh message about the world he left. He did this in his paintings as well as in his writings. Both Antyuchin and Zhurkov have the terrific advantage of having wives who are noted artists in their own right. Katia and Tatyana have collectors and both have pursued different art career paths in Russia. Tatyanna Zhurkov, now in New York, is recognized for her work in the Hermitage Museum and for her phenomenal jewelry and sculpture crea- tions. Katia Antyuchin’s fine, intricate watercolor paintings are coveted by collectors here and abroad.

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I can only attempt to relate how important my Russian related courses were to my work with all the international artists I have promoted providing me the assurance I needed to be more knowledgeable and professional in my field. I doubt if it is very difficult to understand now how overjoyed I am to invite Mikhail (Misha)Ovchinnikov to lecture at Georgetown. Misha’s father, Vladimir Ovvchinnikov who was considered one of current Rus- sia’s more celebrated artists, died a couple of years ago. He was a key player in my earlier Gallery days. He came here for my show, was inter- viewed and rather maligned by a Washington Post critic. A couple of years later I was invited to write, “Memo from An American Gallerist” and invited by the Mayor of the then Leningrad as a guest to Vladimir’s solo exhibit in the Manezh, which, before conversion, was the stable- home of the Czar’s horses. Misha was sixteen then and my guide for that event. He was already brilliant and destined to be a name in the world of art. When I planned to do my ‘Finale’ exhibition, “Circuitous Roots: A Celebration of Art” at River Farm on the Potomac, Vladimir Ovchinni- kov’s paintings were included. Now, Misha will come from St. Peters- burg to represent his Father and will lecture at Georgetown on April 13 and talk at the opening of the show, April 16, 2016. He is working on the title of his lecture, and I am hoping it includes his intriguing role as the creator of the first privately-owned museum in Russia, The Erarata Mu- seum of Contemporary Art, his role as the first deputy director of the Faberge Museum, and his important task as the director of The Link of Times, a Cultural & Historical Foundation. What more appropriate young entrepreneur could I have wished for than one who could embrace the values and purpose of our Liberal Studies Program as it enters its fifth decade? The stories in the lives and art of Nikolai, Igor, Misha and many more international artists in my gallery camp ( known as The von Brahler Ltd./Gallery) are fascinating subjects for the study of human values in the discipline of Fine Art—these men may be thought of as entrepreneurs or singularly unique in their mediums of expression. They grew from their own roots to be now and in the future willing to search and find new content in the power of fine art to release opinions in regard to the cultural, political and spiritual life of nations around the globe.

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Trail Cairns

by Christy Wise, MALS ’14

Christy Wise is an author, essayist, poet and human rights activist. She is co-author of A Mouthful of Riv- ets: Women at Work in World War II. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including Bayou Magazine, Concho River Review, Inscape, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Wise’s thesis is titled: Banished to the Black Sea: Ovid’s Poetic Transformations in Tristia 1.1.

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33 ALUMNI - 2015 - WISE GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES

Trail Cairns

I peered into the mist, searching for my teacher’s faith in me and saw, reflected back, my own confusion.

“Stay close to the text,” he said, when I began work on my thesis. That seemed easy. Ovid’s verses were vivid, compelling and spoke to me across an expanse of time.

My advisor believed that I could write something meaningful about Ovid’s exile from Rome. Me? My weak voice joining the giants of the past two millennia? I was skeptical, but said nothing.

I read books and articles for days, weeks, months. I walked through fog, looking for a clearing and firm ground.

Every once in a while, I came upon a trail cairn left by Professor McNelis. Those small rock piles offered profound relief and hope. On the marked trail, I hiked vigorously. But before long, mist closed in again. I stumbled.

Months passed. I turned in a draft. Rejected. Another draft. Also rejected. In the deepening murkiness, I pulled on my hiker’s headlamp and black fleece jacket. This path was steeper, rockier, colder than I expected. And lonely.

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On a December morning, frustrated and weary from traveling in the dark, I turned in another draft. Would this, too, be cast aside? I had lost all of my bearings.

“Look at this,” he said. “You’ve drawn a map!” I examined the pages. He was right. I had found a route forward.

I took a long, deep, breath. Across the gray horizon, heavy with slate clouds, a rosy hue warmed the thin winter sunrise. Beneath my boots I felt the hard earth of a solid path. I picked up my hiking pole and started walking.

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Roads Taken and not Taken: Thoughts on “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” Plus-70

by Michael F. Duggan, MALS ’89; Ph.D. ’02

Michael Duggan has taught as an adjunct professor in the Department of Graduate Liberal Studies at Georgetown University since 2003, and in New York University's Washington D.C. Program. A MALS ’89 graduate, he holds a Ph.D. in history from Georgetown, with emphases in American and Modern European history, and a collateral field in Western Philosophy. His research interests range from 20th century U.S. foreign policy and the American presidency to critical rational- ism, cosmology, and the history of ideas. In 2007 Pro- fessor Duggan co-founded Georgetown’s Liberal Stud- ies Philosophy Roundtable, an ethics discussion group. He was the Supreme Court Fellow for 2011-2012.

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Introduction I began my MALS program at Georgetown during the summer of 1986 as a feckless and undisciplined recent college graduate, and took my degree in December 1989. The broad values-based humanities program only whetted my desire to pursue further education, and almost a decade later I returned, to Georgetown, finishing my Ph.D. in American History (with a minor in Modern Europe and a collateral field in Western Philos- ophy) in 2002. During this time I came to realize that a solid grounding in the liberal arts and humanities—and especially in history—provides a sounder basis for policy and critical thinking than pure theory, be it political or economic. We live in a time of ever-increasing specialization, and Liber- al Studies provides an invigorating tonic for those caught in this trend. Simply put, a well-educated person with a broadly-based background and with a high degree of cultural literacy produces better, more effective, more humane professionals and leaders, than the narrow focus of the mere careerism and credentialism so common of our time. I suspect that the ideal of the Liberal Studies Program and the Jesuit pedagogical tradition of educating the “whole person” must have had something to do with my embracing this outlook. I wrote the following article during the summer of 2015 to com- memorate the 70th anniversary of the ending of the Second World War in the Pacific, and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Na- gasaki. Although I had long assumed that the dropping of the bombs was an unfortunate necessity—the best of a number of bad options—I have since come to realize that it remains an open question and that very good reasons exist to suggest that they might not have been necessary. I also realize that we will never know for certain, although we can profit greatly from studying this period of our history with an open mind. I would like to think that this openness to changing one’s mind in light of powerful arguments to the contrary of what one already believes (one of Karl Pop- per’s definitions of “rationality”) was at least in part instilled in me during my studies at Georgetown and will continue to serve me in the future.

Roads Taken and not Taken: Thoughts on “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” Plus-70 We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remem-

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bered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita… “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” — Robert Oppenheimer

When I was in graduate school, I came to characterize perspectives on the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan into three categories. The first was the “Veterans’ Argument”—that the dropping of the bombs was an affirmative good. As this name implies, it was a position embraced by some World War Two veterans and seems to have been based on lingering sensibilities of the period, the fact that they regarded the rapid end of the war as having saved many lives—including their own—destroyed an aggressive and pernicious system of government. It also seemed tinged with an unapologetic sense of vengeance cloaked as simple justice. They had attacked us, after all—Remember Pearl Harbor? More positively, supporters of this position would sometimes cite the fact of Japan’s subsequent success as a kind of moral justification for dropping the bombs. Although some of the implications of this perspective cannot be dis- counted, I tended to reject it; no matter what one thinks of Imperial Ja- pan, the killing of more than 150 thousand civilians can never be an in- trinsic good. Besides there is something suspect about the moral justification of horrible deeds by citing all of the good that came after it, even if true.1 I had begun my doctorate a few years after the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, and by then there had been a wave of “revisionist” history condemning the bombings as intrinsically bad, as inhumane, and unnecessary—as “technological band aides” to end a hard and bitter conflict. The argument was that by the summer of 1945, Japan was on the ropes—finished—and would have capitulated within days or weeks even without the bombs. Although I had friends who subscribed to this position, I thought that it was unrealistic in that it interjected idealistic sensibilities and considerations that seemed unhistorical to the period. This view is was also associated with a well-publicized incident of vandalism against the actual Enola Gay at a Smithsonian exhibit that ignited a controversy that forced the museum to change its interpretive text to tepid factual neutrality. And then there was a kind of middle-way argument—a watered- down version of the first—asserting that the dropping of the bombs— although not intrinsically good—was the best of possible options. The

39 ALUMNI/FACULTY - 2015 - DUGGAN GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES other primary option was a two-phased air-sea-land invasion of main islands of Japan: Operation Olympic scheduled to begin on November 1, 1945, and Operation Coronet, scheduled for early March 1946 (the two operations were subsumed under the name Operation Downfall). I knew people whose fathers and grandfathers were still living who had been in WWII, and who believed—with good reason—that they would have been killed fighting in Japan. It was argued that the American casualties for the war—294,000 combat deaths—would have been multiplied two or three fold if we had invaded, to say nothing about the millions of Japa- nese that would have likely died resisting. The Okinawa campaign of April-June 1945 and the viciousness and appalling casualties of both sides were regarded as a kind of microcosm, a prequel of what an invasion of Japan would be like.2 The idea behind this perspective was one of realism, that in a modern total war against a fanatical enemy, one took off the gloves in order to end the thing as soon as possible. General Curtis LeMay notes that it was the moral responsibility of all involved to end the war as soon as possible, and if the bombs ended it by a single day, it was worth it.3 One also heard statements like “what would have happened to an American president who had a tool that could have ended the war, but chose not to use it, and by doing so doubled our casualties for the war?” It was simple, if ghastly, math: the bombs would cost less in terms of human life than an invasion. With an instinct toward the moderate and sensible middle, this was the line I took. In graduate school, I devoured biographies and histories of the Wise Men of the World War Two/Cold War era foreign policy establishment—Bohlen, Harriman, Hopkins, Lovett, Marshall, McCloy, Stimson, and of course, George Kennan. When I read Kai Bird’s biography, Chairman, John McCloy and the Making of the American Foreign Policy Establishment, I was surprised by some of the back stories and wrangling of the policy makers and the decisions behind the dropping of the bombs.4 It also came as a surprise that John McCloy (among others), had in fact vigorously opposed the dropping of the atomic bombs, perhaps with very good reason. Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy was nobody’s idea of a dove or a pushover. Along with his legendary policy successes during and after WWII, he was controversial for ordering the internment of Jap- anese Americans and for not bombing death camps like Auschwitz, because doing so would divert resource from the war effort and victory. He was also the American High Commissioner of occupied Germany after

40 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH the war and had kept fairly prominent Nazis in their jobs and German industrialists out of prison. Notably, in the1960s, he was one of the only people on record who flatly stood up to President Lyndon Johnson after getting the strong-armed “Johnson treatment” and who was not ruined by it. And yet this tough-guy hawk was dovish on the issue of dropping the atomic bombs. The story goes like this: In April and May, 1945, there were indications that the Japanese were seeking a settled end to the war via diplo- matic channels in Switzerland and through communications with the So- viets—something that was corroborated by U.S. intelligence.5 Armed with this knowledge, McCloy approached his boss, Secretary of War— arguably father of the modern U.S. foreign policy establishment— “Colonel” Henry L. Stimson. McCloy told Stimson that the new and moderate Japanese Prime Minister, Kantaro Suzuki, and his cabinet, were looking for a face-saving way to end the war. The United States was demanding an unconditional surrender, and Suzuki indicated that if this language was modified, and the Emperor was allowed to remain as a figurehead under a constitutional democracy, Japan would surrender. Among American officials, the debates on options for ending the war included many of the prominent players, policy makers and military men like General George C. Marshall, Admiral Leahy and the Chiefs of Staff, former American ambassador to Japan, Joseph Grew, Robert Op- penheimer (the principle creator of the bomb), and his Scientific Adviso- ry Panel to name but a few. It also included President Harry Truman. The debates included whether or not to give the Japanese “fair warning” and if the yet untested bomb should be demonstrated in plain view of the enemy. There were also considerations of deterring the Soviet—who had agreed at Yalta to enter the war against Japan—from any East Asian am- bitions. Although it was apparent to Grew and McCloy, that Japan was looking for a way out—therefore making an invasion unnecessary—the general assumption was that if atomic bombs were functional, they should be used without warning. This was the recommendation of the Interim Committee, that included soon-to-be Secretary of State, James Byrnes, and which was presented to Truman by Stimson on June 6.6 McCloy disagreed with these recommendations and cornered Stimson in his own house on June 17th. Truman would be meeting with the Chiefs of Staff the following day on the question of invasion, and McCloy implored Stimson to make the case that the end of the war was days or weeks away and that an invasion would be unnecessary. If the United States merely modified the language of un-

41 ALUMNI/FACULTY - 2015 - DUGGAN GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES conditional surrender and allowed for the Emperor to remain, the Japa- nese would surrender under de facto unconditional conditions. If the Jap- anese did not capitulate after the changes were made and fair warning was given, the option for dropping the bombs would still be available. “We should have our heads examined if we don’t consider a political solution,” McCloy said. Bird notes that the meeting with Truman and the Chiefs was dominated by Marshall and focused almost exclusively on military considerations.7 As Bird writes “[even Stimson seemed resigned now to the invasion plans, despite the concession he had made the previous evening to McCloy’s views. The most he could muster was a vague comment on the possible existence of a peace faction among the Japanese populace.” The meeting was breaking up when Truman said “No one is leaving this meeting without committing himself. McCloy, you haven’t said anything. What is your view?” McCloy shot a quick glance to Stimson who said to him, “[s]ay what you feel about it.” McCloy had the chance he needed.8 McCloy essentially repeated the argument he had made to Stimson the night before. He also noted that a negotiated peace with Japan would preclude the need for Soviet assistance, therefore depriving them of any excuse of an East Asian land grab. He also committed a faux pas by actually mentioning the bomb by name and suggesting that it be demonstrated to the Japanese. Truman responded favorably, saying “That’s exactly what I’ve been wanting to explore… You go down to Jimmy Byrnes and talk to him about it.”9 Bird points out:

[b]y speaking the unspoken, McCloy had dramatically altered the terms of the debate. Now it was no longer a question of invasion. What had been a dormant but implicit option now became explicit. The soon-to-be tested bomb would end the war, with or without warning. And the war might end before the bomb was ready.” but increasingly the dominant point of view was that the idea of an invasion had been scrapped and in the absence of a Japanese surrender, the bombs would be dropped.10

After another meeting with what was called the Committee of Three, most of the main players agreed “that a modest change in the terms of surrender terms might soon end the war” and that “Japan [would be] sus- ceptible to reason.”11 Stimson put McCloy to work at changing the terms of surrender, specifically the language of Paragraph 12 that referenced

42 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH the terms that the Japanese had found unacceptable. McCloy did not mention the atomic bomb by name. But by now however, Truman was gravitating toward Byrnes’s position of using the bombs. After meeting with the president on July 3, Stimson and McCloy “solicited a reluctant invitation” to attend the Potsdam Conference, but instead of traveling with the President’s entourage aboard the USS Au- gusta, they secured their own travel arrangements to Germany. Newly sworn-in Secretary of State, James Byrnes, would sail with the president and in fact was a part of his poker group.12 The rest, as they say, is history. At Potsdam, Truman was told by the Soviets that Japan was once again sending out feelers for a political resolution. Truman told Stalin to stall them for time, while reasserting the demand for unconditional surrender in a speech where he buried the existence of the bombs in language so vague, that it is likely that the Japanese leaders did not pick up on the implications.13 Japan backed away. Truman’s actions suggests that, under Byrnes’s influence, he had made his mind to drop the bombs and wanted to sabotage any possibly of a political settlement. As Bird notes, “Byrnes and Truman were isolated in their position; they were rejecting a plan to end the war that had been endorsed by virtually all of their advisors.”14 Byrnes’s position had been adopted by the president over the political option of McCloy. As Truman sailed for home on Au- gust 6, 1945, he received word that the uranium bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” had been dropped on Hiroshima with the message “Big bomb dropped on Hiroshima August 5 at 7:15 P.M. Washington time. First reports indicate complete success which was even more conspicuous than the earlier test.” Truman characterized the attack as “The greatest thing in history.”15 Three days later the plutonium bomb “Fat Man” fell on Naga- saki. The Soviets entered the fighting against Japan on August 8. The war was over. Given Byrnes’s reputation as a political operative of rigid tempera- ment and often questionable judgment, one can only wonder if the dropping of the bombs was purely gratuitous. Did he and the president believe that the American people wanted—and rightfully deserved—their pound of flesh almost four years after Pearl Harbor? Of course there were also questions of “what would Roosevelt have done?” With events safely fixed in the past, historians tend to dislike messy and problematic counterfactuals, and one can only wonder if McCloy’s plan for a negotiated peace would have worked. One of the most con- structive uses of history is to inform present-day policy decisions through

43 ALUMNI/FACULTY - 2015 - DUGGAN GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES the examination of what has worked and what has not worked, in the past, and why. Even so the vexing—haunting—queries about the necessity of dropping the atomic bombs remain as open questions. The possibility for a political resolution to the war seems at the very least to have been plausible. The Japanese probably would have surrendered by No- vember—perhaps considerably earlier—as the result of negotiations, but there is no way to tell for certain.16 As it was, in August 1945, Truman decided to allow the Emperor to stay on anyway, and our generous reconstruction policies turned Japan (and Germany) into a miracle of representative liberal democracy and enlightened capitalism. Even if moderate elements in the Japanese government were able to arrange an effective surrender, there is no telling whether the military would have gone along with it; as it was—and after two atomic bombs had leveled two entire cities—some members of the Japanese army still sought destruction over capitulation, and a few even attempted a coup against the emperor to preempt his surrender speech to the Japanese Peo- ple. This much is certain: our enemies in the most costly war in human history have been close allies for seven decades (as the old joke that goes, if the United States had lost WWII, we would now be driving Japa- nese and German cars). Likewise our Cold War enemy, the Russians, in spite of much Western tampering within their sphere of influence, now pose no real threat to us. But the bomb remains. Knowledge may be lost, but an idea cannot be un-invented; as soon as a human being put arrow to bow, the world was forever changed. The bomb remains. It remains in great numbers in at least eight nations and counting, in vastly more powerful forms (the hydrogen bomb) with vastly more sophisticated means of delivery. It is impossible to say whether the development and use of the atomic bomb was and is categorically bad, but it remains for us a permanent Sword of Damocles and the nuclear “secret” is the fire of Prometheus. It is now a fairly old technology, the same vintage as a ’45 Chevy. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki broke the ice about its use in combat and will forever live as a precedent for anyone else who may use it. The United States is frequently judgmental of the actions and mo- tives of other nations, and yet we alone are the only ones to have used nuclear weapons in war. As with so many people in 1945, Stimson and Oppenheimer both recognized the atomic bomb had changed everything. More than any temporal regime, living or dead, it and its progeny remain a permanent enemy of mankind.

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ENDNOTES

1. For a discussion of the moral justification in regard to dropping the atomic bombs, see John Gray, Black Mass (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2007). 2. For an account of the fighting on Okinawa, see Eugene Sledge, With the Old Breed. 3. LeMay expresses this sentiment in an interview he gave for the 1973 documentary series, The World at War. 4. “Hiroshima,” Kai Bird, Chairman, John J. McCloy and the Mak- ing of the American Establishment, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 240-268. 5. Ibid., 242. 6. Ibid., 244. 7. Ibid., 245. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., 246. 10. Ibid., 250. 11. Ibid., 247-248. 12. Ibid., 249-250. 13. W. Averell Harriman, Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946 (New York: Random House, 1975), 493. 14. Bird, “Hiroshima,” 251. 15. Harriman, Abel, 293. 16. Robert Dallek, The Lost Peace (New York: Harper Collins, 2010), 128. Dallek makes his point, basing it on the Strategic Bombing Survey, as well as the reports of Truman’s own special envoy to Japan after the war in October 1945.

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Professional Life and Liberal Studies

by Charles A. O’Connor III, J.D. ’67; MALS ’85; DLS ’12

Charles O’Connor is an adjunct faculty member in the Graduate Liberal Studies Program, and teaches a course entitled “Western Culture, World War I and the Death of God.” He is a graduate of Harvard College, AB cum laude in English (1964), and Georgetown University, JD (1967), MALS (1985), and DLS (2012). For over forty years he practiced environmental law in Washington DC and remains senior counsel with Den- tons US LLP, formerly McKenna Long & Aldridge, LLP and its predecessor firms. He co-wrote the two leading treatises in the field of US chemical regulation, The Pesticide Regulation Handbook and the Toxic Sub- stances Control Act (TSCA) Handbook, and served for many years as chairman of the firm’s Environmental Department. For several years during the early 1970s he served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law Center and at Catholic University Law School. Over the past decade he has been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America practicing Environmental Law and holds and AV® Preeminent™ lawyer rating by Mar- tindale-Hubbell®, among other legal recognitions. He is the author of The Great War and the Death of God (New Academia Publishing, 2014), based upon his doctoral thesis in Georgetown’s Liberal Studies Pro- gram. — ∞ —

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Looking back from a forty-five year perspective, law practice has lived up to my career expectations for challenge, excitement, and fulfillment. Fresh out of law school, I entered Navy JAG and soon found myself trying military court-martials in war-torn Vietnam. Upon discharge, I entered private practice in 1970 at the dawn of the environmental movement and began a substantively and professionally broad career, addressing a wide array of significant public health and environmental issues in challenging federal and state administrative hearings and judicial cases. Despite this rewarding career, however, after several years of intense focus on my environmental law practice I realized I had strayed from the contemplation of life’s larger questions, which had intrigued me as a college English major. I was reminded of Socrates’s dictum that the unexamined life is not worth living. Then, ten years into the practice, I discovered Georgetown’s Graduate Liberal Studies Program, designed to further “the quest for knowledge about ourselves and our world.” These words of its then Director Dr. Phyllis O’Callaghan proved prophetic. For the next five years GLS opened a whole new perspective on life through courses ranging from The Social Consequences of the New Bi- ology and The Modern Middle East to Renaissance Art & Civilization and Christianity & World Religions. Eventually, I gravitated toward courses taught by theologian John F. Haught (Denial of Death and A World in Process) and philosopher Frank Ambrosio (Existentialism), and by 1985, I had an MALS degree coupled with a thesis on “The Authentic Life According to Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Whitehead.” GLS delivered on its promise to provide a broad interdisciplinary learning experience aimed at enhancing the lives and careers of its student body. We examined our most fundamental questions as human beings, “what we are, what we know, what norms ought to bind us, [and] what are the grounds for hope,” to quote American philosopher Richard Bernstein. By broad- ening the focus of our careers, GLS inevitably produced more authentic individuals able to make better judgments affecting our families, friends, colleagues, and those we serve professionally. Twenty years later, on the brink of retirement, I found Georgetown still at the forefront of Graduate Liberal Studies, now offering a Doctor of Liberal Studies Degree. What a rewarding way to transition out of active law practice – this time delving into the cultural impact of World War I. My studies led me to conclude that the war had radically changed Western culture, elevating science to unquestioned dominance, lowering confidence in human reason, and enabling unchallenged emergence of the modern secular worldview that reality is just senseless and valueless

48 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH matter obeying indifferent physical and natural laws and lacking any fundamental meaning and purpose. The New Atheists embraced this Neo Darwinian materialist reality as scientific truth, demeaning continued belief in God or a transcendent realm as either intellectually disingenuous or self-delusion. I had found an irresistible intellectual challenge. Bringing to bear my MALS and DLS studies, I had uncovered a new link between the Great War and the atheistic worldview that today pervades academe and the intellectual establishment. Once again, GLS proved to be the perfect complement to a profession in law, and ultimately led me to a new career, teaching and lecturing in my doctoral field, supported by a doctoral thesis subsequently revised and published in book form. As the GLS Program enters its fifth decade, Georgetown can provide no greater service to the lives and careers of Washington area professionals than preserving and promoting this unique interdisciplinary learning experience. GLS truly embodies the Jesuit mission of Cura Per- sonalis – care for the person.

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Educating Public Intellectuals

by Francis J. Ambrosio, Ph.D.

Frank Ambrosio is an Associate Professor of Philoso- phy and Director of the Doctoral Program in Liberal Studies at Georgetown University. After studies in Ital- ian language and literature in Florence, Italy, he completed his doctoral degree at Fordham University with a specialization in contemporary European Philosophy. His most recent book is Dante and Derrida: Face to Face (State University of New York Press). In Oc- tober 2009, The Teaching Company released his course, “Philosophy, Religion and the Meaning of Life,” a series of 36 half-hour video lectures which he created for the “Great Courses” series. He is the founding Director of the Georgetown University “My Dante Project,” a web based platform for personal and collaborative study of Dante’s Com- media. In 2014, he acted as lead instructor for an online course on Dante offered by EDX which was utilized by over 15,000 students. In addition to his work at Georgetown, he co- directs The Renaissance Company with Deborah R. Warin, leading adult study programs focusing on Ital- ian Renaissance culture and its contemporary heritage.

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Anyone familiar with Liberal Studies is aware of the two characteristics that distinguish it as a field of study from the more traditional academic disciplines and departments: interdisciplinarity and values reflection. But when it comes to identifying the purpose of a doctoral degree in Liberal Studies as opposed to a PhD degree, the picture can be somewhat less clear. Candidates for the PhD degree are being trained as researchers to work in a professional capacity in academia or in other established research venues, and the goal of that research is to produce new knowledge in a specialized field of investigation. The contribution of that research is justified by the presumption that knowledge is a value in itself, however many may be its practical applications. The goal of the doctoral degree in liberal studies is not primarily research and the production of new knowledge, though it may well be the case that interdisciplinary research has that result as a secondary effect. I would suggest that the proper purpose of the kind of interdisciplinary framing of questions and issues together with reflection upon the signifi- cance of those issues for the well-being of persons and societies is best characterized as the education of public intellectuals. In the sense that I'm using the term here a public intellectual is first and foremost an educator in the best tradition of liberal arts education, consonant with the first emergence of that tradition with the Greeks, especially Plato in his Republic where he envisioned education as focused on the formation of the whole person toward the ideal of citizenship. Ob- viously in this context, the public intellectual as educator is not to be found exclusively or even primarily in academic institutions, but rather working in every field of endeavor and social concern to create communities of dialogue and deliberative judgment about how best to conduct the workings of society for the common good. Public intellectuals as educators take their place by assuming leadership roles in creating functional communal groups engaged in authentic dialogue, which is neither debate nor the search for rational consensus. Rather their effort remains focused on how best to deal practically with issues that resist both theoretical resolution and adequate majority decision. They seek to foster participation in the process of discerning the best ways to create and

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maintain the most effective conditions for innovation, experimentation and implementation and evaluation of new approaches that respond directly to the immediate needs and long-range goals of the people and institutions most directly affected. This conception of public intellectuals as liberal arts educators outside the boundaries of traditional academic institutions is deeply consonant with the Jesuit educational tradition in which Georgetown stands. While always affirming knowledge as a value in itself, authentic Jesuit education is never satisfied with knowledge simply for its own sake, but rather strives to put that knowledge in the service of “the greater good;” the good of human persons and their societies. The Doctor of Liberal Studies degree is a professional degree in the sense that all doctoral degrees, including the PhD, are aimed at professional practice in a specific field of endeavor. But in the case of the DLS, that field of professional practice is not research but rather leadership and public service, and specifically the service of educating the populace to be more capable of confronting the complex issues and making the deliberative decisions about situations like climate change, international law and policy, gender and racial\ethnic diversity, economic and social justice, and the myriad of other questions our culture is urgently in search of responses…that we can live with and live by with a sense of dignity and accomplishment. Society has profited by the contributions of experts in every field through the relevant knowledge which they bring to bear on diverse areas of human endeavor. But as our history makes increasingly clear, expertise by itself cannot sustain and enhance the quality of human life except in the context of a society which, as Jefferson insisted, is well-educated not simply in the range of academic disciplines, but also educated in the processes of dialogue and deliberation by which such knowledge becomes humanly fruitful and productive. It is to this end of producing public intellectuals as educational leaders in every area of societal practice that Georgetown's DLS program dedicates itself and anticipates producing more graduates who effectively embody and make good on that commitment in the next decade and beyond.

