History

Discussions of Jews' relationship to Vienna before 1938 tend to focus on their consumption of Viennese culture, including music, art, literature, and intellectual innovation. However, understanding place as a formative aspect of material culture can help us see another crucial aspect of how Jews-individually and collectively-came to terms with their place in the city. This essay examines the significance of place for Jews in Vienna through a variety of primary sources related to the Judenplatz, the square which is today the city's premier site of Jewish memory, and Leopoldstadt, the district that encompasses Vienna's most densely populated Jewish residential area. Memoirs, newspaper articles, caricatures, and maps written by both Jews and non-Jews reveal how the significance of these two areas changed over time, as they became deeply intertwined with the self-perceptions of both Jews and non-Jews. Analyzing how the Judenplatz and Leopoldstadt engaged Jewish difference over time helps us understand how the presence or absence of Jews remained a persistent dialectic in determining the meaning of place in Vienna.

After the Second World War, using culture – such as theater, film, and writing – to promote Austria as a separate nation became a helpful strategy for Austrians and the Allied Forces alike. In this context, the role of Jews and Jewish difference in revising Austrian self-definitions was particularly fraught. Antisemitic prejudices persisted after the Holocaust, even though Austrian Jews were now largely absent. However, in the early postwar years, antisemitism was more likely to rear its head via code words or backhandedly, in efforts to deny its very existence. This article investigates the presence and consequences of this 'invisible' antisemitism in postwar Vienna by juxtaposing two films made at roughly the same time: Der Prozeß (1948), a film about antisemitism that takes place in a nineteenth-century village over 300 miles away and features only innocent rural Jews and diabolical antisemites, while The Third Man (1949) features an urban tale of the black market and poisoned children set in post-1945 Vienna that does not mention either Jews or the reasons for their absence. This comparison suggests that the simultaneous repression and evocation of Jewish difference that characterized the creation of culture in Vienna before the Holocaust persisted in the immediate postwar era.

Focusing on the relationship between socially constructed ideals of the “Jewish” and “non-Jewish” as part of a social and symbolic order similar to gender can provide critical and theoretical tools helpful for understanding the role of Jews and others in the creation of modern Central European culture. This article traces the genealogy of this system of constructed ideals from Otto Weininger to Lenny Bruce and offers a number of examples in which the study of German Jewish cultural history can be enhanced by its use.

Franz Theodor Csokor's three-act drama, Dritter November 1918: Ende der Armee Österreich-Ungarns (Third of November 1918: End of the Army in Austria-Hungary) reveals how Jewish difference played an important—if often unrecognized—role in the shaping the terms of Austrian patriotism in the years leading up to 1938. Portrayals of Habsburg loyalty as " Jewish " or " not Jewish " helped articulate how nostalgia for Austria-Hungary would figure in a new sense of Austrianness, a project that took on even more urgency under the authoritarian censors of the Ständestaat. While the play's portrayal of a Jewish doctor as level-headed, peace-loving, and caring countered some egregious antisemitic stereotypes about disloyal and sexually perverted Jews, it also suggested that Jews were overly rational, lacking in emotional depth, and, ultimately, unable to embody a new Catholic, spiritual, Austrian patriotic ideal. Considered in its broader political context, and along with Csokor's earlier unpublished drama Gesetz, the play reveals how labelling Habsburg loyalty as Jewish helped to clarify and critique the nature of what it meant to be Austrian under an authoritarian regime that promoted a pro-Catholic, anti-Nazi vision of Austrian patriotism. It also offers a prime example of how even anti-antisemitic authors like Csokor perpetuated negative stereotypes about Jews, even as they aimed to present them in a more positive light.

The collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918 left all Austrians in a state of political, social, and economic turmoil, but Jews in particular found their lives shaken to the core. Although Jews' former comfort zone suddenly disappeared, the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy also created plenty of room for innovation and change in the realm of culture. Jews eagerly took up the challenge to fill this void, and they became heavily invested in culture as a way to shape their new, but also vexed, self-understandings.

By isolating the years between the World Wars and examining formative events in both Vienna and the provinces, Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture between the World Wars demonstrates that an intensified marking of people, places, and events as "Jewish" accompanied the crises occurring in the wake of Austria-Hungary's collapse, with profound effects on Austria's cultural legacy. In some cases, the consequences of this marking resulted in grave injustices. Philipp Halsmann, for example, was wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of his father years before he became a world-famous photographer. And the men who shot and killed writer Hugo Bettauer and philosopher Moritz Schlick received inadequate punishment for their murderous deeds.

But engagements with the terms of Jewish difference also characterized the creation of culture, as shown in Hugo Bettauer's satirical novel The City without Jews and its film adaptation, other texts by Veza Canetti, David Vogel, A.M. Fuchs, Vicki Baum, and Mela Hartwig, and performances at the Salzburg Festival and the Yiddish theater in Vienna. By examining the lives, works, and deeds of a broad range of Austrians, Lisa Silverman reveals how the social codings of politics, gender, and nation received a powerful boost when articulated along the lines of Jewish difference.