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A Historian’s Reflections on Liberal Studies

by James H. Hershman, Ph.D.

James Hershman holds a Ph.D. in Southern History from the University of Virginia. He has taught as a Lecturer in History at the University of Virginia and Wake Forest University. He has served in federal service, on the senior staff at the Brookings Institution, and as a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Government Affairs Institute. His most recent historical writing is available online at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Encyclopedia Virginia.

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55 FACULTY - 2015 - HERSHMAN GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES

My first encounter with the Liberal Studies Degree Program at Georgetown was in 1983 when an acquaintance who taught in the program suggested that I talk with Phyllis O’Callaghan. The concept of a Liberal Studies curriculum was new to me, though I was certainly open to the idea. By the time I left my meeting with Phyllis, I was a confirmed believer in its virtues. Like me, she was an American historian and a southern one at that, from Memphis, Tennessee. Our discipline, Ameri- can History, we agreed, had become too compartmentalized and specialized in every respect. It had grown insulated and isolated from other disciplines, from the humanities, and from the larger world of intellectual endeavor. And it was not unique among the academic disciplines in displaying those tendencies. While it couldn’t reverse that trend, Liberal Studies could at least offer a stimulating alternative. That summer Phyllis convinced me to give a lecture on Thomas Jefferson, followed by a Char- lottesville tour, for a group of high school teachers in a program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. She soon had me doing directed individual studies and in 1988 persuaded me to teach a regular course. I’ve been teaching a course every summer since. Liberal Studies’ interdisciplinary approach was a natural for me; I had used it in my graduate training and in the history I wrote. In the courses for my doctorate, I had incorporated one outside of history— constitutional law—and would have taken others if the curriculum had permitted. I was part of a group of graduate students who successfully petitioned to have our oral examinations on the whole of American His- tory rather than specialized segments. Moreover, when I started writing history, I found I was citing works from sociology, economics, political science, even educational psychology. The type of history I sought to produce followed the classic approach of the discipline—the story of people changing as they moved through time—but it was clear that a full context for that story was not possible without recourse to a wide field of human study. So, yes, I thought Liberal Studies and History were most compatible. The Human Values component of Liberal Studies also fit with my concept of doing good history. History should be true to the evidence it finds, but it can’t be value neutral in a deeper sense. The historian’s values shape the questions asked and the interpretation placed on evidence. Exploring the meaning in American History of freedom, equality, and social justice have been central to my classes in Liberal Studies. Having experienced the era of the 1960s, the history of American contradictions over race and the growth of democratic participation over more than two

56 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH centuries have been a major focus of interest. My Liberal Studies students brought a great variety of backgrounds and perspectives into illu- minating class discussions, presentations, and papers on these and other human values topics over my decades in the program. The great diversity of the students has been a fundamental strength of the Liberal Studies program. They covered the whole range in age from the early twenties to the seventies and in experience from people one or two years out of college to those who held two or three graduate or professional degrees—what a wonderful mix. When you add the intellectual curiosity they brought to class, the fact that they were there out of genuine interest, it overcame the fact of weariness from a long day and made for stimulating discussions in the evening class. They often came talking of abstract concepts in philosophy or religion that I challenged them to connect to the events and developments in history. It made for a learning experience both for the students and the instructor. Another rewarding and fulfilling experience has been mentoring students on their masters’ theses. Some of my best memories of Liberal Studies are of working with students as they begin to develop their ideas, to search for sources, to struggle for a thread to bring it together, and, in general, work through the difficulties and frustrations of the process. Of- ten, my students have displayed real creativity in shaping ideas and in finding and using sources. I always remembered how much my own writing of a master’s thesis was a learning experience for me, and I think it has been for the ones I have directed at Georgetown. My students have taken a historical approach within a Liberal Studies context—frequently their work has focused on historical debates and the ways socially prevailing ideas have affected historical writing. Though I have lost count of the number I have directed, I never tire of watching a student experience the sense of accomplishment and confidence that comes on completion of the thesis. I’ll conclude with the answer to the question: Does a historian be- long in Liberal Studies? Phyllis O’Callaghan said “yes,” and she was right. Certainly for this historian it has enriched my intellectual life and made me a better scholar and better person. As the Graduate Liberal Studies program celebrates its first half century, I want it to thrive and flourish for another.

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Liberal Studies: The Time of Your Life in the Present – in the Future

by William J. O’Brien, Ph.D.

William O’Brien received his Ph.D. in systematic theology from the University of Chicago. Before joining the Liberal Studies Program faculty in 1984, he taught at the University of Notre Dame, Catholic University, and as a visiting theologian at Georgetown University. His publications include articles ranging from Augus- tine and Dante to Walker Percy and Samuel Beckett, and Stories to the Dark; explorations in religions imag- ination. He also edited nine volumes of essays on Jesu- it education, and since 2004 has served on an institu- tional review board for the National Institutes of Health. He brings an interdisciplinary approach to all his seminars, including Classics in the Catholic Tradi- tion, Augustine’s Confessions, Theology and Litera- ture, Theological Issues in 20th and 21st Century Fic- tion, and Understanding the Symbolic Language of Re- ligion.

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With a few images I hope to capture what many—students and faculty alike—have come to appreciate about their liberal studies experience at Georgetown. The Liberal Studies Program at its best is an oasis in a bewildering world: a meeting place, a place of sustenance and refreshment, not an end or goal but a welcome break in a journey with many ups and downs, twists and turns. This oasis offers a reservoir of learning in its libraries, its books, its cultural artifacts, and its curriculum. But what makes it real and not a mirage are the personal encounters that occur, as wayfarers from many and varied places share their experiences, insights, and above all their questions as they open the works in a variety of curricula and are in turn opened and even sometimes stretched by those same works. Among the variety of our oasis’s curricular resources are seminars, literally “seed beds” in which questions, issues, asides, insights and per- ceptions are planted, cultivated, nurtured and, one hopes, eventually har- vested and digested—on every individual’s time-line. I have always favored the image of a seminar as a mountain- climbing expedition. That image makes clear to me my role as guide, one who has ventured the journey with countless groups of climbers from every continent, of widely varying skills and interests. Every journey is different. As guide I know some of the highpoints, but the particulars of our journey are determined by the limits of our combined equipment (the baggage we all bring) and the scope of our interests and motivations. For some the journey up the mountain will be an intellectual adventure, a series of vistas to be enjoyed and captured on cell phones and other digital devices. For others, likely fewer in number, yet surprisingly in evidence on every climb, the climb is not up a Denale or an Everest, but rather up a Mount Sinai or a Mount Zion, and the experience more like a pilgrimage than an adventure. Some books invite some to new heights and fresh perspectives on our common world; others open pilgrim souls to venture into the depths of their own lives. Some seek information. Some seek transformation. Some in search of adventure are surprised to find themselves transformed. Some who seek transformation discover their interest in becoming informed. Whatever kind of climber arrives at basecamp, all are invited to share their “baggage,” baggage for them but maybe equipment missing from another person’s pack. If, for example the seminar’s curriculum includes Dante’s Divine Comedy, it would be useful to know that one or other of the participants is fluent in Italian. How far the group can ad-

60 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH vance in the semester journey is in no small part measured by the skill set and experience each climber brings. Finally, in any really challenging climb, the rope is essential. In a seminar, that rope is the text, and no one is encouraged to let go the text to go off on a tangent. The climb is invigorating enough, demanding enough, and time is of the essence. Seminars are prime time. The Liberal Studies Program can be the time of your life in the present - in the future.

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Writing as a Way of Knowing: Twenty Years of Writing Services

by Kathryn Temple, J.D., Ph.D.

Kathryn Temple recently completed six years as chair of the Department of English at Georgetown Universi- ty. Her first book, Scandal Nation, examined the relationship between legal regulations concerning author- ship and national identity. Her second book, Loving Justice: William Blackstone and the Origins of Anglo- American Law, is scheduled for completion in Spring 2016. She has published essays in such venues as Eighteenth Century Fiction, Eighteenth-Century Theo- ry and Interpretation, and Law, Culture and the Hu- manities. Other projects include outreach to non- traditional students through her website altstudensuccess.com and her work on Connected Aca- demics, an MLA/Mellon funded project aimed to reimagine graduate education in the humanities. She has been at Georgetown since 1994.

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Twenty years ago, I received a call from the then-dean of the Liberal Studies Program at Georgetown. Would I help her by tutoring Liberal Studies students in writing? Georgetown had a Writing Center, staffed by tutors, but they were undergraduates, many years younger than the average Liberal Studies student and with no experience tutoring adults working on the graduate level. In 1996 then, I began offering up two hours a week to any student who could walk in or call. My starting point was rather primitive: the program assumed that the students came with deficits and that I would help them correct these deficits. Fortunately for me, the students themselves quickly undid this stereotype. True, most had little in the way of what we college teachers think of as education: many had never been taught the difference between paraphrase and plagiarism or what a five- paragraph essay looks like or how to write a case study. But they were rich in experience and it is these shared experiences that I remember most: Many evenings were spent with students like my art history fan, who courageously came out over the three years I tutored him, was rejected by his Fundamentalist Christian family, and eventually graduated and moved to a new life in California; a young government worker who needed only a little encouragement and someone to show him what a five-paragraph essay looked like; and the African-American mom who had seen her own kids through college and now wanted the experience for herself. Over the years, we built the program, eventually hiring graduate student tutors to work hands on with the students. I shifted my efforts from one-on-one tutoring to managing tutors and running day-long writing workshops called “Writing Boot Camps” or, more to the point, “Writing for Grown-Ups.” I worked with wounded vets, executives with multiple advanced degrees; reporters who had been embedded in Afghanistan; people in cancer treatment; dads and moms juggling work, kids and school; engineers now hungry for the liberal arts; a doctor who felt he’d never had a “real” education; a surgeon so used to dictation that she could not use basic word processing. While many needed at least some basic instruction, the one thing all students held in common was anxiety. Would they be able to write well enough to “make it” in the program? What if the professor hated their writing? What if they “flunked out”? Even admitting anxiety caused anxiety. Graduate students especially tended to think that all the other students had it together while they did not.

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It is well established in the pedagogy of writing that anxiety impedes performance. Meanwhile, cognitive psychologists tell us that rituals, hab- its, and methods reduce anxiety. So over these years, my work evolved to focus on reducing anxiety through offering students a writing method they could rely on, but shape to their own purposes. At the same time, I tried to “out” anxiety in every workshop so that students would be able to connect on a more authentic level and support each other once they left the writing lab. Sure, we still worked on complex grammatical problems, mostly to exercise our editing muscles. But the most important part of the workshop became that devoted to figuring out what we were telling ourselves about writing, to teasing out the low mutter of thoughts that undermined confidence and made it difficult to create and then to revise written work. Perhaps most anxiety producing was the nature of writing itself. Stu- dents wanted certainty; they wanted to know that they could shape each paper, control its content, and see it to a satisfying conclusion. But writing is, as many writing instructors have said, “a way of knowing,” a heu- ristic process that often yields unexpected results. What we needed to learn was not so much how to do it “right,” as how to keep the process alive while we dealt with the anxiety of not knowing and the gradual unfolding of new knowledge. Each semester now I run several sessions of “Writing for Grownups.” Like my own writing and that of my students, the sessions keep evolving as I discover new techniques and unanticipated needs. Writing truly is a way of knowing for me, but so is the teaching of writing. It is difficult now to remember the “me” of twenty years ago who thought in terms of “correctness” and deficits. Teaching writing has become a way of ever increasing knowledge, in which I learn from my students as much about what I don’t know as what I do. So thank you, Lib- eral Studies students of the past twenty years, thank you for sharing, not only your anxieties, but also your time, your experiences and the rich knowledge you embody. My life is better because of you.

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Graduate Liberal Studies: Future Tense

by Gladys B. White, Ph.D.

Gladys White holds the degrees of Ph.D. in philosophy from Georgetown University, M.S.N. in community health nursing from Catholic University of America and B.S.N. from Duke University. She is adjunct faculty in the Liberal Studies Program.

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The Graduate Liberal Studies here at Georgetown University offers students an unparalleled opportunity to both identify and address contemporary human problems from baseline studies in the humanities. I have been teaching in this program for 16 years, offering courses in areas of applied ethics, such as workplace ethics, global bioethics, ethical issues in the professions and most recently cyberethics. I am convinced that any realistic hope that we have for successfully tackling the multifaceted problems of the present and future related to scientific advance and the proliferation of technology depends upon an interdisciplinary approach. Sample problems include: 1) making use of patient/subject populations in human research in a way that doesn’t exploit them; 2) taking ownership of human environmental responsibilities so that planet earth can remain a good place to be born, live, work and die; 3) addressing communicable diseases such as Ebola in order to decrease their incidence and preva- lence and minimize or eliminate their harmful impact on the human community; 4) determining which genetic and reproductive technologies are ethically defensible for the elimination of disease and family building, and 5) ascertaining the possible ethical uses of human biological stuff such as cells, tissues and solid organs for the benefit of others rais- ing questions about altruism, privacy, risk, benefit and commercializa- tion. All of these problems demand large attention to the central question of just what it means to be human and how can we build the human community so that it not only underwrites our survival but also ensures our flourishing? This is a philosophical, ethical and religious question. Interdisciplinary studies offer the opportunity to discover new insights which just might illuminate new solutions to such multifaceted problems. No other more discrete academic discipline covers this intellectual terrain in precisely the same way. Liberal Studies’ students by virtue of their prior education, work experiences and advanced coursework are thoughtful, creative and persis- tent enough to tackle important problems. I can think of many stunning examples of this over the years including an ethical analysis of the mort- gage crisis by an individual who worked for a major lending company, a consideration of Just War theory as it may or may not apply to attacks in cyberspace by a student who works at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, an analysis of the online currency Bitcoin by a student employed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and many, many more. Our students come from all walks of life. Some work for the University on campus, others are employed by Federal or State Agencies and still

68 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH others are involved in law enforcement for example in D.C. government or are active duty military serving at the national level. The diversity of our students in addition to the elasticity of the curriculum with respect to topic areas allows for breadth, depth and creative insight. For some students the achievement of a new degree in Liberal Studies may lead to a career change, but for others their work in this field can serve as affirma- tion and reinforcement of prior and continuing work along important professional paths! Sharing the truly excellent work of Liberal Studies’ students in their course papers, class presentations and thesis projects is one of the challenges of working within Liberal Studies and a published volume of student work such as this one is an important avenue toward achieving necessary visibility for our students. I hope that there will be more such possibilities in the future!

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Women’s Empowerment and Peacebuilding A Case Study: Women’s Role in Tunisia’s Revolution and Democratization Process

by Stephanie J. Bagot, MALS ’15

Written for Course: The Pursuit of Peace Professor: Joseph Smaldone, Ph.D. Spring 2014

Stephanie Bagot is a recent Master of Arts in Liberal Studies graduate in the field of International Affairs at Georgetown University. Born and raised in France, she also earned a law degree from the University of Paris- X and an LLM in International Law from American University. She is admitted to practice law in New York, Washington DC and France. She currently works in the international development sector as the lead attorney for cross-border mergers & acquisitions in a mi- crofinance network with offices in Eurasia, Africa, Lat- in America, the Middle East and South Asia. She enjoys travelling overseas for work and pleasure and lives in Washington DC with her husband.

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The problems we face today are too big and too complex to be solved without the full participation of women.

— Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 2009

Women’s contributions to peace negotiations, peacebuilding and security, as well as women’s political participation itself, too often remain an- ecdotal and not systematic. Very few women are engaged in formal peace processes or are active participants in reconstruction and peacebuilding efforts. Indeed, of 24 peace processes since 1992, women represented only 2.5% of the signatories, 3.2% of the mediators and only 7.6% of the negotiators.1 Women are disproportionately part of the uncounted number of casualties in wars and play an obvious and crucial role in maintaining the very existence of societies being torn by conflict. Unfor- tunately tough, their voices are too rarely heard and, perhaps subsequently and inevitably, women’s rights are too often left out of the discussions led by men on how to repair the damage committed against these very same societies. Can international peace and security and democracy be enhanced when women are active participants in all aspects of a nation and when women’s rights are respected at all levels? Can the participation of women in society not only be a good sought out for the inherent value of promoting equality but also for the utilitarian potential of being a necessary precondition for a nation to address its traumas? Even if the international legal framework exists, even if it seems evident that fifty percent or more of the population should be considered a valuable resource for peacebuilding, the political will to involve women is too often lacking. On October 31, 2000, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1325, which for the first time recognized that not only women should be protected but further created the standard that women also have a role to play in peacebuilding and security. 2 However, this Resolution, like the ones that followed, is rarely implemented. One may argue that when women’s role in such processes is actually implemented, the benefits will possibly become more evident. Nevertheless, there are prominent examples of societies under major political transi- tions that can illustrate the practical differences that can result from women’s participation, with the example of Tunisia within the context of the “Arab Spring.” The so-called “Arab Spring” has come to refer to the attempts by the publics of multiple Arab countries to either force reform of their existing (autocratic) political systems or to actually change those political systems

72 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH and replace them with generally more inclusive and representative systems. These attempts started in Tunisia, but quickly spread to Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria. Less coherent demands for change followed in countries throughout the Arab world. The process is ongoing but the Arab nations’ experience as a region with a common history, culture, language, and over-lapping identity begs the question of why some revolutions have been successful and others have been brutally repressed. An initial question is to what extent the most successful revolution so far in the Arab world, the Tunisian revolution, has benefited from the inclusion of women. Rather than the common international demand to see women’s rights and inclusion as the outcome of a process that very often doesn’t include them, does Tunisia’s inclusion of women in multiple levels of society already provide an indicator for a more successful transition to a representative government? The Tunisian’s revolution, and the rather successful democratization process that followed, especially taken in the context of a much less successful Arab Spring in other Arab countries, indeed provides a useful example of the importance of including women at all stages of transition. More than three years after the events known as the Jasmine Revolution, and a few months after the adoption of a new Constitution in Tunisia that, even if not perfect by international standards, guarantees some fundamental women’s rights, we can ask whether “the Tunisian model for democratic transition [has] succeeded in placing Tunisia on the path of democracy? And what are the principal features of this model that make it successful?”3 So far, no other Arab country that is taking part in the Arab Spring has had the same success as Tunisia on any level, and women’s rights have been left out or remain difficult to implement. There are probably many factors that can explain why Tunisia is so far succeeding (by the measure of peaceful change from autocracy towards a more representative egalitarian system) whereas the other Arab Spring nations are in various states of disarray with some in complete civil war, others under brutal lockdown by their regime, and others struggling to implement real change in new political systems as various power brokers vie for influence. Focusing on only one of those factors – but perhaps one that has been among the most influential - the truly characteristic role and participation of women during the Jasmine Revolution, as well as in post- revolution politics is how women have been an integral part of the new democratization process in Tunisia. After a general overview of women’s roles in peacebuilding processes in Section 1 and an historical overview

73 STUDENT - 2015 - BAGOT GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES of women’s rights in Tunisia before the Jasmine Revolution in Section 2, Section 3 looks at women’s roles during and after the Jasmine Revolu- tion and Section 4 compares it with the examples of Egypt and Libya. Based on these analyses, the reader may better comprehend in Section 5 why Tunisia’s transition to democracy was so different in its inclusion of women, as compared to the other Arab Spring nations, and whether or not some of these lessons learned can be replicated in other countries. In Section 6, through the example of Tunisia, one may also try to analyze what women’s empowerment can do for peace process, the role of men in women’s empowerment, and how women’s involvement in a peace process can make a positive difference.

Section 1. A general overview of women’s role and involvement in peacebuilding processes Women’s involvement in peacebuilding often starts before the onset of conflict. For instance, in Sri Lanka in October 1984, feminist activists formed the Women for Peace movement to try to stop the conflict between the government and the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam. In Oc- tober 1991, the Women in Black movement in Serbia launched an anti- war campaign in the former Yugoslavia. In Burundi in 1995, women such as Sabine Sabimbona or Agnes Nindorera tried to warn against the ethnic manipulations and propaganda of the government.4 These are not exceptions, but perhaps reflect a realization by women that they and their broader interests in society are most at risk in competitions between male-dominated groups for power. However, too often women are neither at the table that makes war nor the table that attempts to negotiate peace and operate on the margins of politics and power, having a very limited influence. The machinery of conflict including the propaganda that often accompanies it too often closes any space for women’s rheto- ric, or for any dialogue with women for that matter.5 But with some additional support, women could have a much broader impact on peacebuilding processes. For instance, in South Africa, women played a crucial role in the anti-apartheid movement and subsequently in the peace process that drew up a new constitution for a democratic country. The United Nations and the South Africans quickly noted the impact that women had on bringing peace to communities by being part of every mechanism and committee that was addressing the change the nation was undergoing. A United Nations observer recounted that “women were what made the committee effective” and that “with men it

74 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH was war at all-time [but]… the women were keen to get peaceful resolution….”6. In South Africa, women’s inclusion in local peace committees clearly made a difference in the transition process. It is unfortunate that examples such as South Africa are not more widespread. Misogyny and sexism can certainly provide some explanation as to why women are not more involved at the peace table, as well as the fact that women rarely hold crucial high-level positions that can have an effective impact on the decision-making process. For instance, women are rarely defense ministers or chief of staffs of the army.7 The local cultures provide different excuses for the absence of women in this process. Some claim that peace talks are no venue for gender equality or women’s issues, implying that women only care about those issues. There is also sometimes skepticism as to women’s abilities to engage in peacebuilding talks.8 So, what can change the dynamic towards a more systemic inclusion of women in the conflict prevention debate? On October 2000, the United Nations passed Security Council Reso- lution 1325, which calls for all actors to involve women in the “prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response and in post-conflict reconstruction.”9 Resolution 1325, as well as a series of other related resolutions that followed, applies to all countries wherever it can be used and picked up by civil society. It echoes the demands from women who want to be included in the shaping of their societies, who want to be part of their countries’ reconstruction and who want to have their needs and concerns heard. These United Nations resolutions are rooted in the firm belief that women’s inclusion in peace processes will contribute to a more sustaina- ble peace. However, since Resolution 1325 was passed, only marginal progress in integrating women in formal peace processes has been accomplished. A study undertaken in 2008 found that out of 33 peace negotiations only 4% of participants were women.10 Even the United Nations, which has arguably been the greatest promoter of gender equality, has failed to implement in its practice those values it is promoting to the world. For example, no Secretary General (and no female Secretary General has yet been elected) had ever appointed a woman to be the chief mediator of a peace process until recently, on March 2013, with the appointment of former Irish president Mary Robinson as the first mediator at the United Nations (for the Africa’s Great Lakes region).11

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Therefore, more remains to be done to fully include women at the peace table. Inclusion of fundamental women’s rights in the legal framework of a country may constitute a first important step toward that goal.

Section 2. Historical background and women’s status in Tunisia before the Jasmine revolution As Katrin Bennhold points out, “there is another source of Tunisian wisdom that may hold inspiration for at least half the populations across North Africa and the Middle East: a long tradition of women’s rights that goes well beyond anything else in the region.”12 Within the Arab world, Tunisia has a long tradition of respect for women’s rights. In a poll conducted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2013, Tunisia was ranked 6 out of 22 Arab states for women's rights.13 Indeed, after its independ- ence from France in 1956, Tunisia initiated reforms of its family law, which led to the adoption of the progressive Code of Personal Status (CPS) in 1956.14 Habib Bourguiba was Tunisia’s first president after the country’s in- dependence from France, and its founding father, having led the political fight for freedom for years at great personal cost. His vision of the state was a nationalist and secularist one, where all citizens had a role to play, including women.15 This might seem unusual today in the context of the Middle East, but the 1950s were a different time with traditional societies frozen in time by colonial structures competing with international political discourses led by debates on socialism, democracy, and anti-colonial and anti-imperialism liberation struggles. This was Habib Bourguiba’s era as well as that of his compatriots in Tunisia and throughout North Africa and much of the Middle East (excluding Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf). Bourguiba was the main instigator of the improvement of the status and rights of women, first as prime minister, with the CPS and after he came to power in 1957.16 With the CPS he instituted the legal framework for the equality of men and women in Tunisia. One of the political reasons behind the CPS was to “generate a new form of alle- giance in which individual allegiances went to the nation-state.”17 As such, the development of a state feminism clearly followed a political agenda, which ensured women’s support to the government.18 This new conception of citizenship, and the individual rights that came with it, benefited Tunisian women. The new CPS included major changes to family law, including the abolition of polygamy, the right to divorce for men and women, and increased women’s rights in custody of children.19

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Perhaps most importantly, the CPS transformed the educational opportunities for boys and girls while introducing women to the national work and political force. The CPS permitted family planning and required both girls and boys to attend school beginning at age six.20 Wom- en were also granted the right to work and therefore the right to gain some economic freedom.21 Furthermore, in 1957 women were granted the right to vote and in 1959, the Tunisian constitution provided that “women [were] full citizens with complete legal equality and civic du- ties, with the full right to exercise their political, economic and social rights.”22 This had practical applications as well. As an example of the movement that followed, in 1968, the first female was appointed to the bench.23 Critically, Tunisia interpreted Islamic law in a manner consistent with the political values of equality that it was promoting allowing a bridge between traditional cultural attitudes and the new state values.24 The Tunisian government also attempted to entrench itself firmly within an international framework, ratifying many conventions on women’s rights, for instance the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1968 and the Convention on Eradication of All Forms of Discriminations against Women in 1985.25 One nuance however, is that even if Tunisia’s state feminism im- proved women’s rights, it did not necessarily change the social structure that allows discrimination against women when the state weakens. How- ever, it provided a basis of fundamental women’s rights in Tunisia under which generations to come learned to live and accept as a necessity. Girls and women (and boys and men) grew up with this cultural understanding and framework. These large societal effects remained in place even after Zine El- Abidine Ben Ali (“Ben Ali”) seized power in a constitutional coup in 1987. Although introducing a more traditional autocratic strongman political system, rejecting basic western tenants of representative government, he nevertheless continued the trend in women’s rights reforms. For example, the minimum age of marriage for women was raised from fifteen to eighteen years old in 2007, and women’s right to alimony was also expanded in the 2000s.26 Many women’s groups were established, however within the constraint of needing to provide political support to the regime. For instance, Ben Ali’s wife headed the largest women’s organization (l’Union Nationale de la Femme Tunisienne).27 However, for the autocrat Ben Ali, guaranteeing women’s rights was also a façade of

77 STUDENT - 2015 - BAGOT GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES westernization to avoid having to move towards a more genuine democratization and citizens’ participation process. These fundamental changes over several generations, including an educational, political, and legal framework for women’s participation in a less patriarchal system, have outlasted both Bourguiba and Ben Ali. Alt- hough women’s empowerment in Tunisia is still an ongoing battle, for instance in terms of political representation, the country has come a long way, especially compared to some of its neighboring Arab Spring nations such as Egypt and Libya. In that context, what was women’s role in the Jasmine revolution, and how did they manage to maintain their rights for the most part in the Tunisian constitution-making process?

Section 3. The Jasmine Revolution, Tunisia’s democratization process and women’s role The Jasmine Revolution was ignited by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on December 17, 2010. It prompted a wind of rebellion in other Arab countries, including Libya and Egypt, now known as the Arab Spring.28 Although the local media were silent about the protests and demonstrations that followed, some foreign media such as France 24 and Al Jazeera aired images of brutality against the demonstrators by the police in Sidi Bouzid.29 Interestingly, the protest had initially started for socioeconomic reasons, but after the death of Mohammed Bouazizi on January 2, 2011, it spread all over the country as a protest against the regime of Ben Ali. On January 14, 2011, the Tunisians protestors were on the streets and forced Ben Ali to step down. Ben Ali, in the absence of support from the army, was forced to flee Tunisia for Saudi Arabia.30 Despite the fact that men are usually the main participants in revolutions or conflicts, Tunisia’s women’s involvement during the Jasmine Revolution was significant, as protesters and demonstrators from all segments of the population. Women were on the streets, as well as blog- ging and tweeting. Because of their active participation, women were able to be part of the discourse and keep politics focused on gender equality, for instance within the National Constituent Assembly (NCA). The “Islamist party Ennahda acquired the largest number of seats in the assembly and boasted 42 female candidates of a total of 49 total women elected to the 217-member NCA.”31 Women were also able to have a concrete influence over the drafting of the new Constitution. Adopted on January 26, 2014, the new Constitu- tion provides for equality between men and women, after some heated

78 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH debates about the notion of women being “complementary” to men,32 which was later abandoned in the final version of the Constitution. The new Constitution includes articles ensuring equality between men and women. Article 37 of the Constitution requires the state to guarantee the representation of women in elected assemblies, article 40 of the Constitu- tion provides for equal rights in the work environment, article 46 of the Constitution provides for the protection of women’s acquired rights and the state’s engagement to take measures to eradicate violence against women.33 Also, as stressed by Sana Ben Achour, a women’s rights activist, the new Constitution is the first in the Arab world to give women the right to run for president.34 Even if the new Constitution is a great step for women in Tunisia, it is still not a panacea, and in some areas of the law, for instance in inheritance, women still receive unequal treatment. Since the Constitution is silent on the matter of inheritance, traditional jurisprudence in Tunisia is expected to dominate in which women receive only half of what is usually passed to men.35 In a fundamentally patriarchal culture, the road to complete equality still has to be lived and culture changed in some respects. At least the new Constitution builds on what Tunisia under Bour- gouiba started decades ago: integrating women’s equal rights into people’s mindsets and the country’s legal framework. By rooting such rights legally, it helps to further root such rights into the culture as well. But vigilance is always needed and there is still much to do to ensure that women’s rights in Tunisia continue to expand and that political pressures are not used to retract any of the hard fought rights Tunisian women, and perhaps by example, other women have gained. One important area where women should be more present in Tunisia is the judicial field. To overcome discrimination, some formal quotas should be considered for female judges. Women’s presence in the judiciary could enhance impartiality and foster equality in the judicial sphere, which guarantees the fair enforcement of women’s rights. Another area where women’s presence could be reinforced is the religious sphere. In order to counter views of Islam, which question or negate some women’s rights, women religious scholars should be trained and educated to give a version of Islam consistent with equality, confirming within its own cultural matrix that women’s rights are not un-Islamic, and to the contrary, are a requirement of the religion. What is interesting about Tunisia is how some Western values from its colonial past endured up to this day and how Bourguiba’s influence in terms of women’s rights still live on in developments today. Women’s

79 STUDENT - 2015 - BAGOT GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES empowerment, as Tunisia’s example shows, starts with equal rights for women to be educated and work. Once a country educates women and allows them an opportunity to be financially independent, and once men are used to having a second source of income in their homes, avoiding women’s voices in a conflict situation is much more difficult. Noting the examples of Egypt and Libya, women’s inclusion in their transition processes has proven much more difficult than in Tunisia.

Section 4. A comparison with Egypt and Libya: women’s involvement in the revolutions and women’s status in Egypt and Libya Egyptian women were actively engaged in the revolution and were present in the protests in Tahrir Square that led to the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. We observed on television as the events occurred women on the streets alongside with men. Since then, Egypt has been in a transition that has not unfolded well for women. According to a poll dated November 2013 by Thomson Reuters Foundation, Egypt is now the worse Arab State for women’s rights among the 22 Arab States polled.36 So what happened to women’s rights in Egypt? Women were at the heart of civil society movements during the revolution and were pushing for the rights of all Egyptians. For instance, in 2010 a law mandating a quota of 64 new seats in the House for women was passed, which was a major increase from before the revolution.37 However, this quota was abolished when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces later gained control.38 Furthermore, the 2012 Constitution actually constricted women’s rights instead of building on past successes. The 1971 Constitution “included a provision requiring the state to treat women and men equally in political, social, cultural, and economic spheres.”39 This provision was enforced with the caveat that such treatment not violate Shari’a law, which is not necessarily defined. When women requested that the caveat be suppressed in the 2012 Constitution, the entire provision on equality was deleted and now women were “dis- cussed in the Constitution as a particular group only in the context of their responsibilities to the family.”40 Yet another Constitution was drafted and adopted in January 2014, however, which granted several women’s rights that had been deleted in the 2012 Constitution. For instance, under Article 6 of the 2014 Constitu- tion, an Egyptian woman married to a foreigner can now bestow her citizenship to her children, which was not the case before.41 Furthermore, Article 11 of the 2014 Constitution, provides, among others rights, for (i)

80 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH the achievement of equality between women and men in all their civil and political rights and their economic, social and cultural rights, (ii) for women’s right to hold public office and be represented, as well as their appointment to judicial bodies and authorities, without discrimination, for (iii) an obligation for the state to protect women against all forms of violence. 42 However, the 2014 Constitution does not include explicit quotas for women in parliament and also offers very limited guarantees to protect these rights from the government, especially in the context of extensive military powers given by the same Constitution.43 It is still to be seen how this Constitution will be implemented, especially within the context of terrible acts of violence against women being reported in Egypt on a daily basis, especially against women participating in the public arena. Similarly, in Libya, women were active participants in the demonstrations against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime that started in Benghazi in February 2011, as well as in the logistical support to the opposition. In the 2012 parliamentary election that followed, 33 women out of a total 200 members were elected to the General National Congress, which was a great step for female political participation in Libya. However, more recently, women’s rights have been severely challenged in Libya. For instance, in February 2013, Libya’s Supreme Court lifted restrictions on polygamy and in April 2013, the government suspended issuing marriage licenses for Libyan women marrying foreigners.44 In their daily lives, women suffer from physical harassment, as well as challenges in the work environment (such as career promotion, equal pay and opportunities) along with domestic abuse and the pressure for taking care of the children.45 And even though women hold some seats in the government, they are struggling to hold on to their seats that may have been opportun- istically apportioned in the early days of the Revolution. As Libyan writer Aicha Almagrabi says “Libyan women were handed over as spoils of war” and their situation has degraded since the revolution.46 With a democratic process in a stalemate and increased violence against lawmakers, judges, prosecutors, journalists, and activists, the future of not only women’s rights but democracy seems unclear for Lib- ya. The international community should refocus its attention on Libya before its government institutions collapse, which can only be a premoni- tion for an even grimmer future for women’s rights.47 So how can we explain such different paths taken by other Arab Spring nations regarding women’s rights and women’s involvement in

81 STUDENT - 2015 - BAGOT GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES transition processes? And what can be some of the lesson learned from Tunisia regarding the same?

Section 5. Women’s empowerment in Tunisia: lessons learned? It is difficult to fully comprehend why Tunisia managed to so far complete a rather successful democratic transition and why Egypt and Libya have so far failed. Tunisia has been hailed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as “a model for others in the region and around the world.”48 What are the lessons learned from Tunisia in terms of women’s empowerment, and how this impacted their involvement in the Jasmine’s Revo- lution and the democratization process? Was the level of women’s empowerment prior to the Jasmine Revolution a determining factor for sta- bilization, peace and democratization in Tunisia? Were women’s rights not as culturally and socially integrated in Egypt and Libya as they were in Tunisia? So are there any lessons learned from the Tunisian model that can be applied to other Arab states – or to other states in general? Can the Tunisian model be used to argue that granting women equal rights is a key component for stability, peacebuilding, security and democracy? As noted, there is a long tradition in Tunisia of women’s education and financial empowerment. In Tunisia, women play an important socioeconomic role and the men have grown accustomed to the women also providing financially for the family. The financial inclusion of women is important to foster a strong economy, and in turn a strong economy is a key element of stability and peace. As Fatma Bouvet de la Maisonneuve asserts “the men and women marching for democracy…were all the children and grandchildren of women who had grown up with an education and a sense of their rights [and]… [i]t’s no coincidence that the revolution first started in Tunisia, where we have a high level of education, a sizeable middle class and a greater degree of gender equality … We had all the ingredients of democracy but not democracy itself. That just couldn’t last.”49 As such, women’s empowerment can be claimed as an ingredient of democracy and peaceful state building processes, despite an otherwise oppressive history of autocracy and potentially countervailing religious forces. Can this success be replicated in other post-conflict situations, especially in Arab countries and “as a woman in Tunis pro- claimed: “if we women in Tunisia can write our Constitution, who’s to say that Egypt and Libya and Syria and Palestine won’t be next?”50

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It is important to look at Tunisia as an example where women were not seen as victims but as leaders and replicate this in other countries in conflict. After Ben Ali’s regime collapsed, women’s rights organizations, which had been long active in Tunisia, mobilized to ensure a transition where women were included.51 Tunisia also avoided following the Egyp- tian path in part because its main political actors preferred negotiations and compromise instead of violence with a broad band of the political spectrum from leftist nationalist to moderate Islamist. For instance, En- nahda (the moderate Islamist party which won the first free elections after the Jasmine Revolution) agreed to resign from government in the fall of 2013 rather than risk plunging the country into another round of civil strife.52 Yet, that same spectrum of forces, often at odds with each other, nevertheless have generally stood together against Salafist forces which challenged the very underpinnings of an egalitarian society. However, can Tunisia be considered a model to follow and emulate? After its colonial past, Tunisia has evolved into a homogeneous nation state with a high level of collective consciousness. Tunisia also possesses a fair amount of necessary components to establish a stable democracy, such as “social cohesion, an educated middle class, a legacy of authentic non-governmental civic and professional organizations … a tradition of secularism and concern with women’s rights….”53 Looking at how the other Arab Spring revolutions unfolded, Tunisia may be more of an exception than an exemplar to easily emulate, as it may be difficult to find all the ingredients of this recipe elsewhere to recreate the successful and inclusive democratization process in Tunisia. One may say that if the secular party in Egypt had had a better program of action, if the military had not intervened in the political process, and if women’s rights issues had been taken seriously, Egypt could have accomplished this democratic transition successfully as well. Even if Tunisia’s model may be difficult to emulate, what positive ingredients can still be identified to foster women’s involvement in peacebuilding processes and why do they matter?

Section 6. Women’s empowerment: a driver for peace? What are some successful recipes for prosperous peacebuilding Empowering women helps make a more secure world. There is a strong link between state security and women’s security. The more women are treated well in a country, the more peaceful and democratic it generally is. And conversely, the less women’s rights are preserved, the more like-

83 STUDENT - 2015 - BAGOT GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES ly a country will generally have a conflict.54 Not only are women’s rights important to be preserved, but women’s voices must also be heard. For instance, in the rise of many forms of extremism and related violence, women can act in many respects, as religious models, as mothers, as community members, etc. International peacebuilding structures were not designed for the new post-Cold War conflicts, which are more internal and where women’s roles are even more crucial. Civil society, non- governmental organizations and the United Nations should work together on adapting the existing peacebuilding structures to our world’s current needs. It is also crucial in this process to integrate men. Similarly to the Tu- nisia model, young men should be educated with the understanding that men and women are equal and that women are equal participants in civil, political, and economic spheres of society. Men, in whatever cultural or national context, have to be involved in a discussion on what it means to be a “man” within an egalitarian world and create role models that are not only the typical stereotypes that we currently know. It is fine for men to show weaknesses and cry, it is fine for men to ask for women’s help, it is fine for men to be supported by women, it is fine for men to take care of the children, etc. Those men should be viewed as role models as well, not only the dominant cultural stereotype of men carrying guns. Unfortu- nately, because of the gender roles created by society, and the traditional stereotypes of men as family providers and women as child raisers, any lack of income or resources (and the social recognition that comes with it) can lead men to become violent and participate in armed conflicts. According to the World Health Organization “men are three to six times more likely than women to commit homicide and males of all ages represent 80 percent of homicide victims.”55 However, although men are usually seen as the ones perpetrating the violence in conflict zones, research shows that men are not inherently violent.56 Men are too often the victims of a hyper-masculinity created around violent conflicts. Since gender is a social construct, rather that biologically determined, definitions of “man” and “women” can be shaped by culture. Focusing on men’s perspectives is also an important component of women’s empowerment and peacebuilding. For instance, any training organizations can provide to women on women’s empowerment in countries like Afghanistan will have little effects, or worse damaging effects (e.g., violence), if their husbands do not receive similar training. For instance, non-governmental organizations, such as Promundo, Women for Women International and CARE are working on programs that “combine

84 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH psychological support for men based on a group therapy model with education sessions on positive norms change and preventing SGBV.”57 Oth- er programs focus on changing community norms, developing healthier and more non-violent male identities, but it would be important as well to find concrete ways for men to see women as allies in peacebuilding efforts and sensitize men in women’s rights and equality in some countries or communities.58 Similarly again to the Tunisian model, programs should find a way in some counties to engage men in women’s economic empowerment so that they get use to a second income and women working. As a conse- quence, men could become used to sharing caregiving and households tasks and inverse gender stereotypes that lead to the ideas in some countries that women’s roles are limited to the home and not the public space. Also, similarly to the Tunisian’s model, civil society should allow space for women’s rights groups and women political activist groups to flourish. Women’s education, women’s financial empowerment, women’s freedom to participate in civil society and men’s inclusion in women’s empowerment process seemed to have been some of the key ingredients in women’s participation at all levels of the Tunisian democratic transition process. So was women’s empowerment a driver for peace in Tuni- sia? The results speak for themselves.

Conclusion In a world where women’s rights and women’s empowerment seem to be constant and ongoing battles, Tunisia stands out as an exception. Despite decades of autocracy, Tunisia is managing to go through a relatively peaceful democratization process and maintain women’s fundamental rights. Time will tell if this new democracy is on solid ground for the long term. Any peace must be structured in a way that there is no recurrence of war or conflict, and certainly integrating women fully in the peacebuilding process is a main step to ascertain a long standing peace. It is the civil society bottom up and not government top down that can help shape a longstanding peace where women’s rights are respected. In Tunisia’s case, fundamental women’s rights have been part of society for decades with the reforms accomplished by Tunisia’s post- colonial governments. As such, women’s rights groups integrated in civil society were able to influence the political elites at critical times. Legal

85 STUDENT - 2015 - BAGOT GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES structures were created to implement higher levels of equality throughout the political system. The religious tradition was interpreted in a manner consistent with the goals of greater egalitarianism. Female examples in various political, judicial, artistic, academic, and government positions created a new paradigm of “normal.” Secularist and moderate Islamist forces alike incorporated women as a norm into their parties and electoral lists. The rest opposed those parties that fundamentally rejected the concept of egalitarianism within a representative government framework. Elements of Tunisia’s success exist in many other countries but perhaps the unique combination of those elements has created a catalyst for change that allows women to be actors in that change. The challenge for international agencies such as the United Nations, which accept that women are necessary participants in peacebuilding efforts, is to promote those elements in each context not only through assistance programs and political support but also through internalization of such values within its own organizational structure. Sending men to lecture women on the need for women to be part of an inclusive peacebuilding effort may not have the same value as the actual example of women as peacebuilders on the international stage. This exclusion of women both within countries in change and international organizations attempting to involve themselves in that change can be a driver of conflict, so any peace process that is not inclusive is destined to fail. As Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on February 26, 2014 during the Advancing Women in Peace Awards Cer- emony: “When women are excluded and marginalized, we all suffer: We miss out on their experience, their knowledge, their skills, their talents but when women and girls have the chance to participate fully alongside men and boys in making peace, in growing the economy, in political life, in every facet of existence, then we all benefit.” Many countries, such as South Africa, Northern Ireland or the Phil- ippines, have demonstrated that women’s participation in a peacebuilding process can be a determining factor for successful democratic transi- tions.59 Counterexamples of peacebuilding processes that did not suffi- ciently include women and which are still struggling to make a fuller transition to democracy are for instance Algeria in 1990/91, Iraq and the Palestine Authority in 2006. It is crucial to institutionalize women’s rights in society, as well as gender equality to fully allow for a penetra- tion of these values into civil society, for women’s rights groups to develop and mature to be able to influence peacebuilding and democratization processes. It is important also to recognize the importance of men in

86 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH women’s empowerment. It is for the benefit of women, men and peace to engage all parties as allies in promoting a more balanced, peaceful and equal world. Our world signs peace agreements but pots of chaos are left and the real issues are too often not being addressed, which leads to the resurgence of conflicts and violence. There is something to be said for a peacebuilding process that includes representatives of more than half of the population, as the Tunisia example demonstrates.

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ENDNOTES

1 United Nations Development Fund for Women Publication, “Women’s Participation in Peace Negotiations”, (August 2010), accessed April 16, 2014, http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/03A WomenPeaceNeg.pdf. 2 United Nations, “Landmark Resolution on Women, Peace and Se- curity,” (October 31, 2000), accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/wps/. 3 Rached Ghannouchi, “Tunisia’s Hopes Near Realization,” Huffing- ton Post, (March 4, 2014), accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/tunisia-revolution. 4 Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, Women Building Peace: What They Do, Why It Matters (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007), 34-35. 5 Ibid., 35-36. 6 Ibid., 41-43. 7 Ibid., 58. 8 Ibid., 61. 9 United Nations, “Landmark Resolution on Women, Peace and Se- curity.” 10 United Nations Development Fund for Women Publication, “Women’s Participation in Peace Negotiations.” 11United Nations, UN News Center, accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp/www.fao.org/story.asp?NewsID= 44416&Cr=democratic&Cr1=congo#.Uzht1Vx6O-Q. 12 Katrin Bennhold, “Women’s Rights A Strong Point in Tunisia,” New York Times, (February 22, 2011), accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/world/middleeast/23iht- letter23.html. 13 Thomson Reuters Foundation, accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.trust.org/spotlight/poll-womens-rights-in-the-arab-world/.

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14 Mounira M. Charrad and Amina Zarrugh, “The Arab Spring and Women’s Rights in Tunisia,” (September 4, 2013), accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.e-ir.info/ 2013/09/04/the-arab-spring-and-womens- rights-in-tunisia/. 15 Emma C. Murphy, “Women in Tunisia: Between state feminism and economic reform,” in Women and Globalization in the Arab Middle East: Gender, Economy, and Society (Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner Pub- lishers, 2003), 169-193. 16 Ibid. 17 Charrad and Zarrugh, “The Arab Spring and Women’s Rights in Tunisia.” 18 Murphy, “Women in Tunisia: Between state feminism and economic reform,” 169-193. 19 Charrad and Zarrugh, “The Arab Spring and Women’s Rights in Tunisia.” 20 Engy Abdelkader, “The Future of Women’s Rights in Tunisia,” Huffington Post (January 9, 2014), accessed April 16, 2014, http://www. huffingtonpost.com/engy-abdelkader/the-future-of-womens-righ_b_ 4565292.html?view=print&comm_ref=false. 21 Murphy, “Women in Tunisia: Between state feminism and economic reform,” 169-193. 22 Ibid. 23 Abdelkader, “The Future of Women’s Rights in Tunisia.” 24 Murphy, “Women in Tunisia: Between state feminism and economic reform,” 169-193. 25 Ibid. 26 Charrad and Zarrugh, “The Arab Spring and Women’s Rights in Tunisia.” 27 Christine Goulding, “Tunisia: Women’s Winter of Discontent,” Open Democracy Publication, (October 25, 2011), accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/kristine-goulding/tunisia- womens-winter-of-discontent.

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28 Matt Buehler, “Party Politics and the Prospects for Democracy in North Africa by Lise Storm (review),” The Middle East Journal 68.1 (2014): 112-113. 29 Ibid., 113. 30 Ibid. 31 Charrad and Zarrugh, “The Arab Spring and Women’s Rights in Tunisia.” 32 Ibid. 33 Hélène Sallon, “Libertés, droits des femmes : les avancées de la constitution tunisienne,” Le Monde (January 27, 2014), accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.lemonde.fr/tunisie/article/2014/01/27/des- avancees-majeures-dans-la-constitution-tunisienne_4354973_ 1466522.html. 34 United Nations, UN Women Publication, “Tunisia’s new Constitu- tion: a breakthrough for women’s rights,” (February 11, 2014), accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.unwomen.org/lo/news/stories/ 2014/2/tunisias-new-constitution. 35 Amandine Bourgoin, “Pour les femmes des victoires mais pas de triomphe,” Paris Match (February 14, 2014), accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.parismatch.com/Actu/International/Une-vraie-revolution- pour-les-femmes-546274. 36 Thomson Reuters Foundation, (November 12, 2013), accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.trust.org/item/20131108170910- qacvu/?source= spotlight-writaw. 37 Hamid Khan, Manal Omar, Kathleen Kuehnast and Susan Hay- ward, “Fostering Synergies for Advancing Women’s Rights in Post- Conflict Islamic States: A Focus on Afghanistan, Egypt and Libya,” The Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, U.S.-Islamic Forum Papers 2013 (November 2013): 10. 38 Ibid., 10. 39 Ibid., 11. 40 Ibid. 41 Youssef Mahmoud, “In Egypt’s New Constitution, Are Women

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Equal Citizens?” (December 19, 2013), accessed April 16, 2014, http://theglobalobservatory.org/analysis/646-in-egypts-new-2013- constitution-are-women-equal-citizens.html. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Human Rights Watch (May 26, 2013), accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/26/libya-seize-chance-protect- women-s-rights. 45 Adela Suliman, “International Women’s Day in Libya: a Foreign Perspective,” Libya Herald (February 8, 2014), accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.libyaherald.com/2014/03/08/opinion-international-womens- day-in-libya-a-foreign-perspective/#axzz3L3w5VCmv. 46 Karlos Zurutuza, “Libyan women were handed over as spoils of war,” Inter Press Service (December 19, 2013), accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/12/qa-libyan-women-handed-spoils-war/. 47 Human Rights Watch, “Libya: Government Institutions at Risk of Collapse,” (March 7, 2014), accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.hrw. org/news/2014/03/07/libya-government-institutions-risk-collapse. 48 Eve Conant, “Rollback of Women’s Rights: Not Just in Afghani- stan,” National Geographic (February 20, 2014), accessed April 16, 2014, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140220- women-rights-afghanistan-karzai-arab-spring-sharia-world/. 49 Goulding, “Tunisia: Women’s Winter of Discontent.” 50 Ibid. 51 Valentine M. Moghadam. “Modernizing women and democratization after the Arab Spring,” The Journal of African Studies 19, no.2 (2014): 137-142. 52 Ibid. 53 Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, “Tunisia: Exemplar or Exception?” For- eign Policy Research Institute Publication (January 2011). 54 The Women Stats Project, accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.womanstats.org/index.htm.

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55 Joseph Vess, Gary Barker, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini and Alexa Hassink, “The Other Side of Gender, Men as Critical Agents of Change,” United States Institute of Peace, Special Report, (December 2013). 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Moghadam, “Modernizing women and democratization after the Arab Spring.”

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abdelkader, Engy. “The Future of Women’s Rights in Tunisia.” Huffing- ton Post (January 9, 2014). Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/engy-abdelkader/the-future-of- womens-righ_b_4565292.html?view=print&comm_ref=false. Anderlini, Sanam Naraghi. Women Building Peace: What They Do, Why It Matters. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007. Bennhold, Katrin. “Women’s Rights A Strong Point in Tunisia.” New York Times (February 22, 2011). Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/world/middleeast/23iht- letter23.html. Bourgoin, Amandine. “Pour les femmes des victoires mais pas de triomphe.” Paris Match (February 14, 2014). Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.parismatch.com/Actu/International/Une-vraie- revolution-pour-les-femmes-546274. Buehler, Matt. “Party Politics and the Prospects for Democracy in North Africa by Lise Storm (review).” The Middle East Journal 68. no, 1 (2014). Charrad, Mounira M., and Amina Zarrugh. “The Arab Spring and Wom- en’s Rights in Tunisia.” (September 4, 2013). Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.e-ir.info/2013/09/04/the-arab-spring-and-womens- rights-in-tunisia/. Conant, Eve. “Rollback of Women’s Rights: Not Just in Afghanistan.” National Geographic (February 20, 2014). Accessed April 16, 2014. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140220-women- rights-afghanistan-karzai-arab-spring-sharia-world/. Ghannouchi, Rached. “Tunisia’s Hopes Near Realization.” Huffington Post (March 4, 2014). Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/tunisia-revolution. Goulding, Christine. “Tunisia: Women’s Winter of Discontent.” Open Democracy Publication (October 25, 2011). Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/kristine- goulding/tunisia-womens-winter-of-discontent. Human Rights Watch. “News, May 26, 2013.” Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/26/libya-seize-chance-protect- women-s-rights.

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Human Rights Watch. “Libya: Government Institutions at Risk of Col- lapse.” (March 7, 2014). Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/03/07/libya-government-institutions- risk-collapse. Khan, Hamid, Manal Omar, Kathleen Kuehnast, and Susan Hayward. “Fostering Synergies for Advancing Women’s Rights in Post- Conflict Islamic States: A Focus on Afghanistan, Egypt and Libya.” The Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, U.S.-Islamic Forum Papers 2013 (November 2013). Maddy-Weitzman, Bruce. “Tunisia: Exemplar or Exception?” Foreign Policy Research Institute Publication (January 2011). Mahmoud, Youssef, Senior Advisor at the International Institute of Peace. “In Egypt’s New Constitution, Are Women Equal Citizens?” (December 19, 2013). Accessed April 16, 2014. http://theglobalobservatory.org/analysis/646-in-egypts-new-2013- constitution-are-women-equal-citizens.html. Moghadam, Valentine M. “Modernizing women and democratization after the Arab Spring.” The Journal of African Studies 19, no. 2 (2014): 137-142. Murphy, Emma C. Women in Tunisia: Between state feminism and economic reform. Women and Globalization in the Arab Middle East: Gender, Economy, and Society. Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner Publis- hers, 2003. Sallon, Hélène. “Libertés, droits des femmes: les avancées de la constitution tunisienne.” Le Monde (January 27, 2014). Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.lemonde.fr/tunisie/article/2014/01/27/ des- avancees-majeures-dans-la-constitution-tunisienne_4354973_ 1466522.html. Suliman, Adela. “International Women’s Day in Libya: a Foreign Per- spective.” Libya Herald (February 8, 2014). Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.libyaherald.com/2014/03/08/opinion-international- womens-day-in-libya-a-foreign-perspective/#axzz3L3w5VCmv. The Women Stats Project. Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.womanstats.org/index.htm. Thomson Reuters Foundation, Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.trust.org/spotlight/poll-womens-rights-in-the-arab- world/.

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United Nations Development Fund for Women Publication. “Women’s Participation in Peace Negotiations.” (August 2010). Accessed April 16, 2014. http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/03A WomenPeaceNeg.pdf. United Nations. “Landmark Resolution on Women, Peace and Security, October 31, 2000.” Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.un.org/ womenwatch/osagi/wps/. United Nations, UN News Center. Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp/www.fao.org/story.asp?New sID=44416&Cr=democratic&Cr1=congo#.Uzht1Vx6O-Q. United Nations, UN Women Publication. “Tunisia’s new Constitution: a breakthrough for women’s rights.” (February 11, 2014). Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.unwomen.org/lo/news/stories/2014/2/ tunisias-new-constitution. Vess, Joseph, Gary Barker, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, and Alexa Has- sink. “The Other Side of Gender, Men as Critical Agents of Change.” United States Institute of Peace, Special Report (December 2013). Zurutuza, Karlos. “Libyan women were handed over as spoils of war.” Inter Press Service (December 19, 2013). Accessed April 16, 2014. http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/12/qa-libyan-women-handed-spoils- war/.

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The Bolshevik Revolution as Seen through Art: Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev

by Linda H. Buckley

Written for Course: Russian History and Culture through Literature and Film Professor: Elizabeth K. Zelensky, Ph.D. Spring 2014

Linda Buckley is a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies degree candidate concentrating in the field of literature. Linda earned a combined Bachelor’s Degree and Mas- ter’s Degree in International Studies with a minor in In- ternational Economics from the Johns Hopkins Univer- sity, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. She spent over twenty years working for the Department of Defense in weapons system program management for the Missile Defense Agency and De- partment of the Navy. Linda is a former Deputy Chief Financial Officer for the U.S. Marshals Service and is currently the Senior Director of Administrative Appli- cations at Georgetown University.