This essay reviews three recent books from the disciplines of history, art history, and German studies that inject new meaning into age-old questions about why Jewish difference mattered in the creation of modern culture in Central Europe. Each foregrounds the centrality of the dynamic of visibility/invisibility that formed a crucial source of power and control for Jews living among populations that never completely accepted them in Budapest, Vienna, and the cities of Weimar Germany. By highlighting subtle and often unarticulated instances of engagement with Jewish difference that are usually dismissed or relegated to footnotes, these expertly contextualized studies illuminate the invisible circumscribed codes of behavior that shaped Jews' experiences. In doing so, they add a great deal of nuance to our understanding of the history of Jews in modern Central Europe. They show that, while Jewishness was often subtle and ephemeral, the influence of Jews on the culture they created persists.

This is another essay I wrote for a graduate-level history class back in 2005. Along with my other essay on the printing press and the weaponized pamphlet, this paper worked as another foundational piece for my master's thesis on Martin Luther's monster interpretation. The foci here involve early modern Europe-roughly 1492 to 1700ish-and the concept of monstrosity.

This was based on a term paper I for graduate school in 2006. I thought this would be of interest to those interested in topics like church-and-state separation, Utah history, and the history of religion, specifically the LDS Church. Coercive Citizenships: Religious Practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and Legitimizing Utah Statehood, A Critical Bibliography Introduction: "You can't have just one." In January of 2002, Salt Lake City became the host of the XIX Winter Olympic Games. With 78 events, nearly 2,400 athletes, and over 6,000 broadcasters -not to mention the millions upon millions watching the Winter Olympics on television -Salt Lake City became the center of the world. 1 While the athletes, broadcasters, and tourists reveled in the snowtopped mountains and the icy blue sky, they also had to contend with Salt Lake City as a city central to the faith of millions, in much the same way as Jerusalem, Mecca, and Rome are cities of faith and power. In the case of Salt Lake City, the faith was that of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 2 While Salt Lake City was the spiritual home to millions of Mormons, this did not stop Greg Schirf, of Schirf Brewing Co., maker of Wasatch Beers. Only a few short months before the commencement of the Winter Games, Wasatch Beers introduced Polygamy Porter in a brilliant marketing coup. 3 With the slogan "You can't have just one", Polygamy Porter made light humor of the tradition of polygamy as church doctrine within the LDS Church. Since it was an alcoholic beverage, Mormons were forbidden from consuming it. As a marketing campaign, Schirf Brewing Co. made millions off the controversy. But it also inadvertently undermined the legitimacy of 1 ; Internet; accessed on May 16, 2006. 2 While the term "Mormon" is a common misnomer (Cf. Mohammedan in reference to Islam), the terms LDS, Mormon, and Saints will have interchange usage. All refer to the congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The analysis of Luther’s monk-calf pamphlet focuses on the impact of Augustinian theology in Luther’s interpretation of monstrosity, the body, and original sin.  A literature review critiques the various approaches used to interpret monstrosity.  A line-by-line analysis and commentary provide an in-depth investigation into Luther’s Augustinian problematics.  The later medicalization of the monk-calf concludes the analysis.

This article investigates the fluctuating bifurcated nature of The Dune Encyclopedia, by Willis E. McNelly, both as a prized pop culture collector’s item and as an in-universe critique of God-Emperor Leto II’s theocratic totalitarian ersatz monarchy. Marx’s concept of the commodity and Walter Benjamin’s aesthetic theory about art objects first being cult objects are overlaid on a modern analysis of pop culture fandom and the interconnections between the disruptions of free market capitalism and corporate control of fictional narratives.

Leonard Wheeler and the Ojibwa
Paper Abstract
In the 19th and 20th centuries the U.S. government attempted to assimilate Native American children by placing them in boarding schools.  Much has been written on these schools, starting with Carlisle Indian School in the 1870s.  However, the government had been providing funds towards the ‘civilizing’ of native peoples for decades before the advent of schools like Carlisle, through its funding of mission schools such as that for the Ojibwa at La Pointe, Wisconsin, which began schooling native children around 1830. Though the U.S. government provided financial support for the schools at the Ojibwa mission, the missionaries who ran these schools did not always share the same views and goals as the Secretary of War, whose office provided the funds. While the government tended to stress assimilation into white society, missionaries tended to stress conversion to Christianity.
This paper examines one of those missionaries,  Rev. Leonard Wheeler, who  arrived at La Pointe in 1841, to join an established ABCFM mission where a school had existedfor more than ten years to teach native children to read and write in their own language. Wheeler had his own ideas of what was best for the native peoples and did not always conform to official government policy. Michael C. Coleman has recently argued that while many missionaries acknowledged the vices of white society and disapproved of government treatment of native peoples, most stopped short of naming the agencies and persons responsible. Wheeler, however, wrote scathing letters to the Office of Indian Affairs naming corrupt agents, doctors, Senators, and even the Commissioner himself. In order to keep funding for his Indian Boarding School, Wheeler had to play the middle man in balancing the demands of the ABCFM and the US Government. I argue in this paper that Leonard Wheeler attempted to adopt these strategies of assimilation and conversion, but ultimately chose to do what he thought was best for the Native population and acted as an intermediary between the Ojibwa and these outside forces.