— ∞ —

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In 1868, Count Leo Tolstoy wrote that the great literary works of the Russian tradition were not novels in the European sense but “huge poetic structures for symbolic contemplation” animated by the search for truth. Building on this, Orlando Figes, in the Introduction to Natasha’s Dance, notes that artistic endeavor in Russia is characterized by its quest to define Russia’s nationality, its character, its history, its customs, its spiritual essence and its destiny. Throughout history artists in Russia took upon themselves the mission of creating this national community of values and ideas through literature, art and later cinema through a series of mythic tropes.1 Without a free press, the arts became the ideological battle ground that defined a Russian identity rooted firmly in Orthodoxy and Russia’s destiny as the Third Rome.2 The Bolshevik Revolution sought to destroy and then replace this identity with a new mythology of a Marxist Utopia founded on an equi- table distribution: from each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs. Culture was subordinated to this goal; however, the works commissioned by the Stalinist government as works of Socialist realism are virtually forgotten today. The enduring works of art from the Soviet period are those that were at odds with this vision of a Communist utopia. Resurrected and preserved by the Russian people, the works that endure are those that preserve the tropes of classic Russian culture. Two of these enduring masterpieces are the novel, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov and the film, Andrei Rublev by Andrei Tarkovsky. Through these narratives, one can glimpse why the Soviet revolution is a singular event in history, not organic to Russian culture. By exploring cultural patterns in Russian history through these two symbolic works of art, in retrospect, it seems obvious that the Bolshevik Revolution was doomed to fail.

1 Orlando Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (New York: Picador, 2002), xxvii. 2 Elizabeth Zelensky, “LSHV-436-01: Russian History and Culture through Literature and Film,” Class Notes; Georgetown University, Sep- tember 9, 2014.

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Historical Context: What is Art in Soviet Russia? In 1896 Tolstoy wrote in What is Art?, that the purpose of art is to communicate on an emotional level and to further Christian brotherhood and unity. He went on to say that in the future “science may reveal to art yet new and higher ideals.”3 Anatolii Lunacharskii, the first Soviet Commis- sar for Education in charge of culture, noted in 1919 that great works of art can only come from a religious or broad socialist idea as “life-giving.” Essentially the Bolsheviks declared that Communism had become the new and higher ideal that Tolstoy predicted, and that “with the minimum of attention and experience, this idea can be easily conveyed in the appropriate artistic guise.”4 Adapting Tolstoy’s concepts for their own, the Bolsheviks went on to search for new forms of universal art that would communicate to all the ideals of Communism. Art, from the beginning of the Soviet era, evolved from a search for truth about Russia’s identity to propaganda to create the new Soviet identity. It went from being a realm of human communication to one of Communist education. In its most extreme form, under Stalin, it became a means to obscure the truth and uphold the myth of Soviet origins and destiny. Art became a state- controlled image of the future, no longer a forum for debating and forming the Russian identity. In order to achieve a new purpose for art, the Soviet State had to create a new mythology. As James von Geldern points out in his book, Bol- shevik Festivals, 1917-1920, the Soviets created a new narrative surrounding the events of the October Revolution and used massive festivals to instill a sense of unity and participation among the populace. Not only did these festivals replace religious festivals and public ceremony, but they created a dynamic reliving and retelling of the myth that the revolution was inevitable and organic.5 However, the power of the Soviet myth

3 Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? (Excerpts), Chapter Twenty, https://catalog.library.georgetown.edu/articles/4075163.13832/1.PDF (accessed October 26, 2014). 4 Anatolii Lunacharskii, “The Tasks of the State Cinema in the RSFSR, 1919,” in The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Doc- uments, ed. Richard Taylor and Ian Christie (Cambridge: Harvard Uni- versity Press, 1988), 22-23. 5 James Von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals, 1919-1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 175-177.

99 STUDENT - 2015 - BUCKLEY GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES did not lie in its slow evolution from Russian history, but in the myth that the Revolution sprang from a singular point in time: the storming of the Winter Palace. By subordinating art to the propaganda of the Soviet myth, the Bolsheviks worked to shape the memories of the new Soviet man.6 It was not enough to create a new myth of Russian identity. In order to create a new Soviet culture, the Bolsheviks understood that the old identity had to be systematically dismantled. The three keys to Russian national identity lay in the monarchy, Orthodoxy and the Patriarchy of the Communes. The storming of the Winter Palace and killing of the Tsar accomplished the first objective—dismantling the political structure. Col- lectivization, starvation and arrests of the Kulaks, or rich peasants, accomplished the last—uprooting the economic-societal structure. The most difficult, and ultimately fatal task for the Soviet Revolution, would be the dismantling of Orthodoxy, which is the foundation of Russian culture. In the beginning the Soviets sought to do this subtly by co-opting existing Orthodox symbology; to infuse it with new meaning. This is not unique to the Bolshevik Revolution; according to Orlando Figes and Bo- ris Kolonitskii, all revolutions are sacralized, shown as a renewal and moral resurrection. However, the Bolsheviks also understood that with a population consisting primarily of peasantry, many of whom could not read, supplanting Christian symbology with Soviet imagery was a natural means to communicate with the Russian people on an emotional level.7 Since the fall of Byzantium, a powerful cultural trope for Russia had always been its messianic vision of the Third Rome with Russia as the defender of the faith.8 The first task of the Bolsheviks was to replace this vision. Figes and Kolonitskii pointed out that the peasant soldiers often looked upon the Soviet leadership as Christ-like; i.e., bringing salvation. And the Bolsheviks exploited this imagery by portraying Lenin as a

6 Von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals, 1919-1920, 199-200. 7 Orlando Figes and Boris Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Rev- olution: The Language and Symbols of 1917 (New Haven: Yale Univer- sity Press, 1999), 33. 8 Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 309.

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Christ-like martyr after an attempt on his life in August 1918.9 Christian imagery is so ingrained in the Russian psyche that Aleksandr Blok could not find an alternative to convey his emotions about the revolution. In his poem, “The Twelve,” he portrays Christ at the end leading twelve guards who could be thought of as the new apostles of the Revolution.10 This co-optation was accompanied by propaganda against the clergy and active “exposure” of false religious symbolism. This included taking peasants for airplane rides to prove that there were no angels or Gods in the sky. The State also sponsored blasphemous atheistic art to include visions of the pregnant Virgin longing for a Soviet abortion.11 By 1921 the war on Orthodoxy turned into a terror campaign with the closure of churches, shooting of priests and the house arrest of Patriarch Tikhon in 1923.12 By this time the consolidation of Bolshevik power was complete and no art that was pro-religious was tolerated. In 1934 independent artistic organizations were eliminated, and in the same year when the First Congress of Soviet Writers met, Socialist Realism was launched. One could not publish in the Soviet Union if not a member of the Writer’s Union which required members to “accept the program of the Com- munist Party…and strive to participate in socialist construction.”13 As a result, by the 1930s all art was reviewed and censored before released. By the 1940s and early 1950s, many artists of the intelligentsia who would not, or could not, conform were exiled, arrested and sent to labor camps. When Khrushchev began his campaign of de-Stalinization in 1956 and began the cultural Thaw, there had been an interruption in Russian culture of over twenty-five years within the Soviet Union. Remarkably two works of Soviet art stand out as a preservation of the religious underpinnings of that culture: one written in secret throughout the 1930s by

9 Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and Symbols of 1917, 74, 146 and 151. 10 Elizabeth Zelensky, “LSHV-436-01: Russian History and Culture Through Literature and Film,” Class Notes, November 11, 2014. 11 Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924 (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 745-746. 12 Ibid. 13 Edward J. Brown, Russian Literature Since the Revolution (Cam- bridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 13.

101 STUDENT - 2015 - BUCKLEY GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES the son of a theology professor; the other directed by a child of the Soviet Union who had never experienced that culture first-hand. Both of these present a resurrection of Orthodox values and religious cultural tropes.

What is the Bolshevik Revolution? Culture and art have long been a critical part of the Russian national identity. Lenin understood the need to capture the emotions of the Rus- sian people, and for him, cinema was the key. In its ability to communicate images and transform them, film was considered the new technological basis for Communist art; and in turn art would change the consciousness of the people.14 Stalin considered the artist to be the “engineer of the human soul.”15 They both failed to grasp the most powerful trope of Rus- sian culture: that art serves a higher purpose. As Tolstoy pointed out in What is Art?, true art is not merely beautiful; the artist does not serve to create art for art’s sake, but to communicate fundamental questions of mankind’s existence.16 Hence artists such as Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak never thought to emigrate from the Soviet Union. They both felt a moral obligation to suffer with the people and to be the “voice of memory.”17 The great cinematographer, Andrei Tarkovsky, born in 1932, was a product of Soviet culture. Fathered by the Soviet poet, Arseny Tarkov- sky, he was raised largely by his mother after Arseny left the family. He attended State-sponsored schools and there is little evidence of dissidence within his family. While in exile, Tarkovsky said, “I am not a Soviet dissident. I have no conflict with the Soviet Government.”18 Thus, any Rus-

14 Zelensky, “LSHV-436-01: Russian History and Culture Through Literature and Film,” Class Notes, November 11, 2014. 15 Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 447. 16 Tolstoy, What is Art? (Excerpts), Chapter Sixteen. 17 Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 441. 18 Tarkovsky emigrated because the “Soviet authorities left me no other choice.” He was a “dead soul” in the Soviet Union. (Obituary: “Andrei Tarkovsky, Director and Soviet Émigré Dies at 54, “New York Times, December 30, 1986, accessed December 8, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/1986/andrei-tarkovsky-director-and-soviet- émigré-dies-at -54.html.

102 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH sian spirituality should have been engineered out of his soul. His second film, Andrei Rublev, was approved as the biography of a native genius that saved Russian culture from the Mongol-Tatars. When it was completed, the film instead spoke to the persistence of Orthodox cultural tropes that the Bolsheviks had failed to dismantle.

The Revolution as Seen through Tarkovsky’s Icon: Andrei Rublev Described as a “moving icon” by American film critic J. Hoberman,19 Andrei Rublev was filmed from 1964-1966 at the end of Khrushchev’s cultural Thaw and Brezhnev’s return to Russian nationalism.20 Using techniques of slowing scenes, long-angle shots and limited dialogue, Tarkovsky creates space for the viewer to interpret and derive his own meaning. As a biography of the great artist, the film side shadows Ru- blev’s actual achievements in the sense that we never see him painting in the movie. Instead what we see are the experiences that made him the greatest icon painter in history. In Tarkovsky’s autobiography, Sculpting in Time, he says that An- drei Rublev is a film about time and a return to beginnings. From his intellectual training about the need for unity and Christian brotherhood in the face of the Mongol invasion, Rublev can only create true art after confronting life and all its horrors through his own experience. Accord- ing to Tarkovsky, the theme of Andrei Rublev is that every age is marked by the search for truth and a moral ideal. Unless the artist “touches all its running sores” he cannot express the moral ideal of his time.21 Tarkovsky shows all the “running sores” of society in the 15th century. However, his movie is about hope and spiritual endeavor. Beginning with the peasant who tries to fly and dies for his moment of achievement and beauty, to the end where the nearly miraculous creation of the ring-

19 James L. Hoberman, Insert to Andrei Tarkovsky, Andrei Rublev: The Passion According to Andrei, DVD (The Criterion Collection, 1998). See also, Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 516-517. 20 Catherine Evtuhov and Richard Stites, A History of Russia: Peo- ples, Legends, Events, Forces Since 1800s (Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2004), 450. 21 Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: The Great Russian Filmmaker Discusses His Art, Trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair (Austin: Univer- sity of Texas Press, 1987), 89-90, 168, 208.

103 STUDENT - 2015 - BUCKLEY GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES ing bell resurrects both the Church in Vladimir and Andrei’s purpose as an icon painter. Tarkovksy’s film serves to add the element of time to art by reminding us that the icons that survive today are not only symbolic of the gateway to a transcendent realm, but also to Russia’s cultural past. In the epilogue, Tarkovsky shows images of actual icons, once held by live people in the 15th century. A source of national pride, the Russian style of iconography, came to be typified by Andrei Rublev’s art. Developed during the time of the Mongol invasion, when ancient Russia was cut off from Byzantium, the icon painters developed an “inverse perspective” to symbolize activity “outside of the laws of earthly existence.”22 These icons, as Tarkovsky reminds us, are of a time and place with which people today have a spiritual connection.23 In this sense, matter cannot be dead. This is a strong cultural trope in Russian history—that matter, particularly in the form of the icon, is transcendent—it is a means to communicate with other realms. Early in the Revolution the Bolsheviks sought to undermine the power of the icon. Lenin was quick to define matter as “independent of consciousness, sensation, experience, etc., of humanity; matter is objec- tively real despite what meaning one may attempt to give it.24 Tarkov- sky’s film shows us not only the otherworldly beauty of these surviving icons but also their living power. Without stating it in words or in direct images, Tarkovsky’s movie communicates to the viewer that Russia was not ready for the revolution or Lenin’s attempts to educate the people into a revolutionary consciousness. As a metaphor for Russia, Andrei is described by the Monk Kirill, as lacking awe and faith. “Only with true insight can you grasp its essence.”25 Andrei does not become a great icon painter until he experiences that awe and faith, first in his encounters with the Eastern pagans, the Holy Fool, the suffering of the blinded workers at the hands of the no-

22 Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 299-300. 23 Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: The Great Russian Filmmaker Dis- cusses His Art, 79. 24 V.I. Lenin, “Materialism and Empirio-criticism—Critical Com- ments on a Reactionary Philosophy,” Elizabeth Zelensky’s Course Handout. 25 Tarkovsky, Andrei Rublev: The Passion According to Andrei.

104 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH bleman, and finally the apocalyptic destruction of the Church in Vladi- mir. In the scene where the dead Theophanes appears before Andrei, An- drei questions how long “our mother country” will suffer. Theophanes responds by saying “forever probably” but goes on to tell Andrei that it is his obligation to live between earthly torment and divine forgiveness, and that it is a sin to not paint. For Tarkovsky, this is the role of the artist in Russian society: not to create socialist realist art that does not reflect the truth, but to continually seek truth through faith. In his biography, Tar- kovsky states that art cannot engineer the soul or educate the people. He states, “It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all…. Art only has the capacity, through shock and catharsis, to make the human soul receptive to good.”26 For an artist raised in an atheistic society, this film is rather a remarkable achievement. When the film was completed, Tarkovsky was not allowed to release it in the Soviet Union. With claims that it was too violent and there was too much nudity, at the end of the day the censors could not fail to notice the critique of the revolution that the film represents. It was finally released in 1971 in a shortened version. Tarkovsky himself emigrated to Italy in 1984 and died of lung cancer in 1986.27

The Revolution as Seen Through Bulgakov’s Iconostasis: The Master and Margarita If Andrei Rublev is an icon connecting Russians with their past and their spiritual identity, then The Master and Margarita is the iconostasis connecting all the tropes of Russian culture. By taking us into the fifth dimension, beyond space and time, and connecting our human story with the past, Mikhail Bulgakov wrote a living gateway to Russian culture. Mikhail Bulgakov was known as a playwright in the Soviet Union. Born in 1891 in Kiev, he was the son of a professor of theology and the

26 Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: The Great Russian Filmmaker Dis- cusses His Art, 50. 27 “Andrei Tarkovsky Bio,” accessed December 8, 2014, http://andrei-tarkovsky.com/bio.html. According to this official Tarkov- sky website, there is some evidence that his death was not natural but KGB-facilitated.

105 STUDENT - 2015 - BUCKLEY GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES grandson of Orthodox priests. Like Anton Chekhov, he was trained as a doctor but gave up medicine to become a writer in Moscow in 1921. His first novel, The White Guard, was published in serial form in the journal Rossiya, which ceased to exist before the novel could be published to completion. It was widely criticized for being too sympathetic to counter- revolutionaries. However, in that time of relative artistic freedom, the Moscow Art Theater invited him to dramatize the novel into a play called The Day of the Turbins in 1926.28 By 1929 as artistic freedom became increasingly curtailed, Bulgakov was barred from publication and writing for the stage. In 1930, Bulgakov wrote to the Soviet government stating that his works had no place in the Soviet Union. He declared that the government censors were killing creative thought and destroying Soviet drama; “I regard it my duty as a writer to fight censorship in whatever form and under whatever government it may exist, and to call for freedom of the process…Any writer who tries to prove that he has no need for creative freedom is like a fish publicly declaring that it needs no water.” He wrote that he had become a satirist at a time when true satire was absolutely unthinkable in the Soviet Un- ion. He described himself as a mystical writer, and as a man who regarded the Russian intelligentsia as the best stratum of Russian society. “To me, the impossibility to write is tantamount to being buried alive.” He requested permission to leave the country. However, he went on to say that if he was condemned to silence as a writer in the Soviet Union, then he wanted to be assigned to a job in the theater. Allegedly Stalin himself, a fan of The Day of the Turbins, called Bulgakov and arranged his appointment as the Assistant Director at the Moscow Art Theater. Here he was forced to produce the plays of others for the rest of his life. 29 Begun in late 1928, Bulgakov worked on The Master and Margarita up until his death in 1940. Like the manuscript of his main character, Bulgakov burned it in 1930 but recreated it from memory. Writing in secret, Bulgakov knew it would not be published in his lifetime. When it

28 Mirra Ginsburg, “Introduction,” in Mikhail Afanasevich Bulga- kov, Flight & Bliss: Two Plays Translated by Mirra Ginsburg (New York: New Directions Books, 1985), vii-ix. 29 Ibid.

106 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH was finally published in an abridged form in 1966, it was “electrifying” to the Soviet reading public that had been starved for so long.30 The novel itself is like a triptych tying three stories into one. The first is a satirical treatment of life in Moscow under Soviet rule. This is foregrounded by the appearance of Satan and his retinue who attempt to prove the existence of God through their own presence and actions – to bring God to a Godless society. The second is the story of the beautiful Margarita and a persecuted author, the Master. This story is one of redemption and resurrection through love.31 The last is a completely de- familiarized story of the Passion of Christ. All three are like the doors in the Russian Orthodox iconostasis representing doors to another dimension. Ultimately they all converge to become one story prior to sunrise on Easter Sunday: the connection between man and God and its resurrection through art. In the story of Satan, in the guise of Woland, the absurdity and ills of Soviet society are brought to the forefront. Wanting to observe whether the people of Moscow have changed, his cohorts stage a night of black magic in Moscow’s Variety Theater, in an attempt to observe as many people as possible. In this scene, Woland remarks that the people are still interested in money and have not changed much, but are made worse by the impossible housing situation.32 The housing situation in Moscow is typlified by a certain apartment, Apartment 50, where most of the action in Moscow takes place. Apartment 50 is large and was originally owned by a jeweler’s wife. Because of its desirability, its inhabitants are continually arrested, accused by those who hope to inhabit it next.33 Apartment

30 Richard Pevear, “Introduction” in Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, transl. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Penguin Books; 1997), vii-x. See also, Dana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor, “Biographical Note,” in Mikhail Bulgakov, The Mas- ter and Margarita, trans. Dana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor (New York: Vintage International, 1995), 371-372. 31 Laura D. Weeks, “What I have Written, I Have Written,” in The Master & Margarita: A Critical Companion, ed. Laura D. Weeks (Ev- anston: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 23. 32 Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 122, 126 and 207. 33 Ibid., 73-76.

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50 is a place that inspires evil and it is here that Woland holds his Spring ball. It is also one of the structures destroyed in the apocalypse staged by his compatriots Begemot and Koroviev. What is notable about Bulga- kov’s depiction of Satan is that Woland is not inherently evil. He is clearly sent to Moscow on a mission and, as shown in the scene with Matvei Levi, he does the bidding of Christ and God.34 In the story, Woland metes out justice to those that wrongly accuse. His retinue does not destroy for the sake of destruction but to destroy an unjust foreign currency store that denies hardworking Russian people access to goods;35 sets fire to Griboyedev’s restaurant which caters to an elite group of writers that have no talent; and destroys the apartments where innocents are arrested for the sake of their living spaces. Reminiscent of the Rites of Spring, Satan’s Ball is a pagan rite ending in a sacrifice of the spy Meigert.36 Bulgakov turns Moscow into the gateway to Hell. In the background is a simple and straightforward love story of a suffering artist and the woman who would save and protect him. Some consider it to be autobiographical and an homage to Bulgakov’s wife. 37 Per- haps both, but the story of Margarita is also reminiscent of the Holy Vir- gin’s Descent into Hell. Written in the 12th century, it represents one of the most powerful tropes in Russian cultural history: the Virgin as merci- ful mother. In the story, the Virgin asked the Archangel Michael to show her the tormented souls in Hell. As she encounters the souls, she intercedes with God and Christ to show them mercy. Margarita descends into Hell in the form of Satan’s Ball and intercedes on behalf of Frieda,38 tor- tured for eternity for murdering the child she could not support. Margari- ta also asks for Woland’s help in freeing the Master and Pontius Pilate.39 At the end it is Christ who decides the fate of both Pontius Pilate and the Master.40 However, unlike the Virgin’s descent, Margarita’s descent is

34 Ibid., 360-361. 35 Ibid., 347-351. 36 Ibid., 262-275. 37 Weeks, “What I have Written, I Have Written,” 13. 38 Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 282-284. 39 Ibid., 284, 381-382. 40 Ibid., 382.

108 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH more akin to the pagan rites as captured in Stravinsky’s and Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring. This is yet another nexus with the Russian cultural past. The final story is that of the novel about Pontius Pilate. Narrated al- ternatively by Woland, the poet Ivan Bezdomnyi, and by Margarita’s reading of the manuscript, it is the ultimate defamiliarization of a story familiar to the entire Christian-Judeo world. By use of his name in Ara- maic, Yeshua Ha-Nosri, Bulgakov creates a fictional character out of Christ but never once leads us to doubt that Christ existed as an actual person. By changing the details of the basic story, Bulgakov forces us to focus on the fundamental meaning of Christ’s existence—as an interme- diary to God and the spiritual realm. In this sense, the story of Pontius Pilate and Ha Nosri is like the Holy Door of the iconostasis—opened for rare, sacred moments. It is through this story that “accounts are settled” 41 in the novel and faith in divine forgiveness is rediscovered. Because the details of the story are so foreign, one cannot be drawn into a debate about its authenticity, or the sequence of events. Instead one must focus on Ha-Nosri’s message: cowardice is the worst sin, but even this can be forgiven.42 Bulgakov’s message is clear: because of fear or self-interest, the Russian people did not stand against the Bolsheviks to protect their rights to speech, food and freedom of expression. Just as Margarita had to say “yes” to descend into Hell and serve as Woland’s hostess, so must man say “no” if he does not accept the Revolution. However, Bulgakov’s message, like Tarkovsky’s also holds out the hope of redemption: through love, as represented by Margarita and Ha-Nosri. If Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev is a touchstone to another realm; then The Master and Margarita takes us directly into that realm. It takes us into a space where Earth, heaven and hell all exist on the same plane and in the same time. Just as Rublev’s icons have an inverse perspective to draw our attention to a spiritual-beyond, Bulgakov’s defamiliarization of Satan, the Passion of Christ, the Rites of Spring, and Moscow itself are intended to do the same. Whereas Tarkovsky slows time to connect with the past; Bulgakov twists time on itself to point us back to where we need to be. 43 And in case we lose our way, Bulgakov sprinkles the novel with

41 Ibid., 380. 42 Ibid., 305, 319. 43 David M. Bethea, “History as Hippodrome: The Apocalyptic Horse and Rider,” in The Master and Margarita: A Critical Companion, 109 STUDENT - 2015 - BUCKLEY GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES breadcrumbs of Russian culture. Throughout the novel he references other key writers or works of art. For example, his descriptions of the scenes between Pontius Pilate and Ha-Nosri call to mind Nikolai Ge’s painting, “What is Truth,” depicting Christ stepping out of the sun before Pilate,44 or his reference to Anna Karenina, when he notes “Everything was confusion in the Oblonsky home” in describing the activities in Apartment 50.45 Perhaps the most obvious is when Begemot and Koroviev declare that Dostoyevsky is immortal and does not need a badge to identify himself as a writer.46 In this way, Bulgakov answers Akhmatova’s call to be the “voice of memory.”47 Both Bulgakov and Tarkovsky, through their works, demonstrated that the Bolshevik Revolution was founded on a false premise. Based on the concept that a revolutionary consciousness could be created and a new culture imposed, Lenin and later Stalin dismantled the underpinnings of Russian culture to consolidate power and educate the people to a new identity. The resurrection of Bulgakov’s work and its wide acceptance showed that the old identity was very much alive. Tarkovsky’s work, developed with no first-hand experience of Orthodoxy, demonstrates how deeply rooted in the Russian psyche religious tropes are. Alexander Herzen wrote in his memoirs almost two hundred years ago:

In his true works the poet and artist is always national. Whatever he does, whatever aim or idea he may have in a work, he will always express, whether he wants to or not, some element of the national character; and he

ed. Laura D. Weeks (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 122-142. 44 Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 24-25. 45 Ibid., 200. 46 Ibid., 354. 47 Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 441.

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will express it more deeply and vividly than national history itself.48

Tolstoy as a Mirror of the Revolution The role of the artist in Russian society is perhaps the most deeply ingrained of all the tropes in Russian culture. Expressed by Tolstoy in 1896 and rephrased by Tarkovsky almost a hundred years later, the role of the artist is pervasive throughout Russian culture. However, Tolstoy, ex- communicated from the Church, demonstrated that Russian spirituality is not tied to the Church. Even by destroying the Churches and the clergy, the Soviet Revolution could not destroy Russian spirituality. Tolstoy believed that God existed outside of the Church in every person through prayer. He came to embody Russian religious experience outside of the Church. For Tolstoy, Christ was an actual person who still represents the bridge to eternal life. Faith in the infinite is at the heart of man’s finite purpose in life.49 The role of art then was a means of inter- connectedness among individuals and between man and God. As early as 1908 Lenin wrote an essay describing Tolstoy as the “mirror of the Rus- sian Revolution.” Lenin described Tolstoy as a flawed reflection mirror- ing the contradictions in Russian society that made Revolution possible. However, Lenin noted that Tolstoy could not understand the complexity of the Revolution.50 Lenin was correct in describing Tolstoy as a mirror, but the image he was reflecting was not the correctness of the revolution but the impossibility of imposing a Marxist revolution on Russia. As both Bulgakov and Tarkovsky have shown us, Heaven cannot exist without Hell; light cannot exist without shadow, thus Utopia on earth is not possible—this is the fallacy of the Communist Revolution. The Bolsheviks were not incorrect in portraying the Revolution as a singular moment in time; but as artistic narratives have shown, it was an aberrant moment in time.

48 Alexander Herzen, “My Past and Thoughts,” in Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: The Great Russian Filmmaker Discusses His Art, 166. 49 Zelensky, Class Notes, November 4, 2014. 50 V.I. Lenin, “Tolstoy as the Mirror of the Russian Revolution,” in Lenin Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973) Vol.15, 202-209. Reprinted in the Marxists Internet Archive, accessed December 8, 2014, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/sep/11.html.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Andrei Tarkovsky.” Wikipedia, Accessed December 8, 2014, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Tarkovsky. “Andrei Tarkovsky Bio.” Accessed December 8, 2014, http://andrei- tarkovsky.com/bio.html. Bethea, David M. “History as Hippodrome: The Apocalyptic Horse and Rider.” In The Master & Margarita: A Critical Companion. Edited by Laura D. Weeks. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1996, 122-142. Brown, Edward J. Russian Literature Since the Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982. Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Penguin Books, 1997. Burgin, Dana, and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor. “Biographical Note.” In Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita. Translated by Dana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor. New York: Vintage Inter- national, 1995. Evtuhov, Catherine, and Richard Stites. A History of Russian: Peoples, Legends, Events, Forces Since 1800s. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2004. Figes, Orlando. A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891- 1924. New York: Penguin Books, 1996. Figes, Orlando. Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. New York: Picador, 2002. Figes, Orlando, and Boris Kolonitskii. Interpreting the Russian Revolu- tion: The Language and Symbols of 1917. New Haven: Yale Univer- sity Press, 1999. Ginsburg, Mirra, “Introduction.” In Mikhail Afanasevich Bulgakov, Flight & Bliss: Two Plays Translated by Mirra Ginsburg. New York: New Directions Books, 1985. Lenin, V.I. “Materialism and Empirio-criticism—Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy.” In Elizabeth, Zelensky, “LSHV-436-01:

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Russian History and Culture Through Literature and Film” (Class Notes and Handouts). Georgetown University, Fall, 2014. Lenin, V.I. “Tolstoy as the Mirror of the Russian Revolution.” In Lenin Collected Works. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973, Volume 15. Accessed December 8. 2014. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/sep/11.html. Lunacharskii, Anatolii. “The Tasks of the State Cinema in the RSRSR, 1919.” In The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Docu- ments. Edited by Richard Taylor and Ian Christie. Cambridge: Har- vard University Press, 1988, 22-23. Obituary: “Andrei Tarkovsky, Director and Soviet Émigré Dies at 54.” New York Times, December 30, 1986. Accessed December 8, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/1986/andrei-tarkovsky-director-and-soviet- émigré-dies-at -54.html. Tarkovsky, Andrei. Andrei Rublev: The Passion According to Andrei. DVD, The Criterion Collection, 1998. Tarkovsky, Andrei, Sculpting in Time: The Great Russian Filmmaker Discusses His Art. Translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair. Austin: Univer- sity of Texas Press, 1987. Tolstoy, Leo, “What is Art” (excerpts), Chapter Five. Accessed October 26, 2014. http://www.csulb.edu/~jvancamp/361r14.html. Chapter Sixteen. Accessed October 26, 2014. https://catalog.library.georgetown.edu/articles/4075162.13831/1. PDF. Chapter Seventeen. Accessed October 26, 2014. https://catalog.library.georgetown.edu/articles/4075163.13832/1. PDF. Chapter Twenty. Accessed October 26, 2014. https://catalog.library.georgetown.edu/articles/4075164.13833/1. PDF. Von Geldern, James. Bolshevik Festivals, 1919-1920. Berkeley: Univer- sity of California Press, 1993. Weeks, Laura D. “What I have Written, I Have Written.” In The Master & Margarita: A Critical Companion. Edited by Laura D. Weeks. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996. Zelensky, Elizabeth. “LSHV-436-01: Russian History and Culture through Literature and Film” (Class Notes and Handouts), Georgetown University, Fall, 2014.

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Personalizing Medicine and Protecting Health Data: An Ethical Analysis

by William A. Cessato

Written for Course: Global Bioethics Professor: Gladys White, Ph.D. Spring 2015

William Cessato is senior director of communications and strategic initiatives at Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies. He currently is a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies candidate at Georgetown University, where he also received his Bachelor of Arts in English with a minor in theology.

— ∞ —

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Author’s Note: This analysis responds to a course writing assignment in which students were asked to draft a fictional briefing memo to a public official about a current bioethics issue with global implications. The following briefing, written to the mayor of the District of Columbia, is dated March 24, 2015. This assignment has not been updated to reflect information developments that have occurred since the March due date.

As you continue progressing through the first few months in your new role as mayor, I thought it would be important to provide some background information on two interrelated items that have been in the news media this winter: personalized or precision medicine and health data security. Given your leadership of a global city with, according to the US Census Bureau, approximately 659,000 people (“State & County QuickFacts” 2015)—about 14 percent of whom report not being born a United States citizen (“Foreign-Born Persons” n.d.)—and your oversight of the city’s Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, which includes the city’s Department of Health (n.d.), I thought this information would be particularly pertinent. As you know, the city’s health department seeks to “…promote and protect the health, safety and quality of life of residents, visitors and those doing business in the District of Columbia” through access to resources, community collaborations, education, disease and injury control and prevention, and risk identification (n.d.). Considering the interest the residents of the District of Columbia might have in these current and related issues in the health and science spheres, please review, when you have the opportunity, the following overview of personalized or precision medicine efforts, update on recent health data security issues, discussion of their relationship with each another, analysis of related ethical issues, and brief concluding recommendations about a way forward for this administration.

Personalized or ‘Precision’ Medicine Regarding personalized or precision medicine, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the big news about twelve years ago that the human genome had been sequenced. The National Human Genome Re- search Institute (NHGRI) at the NIH notes, “In April 2003, NHGRI celebrated the historic culmination of one of the most important scientific projects in history: the sequencing of the human genome” (NHGRI 2013). On January 30, 2015, President Barack Obama delivered an address in the East Room of the White House in which he stated that the

116 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH first human genome sequencing cost about $100 million. Now, he said, it costs about $2,000 (US President 2015). His comments formed a part of a larger address in which he described his precision medicine proposal:

And that’s why we’re here today. Because something called precision medicine—in some cases, people call it personalized medicine—gives us one of the greatest opportunities for new medical breakthroughs that we have ever seen. Doctors have always recognized that every patient is unique, and doctors have always tried to tailor their treatments as best they can to individuals. You can match a blood transfusion to a blood type. That was an important discovery. What if matching a cancer cure to our genetic code was just as easy, just as standard? What if figuring out the right dose of medicine was as simple as taking our temperature? (Ibid.)

The president then highlighted his optimistic view of this approach, asserting, “[a]nd that’s the promise of precision medicine: delivering the right treatments, at the right time, every time, to the right person” (Ibid.). According to a fact sheet produced by the White House, the $215-million initiative, a part of the president’s 2016 budget proposal, includes $130 million aimed at forming a group of a million or more volunteers to participate in related research; $70 million for specific genomic research on cancer; $10 million for expertise cultivation, database development, and regulatory infrastructure; and $5 million for privacy and data security (2015). (n.b., The preceding list of outcomes is not exhaustive.) With respect to individuals who volunteer, the fact sheet puts forth, “Partici- pants will be involved in the design of the Initiative and will have the opportunity to contribute diverse sources of data—including medical records; profiles of the patient’s genes, metabolites (chemical makeup), and microorganisms in and on the body; environmental and lifestyle data; patient-generated information; and personal device and sensor data. Pri- vacy will be rigorously protected” (Ibid). In summary, building upon the past 12 years of scientific advances, the president is now proposing further investment in the area of precision medicine with the apparent goal of generating more data from the public and developing targeted treatments based upon human health records and genomic research—all the while seeking to protect the public’s private information.

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Health Data Heists As you know, the District of Columbia also works to protect the confidentiality of individuals with respect to health-related information. For example, the city’s regulations state that hospitals must maintain the confidentiality of medical records, which can only be viewed by authorized individuals. Patients or their designated representatives must give consent before a record can be released. Additionally, “[i]n order to ensure the patient’s right of confidentiality, medical records are destroyed or disposed of by shredding, incineration, electronic deletion, or another equally effective protective measure” (Record Keeping Requirements 2008, no. 22- B2030). This issue of protecting health data, including information related to a person’s genome, has taken on added urgency, particularly with recent media reports of cyber-security breaches in the health care sector. One day before President Obama’s speech on precision medicine, Anthem, which is the second largest health insurer in the United States according to the Washington Post, discovered a data breach that had compromised the records of 80 million of the company’s current and former members and employees (Harwell and Nakashima 2015). While health records and credit card numbers were not stolen in this incident, which the attack investigators believe originated with Chinese hackers, the cyber-thieves did get away with information such as Social Security numbers and street addresses (Ibid.). The reporters, citing experts, note that things could be worse the next time, especially given apparent vulnerabilities with data systems:

Security experts said health care has become one of the ripest targets for hackers because of its vast stores of lucrative financial and medical information. Health insurers and hospitals, they added, have often struggled to mount the kinds of defenses used by large financial or retail companies, leaving key medical information vulnerable. While medical records, such as treatment details or test results, were not compromised in what Anthem called ‘a very sophisticated attack,’ experts say the breach underlines the worry- ing potential for hackers to steal private health data that is val- ued on the black market as tools for extortion, fraud or identity theft. Medical information could be exploited, for example, to file false insurance claims and buy prescription drugs, and at-

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tackers could extort cash from policyholders desperate to keep their private medical data under wraps. (Ibid.)

Additionally, just last week, according to CBS News, Premera Blue Cross, a health insurance company reported that it had been hacked in January—an incident that may impact about 11 million people and may have exposed information ranging from names and Social Security numbers, to clinical and bank account information (CBS News 2015). There- fore, while the District may have a regulation on the books to require hospitals to protect patient data, it remains unclear—in light of recent news and analysis about data breaches in the health sector—that systems in the health care environment are strong enough to withstand cyber- invasions from all over the globe. As more and more individuals begin sharing more and more granular-level health data about themselves, such as President Obama’s call for a million or more volunteers for genome- related research vis-à-vis precision medicine, the risk for individual harm increases considerably. Within this evolving landscape, it is important for you to know that, in addition to the president’s proposed initiative, commercial enterprises offer services to the public that allow individuals to have their deoxyri- bonucleic acid (DNA) sequenced. For example, the company 23andMe seeks to “... help people access, understand and benefit from the human genome” (“Our Mission” 2015) with price tags ranging from $99 in the United States, including the District of Columbia (“Welcome” 2015a), and $199 in Canada (“Welcome” 2015b), to £125 in the United Kingdom (“Welcome” 2015c). The company ships to 56 counties and territories (“What Countries Do You Ship To?” 2015). The Canadian and UK por- tals note that customers can “[f]ind out about your inherited risk factors and how you might respond to certain medications” (“Welcome” 2015b, 2015c) whereas the US portal “provides ancestry-related genetic reports and uninterpreted raw genetic data” (“Welcome” 2015a). The US portal notes that 23andMe will continue providing health-related results to customers who purchased the service before November 22, 2013. In light of a Food and Drug Administration compliance letter, the organization will offer the ancestry and raw genetic reports to all those who bought the service on or after that date. “At this time, we do not know the timeline as to which health reports might be available in the future or when they might be available,” 23andMe explains (“Status of Our Health-Related Genetic Reports” 2015). To participate in any of these services, consumers buy a DNA kit, register a bar code, and mail in a saliva sample for

119 STUDENT - 2015 - CESSATO GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES processing in the laboratory (“How It Works” 2015). Regarding privacy, the company states, “Your personalized 23andMe web account provides secure and easy access to your information, with multiple levels of en- cryption and security protocols protecting your personal information” (Ibid.). In addition to these direct-to-consumer services, 23andMe allows users to opt-in to being a part of research during the sign-up process, and users can opt-out whenever they choose. The company reveals that a willing participant contributes, on average, to more than 230 studies. Some of this research receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, and the overall research enterprise is “... governed by an Institu- tional Review Board (IRB)” (“Research” 2015). On a different page within the company’s website, 23andMe showcases the large number of people who have decided to participate in research; its research portal database includes “...650,000 genotyped individuals with more than 225M phenotypic data points, including demographic, clinical, family history information and more” (“Power in Numbers” 2015). The promise of personalized medicine is made evident within the 23andMe site with the company claiming, “We believe DNA can provide insight into why some people are more likely to get a disease than others. We want to understand, through genetics, why people respond differently to disease treatment options and drugs” (“Research” 2015). The key takeaway thus far is that many people globally are willingly having their genomes sequenced for personal use and/or participation in research studies. Options exist in the private and public spheres for such activity. While that may serve a laudable goal in the United States, including the District of Columbia, and around the world in terms of advancing research into the mysteries of the genome and personalizing medicine, concerns around the security of health data—given the general fact that the stored information carries the incredible burden of being an individual’s unique bodily blueprint, as well as recent examples of breaches in the health sector—must be considered.

At a Crossroads: Ethical Viewpoints The convergence of the two issues outlined so far in this memo (i.e., personalized medicine and health data security) raises important ethical matters that you, in light of your leadership role of the city, might consider as you seek to serve the residents. Various scholars have written about some related concerns.

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For example, Kelly A. McClellan, Denise Avard, Jacques Simard, and Bertha M. Knoppers elaborate on personalized medicine and its ability to exacerbate unequal access to health care in the European Journal of Human Genetics. Specifically the authors look at drawbacks of genetic risk prediction models for breast cancer:

Limitations with respect to age, race, and underlying variability across breast cancer genetic risk prediction models, as well as limitations arising during their implementation, raise the possibility that some populations are excluded, or are sent for super- fluous testing, not as a result of actual medical risk, but as a result of inequities arising from the limitations inherent to the models themselves or through the inadequate collection of family history. (McClellan et al. 2013, 145)

The authors reveal that a model’s accuracy and racial validity may be influenced by, for instance, a patient’s age or racial background, and there seems to be some misunderstanding about which model, among the more than twelve that are in use, presents the most accurate risk assess- ment. Additionally, given that assessments utilize family history, the authors note that a person’s “[o]lder age, lower education, and membership in a minority group” may negatively impact her reporting of accurate “... personal and family history of cancer” (Ibid., 144-145). This difficult situation may be compounded by health care providers’ lack of certainty in terms of family history collection procedures (Ibid., 145). Specifically related to ethics, they write, “Thus, if new personalized medicine genetic technologies have the effect of inequitably excluding individuals, thereby becoming vehicles through which disparities are perpetuated, we can ask whether the decision to rely on information from them is ethical, in light of the significant public investment underlying their development” (Ibid., 146). Another relevant manuscript—written by Kimberly Shoenbill, Nor- man Fost, Umberto Tachinardi, and Eneida A. Mendonca and appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association—digs into the ethics surrounding the inclusion of genetic data in electronic health records (EHRs). They write:

When considering incorporation of genetic data into EHRs, one must realize that as analytical validity, clinical validity, and utility decline, potential risks can outweigh potential benefits. Data

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that are inaccurate, unreliable and/or not useful in guiding care have a low likelihood of improving patients’ lives but may still cause harm .... Health information technology (HIT) professionals play a key role in protecting against these harms using effective data security and data governance. By ensuring high security (access management) in the use, storage and sharing of genetic data, the risk of confidentiality breach can be minimized. This can lessen other risks such as stigmatization, discrimination and family conflict. (Shoenbill et al. 2014, 172-173)

From an ethical standpoint, they claim that the inclusion of a person’s genetic information in his electronic health record must “... maximize good and minimize harm while respecting people as autonomous beings with a right to make their own decisions” (Ibid., 177). Key issues, they conclude, include data standardization to support interpretation of genetic information in the electronic records, information security measures, and tools geared toward patient consent and data interpretation among providers (Ibid., 177-178). So while genetic research and personalized medicine may have the ability to tailor an individual’s treatments and improve health care, these scholarly articles highlight some real-time ethical concerns and related examples of human suffering, ranging from health disparity perpetuation arising from flawed genetic risk modeling to the way a data breach involving someone’s genetic code may result in unwanted stigma or dis- criminatory practices. You will note that the latter author group discusses the idea of maximizing benefit and minimizing harm. In ethics, this goal falls under the umbrella of utilitarian theory. As outlined by bioethicists Tom L. Beauchamp and Jeffrey P. Kahn in Contemporary Issues in Bio- ethics, this way of proceeding supports the idea that “... an action or practice is right (when compared to any alternative action or practice) if it leads to the greatest possible balance of good consequences or to the least possible balance of bad consequences in the world as a whole” (Beau- champ and Kahn 2014, 13). They add, “The point of the institution of morality, [utilitarians] insist, is to promote human welfare by minimizing harms and maximizing benefits ...” (Ibid.). This approach, which focuses on the positive and negative outcomes of an action, is different than the duty-oriented theory of German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who deals with the genesis of an action. Beauchamp and Kahn write:

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Kant tries to establish the ultimate basis for the validity of moral rules in pure reason, not in intuition, conscience, or utility. He thinks all considerations of utility and self-interest morally un- important, because the moral worth of an agent’s action depends exclusively on the moral acceptability of the rule on the basis of which the person is acting. An action has moral worth only when performed by an agent who possesses a good will, and a person has a good will only if moral duty based on a universally valid rule is the sole motive for the action. Morality, then, provides a rational framework of principles and rules that constrain and guide everyone, without regard to their personal goals and interests. (Beauchamp and Kahn 2014, 16)

In relationship to the issue at hand, specifically human genome mapping, personalized medicine, and health data security, both theoretical models appear useful. Encouraging people to participate in genomics research to yield better precision medicine techniques may contribute to a maximized level of good for society at large. However, those offering such services, ranging from the federal government and commercial organizations, to a local health provider, have an inescapable duty to do all they can to protect individuals from suffering harms such as compromised genetic data. Adopting an approach that supports both a duty- bound responsibility to protect persons and a framework that seeks to maximize societal benefit from the participation of those persons provides a strong ethical foundation from which to encounter and respond to this emerging area in the biomedical sphere.

Recommendations and Conclusions As you consider these issues, which have local, national, and global reach in terms of public participation and potential harms, and their ethical implications, it may be helpful for you to pursue a few different options. One potential pathway involves working alongside the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services and the Department of Health to create a robust education campaign to give as much information to the residents of the District of Columbia about the benefits and risks of sharing their genomic information via commercial or governmental initiatives and to collaborate with health systems within the jurisdic- tion to ensure that necessary data security measures are in place to protect patients’ genomic information. These steps would go a long way in

123 STUDENT - 2015 - CESSATO GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES supporting key normative principles in the ethics field, as outlined by Beauchamp and Kahn, specifically respect for autonomy, which “... provides the basis for the right to make decisions ...” (Ibid., 23); beneficence and non-maleficence, or doing good and not causing harm (Ibid., 25); and justice, or the idea that equal cases or situations should be treated in an equal manner (Ibid., 26). By giving people clear information upon which to make a decision about involvement in genomic testing, including all of the known benefits and risks—from interpretation limitations to data risks, you would be heading in the right direction to support their informed decision-making abilities, to promote good and limit bad consequences, and to ensure that all are given equal opportunity to participate or to choose to avoid taking part. A second path might involve working with health leaders (e.g., hospital executives and other local businesses that handle health data) to ensure that appropriate data security mechanisms are in place to handle exceptionally confidential information like a human being’s genome map. Because there may be consid- erable cost associated with heightened security measures, you might consider grant award funding to help support organizations that may wish to promote the best possible outcomes vis-à-vis data security implementation, but don’t have the financial resources to do so. To conclude and summarize, individuals locally, nationally, and globally have growing opportunities to share personal genetic information—either via federally sponsored initiatives or commercial enterprises. At the same time, alarm bells, so to speak, are ringing about the vulnerability of health data systems. This document has outlined these interrelated issues and provided brief recommendations, grounded in ethical analysis, for you to contemplate as you set an agenda for this administration, particularly related to health services. Ultimately, adopting the steps described above may help underscore your commitment to supporting humanity’s ability to flourish in an age of precision medicine.

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REFERENCE LIST

23andMe. 2015. “How It Works.” Accessed February 15, 2015. https://www.23andme.com/howitworks. ———. 2015. “Our Mission.” Accessed February 15, 2015. https://www.23andme.com/about. ———. 2015. “Power in Numbers.” Accessed February 15, 2015. https://www.23andme.com/23andMeResearchPortal. ———. 2015. “Research.” Accessed February 15, 2015. https://www.23andme.com/research. ———. 2015. “Status of Our Health-Related Genetic Reports.” Accessed March 5, 2015. https://www.23andme.com/health. ———. 2015a. “Welcome.” Accessed March 5, 2015. https://www.23andme.com. ———. 2015b. “Welcome.” Accessed March 5, 2015. https://www.23andme.com/en-ca/. ———. 2015c. “Welcome.” Accessed March 5, 2015. https://www.23andme.com/en-gb. ———. 2015. “What Countries Do You Ship To?” Accessed February 15, 2015. https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en- us/articles/202907910-What-countries-do-you-ship-to. Beauchamp, Tom L., and Jeffrey P. Kahn. 2014. “Ethical Theory and Bioethics.” In Contemporary Issues in Bioethics. 8th ed., edited by Tom L. Beauchamp, LeRoy Walters, Jeffrey P. Kahn, and Anna C. Mastroianni, 1-35. Boston: Wadsworth. CBS News. 2015. “Health Insurer Premera Hit By ‘Sophisticated At- tack.’” March 17. Accessed March 18, 2015. http://www.cbsnews. com/news/health-insurer-premera-hit-by-sophisticated-cyberattack. Department of Health. n.d. “About DOH.” Accessed February 14, 2015. http://doh.dc.gov/page/about-doh. Harwell, Drew, and Ellen Nakashima. 2015. “China Suspected in Major Hacking of Health Insurer.” Washington Post. February 5. Accessed February 14, 2015. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ economy/investigators-suspect-china-may-be-responsible-for-hack-

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of-anthem/2015/02/05/25fbb36e-ad56-11e4-9c91-e9d2f9fde644_ story.html. McClellan, Kelly A., Denise Avard, Jacques Simard, and Bartha M. Knoppers. 2013. “Personalized Medicine and Access to Health Care: Potential for Inequitable Access?” European Journal of Hu- man Genetics 21, no. 2: 143-147. National Human Genome Research Institute. 2013. “50 Years of DNA: From Double Helix to Health: A Celebration of the Genome.” Ac- cessed February 14, 2015. http://www.genome.gov/10005139. Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services. n.d. “DMHHS Agencies and Boards.” Accessed February 14, 2015. http://dmhhs.dc.gov/page/dmhhs-agencies-and-boards. Record Keeping Requirements. 2008. D.C. Municipal Regulations and D.C. Register, ch. 22-B20, no. 22-B2030 (2008). Accessed February 14, 2015. http://www.dcregs.dc.gov/Gateway/RuleHome.aspx? RuleNumber=22-B2030. Shoenbill, Kimberly, Norman Fost, Umberto Tachinardi, and Eneida A. Mendonca. 2014. “Genetic Data and Electronic Health Records: A Discussion of Ethical, Logistical and Technological Considerations.” Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 21, no. 1 (January): 171-180. US Census Bureau. 2015. “Foreign-Born Persons.” Accessed March 5, 2015. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_POP645213.htm. US Census Bureau. 2015. “State & County QuickFacts: District of Co- lumbia.” Accessed February 14, 2015. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/11000.html. US President. 2015. “Remarks on Precision Medicine.” Daily Compila- tion of Presidential Documents. Accessed February 14, 2015. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-201500064/html/DCPD- 201500064.htm. White House. 2015. “FACT SHEET: President Obama’s Precision Medi- cine Initiative.” Accessed February 14, 2015. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/30/fact-sheet- president-obama-s-precision-medicine-initiative.

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Humanity Needs the Humanities

by Alicia Tenuta Cohen, MALS ’15

Written for Course: Theological Issues in 20th and 21st Century Fiction Professor: William J. O’Brien Spring 2015

Alicia Tenuta Cohen majored in History and English Literature and minored in Political Science as an undergraduate. She moved to Washington, DC, after college where she worked for the Environmental Protec- tion Agency and The White House. Ms. Cohen completed her MALS at Georgetown with a focus in ancient civilizations in May, 2015. She currently teaches at the Connelly School of the Holy Child in Potomac, MD. Ms. Cohen resides in Maryland with her husband, Dave, who is the Press Secretary for Resources for the Future, and they have two sons, Nick and Jon, who are in college.

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Modern science and even not-so-modern science is and always has been an integral part of human existence, or more specifically, human beings’ ability to subsist. The reading of the stars, especially the sun, understanding crop rotation and nutrients from the earth’s soil, harnessing the power of the wind or comprehending germs and their invincible need to propa- gate could all be considered critical scientific discoveries. In fact, without such discoveries, mankind might not have lasted thus far. And scientific breakthroughs continue on a daily basis. What would Copernicus think of NASA’s space program today or what would Saint Jerome do with all of those years in the desert after Siri translated his Bible for him in less than a day? Science is a wonderful and fascinating field. The push, however, for Science and Math programs today overwhelm the availability of the more traditional Humanities classes in American colleges and universities. Pulitzer Prize winning author, professor at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and consummate reader Marilynne Robinson conveys her thoughts on the vital role Humanities classes play in fostering intellectually and emotionally sound graduates ready to embark upon the true commencement of their educations: life. “We have a society increasingly defined by economics…so-called rational choice economics, which as- sumes that we will all find the shortest way to the reward” (Robinson 2013, 5). Administrators, donors and financial custodians of today’s universities often and at times, vociferously, wonder “what do these liberal arts classes have to do with the business world. How will Pottery 101 get ‘Johnny’ a job”? And with this mindset, how indeed would a student get a mechanical, mathematical or marketing positon with an expertise in pottery glazes? But is this “Johnny” or “Josie” going to a trade school to hone a specific skill for a lifetime of work? Or is this student spending four years at a university to learn a lifetime’s share of opportunities? Robinson states, “If we let our universities die back to corporate labora- tories and trade schools, we’ll have done something quieter and vastly more destructive” than smashing Ming vases by denouncing the past in the name of progress. “We are in the process of disabling our (Ameri- ca’s) most distinctive achievement – our educational system” (Robinson 2013, 160). The understanding of the human condition is, of course, a life-long pursuit. The more a person is exposed to various events, emotions, human frailties, the more prepared that person could be when thrust into a complicated, ever-changing adult world. At times it is scary, at times it is monotonous, and at times life may just seem pointless. A well-rounded

128 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH education can provide a young person with the tools to forge through these challenges. Traditionally, a variety of Liberal Arts/ Humanities classes were required in order to earn a college degree, even (or especially) when the student was a Chemical-Engineering major or any type of Science or Math major. A recent trend has altered the academic arena to arrange it more like a training ground for the workers of the world. Rob- inson caustically comments “that an extraterrestrial might think we had actually lost the Cold War” (Robinson 2013, 24). College is not supposed to be a means to an end; it is the means to the very beginning. A solid Humanities curriculum must not ever be overlooked or underestimated. Reading, discussing, analyzing facets of human life is how to be a part of life. The Humanities unveil a world with choices, a world filled with meaning and a chance to find hope and redemption when all could seem lost. CHOICES: A critical component to the vital role Humanities play in a person’s life revolves around the understanding of personal choices. It is in the making of life’s choices; it is in the making of life’s daily choices. Not just the “should I move to the country or to the city” sort of choices, but how to choose the way to live. How to choose the way to respond to daily challenges and life-long impediments. Everything in life is a choice. Marilynne Robinson begins the first page of her book, Gile- ad, with the line “there are many ways to live a good life” (Robinson 2006, 3). Her character writing this line is not referring to parties, cars, Vegas, country-life or blue chip stocks. He, the aging Reverend Ames, is writing a heartfelt paternal memoir/parable/sermon for his young son to read and re-read in future years. Rev. Ames describes his own life’s choices that he made given the circumstances with which fate endowed him. Given that every person who has ever existed has been dealt a hand, it is the responsibility of each person to the play that hand as fairly and competently as possible. Rev. Ames, although worried about not being alive long enough to invoke paternal wisdom as his son matures, was fortunate in that he had the experience and time to reflect on his own life’s challenges and responses in a way that a younger father would have not yet experienced. Time to read, to engage with others, to observe, to absorb, these tools are gifts that the Humanities teach people. Why is classic literature taught and read? Because the classics relate to the human condition, regardless of era, epoch, culture, habitat, or religion of a people. Epochs end, wars end, but people do not. Classics touch the heart of a reader in a way that helps him live or at least choose how to live.

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T.S. Eliot is a writer/poet/ playwright so popular in the 21st Century that every teenager since the publication of “The Wasteland” could recite a line or at least hum a tune to the eternally popular rock-n-roll song made famous by “The Who,” entitled “Teen-Age Wasteland.” But more than an icon, T.S. Eliot’s writings skewer straight to the heart of humanity. In his play, “The Cocktail Party,” Eliot subtly conveys the choices his characters make throughout the play by their frivolous dialogues or pressing concerns or ostensible priorities. This could be read as a de- pressing play or an enlightening play. It is the choice of the reader. It is no accident that the play’s title is not just a party, an often superficial gathering of faces and attire, but it is specifically a cocktail party. Liba- tions alleviate whatever ails a character and blurs what might be too difficult to see. How fitting that Reilly, a sobering figure, refuses a cocktail at the party’s closing and requests a glass of water (Eliot 1950, 171). One of Eliot’s themes in this drama was how a character could choose to see himself. Would he use a clear head, like Reilly, or would he try to see himself through the tipsy whims of society’s eyes. Cocktails can only cloud one’s own realizations of life’s limitations, or perhaps even life’s possibilities. To see the sky as partly sunny is a choice. To bemoan the sky as partly cloudy is another choice. While using metaphoric levity, Alex declares, “Ah, but that’s my special gift- concocting a toothsome meal out of nothing. Any scraps you have will do” (Eliot 1950, 41). Such is an apt metaphor for managing life on life’s terms. What Alex found in the kitchen, he used as best he could, not to mention, choosing to emote a positive attitude while slicing and dicing to his heart’s content. But Celia and Reilly have a more serious discussion about the human condition later in the play. Reilly’s “treatment” of Celia’s condition could be the salve for every human. Use courage and make a choice based solely upon one’s own “vision of something,” as Celia put it (Eliot 1950, 140). Celia honestly chooses her way of life, and even by suffering a brutal death by crucifixion, she still had as “happy” a death as one could accept (Eliot 1950, 183-184). This may seem like an odd concept to a younger reader, but as one ages and further understands the prickly ruminations that can assault one’s conscience while on the cusp of death, the person who ex- pires with acceptance has been given one last gift. Understanding that every person has choices in his or her life, no matter how minor or major, grants a splendid weightlessness to life’s massive burdens. This tranquili- ty can be found through reading the thoughts and trials of others and seeing how they coped with a similar burden. Being human is not simply existing; it is actively choosing how to live. [A moving end to The Life of

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Pi occurred when Pi softly wept because the Japanese Transport Officials chose to believe (Martel 2003, 317).] MEANING OF LIFE: In addition to bringing freedom through choices in life, the study of the Humanities, not just a few introductory classes, but the life-long thirst for the Humanities, can also foster a greater understanding to the age-old question, “What does life mean?” “ What does it truly mean?” “What does any of it mean?” In her pithy book of essays, Marilynne Robinson sarcastically impales a science article which refers to “pre-human culture and technology “(Robinson 2013,155). Rob- inson’s wit conveys her ability to critically assess what she reads, what she sees, what is happening in the world around her. Robinson’s essays are more than entertaining, they instruct each reader to look further with his own eyes and to seek farther with his own mind. “There’s a lot under the surface of life,” which sums up the lens offered to the consummate students of Humanities (Robinson 2006, 6). Looking for a deeper meaning is an acknowledgment of a greater force or energy or purpose in the universe. It is a recognition that there is vastly more to life than hosting the perfect party or displaying the perfect family or understanding even an iota of one’s environment. In Gilead, Rev. Ames found his meaning late in life through the mere “existence” of his son, which may seem overly dramatic to any reader who has never witnessed the “shimmer” of his own child’s hair (Robinson 2006, 55). But the good reverend method- ically logged not only his own life’s lessons, but, also his understanding of his father’s life and his grandfather’s life, endowing his progenies with a head start on their own quests for meaning. Robinson slyly alludes to Kansas and “Free Soilers” and abolitionist settlements and routes of es- cape (Robinson 2006, 10, 58). A student of the Humanities would certainly infer foreshadowing of some sort of imbroglio involving Bleeding Kansas. This is one of the brilliant elements of Robinson’s writing; one must keep reading to decipher the outcome. Rev. Ames acquired a deeper understanding of his one-eyed-blood-stained-gun-toting minister after searching, on many levels, for a weeded-over grave. After learning the entire story, Rev. Ames said, “I’ve tried to imagine myself in my grandfather’s place” (Robinson 2006, 88). One has to walk in another man’s shoes. A greater understanding of the human condition cannot be found in the cogs that torque machinery or in the ratio of ingredients that com- pose rocket fuel. “Science cannot think analogically, though this kind of thinking is very useful for making sense and meaning out of the tumult of human affairs” (Robinson 2013, 17).

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REDEMPTION/HOPE: Along with choices and a greater understanding of life, a person exposed to thinking beyond conventional boundaries could sustain a richer life by embracing the essence of hope and redemption. After the chaos and scandal Rev. Ames had witnessed and discovered throughout his life in regard to his family, the constant disappointment of his namesake is what deeply pained him for years. As Gilead comes to a close, Jack Boughton finally agrees to receive a bless- ing from Rev. Ames, who joyfully imagined Jack’s father thinking- “This is why we have lived this life”(Robinson 2006, 243). A long-awaited redemption finally came true. Another instantly classic 21st Century novel, Atonement, is based upon the antagonist’s life-long attempt to atone for a horrible mistake she made as a young child. Set amidst the brutalities of World War II and the relentless bombing of London, the novel deploys an endless attack of life’s cruel vicissitudes. Ian McEwan’s Atonement is a beautifully written novel that insidiously draws a reader in so convincingly that one can almost smell the rotting corpses and long for a just world that makes sense, days after the book has been re-shelved. Atonement is a commentary about a brutal world where the good are not necessarily rewarded, and the bad may or may not be punished. It is hard to find hope in this novel. It is hard to find a reason to keep fighting for survival because Fate is as whimsical as an imaginative, young child and is as “unreliable” (McEw- an 2003, 338). Atonement is “Romeo and Juliet” meets “Band of Broth- ers.” It portrays the passion of star-crossed lovers that are doomed in a time of world-wide carnage at the hand of a mad man. There is no order in this universe, which is a sting to the human condition that in one time or another each reader has felt. In this ungodly setting, only a novelist could mend the world and properly atone for her sins. Only in her writings could Briony redeem herself, as long as her readers remain en- tranced by her book. Only in the writer’s world could Briony correct the wrongs of her past. Contrition is so painfully yearned for throughout this novel that the reader wants to believe in the end that Briony’s “fortuitous sister and her medical prince survive to love” (McEwan 2003, 350). Peo- ple cheer for redemption; people want hope. These are the simple reasons to get out of bed in the morning, should one be fortunate enough to have a bed. Life goes on and on and on. There are positive ways to muddle through and these gems of life are introduced to the human psyche by the means of the Humanities. “Our humanity consists in the fact that we do more than survive” (Robinson 2013, 147). Human beings strive for meaningful lives filled

132 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH with a sense of freedom of choices and the hope of redemption from mis- takes. It is clear that classes from Anthropology to Literature to History to Psychology to Linguistics to Philosophy or any study of the human condition opens a threshold to a lifetime of learning, understanding and self-fulfillment. Humanities mean freedom. The opportunity to attend college in America used to represent four (or five) years of semi-freedom and semi-adulthood. In those four short years, it was the university’s job to introduce as many of life’s vast topics and possibilities to each and every student. After earning a diploma, anything was a possibility and the choices were up to the graduate. Today, functional college graduates that can read well, write well, complete a spread sheet and pay bills on time will be able to endure corporate training sessions, orientation programs and endless team-building retreats and become successful parts of the workforce. Academia should have more faith in this system; it should have more faith in its graduates. It is the job of the hiring company’s human resources department to train its new employees. Every year there will be an updated computer system to learn and a new budget format to follow. Employers work with their employees to maintain smooth operations. That is usually how it works. If universities transform themselves into workforce-training programs, any hiring company will just retrain the recent graduate/ new employee according to its voluminous regulations. Depletion of the Humanities programs would be a sad depletion of the humans. Pizza will be delivered by drones and Siri will be the sole member of the few remaining book clubs.

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REFERENCE LIST

Eliot, T.S. 1950. “The Cocktail Party, a Comedy.” New York: Harcourt, Brace. Martel, Yann. 2003. Life of Pi: A Novel. New York: Harvest. McEwan, Ian. 2003. Atonement: A Novel. New York: Anchor. Robinson, Marilynne. 2006. Gilead. New York: Picador. Robinson, Marilynne. 2013. When I Was a Child I Read Books. New York: Picador.

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Liminal Space: Moments of Grace in Annie Dillard’s The Maytrees

by Joanne C. Rutkowski

Written for Course: Theological Issues in 20th and 21st Century Fiction Professor: William J. O’Brien Fall 2012

Joanne Rutkowski is a MALS candidate at Georgetown University. She holds a B.A. in Mathematics and Eng- lish from Albright College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. After a number of years in private practice, she has returned to the Securities and Exchange Commission in their Division of Trading and Markets. Like many in the program, she came to Georgetown because she was looking for something more.

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We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

— T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, “Little Gidding,” 1942

Eudora Welty wrote of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, “I honestly do not know what she is talking about at…times.”1 While the same criticism may apply to her 2007 novel The Maytrees, this paper argues that something more is afoot. From her earliest writings, Annie Dillard has been drawn to liminal space, the point at which one stands at the threshold of change.2 Her senior thesis, written in 1967, traced a pattern in Emily Dickinson’s poetry of “description and disappearance … into a vague ‘beyond,’ a beyond that holds both death and all the unattainable secrets of life.”3 She described an unreachable “circumference” of the known world, where the passing over occurs, with the sea and sky as thresholds touching on the eternal.”4 Dillard returns to liminal space in The Maytrees, the slim story of a marriage “played out before the back- drop of fixed stars … on a naked strand between two immensities” on the

1 Eudora Welty, “Meditation on Seeing,” New York Times Book Re- view, 24March 1974. 2 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, liminal (adj.), in its rare usage, is: “Of or pertaining to the threshold or initial stage of a process.” 3 Annie Dillard, “The Merchant of the Picturesque: One Pattern in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry,” Hollins Symposium 3:1 (1967): 33-42, quoted in Nancy C. Parrish, Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, and the Hollins Group: a Genesis of Writers (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999), 147-48. 4 Ibid. “The sea tends to represent the more frightening, overwhelm- ing aspects of infinity – the death that is its prerequisite – and the sky tends to represent the more mysterious and beautiful aspects of infinity – death’s release into freedom, into heaven and knowledge of the sacred mysteries.”

136 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH far reaches of the Cape, and uses this “space between” to draw the reader into a meditation that ultimately is both a love song and a prayer. At one level, this is a book in which not much happens. As Frances- ca Mari notes in The New Republic, Dillard’s central characters have little but a shack and days that “swell with time,” and want nothing but the company of their thoughts.5 Toby and Lou Maytree figure “in only two small events – three, if love counts,” perform “no heroic deeds,” and act “within any decent heart’s scope.” In the course of this modest existence, however, something profound happens. The title is a clue. As a reader has pointed out, Maytree can be read as a pun on the Sanskrit word maitrī, meaning an abiding loving-kindness without attachment, or loving without clinging. It is also a common name for the hawthorn tree, evoking another writer who explored themes of love and its dilemmas.6 This is a story of how things fall apart and how they come back together. The Maytrees are a charmed couple until they are not. As Julia Reed describes them, Lou, a sometime painter, and Toby (whom Lou calls “Maytree”), a poet and house mover, fall intensely in love. In their early days together, Lou, “shipwrecked on the sheets,” “opened her eyes and discovered where on their bed she had fetched up.” “Love so sprang at her, she honestly thought no one had ever looked into it.” Likewise, Toby thinks, “Only the lover sees what is real, he thought.... Far from being blind, love alone can see.” Things change. A child is born. Toby turns 42, and leaves with another woman, their friend Deary. Lou falls apart:

She had no force to fight what held her as wind pins a paper to a fence.... She found herself holding one end of a love. She reeled out love’s long line alone; it did not catch.7

5 Francesca Mari, “Cosmic Realism,” The New Republic, 28 May 2008. 6 “In Defense of Dillard,” New York Times Book Review, 19 August 2007. 7 Suggestions of Yeats weave their way through this book. Both To- by and Lou fall apart, echoing “The Second Coming” (“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”). Simi- larly, Maytree’s recollection of Lou’s “easy-eyed look that night he started falling asleep” seemingly channels “A Prayer for My Daughter” (“many a poor man that has roved, Loved and thought himself beloved, 137 STUDENT - 2015 - RUTKOWSKI GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES

She does not turn to therapy, and organized religion offers no solace. She instead looks to the “autarchy” of the stars, which everyone rules themselves and no one else. 8 “She could guy out Orion and spread him like a spinnaker, a chute to fly beyond her own self-love.” She climbs to the Pilgrim Monument day after day, and practices letting go:

After seven months she had what she called “a grip on letting go.” When anything unwise arose in her henceforth, she attended to it by climbing the monument, at whose top she opened her palm.

With Diogenes as her guide, Lou purges her life of things, including fashion, ironing and people she did not like,” of which she has no need. “With those blows she opened her days like a piñata. A thousand free- doms fell on her.” 9 When Maytree returns with a dying Deary some twenty years later, “‘Come in’, his ex-own Lou said.” She wonders what in her “bare awareness” he might expand. Maytree, for his part, has been on a different journey. “Obliged” to love Deary, “he had wrapped his hand around oars, iced them fast, and kept rowing,” and “never dreamed of shipping his iced-over oars.” When Deary dies, the lovers wake again to passion and compassion. Maytree asks, “Could skies ever have been so clear?” The book ends on a grace note. In a final call and response, Toby looks to the heavens, and thinks he will “trail off into skies like a cloud or a sonic boom. Addio terra, addio cielo.”10 When Maytree dies, Lou in turn hopes

From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes”), W.B. Yeats, Collected Po- ems (New York: Macmillan, 1951). 8 Wikipedia, “Autarchism,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autarchism, accessed 9 December 2012. 9 Liminal space is associated as well with the process of self- realization in Jungian psychology. “Individuation begins with a with- drawal from normal modes of socialisation, epitomized by the break- down of the persona...liminality.” Peter Homans, Jung in Context: Mo- dernity and the Making of a Psychology, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 207. 10 “Addio terra, addio cielo” is an aria is from Monteverdi's first opera, Orfeo (Orpheus, 1607). In the opera, Orpheus goes down to Hades

138 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH that he will remember, “at least at first,” to remember the living, “to watch for its own blue seas’ palming the earth.” Annie Dillard, in Teaching a Stone to Talk, described a spiritual journey as one in which, if you ride the inner monsters down, you find “the substrate, ... our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here.”11 In telling the story of the Maytrees, Dillard uses liminal space to draw the reader in, making it possible for us to “quit the position, or better, the exile, of the remote and disinterested specta- tor.”12 We join, as one reviewer has written, “to keep the little flame [of love] on against all odds and be grateful.13 Dillard distances us and draws us in with the first line of the book: “The Maytrees were young long ago.”14 Her characters are cast on a he-

hoping to bring his wife Eurydice back to life. Because of his beautiful music, he is granted this privilege—on the condition that he not look back at Eurydice while leading her out of Hades. During a moment of anxiety, however, Orpheus does look back, and Eurydice vanishes. Apol- lo pities Orpheus and brings him up to heaven, where he can gaze eternally at Eurydice's radiance in the sun and stars. http://dev5.mhhe.com/textflowdev/genhtml/0078025087/P4.7.1.htm, accessed 10 December 2012. 11 Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encoun- ters (New York: Harper & Row, 1982). 12 Paul Ricoeur, “The hermeneutics of symbols and philosophical reflection,” International Philosophical Quarterly 2.2 (2009): 191-218, quoted in Cynthia Wallace, “‘Spanning the Gap’: Annie Dillard as Ric- oeur's Suffering Creator” (unpublished paper, Loyola University Chica- go, 2009). 13 See Olga Khotiashova, “Review: Annie Dillard’s ‘The May- trees’,” Narrative, http://richardgilbert.me/2011/10/20/review-annie- dillards-the-maytrees/, accessed 12 December 2012. 14 “Long ago” also suggests nostalgia, much as the song of that title, by the English composer Thomas Haynes Bayly, begins: “Tell me the tales that to me were so dear, Long, long ago, long, long ago.” http://contemplator.com/england/longago.html, accessed 14 December 2012.

139 STUDENT - 2015 - RUTKOWSKI GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES roic scale, “a man and a woman both simplified and enlarged.”15 She sets the story on the Cape, which is as one reviewer has noted, “a specifically liminal space, a sliver of land between two seas, always shifting because it is sand, and crowned by an infinite sky.”16 The shoreline is littered with death: the cruelly murdered Woman in the Dunes, the oystermen whose bodies are dragged to shore “chained at the armpits,” and the frozen fish- ing crew Toby watched drown as a child. There is release in the “slow heavens,” and a suggestion of something beyond. The waves mark time. “Twice a day behind [the Maytrees’] house the tide boarded the sand. Four times a year the seasons flopped over. Clams live like this, but without so much reading.” Their lives are open to the elements, literally. When storms come, Maytree removes the basement door so “the seas could pour in without breaking glass.” Dillard famously pared her text from 1600 pages to 200, and the re- sulting work is strewn with gnomic remarks that invite the reader to pause and consider.17 She structures the book as an arc or a series of pa- vilions that carry the reader along. The events of the central three sec- tions -- separation, loss and death, as Dillard explains – are anchored by a prologue and epilogue that are all about love. As one reviewer suggested, Dillard’s prose “calls to mind the classical Chinese poets-- like them, commanding attention by demanding it. This prose promises to be experienced as poetry. It engrosses when it engages.”18 Although Dillard is often associated with transcendentalism, Mari- lynne Robinson suggests that The Maytrees represents a new genre, what she calls “cosmic realism.” “Its sea is wild and generative, its sky orders the constellations, and both are primordial, archaic, full of the fact of time past and persisting, unchanging, changing everything.”19 Robinson

15 Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: HarperCol- lins, 2007), 283. 16 See “Star-Gazing,” Eve's Alexandria, http://evesalexandria.typepad.com/eves_alexandria/2007/11/star- gazing.html, accessed 12 December 2012. 17 Scott Simon, “Annie Dillard’s Tale of Bohemian Love by the Sea,” Weekend Edition, National Public Radio, 28 July 2007. 18 Khotiashova, “Review.” 19 Robinson, “The Nature of Love.”

140 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH argues that cosmic realism is the “late descendant” of the Romantic and Transcendentalist traditions:

But cosmic realism sometimes lacks the assurance of its ances- tors. Emerson believed in the prophet-like power of individual vision precisely because he believed in the unity of creation and the inherent goodness of mankind: he had a philosophy, a meta- physical faith. Works of cosmic realism, by contrast, tend to address tragedies that shake this sort of faith. An unknowable providence pervades all things--borne with ... acquiescence .... 20

It may be this “acquiescence” in an “unknowable providence” that distinguishes The Maytrees. Although she claims theirs is a “human tale” that “needs only the telling,” it seems that Dillard is reaching for something more. Late in the book, Toby thinks of Lou and, in the words of Yeats, her pilgrim soul.21 “Pilgrim soul” could aptly describe a number of characters in the books read for this course. Celia in The Cocktail Hour and Clarissa in Mrs. Dalloway and Lou in The Maytrees are all journeying toward death but the experiences are profoundly different. Celia seeks death as destiny, and Clarissa, though drawn to life, circles back to death as to a forbidden lover. Death in the Maytrees, in contrast, is a point in the continuum. Early in the book, Deary explains that “[w]ith each injury you learn how that patch of you feels.... It wakens. Once you have felt every last nerve ending, at least on your skin, then you have lived in full awareness. Then you die.” Perhaps it is, as Parker Palmer suggests, that “death finally comes to everything – and yet does not have the final word.”22 Dillard is addressing this issue in a post-Christian context. Like Clarissa Dalloway, Lou Maytree lives in a world in which the God of organized religion seemingly has no place. She has considered and rejected the offerings of Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism and Judaism:

20 Ibid. 21 Yeats, “When You Are Old,” Collected Poems. 22 Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000), http://www.couragerenewal.org/parker/writings/leading-from-within, accessed 6 December 2012.

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All religions said – early or late – that holiness was within.... She had looked long ago and learned: not within her. It was fearsome down there, a crusty cast iron pot. Within she was empty. She would never poke around in those terrors and wastes again, so help her God. Provincetown was better. She witnessed the autarchy of the skies.

Similarly, Dillard on her website has written, “I quit the Catholic Church and Christianity; I stay near Christianity and Hasidism.”23 An entry in the guide to her papers at Yale indicates she was reading John Donne’s book, The Way of All the World.24 In the preface of the book, Donne writes:

Is a religion coming to birth in our time? It could be. What seems to be occurring is a phenomenon we might call “passing over,” passing over from one culture to another, from one way of life to another, from one religion to another. Passing over is a shifting of standpoint, a going over to the standpoint of another culture, another way of life, another religion.25

According to Donne, passing over leads to a return: “it is followed by an equal and opposite process one might call “coming back,” coming back with new insight to one’s own culture, one’s own way of life, one’s own religion. In her senior thesis, Dillard described a “circumference” of the known world, “the edge of infinity which surrounds the world of time and touches it at its farthest limits.”26 Donne’s book suggests an inver-

23 http://www.anniedillard.com/, accessed 6 December 2012. 24 The entry reads: “‘Summer 2001 - Monastery - Reading John S. Donne, The Way of All the World’ – ‘Lune Shacks twice, working on Cape novel, Sandhi, Buddha, etc. 2 folders.” Guide to the Annie Dillard Papers, Yale University Library, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale Collection of American Literature, http://drs.library.yale.edu:8083/fedora/get/beinecke:dillard/PDF, accessed 7 December 2012. 25 Donne, The Way of All the World. 26 Dillard, “The Merchant of the Picturesque: One Pattern in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry.”

142 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH sion of this construct. “Every moment then is a center, even the moment of death. The center is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.” 27 The lesson of The Maytrees, whether myth or fable or allegory, may be that one no longer needs to reach the unreachable horizon:

They enfolded each other and looked over each other’s shoulders at the world’s wreck where all shattered, at bareness they held at bay. Or they cradled the world between them like a mor- tally sick child, loving it and not telling it all they knew. Now in compassion they bore, between them, their soli- tudes each the size of the raveled globe. Everything looked better since they were old.

With love and what Cynthia Wallace calls “negotiated hope,” the center is everywhere.28 Dillard brings to this moment with her poetic language that “creates resonances that never before existed, ... leads us into recognizing the sacred again.”29

27 Donne, The Way of All the World. 28 Wallace, “Spanning the Gap.” 29 Ibid.

143

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Justice Brandeis and the Ameri- can Workplace

by Michael F. Schuman

Written for Course: The Court, the Constitution, and the Shaping of the American Nation Professor: Rory F. Quirk, JD Spring 2012

Michael Schuman is a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies candidate concentrating his studies in the area of social and public policy. He will be completing his thesis in Fall 2015 on the Supreme Court and the battle over child labor during the early twentieth century. Michael grew up in Buffalo, New York. He completed his undergraduate studies in Computer Science at the State University of New York at Geneseo. While a member of the United States Air Force he completed a Master of Business Administration degree at Wayland Baptist University. Michael is currently Chief of the Branch of Acquisition Management at the Bureau of Labor Statis- tics.

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Introduction “All through the hours of work in a factory the hum of the wheels never ceases....While the machinery pursues its relentless course and is insensi- tive to fatigue, human beings are conscious, especially towards the end of the day, that the competition is unequal, for their muscles are becoming tired and their brains jaded.”1 At the end of a particular workday, Satur- day March 25, 1911 the hum of the wheel would cease along with the lives of one hundred and forty six garment workers who would succumb to a factory fire giving these words contained in Louis Brandeis's 1907 brief to the Supreme Court greater resonance. Frances Perkins, who would go on to serve as Secretary of Labor under President Franklin Roosevelt, would by chance be a witness to the tragedy of Triangle factory workers jumping out the windows of the emblazon building and into their death. She would later say that the day of the Triangle fire would be “the day the New Deal began.”2 For Louis Brandeis who had just the year before brokered a labor settlement between New York cloak-makers and their employers, his personal struggle for labor reform had began long before. For Brandeis, however, it would not be the struggle of someone ad- vocating victory for one side or another, it would in many ways be the fight to bring labor and management into a partnership of equals that motivated him. This would at times cause him to be at odds with those in the labor movement, but it was this consistency of purpose, to achieve equality within the framework of the law, that made him effective. Once this state was reached he may not have liked the outcome, but he believed in protecting the rights of parties to resolve their differences. For him, however, this not only involved understanding the legal framework of an issue, but also gaining a complete understanding of the factual realities of any situation.

In the Beginning “We the workers in these mills, are peaceably inclined. We have not damaged any property, and we do not intend to. If you will send a committee with us, we will take them through the works...and promise them a safe return to their boats. But in the name of God and humanity, don't attempt to land! Don't attempt to enter these works by force.”3 On a July day in 1893, this warning from a locked out worker would not be heeded and the three hundred Pinkerton guards would attempt to land by boat in

146 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH an effort to secure the Homestead Steel Works so it could be operated with non-union labor. The arrival of the Pinkertons would be greeted by a mob of angry locked out union workers and their families. According to the New York Herald the mob could be heard shouting things such as “we'll send them home on stretchers” and “hell will be full of new faces in the morning.”4 By the next morning a total of 8 people would be killed and another two hundred would be thought wounded in the ensuing gun- fight.5 The Battle of Homestead would not only awaken many in the nation to the state of the labor struggle in the United States, in particular it would be a seminal moment for future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. Looking back on this event he would remark, “I saw at once the common law, built up under simpler conditions of living, gave an inadequate basis for the adjustment to the modern factory system.”6 This event was pivotal for Brandeis, a Harvard Law School graduate who was born into comfortable surroundings in 1856 in Louisville, KY far from the struggles of the American working class.7 It would eventually lead him to call the labor question the “paramount economic question in this coun tr y. ”8

Path to the Brandeis Brief In the time period following the Battle at Homestead, Brandeis would come to realize that the reverence for freedom to contract which was built up by years of common law was no longer appropriate. The industrial era had curtailed the centuries old practice of individuals contracting with each other to sell their labor. Now, the modern factory system gave employers greater bargaining power than they ever had and demanded that strong unions be built up to counteract their power. This would lead him to think not only about what the courts would view as legitimate, but also what the public would see as morally right.9 In 1907, Brandeis would be approached by Florence Kelly and Jose- phine Goldmark to represent the state of Oregon to defend the constitu- tionality of a statute limiting hours for female workers. It was not by accident that Brandeis ended up as the plaintiff's attorney for this momen- tous labor case. His brief to the Supreme Court in this case would become known as the “Brandeis Brief.” The brief marked a shift due to the fact it was not simply a recitation of legal citations and previous court decisions meant to convince the court to follow existing law.10 Rather than following this traditional path, Brandeis would seek to outline the

147 STUDENT - 2015 - SCHUMAN GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES hardships the female laborers faced in an attempt to show Oregon had a reasonable basis for curtailing their freedom to contract.11 Brandeis would have the opportunity to examine the interplay between labor and capital firsthand in 1902. That year, one of his clients, William H. McElwain in the face of an economic downturn would ask the employees of his shoe company to take a pay cut. After his employees refused, he would seek the counsel of Brandeis on how to deal with this situation. Upon examination of the records he determined the sporad- ic hours of employment that the factory offered made it difficult for employees to support themselves. After consultation with the union and company management he would come to the conclusion that the root of the labor problems was due to the haphazard method of production scheduling that the factory employed. Brandeis in turn devised an order- filling scheme that enabled orders to be spread out throughout the year thereby providing for regularization of employment. This arrangement would lead to a flourishing factory that operated over 300 days per year while offering good wages to its employees.12 Although a frequent supporter of labor, he could be critical if he believed a union had crossed the line. This was the case in regards to his criticism in 1904 of a Boston type-setters union which Brandeis believed had irresponsibly gone on strike after securing a fair contract from their employer. In this case the union had struck to demand an increase of $1 per week for a period of a year. This would end in disaster for the union who after five weeks had lost more than they could have gained in a strike that the courts would find to be unlawful.13 Brandeis was also dis- appointed with the lack of union support for the Scientific Management principles developed by Frederick Taylor. Ironically, although the Brandeis Brief would contain stark depictions of the modern mechanized factory he did not fear the efficiency of modern machinery. While unions saw this mechanization as potentially leading to decreased employment opportunities, Brandeis believed that by embracing these methods the union could become a partner in the long term success of the company. 14 The cooperation between labor and management would be a consistent theme of the work that Brandeis would do in the years preceding his appointment to the Supreme Court. This would be exemplified through the efforts of one of his clients, Filene's department store.15 The store would operative on cooperative principles that were codified into the constitution of the Filene Co-operative Association, a document which Brandeis would help draft. The cooperative would be based on the belief that employees could self govern themselves. This cooperative

148 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH approach would give employees control over issues ranging from the expenditure of entertainment funds to the ability to impose punishments for employee theft.16

The Brief The argument that Brandeis would make on behalf of the Oregon female workers, at the request of the National Consumers League,17 would be one that would take into account the realities of their existence. Since the attorney general of Oregon had filed a brief focusing on the relevant legal precedents, Brandeis was free to focus in this area.18 From the Home- stead Battle which would thrust the plight of the American worker into his consciousness, to the movement to industrial democracy at Filene's Department store, these realities were never far from his mind. As he said, “no law can be effective that does not take into account the conditions of the community for which it is designed.”19 Muller vs Oregon would represent a difficult challenge for Brandeis to overcome, as a result he would employ an innovative strategy yet one grounded in previous court decisions.20 In the case, he found himself arguing on behalf of the limitation of working hours for women to a Supreme Court that was notoriously sanguine to limit the freedom of contract. This was embodied by the 1905 Lochner vs New York decision, which spurred this challenge to the Oregon statute. In that case, the Supreme Court struck down a New York law limiting working hours in bakeries to 10 hours per day and 60 per week.21 In Lochner however, Brandeis saw a distinction since no link had been shown between its passage and improving public health. Addi- tionally, he believed that it would be possible to overcome the Court's aversion to labor legislation if its impact was only limited to female workers while male workers were still allowed to negotiate their working conditions free of government protectionism.22 Perhaps it would be this excerpt from The Case for Factory Acts by Mrs. Sidney Webb from the brief that would best lay the framework for the argument Brandeis would make:

There are still those who ask in astonishment, “May not a man, may not a woman, employ their capital or their labor as they choose?” But the State says, with a less and less hesitating sound, “Not under conditions wasteful of life, or destructive of efficiency, of those employed, or dangerous to the safety of the community.”23

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In his brief he would give research to support the rationale of the state for restrictions imposed on freedom to contract. He would cite 18 studies related to the impact of extended hours on the rate of workplace injuries.24 In terms of the destructive impact beyond the life of the employed woman the brief included references to voluminous research showing the negative impact on families. These would range from citations of the decline in morals that can occur in women that work long hours to the negative impact working such hours can have on child- rearing.25 While the brief certainly was groundbreaking in the opinion of most scholars, in the opinion of George Mason University Law Professor David Bernstein, the compiling of the various studies was largely dis- jointed and in some cases presented data that was known to be erroneous by the medical community even at the time.26 This certainly appears to be the case with citations such as one that indicated women's blood contained a greater percentage of water than did men's. Even Bernstein points out however that the point of the brief was to show that the actions of Oregon were reasonable not to put forth a scientific case on the physical condition of women.27 While the heart of the brief would be the referenced citations of studies showing the negative impact on the health of the worker, a number of pages were devoted to showing how many similar laws had been passed not only within the United States, but around the world as well. The 118 page brief would contain only two pages of legal arguments, but those case references to Lochner in particular would be critical to the case. He would concede the right to sell labor is guaranteed under the liberty pro- tections of the 14th Amendment. However, he would base his arguments on the fact that this right could be curtailed by the state for the protection of life, safety, morals, and the general welfare.28 In deciding the case, the Supreme Court would reach a unanimous decision to uphold the Oregon statute. The Court would acknowledge the “very copious collection” of data that Brandeis had included in his brief. They would reach the decision that Brandeis had hoped for by concluding that the physical structure of women place them at a disadvantage in the workplace and that since healthy mothers are essential to healthy off- spring, the public interest is therefore at stake and therefore the actions of Oregon were reasonable. While the Court would make it clear it was not its intention to undermine Lochner with its decision, many people at the time assumed that had been the case. However, with the reintroduction of the freedom to contract doctrine by the 1920's Supreme Court, the legacy of this decision would be the newly expanded place for social facts in

150 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH legal arguments29 including in the historic Brown vs Board of Education case.30 Although the citation of sociological data had been done to an extent by Joseph Lochner in Lochner, to show that bakers were no less healthy than other workers, it is Brandeis who is widely credited with popularizing the practice.31

Garment Workers Despite the maximum hour laws going into place in some states, the life of a garment worker in 1910 was not an easy one. Increasing demand for the newly fashionable shirtwaist had caused an increase in the need for production capacity to meet these needs. The factory owners who knew that fashion fads could change quickly attempted to maximize production while the garments were still in style. Rather than invest in equipment themselves, most garment manufacturers subcontracted the elements of production to independent contractors who would be responsible for filling the factory floor with laborers. In many shops these itinerant workers would carry sewing machines from shop to shop looking for work, once they found it they would often times find themselves paying for the thread and electricity required to produce their portion of the garment.32 Following his work on Muller vs Oregon, Brandeis had become well known for his efforts on behalf of workers. In July 1910, Brandeis would receive a request from Lincoln Filene to come to New York to help settle the garment workers strike that had recently broken out and placed 60,000 workers on the picket line.33 As American Federation of Labor President Samuel Gompers said, the garment workers strike of 1910 would be “more than a strike[, it was]...an industrial revolution.”34 One of the basic beliefs Brandeis had was that workers had the right to govern themselves in both their political and economic affairs. These desires weren't likely far from the mind of Russian immigrant worker Bertha Elkins when she remarked, “I want something more than work and more than money. I want freedom.”35 While Brandeis would come to believe unionization was the best way to meet these goals, he did not however believe that shops should be closed to non-union workers. Instead Brandeis believed that the non-union workers could help put limits on the power of unions, which was just as necessary as having limits placed on employers.36 Just as Brandeis had helped usher in a new era in legal arguments through his brief in Muller vs Oregon, the agreement which became to be known as the Protocol of Peace would be viewed as a watershed event in

151 STUDENT - 2015 - SCHUMAN GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES labor relations during the Progressive Era. The pact would be revolutionary by its introduction of the notion that labor had a key role to play in setting workplace conditions and in ensuring the continued prosperity of the business.37 For Brandeis, the key was not only settling this strike, but establishing a framework for resolving future disputes. While he would be successful in avoiding controversial topics in the first days of the negotiations, it would be the open versus closed shop issue that would be the most problematic to resolve. Though consistent in his belief that the factory floor should be open to non-union workers as well, he would de- vise a compromise known was the “preferential shop.” This scheme would give preference to union workers when they were of the same ability as the non-union applicants.38 While the manufacturers would accept the idea of the preferential shop, it would be opposed by union leadership who believed it gave the employer too much power to judge the relative qualifications of workers. The final agreement would contain compromise language that would allow both sides to claim victory. Language allowing the employers to assess the quality of the employee was removed from the agreement. As long as the union was able to provide a supply of workers, its workers would be given preference. In return for this concession, the manufacturers did not have to recognize the union nor share responsibility in decision making.39 The agreement would however establish self-government in some areas, introduce scientific studies to set piecework rates, and secure wages that were above average for the time period. It would also outlaw charging employees for electricity and supplies as well as establish a joint board to oversee working conditions.40

Triangle The Triangle Company, “with blood this name will be written in the history of the American workers' movement, and with feeling will this history recall the names of the strikers of this shop--of the crusaders.” This line from the Jewish newspaper, the Forward, would refer to the Febru- ary 10, 1910 ending of a the shirtwaist strike at the Triangle Company, yet a little more than a year later blood and Triangle Company would become forever linked.41 Although the Triangle owners had provided better wages as part of the settlement of the 1910 strike, they had refused to negotiate working conditions in their factories.42 While the modern building structure itself was largely fireproof, the contents of the 8th and 9th floor factory areas would prove to be anything

152 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH but. The close proximity of the workers to each other as well as the fabric scrap cluttered floors would be the ideal tinderbox for a deadly conflagra- tion. This in combination with an allegedly locked 9th floor exit door, which was kept locked to avoid theft would be blamed for the high number of fatalities. At the trial the owners would admit they had kept the door locked to thwart the theft of shirtwaists, estimating that less than a mere $20 in garments had been pilfered by employees over the preceding year.43 Although deadly fires were no stranger to the garment industry, the sheer loss of life and the fact the fire occurred at one of the more modern factories in the middle of New York City would shock the nation.44 In the week following the fire the shock would turn to anger and lead to numerous protests through New York. At one particular protest attended by middle and upper class benefactors, labor activist Rose Scheiderman, the woman who had led the Triangle workers to strike, would challenge those in attendance:

I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies, if I came here in good fellowship. We [the working class] have found the good people of the public and we have found you wanting...We have tried you, citizens: we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for sorrowing mothers and daughters and sisters by the way of charity. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable, the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavy on us. 45

This sentiment would galvanize the same forces that had worked to implement the Protocols of Peace. While the private agreement embodied in the protocols would be a first step in improving conditions, the after- math of the fire would put the focus on the need for state involvement. This involvement would occur in the form of a Factory Investigating Committee (FIC) that New York established with police powers to ensure humane working conditions in its factories.46 While the FIC would help set up standard industry practices, Brandeis would continue his fight to prevent the heavy hand of the law from tilting the scales of justice in favor of management.

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Onto the Court On January 28, 1916 President Woodrow Wilson would send a message to the Senate of the United States nominating Louis D. Brandeis to be an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court.47 The nomination would create a bitter battle lasting four months with much of the controversy surrounding the progressive record of Brandeis. This background stood in marked contrast with a Supreme Court which was seen, particularly during this time period, as the conservator of the nation's institutions.48 In the end, on June 1, 1916 he would be confirmed by a vote of 47 to 22.49

Hitchman Coal and Coke vs Mitchell (1917) In the year following his ascension to the Supreme Court, Justice Brande- is would have the opportunity to rule on a case impacting the workplace. In the case of Hitchman Coal and Coke vs Mitchell he would issue a dissent to a Court decision determining that a union had in effect attempted to coerce a company into accepting unionization.50 At Hitchman Coal and Coke, the non-union employees signed individual contracts with the company that did not prevent them from joining a union, but if they did they would no longer be employed by the firm. By attempting to organize these non-union miners, Hitchman Coal and Coke saw this as an unlawful attempt to disrupt their operations in violation of the contracts that the employees had signed. The Court concluded that the union had also illegally acted to induce the employees to violate their contracts with their employer. The majority saw the issuance of an injunction as lawful in order to prevent the employees from being induced into striking by outside labor organizers thereby causing irreparable harm to the employer.51 In his dissent Brandeis would argue that the majority was incorrect in their decision in nearly every regard. He believed that it was not possible for the union to actually coerce Hitchman Coal and Coke. In his opinion, he pointed out that “coercion in a legal sense, is not exerted when a union merely endeavors to induce employees to join a union with the intention of thereafter to order a strike unless the employer consents to unionize his shop.”52 While Brandeis believed it rational that the employer could fear the economic consequences of failing to find enough workers during a potential strike, this for Brandeis did not rise to the level of coercion. In the end, it was the employer who was still free to determine whether to unionize. While the employees could in fact be union-

154 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH ized by the union organizers without the employer's consent, the mine could not be.53 Brandeis would also point out that there had been no actual attempt to induce employees to violate their contracts with Hitchman Coal and Coke.54 Under the terms of the contract, the employee could leave the employer at any time. While these same terms prevented the employee to be both an employee of the company and a member of the union, if the employee had quit upon joining the union, the contract would not have been violated. The majority had seen the union as an ostensibly an illegal enterprise that used improper methods to attempt to coerce their way into a non-union mine. Brandeis however, saw the union as a legal enterprise that naturally would want to expand its reach into every mine in the nation. Since the right of a worker to join a union had been a long established right, he saw no reason to issue an injunction as the majority did to stop the practices that the union had undertaken. Brandeis had long disapproved of injunction as a method of handling labor disputes all the way back to his work with the garment workers, although he did in some cases see their necessity in protecting against irreparable harm that might occur to the employer.55 Additionally, while he had also long opposed the closed shop, which the union sought in this case, his greater aim was to ensure equality of the parties. In this manner he was a great proponent of the concepts of freedom to contract champi- oned for years by the Supreme Court majority. 56 The difference between Brandeis and that of the majority would largely be how to best equalize the relative standing of the parties before any fair contract could be agreed to. Brandeis believed a union should be free to use any legal means necessary to increase its leverage with the employer it was negoti- ating with. Once the parties were on an equal footing although he may have personally disagreed with their aims, such as in the case of a closed shop, he would still support their right to act.

Duplex Printing Press Co. vs Deering (1921) As a result of increases in the concentrations of economic power that developed in the years following the Civil War the Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890. It outlawed the placing of unlawful re- straints on trade as well as monopolies. In the years after its passage, the Act would largely be utilized by courts as a tool for issuing injunctions to combat union activities. This prompted Congress to pass the Clayton Act

155 STUDENT - 2015 - SCHUMAN GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES in 1914 to preclude the application of antitrust provisions against organized labor.57 The extent to which the Clayton Act provided protection for union activities would reach the Court in the case of Duplex Printing Press Co. vs Deering in 1921. Duplex sought to stop machinists and affiliated unions from interfering with their business by inducing its members not to work for the company or any of the purchasers of the printing presses it manufactured. At the time there were only four printing press manufacturers in the United States and Duplex was the only one that had failed to recognize the union. In response to the demands of the other manufacturers that the union bring about unionization at the Duplex plant in order to equalize the competitive landscape, or face termination of their agreements, the union implemented the boycott.58 In deciding the case, the 6-3 majority, with Brandeis in dissent, ruled that the act did not provide protection for a union to engage in illegal activities, such as a secondary boycott to “disrupt or destroy” interstate trade.59 Brandeis in his dissent would find that it was not unreasonable for unions to implement the boycott based on their self-interest. Since the continued operation of the Duplex factory in a non-union manner could negatively impact their wages and working conditions even at union plants, Brandeis found their actions to be justified. He pointed out that the common law of the states and the statutes of the United States allowed industrial combatants to “push their struggle to the limits of the justification of their self-interest.”60 He did not believe it was appropriate as had been done in the past for judges to determine the limits of permissible actions, but rather that was to be a function of the legislature. In his opinion, it was the duty of the legislature to determine whether or not these actions on the part of the labor unions and employers crossed the line to the detriment of the community as a whole. In the absence of this determination, Brandeis concluded that self-interest was a sufficient basis on which to uphold the actions of the union as permissible.61

United Mine Workers vs Coronado Coal Company - Brandeis Un- published Dissent (1921) In the years following the violence of the 1893 Homestead Strike, workplace conflict would remain an all too-common happening. Most notably, approximately twenty people in a striker’s tent camp in Ludlow, Colora- do would be killed by National Guard and mine guards in April 1914. The event would lead labor activist Mother Jones to remark, “The work-

156 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH ing people of America have stood all they can bear.”62 Later that same year, western Arkansas would be the site of another labor uprising. After becoming unprofitable, the Coronado Coal Company of western Arkan- sas would lease its mine to another company thereby ending its contract with the United Mine Workers.63 Eventually, the company would employ the plan to reopen all of these formally union mines with non-union labor. In response, the United Mine Workers would embark upon a campaign of sabotage. Employing tactics ranging all the way up to using dy- namite to blow up coal shipments, the violence would continue until all the company's mines were destroyed. In response the company would sue both the local and national unions alleging that their acts violated the Sherman Act by unlawfully restraining trade and that Coronado should be entitled to treble damages. The jury in the trial, largely at the behest of an apparently anti-union judge, would find in favor of Coronado.64 It would not be until 1920 that the case would be argued before the Supreme Court. After the arguments, Chief Justice Edward White along with a majority of the Justices would vote in conference against the union to uphold the award to Coronado. Brandeis would in turn draft a dissent in favor of the union. He believed that despite the illegality of their actions, they could in no way be deemed an unlawful conspiracy in constraint of interstate commerce. Prior to reaching this conclusion however, he would first include a detailed discussion on the battle that had taken place between the former employees and the company. Utilizing the Lud- low Massacre as a frame of reference for how bad the standoff could have become, he would paint a detailed picture that may have reminded him of the Homestead Strike.65 Fighting behind the banner of “this is a union man's country,” Brandeis would outline how the mob of 60-70 armed with long-distance rifles would first open fire on and then burn down the mine. “The Battle” as it was known,66 would leave two people dead in its wake.67 After his in depth outline of the fighting, Brandeis would come to his decision that no matter the level of depravity that the union had engaged in, these were violations of state and not federal law. While the union believed it was fighting a just cause, Brandeis would make it clear that the actions of the employer in attempting to lower the employees' standard of living were legal. For the union to respond to this by destroying a business was not, but it also was not a concern of the Supreme Court.68 In arriving at this conclusion he would use the majority opinion in Ham- mer vs Dagenhart in which the Court ruled that manufacturing is a local activity. The decision was of course at odds with the dissent he joined in

157 STUDENT - 2015 - SCHUMAN GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES that case which gave a more expensive reading to the Commerce Clause. Yet he would use the majority's opinion to his advantage in this case by quoting one of the unionists as saying “we are going to drive those scabs out of work here...we are not going to let them dig coal,” to showcase the aims of the union related only to localized production.69 Prior to the expected circulation of the anticipated majority opinion by Chief Justice Edward Douglass White, the Chief Justice would pass away. The case would be reargued in front of Chief Justice William Howard Taft. Justice Taft, while initially believing the case had been made that the union had illegally restrained trade, would have his opinion changed after hearing the arguments made by Brandeis. The opinion would devote much time to arriving at the conclusion that a union was in fact a suable entity, a conclusion that Brandeis supported.70 However, it would state that “the wrongs committed were violations of the law of Arkansas”, and not of any federal law.71 In the unpublished Coronado dissent Brandeis colored the context in which the events took place. According to Alexander Bickel, the author of an analysis of the unpublished opinions of Brandeis, this detail was likely included to highlight the fruits of the Supreme Court’s mishandling of labor related cases.72 While this was undoubtedly a factor, it's also consistent with the history Brandeis had of wanting to highlight the human conditions that were in play, as he had most famously done in the Brandeis Brief.

Truax vs Corrigan (1921) During the period of in which Brandeis was involved in labor issues, courts often made it a practice of ending labor disputes through the issuance of injunctions against strikers. In an effort to prevent this practice, several states passed laws outlawing the use of injunctions. Arizona in particular passed a law banning injunctions against peaceful picketing. The law was challenged by an Arizona restaurant owner who saw his business decline by more than 50% after being subjected to picketers. By a 5-4 majority, the Supreme Court would find that this law amounted to an unconstitutional taking of the owners property and violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.73 Brandeis in dissent would uphold the right of Arizona to limit the use of injunctions. He would outline the varying treatment of how states had dealt with strikes and labor issues throughout history showing that the action of Arizona in this case was not unreasonable. He found it com-

158 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH pletely proper for a state to impose some restrictions on the relations between an employer and an employee as had been done over time. These rules he found as “being merely experiments,” and were bound to come and go. As long as the interference of these rules was not arbitrary or unreasonable they would be a permissible abridgment of the 14th Amendment rights. It was the state legislature that was in the best position to balance this abridgment against the wider “social, industrial, and political” conditions of the community affected. Therefore, since history indicated the action commonplace, he found no reason to question the judgment of the legislature of Arizona.74 The decision of the majority in Truax vs Corrigan would not long survive. It would instead be replaced by a majority opinion authored by Brandeis in 1937 in Senn vs Tile Layers Protective Union.75 His majority opinion would echo his dissent in Truax vs Corrigan76 and include an unprecedented line stating that picketing is constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment.77

Dorchy vs Kansas (1926) As Brandeis had shown in his private works, while he was always a stal- wart supporter of the rights of employees to unionize, he had not always been supportive of all their actions. In the case of Dorchy vs Kansas, Brandeis along with the majority of the court would rule against union action he believed crossed the line into illegal activity. The State of Kan- sas had found that Dorchy, who was the Vice President of the local Unit- ed Mine Workers of America, had violated the state's Industrial Relations Act by calling an unlawful strike. The act made it “unlawful to induce others to quit their employment for the purpose and with the intent to hinder, delay, limit or suspend the operation” of mining or for a union official to use their office to induce anyone to do so. 78 Dorchy would be found in violation of this act by Kansas for calling a strike as result of an allegation that the company failed to correctly pay a former employee. Under the contract with the company and the union, the rate of pay for employees under 19 years of age was $3.65 per day versus $5.00 per day for individuals 19 or older. The union alleged that as a result the employee was owed $180 in back wages while the company disputed this due to a disagreement over the employee's age.79 There would be no evidence that this issue was ever raised through an arbitration process. Neverthe- less, as a result of the allegation, the employees followed the union’s strike order and would remain on strike until the debt was paid.80

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In his opinion for a unanimous court, Brandeis would rule that the right to strike under the common law and the 14th Amendment is not absolute. In particular, there is no constitutional right to call a strike simply for the purpose of coercing an employer to pay the claim of a former employee. Brandeis was clear to point out that this was the only rationale the union had for the strike; there was no dispute over wages, hours, nor was the strike in sympathy with another union. He would find that even though a strike may be conducted in an orderly and civil manner, it could be improper if the underlying purpose was illegal. To interfere with the right of the company to carry on their business without just cause he would find to be unlawful. 81 Therefore, it was not unreasonable for Kan- sas to have laws in place that banned this sort of conduct. While Brandeis was a long time proponent of the rights of unions, he was also a long time proponent of fair bargaining on both sides. Unlike Hitchman Coal and Coke vs Mitchell where he did not find the actions of the union to be coercive, in this case he did. In this instance, the company had entered into a valid contract and there was no dispute in regards to the terms of employment. The only issue concerned payment of this alleged debt, which had impacted only one individual and had not even been submitted through an arbitration process to determine its validity. To limit the ability to strike under these circumstances therefore did not appear inconsistent with the 14th Amendment.

Bedford Cut Stone Co. vs Journeymen Stone Cutters' (1927) In 1927 Brandeis would issue his final major dissent in a labor case. In this case, the majority would overcome the barriers to intervention that Chief Justice Taft had put in place at the urging of Brandeis in the Coro- nado decision.82 The case would involve the Bedford Cut Stone Compa- ny, which was involved in the business of quarrying and finishing lime- stone. Before 1921, the company had operated under an agreement with the Journeymen Stone Cutters' union. After failing to come to an agreement with that nationwide union, the company would reach an accord with an independent union. The Journeymen had a provision in their constitution that forbade a member from cutting, carving, or fitting material that had been cut by men working in opposition to the union. Following their ousting from Bedford, the Journeymen would remind their members of this provision. After finding that its customers were having difficulties finding installers for its material, Bedford would seek an injunction to

160 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH stop this practice on the grounds it was an unlawful restraint of interstate commerce.83 The majority would rely upon Duplex Printing Press Co. vs Deering in deciding that the actions of the union were unlawful. Through this nationwide refusal to install the stone, the union had engaged in practices with the intention of disrupting interstate commerce by coercing businesses into not using a particular supplier. They would find that the fact that the contemplated restraint of trade happened after the physical trans- portation had occurred was immaterial since the motive of the union was to strike at interstate commerce.84 Brandeis in dissent would find that this case was very different than Duplex Printing Press Co. vs Deering. In that case, the union had imposed a secondary boycott on the businesses that dealt with the non- union manufacturer, including picketing and attempting to interfere with their enterprises. In this instance, the union installers had simply refused to install the stone from Bedford in accordance with their union contract. Brandeis did not see the fact that the stone happened to be moving in interstate commerce as taking away from that right of a laborer to determine whether or not to perform a particular task. He would point out that failing to give the workers this latitude is reminiscent of involuntary ser- vitude. In closing, he would express his outrage at a Supreme Court that would rule that while monopolies could be permitted under the Clayton Act, a worker could not refrain from performing a task legally. For him it was clear that this was not the intention of Congress, but rather an incorrect Supreme Court interpretation.85 Once again, he would be against Court involvement in a labor case while supporting the right of workers to control their employment conditions.86

Consistency While Brandeis always was aware of the conditions of the American workplace and the impact his rulings would have, his desire for intellectual consistency outweighed any allegiances he may have had to organized labor. His primary belief was the labor and management should negotiate to resolve their disputes as equal partners. It was therefore the job of legislative bodies to ensure this occurred and for the judiciary to stay out of the way. As Brandeis once remarked on the role of the Su- preme Court, “the most important thing we do is not doing.”87 While Brandeis alluded to his deference to the innovative power of states in his Duplex Printing Press Co. vs Deering and Truax vs Corrigan

161 STUDENT - 2015 - SCHUMAN GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES dissents, it was most articulately put forth in his dissent in New State Ice Co. vs Liebmann. He stated that it was imperative that the state governments have the power to, “remold through experimentation, our economic practices and institutions to meet changing social and economic needs.”88 Although this case concerned the right of the State of Oklaho- ma to regulate the ice marketplace as a utility, it is the same principle that Brandeis applied in the labor related cases. From the Brandeis Brief argument in Muller vs Oregon forward, his arguments reflected this. Through the use of facts to back up his assertions in cases such as Muller vs Oregon, he was not doing this in an attempt to gain sympathy for the plight of the workers, but rather to show that the actions of the state were reasonable in light of the circumstances. He would utilize the same tact in his New State Ice Co. vs Liebmann opinion by showing the centrality of the Oklahoma ice market to daily life and how the state had a rational basis for its experimentation.

Conclusion In the years following his 1939 exit from the Supreme Court, Brandeis would be asked whether he planned to write his memoirs, he would reply, “I think you will find that my memoirs have already been written.”89 Per- haps most directly those memoirs would be written in the examination of his work related to the American worker. Those memoirs though would not only tell his story, but the story of a defining time in the history of labor relations. His impact on shaping the American workplace started long before his ascension to a place on the Supreme Court. His origina- tion of the technique that came to be known as the Brandeis Brief shifted the landscape on which generations of Supreme Court decisions would be decided. Through his emphasis on trying to bring greater light to the factual context of legal matters, he in many instances brought new attention to the injustices he observed in American industry. Yet, this was not the goal of his jurisprudence. Rather, it was about the belief that free people of good will could solve their problems if the right conditions were established by Government. As the fire raged and silenced the machines at the Triangle factory, imperiling hundreds of garment workers, at an adjacent building a New York University law school class was taking place. Hearing the commo- tion of the fire, the professor would order his students to head to the roof. By happenstance, upon arrival at the rooftop they would find two ladders that had been left by painters. The ladders would be sufficient to bridge

162 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH the gap between the law school and the roof of the factory building. By this action, the lives of an untold number of garment workers who were able to make it to the roof would be saved by the efforts of the law students and their professor.90 For Brandeis, while the law was of course about the practical textbook application of legal concepts, that was not all it was to him. It was more importantly about understanding how to provide the ladder so the parties could operate as equals.

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ENDNOTES

1. Brief for the Defendant, Muller vs State of Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908), 27. 2. Richard A. Greenwald, The Triangle Fire, The Protocols of Peace, and Industrial Democracy in Progressive Era New York. (Phila- delphia: Temple University Press, 2011), 220. 3. Les Standiford, Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America (New York: Random House, 2006), 161. 4. Ibid., 159. 5. Ibid., 181. 6. Philippa Strum, Louis D. Brandeis Justice for the People (Law- rence, New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 95. 7. Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis and the Progressive Tradi- tion (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1981),3. 8. Richard A. Greenwald, The Triangle Fire, The Protocols of Peace, and Industrial Democracy in Progressive Era New York, 4. 9. Philippa Strum, Louis D. Brandeis Justice for the People, 97. 10. Ibid., 66. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., 95-96. 13. Ibid., 82. 14. Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis A Life, 240-243. 15. Ibid., 237. 16. Philippa Strum, Louis D. Brandeis Justice for the People, 99- 101. 17. Kermit L. Hall, The Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 202.

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18. David E. Bernstein, “Brandeis Brief Myths,” The Green Bag: An Entertaining Journal of Law 15, no. 1 (Autumn 2011): 12, accessed May 19, 2012, http://www.greenbag.org/v15n1/v15n1_articles_ bernstein.pdf. 19. Melvin I. Urofsky, ,Louis D. Brandeis A Life, 209. 20. Kermit L. Hall, The Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions, 202. 21. Ibid., 161. 22. Philippa Strum, Louis D. Brandeis Justice for the People, 119- 120. 23. Brief for the Defendant, Muller vs State of Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908), 53. 24. Ibid., 28-36. 25. Ibid., 106-111. 26. David E. Bernstein, “Brandeis Brief Myths,” 12. 27. Ibid., 11. 28. Brief for the Defendant, Muller vs State of Oregon. 208 U.S. 412 (1908), 9. 29. Kermit L. Hall, The Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions, 209. 30. Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis A Life, 227. 31. David E. Bernstein, “Brandeis Brief Myths,” The Green Bag: An Entertaining Journal of Law 15, no. 1 (Autumn 2011): 11, accessed May 19, 2012, http://www.greenbag.org/v15n1/v15n1_articles_ bernstein.pdf. 32. Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis A Life, 244-245. 33. Richard A. Greenwald, "More than a Strike: Ethnicity, Labor Re- lations, and the Origins of the Protocol of Peace in the New York Ladies' Garment Industry,” Business and Economic History: The Journal of the Business History Conference 27, no. 2 (1998): 319, accessed April 12, 2012, http://www.thebhc.org/publications/BEHprint/v027n2/p0318- p0329.pdf.

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34. Ibid., 318. 35. Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis A Life, 244. 36. Philippa Strum, Louis D. Brandeis Justice for the People, 74. 37. Richard A. Greenwald, The Triangle Fire, The Protocols of Peace, and Industrial Democracy in Progressive Era New York, 76-77. 38. Ibid., 74. 39. Ibid., 71. 40. Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis A Life, 244. 41. David Von Dreble, Triangle The Fire that Changed America (New York: Grove Press, 2003), 86. 42. C-SPAN 3, “The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911.” Annelise Or- leck. C-SPAN Video Archive, 1:05, accessed May 1, 2011, http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/298413-2. 43. David Von Dreble, Triangle The Fire that Changed America, 252-253. 44. Ibid., 220. 45. Richard A. Greenwald, The Triangle Fire, The Protocols of Peace, and Industrial Democracy in Progressive Era New York, 140- 141. 46. Ibid., 189. 47. Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis and the Progressive Tradi- tion, 104. 48. Ibid., 106. 49. Ibid., 118-119. 50. Philippa Strum, Louis D. Brandeis Justice for the People, 343. 51. Hitchman Coal and Coke vs Mitchell, 245 U.S. 229 (1917). 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid.

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55. Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis and the Progressive Tradi- tion, 118. 56. Philippa Strum, Louis D. Brandeis Justice for the People, 343. 57. Kermit L. Hall, The Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions, 79. 58. Duplex Printing Press Co. vs Deering, 245 U.S. 443 (1921). 59. Kermit L. Hall, The Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions, 79. 60. Duplex Printing Press Co. vs Deering, 245 U.S. 443 (1921). 61. Ibid. 62. Charles H. Newell, “The Working Man Has Stood All He Can Bear—Mother Jones,” The Day Book, May 4, 1914. 63. Alexander M. Bickel, The Unpublished Opinions of Mr. Justice Brandeis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 85. 64. Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis A Life, 605-606. 65. Alexander M. Bickel, The Unpublished Opinions of Mr. Justice Brandeis, 86. 66. Ibid. 67. Michael J. O’Neal, America in the 1920's (New York: Stonesong Press LLC, 2005), 61. 68. Ibid., 87. 69. Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis A Life, 606-607. 70. Alexander M. Bickel, The Unpublished Opinions of Mr. Justice Brandeis, 85. 71. Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis A Life, 606-607. 72. Alexander M. Bickel, The Unpublished Opinions of Mr. Justice Brandeis, 93. 73. Kermit L. Hall, The Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions, 308. 74. Truax vs Corrigan, 257 U.S. 312 (1921).

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75. Kermit L. Hall, The Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions, 308. 76. Senn vs Tile Layers Protective Union, 301 U.S. 468 (1937). 77. Philippa Strum, Louis D. Brandeis Justice for the People, 360- 361. 78. Dorchy vs Kansas, 272 U.S. 306 (1926). 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid. 81. Ibid. 82. Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis A Life, 607. 83. Bedford Cut Stone Co. vs Journeyman Stone Cutters' Associa- tion, 274 U.S. 37 (1927). 84. Ibid. 85. Ibid. 86. Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis A Life, 608. 87. Alexander M. Bickel, The Unpublished Opinions of Mr. Justice Brandeis, 17. 88. Kermit L. Hall, The Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions, 214. 89. Philippa Strum, Brandeis on Democracy, 97. 90. David Von Drehle, Triangle The Fire that Changed America (New York: Grove Press, 2003), 135.

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From Early Renaissance to High Renaissance - Changing Visions of Female Beauty Between Piero Della Francesca's “Madonna Del Parto” and Titian's “Sacred and Profane Love”

by Iryna Sirota-Basso

Written for Course: DLS, Seminar Professor: John J. Reuscher, Ph.D Fall 2014

Iryna Sirota-Basso is currently a Doctor of Liberal Studies candidate at Georgetown University. She graduated with honors from Odessa State University, Ukraine with an M.A. in English. Iryna taught English at a college prep school in Ukraine for eight years, where she received an Award of Ministry of Education of Ukraine for Excellence in Teaching and was a national finalist of American Coun- cils’ Teaching English Awards Program. Since 2007 Iryna has been a member of the English Department at the Academy of the Holy Cross, Kensington, MD, teaching a variety of courses in American and World Literature. In her doctoral thesis, Iryna is interested in exploring a transition from a postmodern towards the post-postmodern worldview in Russian and Ukrainian culture. — ∞ —

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Piero della Francesca and Titian’s visions of female beauty. To effectively discuss the distinguishing artistic characteristics of the Early and High Renaissance eras in a short format, one would do better to focus on a smaller scale inductive analysis of two representative paintings from Quattrocento (1400s) and Cinquecento (1500s) periods respectively. While the following aspects contribute to distinguishing Renais- sance art from the previous medieval era, they also portray a gradual lib- eralization and secularization of art, as well as growth of realism and humanism in the depiction of women’s beauty from Early to High Re- naissance era. One of the aspects, in which Renaissance art differs from its medieval predecessor is reintroduction of ancient Greek and Roman mythological subjects, which are reinterpreted and intertwined with Biblical narrative, and receive new symbolic meanings contributing to the multilayered allegorical complexity of the art. At the same time, the development of new science and new discoveries in math and geometry contribute to the growing depth of the paintings’ perspective, through the techniques of measurement, color, light and shadow, as well as multilayered backgrounds, creating an illusion that the painting is an extension of the viewer’s room – a window into another world. The growing realism and humanism of the art ensures that the character’s facial expressions are becoming more complex, reflecting a range of human emotions, present- ing an arguably “more real than life,” idealized version of reality. Finally, the place of art is gradually moving from the sole domain of the Church to the homes of royalty, nobility, and other wealthy individuals. Thus, Piero della Francesca’s “Madonna del Parto” and Titian’s “Sa- cred and Profane Love” demonstrate the growing realism and humanism in artistic depiction of female beauty from Early to High Renaissance periods through deepening of the perspective, intertwining of mythological and Biblical motifs, and replacing the sole monopoly of the Church on commissioning art with the private collections of secular patrons.

From Proto-Renaissance to Mannerism – spread of Humanism. While “the Italian Renaissance” is a phenomenon so complex and am- biguous that it eludes attempts at definition,” a certain set of overarching characteristics distinguishes this period from the ones that came before and after it, and within the Renaissance era a few interconnected yet unique stages can be identified as well (Miller 1998, 1). Even though it

170 WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM…ON TO THE 50TH might be impossible to distinguish a clean break on a timeline, starting in the late 1200s in Northern Italy with the writings of Francis of Assisi (ca. 1180-1226) and poetry of Petrarch (1304-1374), the ideas of individuali- ty and humanistic approach gradually begin taking over the collective consciousness. In this period known as Proto-Renaissance, artists like Giotto (ca. 1267-1337) start allowing themselves more freedom in portrayal of the religious subjects, slowly moving away from prescriptive dogmas of the church. In the 1400s Italian art enters the era of Early Renaissance, breaking away from medieval Aristotelian scholasticism and accepting the worldview of Neo-Platonic theory of Forms, considering profane concept of beauty to be a shadow of the otherworldly Beauty not accessible in this life. Renaissance Humanists follow the Neo-Platonic views brought back by Nicolas of Cusa, who finds mathematical connections between human mind, God, and the world. Humanists in art aspire to create an idealized human form that reflects the otherworldly concept of Beauty. They revive Ancient Greek and Roman aesthetic of the beauty of human body in pursuit of the otherworldly ideal. Humanists also maintain that artists are not just tradesmen but creators of beauty similar to poets. However, it is important to note that Early Renaissance is not simply a rebirth of antiquity, or continuation of the medieval ideas. In this period, “a great variety of elements, derived from both ancient and medieval sources, are utilized in a new and original way,” marked by the synthesis of “Greek reason and Christian revelation” (Bensalhia 2011). In this era Piero della Francesca paints his beautiful “Madonna del Parto” where a deeply religious subject of pregnant Mary receives not only symbolic complexity, but also a deeply human emotion. The ideas of individualism and humanism, as well as the techniques conveying those ideas reach new, earlier unknown horizons in early 1500s era of High or Late Renaissance. The most famous artists of the Renaissance- Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo- all live and create in the High Renaissance period, working with Neo-Platonic aesthetic in mind. Titian also paints his famous work of high complexity and rich symbolism “Sacred and Profane Love” in the High Renaissance era. In this period, the paintings are as close to reality as a two dimensional means can be, populated by almost breathing and living flesh and blood figures, as if ready to come out of the frame at any moment. In mid- 1500s a new style of Mannerism develops, rebelling against the realism of High Renaissance, purposefully elongating the figures and placing them in the most unlikely settings. Through the overview of these Re-

171 STUDENT - 2015 - SIROTA-BASSO GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES naissance stages one can see the progression of philosophical and artistic thought, introducing the ideas of an individual’s liberation, leading the world towards its secularization. Renaissance art owes its unique, fundamentally different from the medieval art characteristics to the ideas of Humanism, which begins to flourish in the 1300s when the utilitarian approach of Aristotelian scholasticism gradually gives way to Neo-Platonic idealistic worldview. Or rather the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle are transformed and intertwined with Christian beliefs on the basis of shifting focus from God to man. Neo-Platonists during the Renaissance era “utilize ideas from both Aristotle and Plato, a synthesis made possible by reinterpreting them.” The original ideas of Plato and Aristotle are reused, but in a new sense. “At the core of Renaissance Humanism was using the study of classical texts to alter contemporary thinking, breaking with the medieval mindsets and creating something new” (Miller 1998, 10). Renaissance Humanism could be defined as “the study of classical – Greek and Ro- man – texts in order to affect how you viewed your world taken from the ancient world to reform the ‘modern’ and giving it a worldlier, human outlook which focused on the ability of humans to act and not blindly follow a religious plan. The perceived will of God was thus less important than during the medieval period: instead the humanists believed God had given humanity options and potential, and humanist thinkers had to act to succeed and make the most of this: it was a duty to do your best” (Wilde 2010). While Humanism, especially in its early stages still remains a deeply religious movement, it plants the seeds of future secularism and eventually spreads them all over Europe.

Humanity and complexity of a woman’s image – moving away from the medieval dogma. When between 1455-1470 an Early Renaissance artist Piero della Fran- cesca painted his fresco “Madonna del Parto,” it was reflecting a popular subject of 1300-1400 - a pregnant Virgin Mary. Yet unlike his medieval predecessors whose depictions of the Holy Mother followed prescriptive Christian dogmas, della Francesca created a more human version of Mary with no royal attributes, no book in her hands, no St. Thomas girdle. The halo above Mary's head is the only indication of her divinity. Her pose is natural for pregnant women and the expression on her beautiful face is complex, conveying both acceptance and sorrow, which emphasizes Mary’s humanity.

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While Piero della Francesca’s “Madonna” still follows a traditional Biblical subject represented in modest garments with a halo above her head, Titian’s 1514 High Renaissance painting “Sacred and Profane Love” depicts a more complex and a less religiously restricted concept of female beauty. Two women with the same face dominate the forefront of the painting, where the nudity of the female figure on the right is com- plemented by the luxurious wedding dress of the female figure on the left. Unlike the High Renaissance era, the presentation of the nude figure and a detailed depiction of opulent garments would have been impossible not only in the medieval art, but even in the Early Renaissance period. An art critic who’s been analyzing “Sacred and Profane Love” for the past sixteen years, Paul Doughton in his “Titian: The Sacred and Pro- fane Love. Visual Analysis,” offers an extremely detailed description of the female figures of “Sacred and Profane Love,” which emphasizes the high complexity and symbolic nature of Titian’s composition:

At the viewer’s left, the cold stare of the clothed figure gazes forward, and though the women's eyes do not engage, the body language of these two contrasting figures incline toward each other. Arrayed in a luxuriant silvery/white dress replete with girdle or belt, the clothed figure seems oblivious to her semi- nude counterpart. The design of this dress is low across the shoulders and chest, full at the sleeves, and the fabric so ample in volume it appears either courtly or formal, although in this treed setting - and in direct contrast to the semi-nude - the clothed figure presents as theatrical or ostentatious. On the right arm of this figure, the opulent fabric is folded back to expose a full, puffed red sleeve from above the elbow, thereafter tailored or fitted down to the wrist. The same red (perhaps with laced edging) is also exposed at the hem of the dress. Below the wrist the right hand is gloved and rests in the woman's lap. Under this hand are leaves and a flower torn (logically) from the small rosebush watered at the fountain’s front. Across the ledge of the fountain are strewn a flower, pieces of leaved branch, and single leaves which forms a visual trail between the plants, ending at the sprig of rosebush clasped under the gloved right hand in the woman's lap. Her left arm and gloved hand rests upon the lid of a closed container. Slightly further to the right of the resting hand of the semi-nude figure, a shallow silver bowl is placed near the pieces of torn rosebush on the ledge directly above the

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spigot. Across to the viewer’s right and balanced by her right arm resting along the fountains ledge, the semi-nude is holding aloft a small lighted oil lamp in her left hand. This figure would be fully nude, save for a twisted piece of white fabric wrapped across the hip, lap, and thigh of the fully exposed left leg. The legs are crossed and only one leg (the left) is completely visible. This figure sits upon a billowing red fabric which appears to rise of its own accord as there is no indication of breeze suggested anywhere else in the painting. There is either a phrenological or stylistic similarity between the women and they are comparably youthful in age, possibly eighteen to twenty-five years old. (Doughton 2011)

This description of the two female figures makes it clear that unlike in the Medieval period, Renaissance art, especially in its High stage, conveys the idealized complexity of female beauty. In European Christian tradition men have been ascribing to women the qualities of both Eve and Mary or “terrestrial Venus” and the “celestial Venus” respectively, the profane and the sacred, often perceiving the representatives of the opposite gender either as a “fallen” woman, or as a celestial virgin. Titian's painting describes the duality of a woman’s nature in an intricate metaphorical composition, where the sacred and profane occupy two opposite sides of the artwork and determine the two types of love respectively. The contrast between the church and the castle, animals, landscapes, and even male hunters in the background on two sides of the painting contributes to the concept. Both female characters are leaning on the sarcophagus with the Cupid behind swirling water in it, creating the serene and peaceful mood of the painting with the balance between spiritual and physical, divine and worldly in a woman. Most art critics agree that, despite the first impression it is the sensual and naked goddess who represents the sacred, while flamboyantly and lavishly dressed bride represents the profane. This High Renaissance painting portrays the sacred, divine, and good coming from nature and God con- verging with daily, earthly, physical, practical, mundane coming from human aspects of love, creating a perfect vision of a woman’s beauty, which, according to the Neo-Platonic view exists only in the otherworldly and can be only accessed “by divine illumination through the soul,” but should be emulated and aspired to in this physical world.

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A new synthesis of mythology and Christianity. In the High Renaissance era art returns to mythological subjects not only providing an opportunity to paint the nude human body, but also allowing artists new freedom and boldness of expression to combine mythological and Christian concepts conveying Neo-Platonic ideas. Thus, in Botticelli's “Primavera” Venus not only takes the traditional in Christian art in place of Mary, but even has the same face as Mary in Botticelli's earlier paintings. Venetian artists, including Bellini, Giorgione, and Ti- tian, are particularly known for glorious intertwining of mythological and Christian motifs (Phelan 2000). The incorporation of mythological motifs in Biblical subjects creates a complex symbolic synthesis of the Renaissance art, contrasting it from the Medieval Christian art. While the outward depiction of Ancient Greek and Roman gods and goddesses becomes possible only in the High Renaissance period, allusions to mythology are being made even in the Early Renaissance art. In this way the mythological motif of pomegranate as a symbol of fertility adds another underlying layer to the Biblical vision of Mary as the Holy Mother, and the Christian concepts of death and resurrection. The baldachin framing the figure of Mary in Piero della Francesca’s “Madonna” is decorated with the mythological symbol of pomegranates. In Greek mythology, the god of death and the underworld Hades kidnaps Persephone, the daughter of the goddess of nature Demeter. He agrees to return the daughter, but tricks her into eating a pomegranate seed, which ensures that Persephone will always be returning to the underworld for three months of every year. Thus, binding Persephone to the underworld, Hades causes the cyclic nature of seasons, as her mother Demeter grieves every fall causing nature to fall asleep, and rejoices every spring when Persephone returns from the underworld. The myth ex- plaining the cyclic nature of life, in Christianity transforms into the concept of overcoming human mortality through faith and resurrection. The ancient myth also attempts to legitimize the laws of binding women to their husbands. In Christian interpretation the pomegranate motif receives additional meanings symbolizing the passions of Christ through its dark red blood evoking juice, with the multiple seeds being Mary's multiple gifts that she offers the world, the main being Jesus, as well as multiple people flocking to Christianity, etc. Thus, decorating the framing baldachin with pomegranates, Piero della Francesca alludes to the future suffering and glory that awaits pregnant Mary and the child in her womb.

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Titian's “Sacred and Profane Love” also has multiple mythological references, which are depicted more outwardly through the central figures of the painting, as well as through additional symbols in the background. One of the interpretations of the two female figures in the forefront suggests that the nude figure on the right is Demeter, representing the sacred, while the one dressed in elaborate bridal garments on the left is Persephone, representing the profane. The positioning of the standing nude and the sitting bride could suggest the supremacy of the sacred who is closer to the sky, why the profane gravitates toward the earth and the underworld. Persephone holds the vase of jewels, wears leather gloves for falcon holding, alluding to an earthly entertainment of hunting, and exposes her bright read silky sleeve, which rhymes with the red cloak draped behind the standing Demeter who holds a torch with the burning flame of God’s love in her hand. This symbolism could suggest the fleet- ing happiness on earth and the eternal happiness in heaven. The fact that both goddesses have the same face could also suggest that the cycle of life described in mythology is reinforced by the Christian concept of death and resurrection possibility for human beings through love. Doughton’s analysis in “The Women, Fountain and Child: Ceres, Proserpine and Cupid/Mercury: First level of allegory,” also reinforces the mythological meaning of the female figures, using their Latin names, “In terms of Classical Mythology the clothed figure is intended to represent Proserpine, while the semi-nude is her mother Ceres. Only when these figures are embraced as archetypes do they correspond with the notion of the Twin Venuses […]. Archetypally the Venere Vulgare is an equivalent of Proserpine, and Ceres is an archetypal equivalent of the Venere Celeste” (Doughton 2011). The motif of fertility is also present in in both della Francesca’s “Madonna” and Titian’s “Sacred and Profane Love,” as pomegranate symbol for Mary in Piero’s fresco rhymes with the rabbits, symbolizing fertility, behind Persephone-the bride in the background of the Titian’s painting. As mentioned above, “Sacred and Profane Love” is also often analyzed as the portrayal of two faces of Ve- nus – celestial Venus and terrestrial Venus, symbolizing the unity of the sacred and profane aspects of every woman in one ideal concept of beauty, where an earthly beautiful aspires to and imitates the otherworldly perfection of pure beauty, according to the Neo-Platonic and Humanistic worldview. Thus, the mythological and the Biblical converge in the subjects and messages of the Renaissance art, with the increasing freedom of depiction and symbolic complexity developing in High Renaissance era.

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Perspective through background and colors. The concept of linear perspective is introduced in art in Early Renais- sance. In the Medieval era the artwork was two-dimensional and lacked the background depth, which would eventually bring Renaissance paintings to life and add realistic humanism to the portrayed subjects in 1400- 1500s. Piero della Francesca, named as a “maestro della luce” (“master of light”) and “maestro dell’affresco,” (“master of frescoes”) by his con- temporaries, was very interested in mathematics, geometry, and effects of measurements on perspective (Diverso). While in Early Renaissance perspective is not as deep as in High Renaissance, and Piero has only a few colors at his disposal; however, he finds ways to create a harmonious and serene balance and a relative depth in his fresco. His Madonna is framed in the curtains of a baldachin with two angels on each side, which create the sense of symmetry in the fresco. The background is the textured pattern of the baldachin fabric, and it creates a perspective, allowing Mary and the angels to step out of the background, like characters on stage, giving them a hint of the third dimension. While the only colors used by della Francesca are deep blue from lapis lazuli, green, red, and beige, and the two angels are specular executed with the same perforated cartoons, the overall mood of the fresco is that of serene humanism, achieved in particular by the artist’s masterful mixing of paints, creating a light and airy atmosphere surrounding the beauty of motherhood with its joys and sorrows. Piero’s “Madonna” is clearly a transitional work where the newly discovered concept of a linear perspective and the combinations of light and shadow through the mixture of the available paints, are being introduced, yet not developed to the level of the High Renaissance art. In Titian's painting, the balance is achieved on multiple levels through the complex compositional organization of the painting. The two female figures in the forefront, clear delineation between the sacred side on the right and the profane side on the left, two-three background levels on each side respectively reinforcing the messages of the sacred and the profane, and finally the water in the sarcophagus being swirled by Cupid —all contribute to the sense of balance and peaceful unity of all compositional elements. The complexity of color combinations, the realistic interplay of light and shadows, as well as the two-three level background create a deep, realistic perspective that almost extends the room where the viewer is standing. It's a truly three dimensional work with flesh and blood living and breathing characters, almost as realistic as the viewers themselves.

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In his analysis “The Sacred and the Profane. Finding the way in: Po- etic Imagery of Donne and Giorgione,” Doughton also discusses the ge- ometric composition of the painting

One of the major keys to unlocking the mystery of the Sacred and Profane Love is the sarcophagus/fountain whose propor- tions are measured by the upright pentacle and the inverted pentagram. […] The only two horizontal lines found in the upright and inverted pentagrams prescribe the upper and lower boundaries of the sarcophagus/fountain. It must be noted that the inverted pentagram invites the 'downward' action and declares the fountain to be the entrance to the underworld realm of Pluto and so describes the 'fall'. This descent into matter is, according to philosophical alchemy, sexual in nature, as is also implied by the Christian events of the Garden of Eden. (Doughton 2011)

The open air, pastoral setting behind the female figures consists of a multilayered background, contributing to the deep and realistic perspective of the composition. Doughton describes it as follows:

To the left and right of the central suite, the rectangular picture plane is surrounded by diminutive images that reference provin- cial life. To the upper left of the picture near the clothed female is a mountainous area which dominates that quarter of the picture, and along a diagonal road around that mountain a rider on horseback races upward toward a castle or fortress. Directly below the rider at left mid centre - though comparative size suggests slightly forward in the mid-rear picture plane - two white rabbits sit in an open area. At far mid-right of the picture and next to the image of the naked female is an image of two men on horseback; both horses are rearing and below them, a dog chases a rabbit. At extreme mid-right is a shepherd with flocks, and in that bucolic environment a pair of lovers is in reclined embrace. Behind and above the two figures on horseback in the apparent distance is a lake divided by an isthmus, beyond which lay a townscape. Receding farther into the distance in the extreme upper-right quarter a church spire and varying roof lines form distant village architecture, and beyond that sea and possibly coves. Concluding the paintings upper-right quarter are the sun streaked clouds; cirrus and stratocumulus run from extreme

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upper-right across to the extreme upper-left of the picture plane, divided only by the spreading form of the large tree. (Doughton 2011)

Titian’s high attention to the minutest details creates not only a complex allegorical composition, but also offers more options for the realistic portrayal of a woman’s beauty.

Moving from churches to palaces and beyond. Most of the Early Renaissance art, just like in the Medieval period, was still being commissioned by the Church and reflected the dogmas of Ar- istotelian scholasticism, serving doctrinal or religious purposes. In this way, Piero della Francesca’s fresco was originally created for an old country church Santa Maria in Silvis in the Tuscan hilltown of Montre- chi. While the incorporation of the above mentioned mythological motifs in the Biblical subject and introduction of the linear perspective, contributed to the humanization and gradual secularization of female beauty in the Early Renaissance art, its figures are still not as psychologically complex and structurally volumetric as those in High Renaissance paintings. On the contrary, Titian’s “Sacred and Profane Love” was commissioned in 1514 by a prominent Venetian citizen Niccolo Aurelio to commemo- rate his marriage to a young widow Laura Bagarotto. Aurelio’s coat of arms, represented among other carved images on the frontal panel of the sarcophagus, emphasizes the secular purpose of this painting as a wedding present, which also contributes to the secularization of the concept of female beauty in it. An Early Renaissance philosopher Pico della Mirandola, representing the Quattrocento Humanism and Neo-Platonic thinking, argues that “the human soul is not a god; it is an image of God, […] imitating in a human way the absolute unity of God. […] Man participates in the life of God both by his natural being and by his religion, which gives a super- natural natural life” (Miller 1998, 11). His contemporary Piero della Francesca seeks to capture in his art that ideal perfection of female beauty, which Pico writes about, and later Titian strives to develop this ideal. Curiously, the death of Piero della Francesca on October 12th 1492 coin- cides with the day when Columbus first sets his foot in the New World, and from here on the new era of scientific discoveries and the movement towards secularism begins (Gennai 2014). Living at the nexus between the old and the new eras, Piero della Francesca represented the transfor-

179 STUDENT - 2015 - SIROTA-BASSO GRADUATE LIBERAL STUDIES mation of the medieval worldview, ushering in the possibility of Titian’s thinking and the ideas of the future High Renaissance era. From Piero della Francesca’s “Madonna del Parto” to Titian’s “Sacred and Profane Love” the notions of an individual’s liberation, growing realism and humanism in artistic depiction of female beauty develop in Renaissance era and beyond.

Piero della Francesca “Maddonna del Parto” (ca. 1455-1470) Museo della Madonna del Parto of Monterchi, Tuscany, Italy.

Titian “Sacred and Profane Love” (1514) Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy.

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REFERENCE LIST

“Art in Tuscany. Piero della Francesca.” www.poderesantapia.com 4 Oct. 2014. . Accessed 4 Nov. 2014. Bensalhia, John. “So how did the Renaissance Begin?” www.italymagazine.com. 7 Oct. 2011. . Accessed 12 Nov. 2014. Bibleartists. “Time of Transition: From Medieval to Renaissance.” www.bibleartists.wordpress.com. 12 Feb. 2012. . Accessed 15 Nov. 2014. della Mirandola, Pico. On the Dignity of Man. 1998. Tran. Charles Glenn Wallis, Paul J.W. Miller, and Douglas Carmichael. Ed. Charles Glenn Wallis, Paul J.W. Miller, and Douglas Carmichael. Indianapolis/ Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., Kin- dle. Diverso, Claudia. “La Chiesa di San Francesco a Pienza.” www.viverelatoscana.blogspot.it. 3 Nov. 2014. . Accessed 8 Nov. 2014. Doughton, Paul. “Titian: The Sacred and Profane Love. Visual Analy- sis.” pauldoughton.com. 13 March. 2011. . Accessed 15 Nov. 2014. ---. “Titian's Sacred and Profane Love. The Sacret and the Profane: Finding the way in: Poetic Imagery of Donne and Giorgione.” 21 Feb. 2011. . Accessed 15 Nov. 2014. ---. “The Women, Fountain and Child: Ceres, Proserpine and Cu- pid/Mercury. First level of allegory.” www.pauldoughton.com. 2 May 2011. . Accessed 15 Nov. 2014.

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Gennai, Cecilia. “Museum of the “Madonna del Prato” in Monterchi.” www.turismo.intoscana.it. 2 Oct. 2014. . Accessed 14 Nov. 2014. “High and Late Renaissance Art.” 3 Jul. 2012. . Accessed 15 Nov. 2014. Phelan, Joseph. “Forbidden Visions: Mythology in Art.” Artcyclope- dia.com. 20 May 2000. . Accessed 12 Nov. 2014. “Piero della Francesca Art.” www.moodbook.com. 24 June 2012. . Accessed 10 Nov. 2014. Ruta, Johnes. “Transition and the Sublime: The evolution of art & culture in the early Renaissance Perspective and early abstraction.” www.azothgallery.com. 4 Aug. 2012. . Accessed 11 Nov. 2011. “Sacred and Profane Love.” www.galleriaborghese.it.15 Sept. 2014. . Ac- cessed 10 Nov. 2014. Wilde, Robert. “Renaissance Humanism.” www.about.com. 28 Sept. 2010. Accessed 14 Nov. 2014.

Author’s note: Only online sources and an eBook were used in this paper per the assignment’s guidelines.

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