American Studies Department - History

From GWUEncyc

Article

The following was written in 1988:

American Literature, American Civilization, American Studies and Robert Whitney Bolwell, at The George Washington University, The Earliest Years

A fiftieth anniversary calls for reminiscences about beginnings. As one present at the start of what became “American Studies” at GW, I have been asked to recall what I can of the status of English and American literature as disciplines there in the very early 1930s.

The English Department then possessed three shining lights. One, fading fast from age, though not from affection, was Dean William Allen Wilbur. For years on end he had taught English to the whole freshman class in the auditorium of a church on the corner of 20th and G streets- from his own book on Rhetoric. A benevolent Baptist (coming out of Brown University), a biblical, Wordsworth and Browning enthusiast, he had become an institution in his own time. He was the first to interview me for a job in the Spring of 1931. His active teaching had yielded to faculty Deaning by then.

The second light was DeWhitt Clinton Croissant, executive officer of the English Department. He had come from Princeton by way of Colorado and Kansas in 1916. A strong character and cheerful cynic, his sympathies centered on the writers of the Restoration period. The wit of Congreve, the satire of Wycherley and Swift lay just beneath the surface of his normal speech, and buoyed his constant sly commentary on all writings since. Very amusing in class.

The third and youngest of this triumvirate, Robert Whitney Bolwell came to GW from Columbia University in 1920. He published his thesis in 1921 on The Life and Works of John Heywood, the minor Tudor songster and writer of interludes in the reign of Henry the Eighth. Solwell could (and did) match Croissant in cheerful cynicism. The two would gently josh each other in department meetings.

It became apparent that if the field of English were divided into two major areas- English and American letters- these two strong personalities might complement each other and not compete. And so it was, and so they did -- to the general health of literary studies at GW when I came aboard. For Bolwell had become Professor of American Literature in 1929, with hopes of developing it as a distinct discipline. He was eager to do so, and the challenge was there.

Pardon a smidgeon about the national status of these two branches of the study of letter, as framework for the specifics going on at GWU. The corpus and layout of what we know as English Literature had taken effect (here and abroad) in about 1870. Its organization into chronological periods, and intellectual "isms" pushing across chronological-boundaries were familiar.

American literature, when it came as a field of concentration, naturally modeled itself on this pattern, derivative as it was in content and appeal, But during the twenties of this century, curricula and creative writings in American literature took off in an exciting and broad direction. The teaching of English literature followed a great tradition emphasizing belles lettres, beautiful and compelling style- now plain, now rich, now fulsome and imaginary, powerful in Marlowe, Shakespeare and Milton, graceful in Chaucer, Pope, and Shelley flush with the page in Dryden and Swift, always dealing with substance, but richly spoken.

American literature, however, had broadened its base and its teaching emphasis almost from the beginning, and gradually gained a particular strength in non belleletristic aspects¬ History of the Plymouth Plantation, the Federalist Papers, sermons, articles on economics, philosophy, agriculture, industry. True, Joel Barlow modeled his Columbiad on the epic forms which had inspired Milton, but the writings of Tom Paine seemed more compelling.

In our century scholars led by W.P. Trent, all stemming from enthusiasms for the American scene welling up from Columbia University, began to provide handy texts for study- Colonial Prose and Poetry, the Prose and Poetry of the Revolution -organized to display an orderly progress in American letters, while Vernon Parrington was fascinating his students at the University of Washington with his Main Currents of American Thought. A dozen universities and a tribe of remarkable scholar-teachers followed sturdily along. So first American Literature had to become established , not with just a few lectures here and these, and a course or two, but as a discipline and a college major, with American writers subjected to the same sort of critical analysis as had been applied to their English counterparts for half a century.

To those of us reared in the mold of the older doctoral discipline in English philology, a certain thinness and derivativeness was perceived (in content and style) in the works of the bearded row of the Whitiers, the Lowells, and the Longfellows whom we thought of as leading American writers. But that was made up for by an increasing emphasis on the content of the later authors-- moral, theological, frontier expansionism and the incorporation (in the canon) of sister fields of thought.

Example of these elements in a total culture had, of course long been at hand in an urge towards the history of ideas and an anthropological definition of American culture. Noah Webster, early on, as a lexicographer, traveler, orchardist, experimental scientist wrote on literary, political, economic, and scientific subjects, on banks, insurance, the French Revolution, the decomposition of white lead paint, the rights of neutral nations, and copyright law. The driving force behind him lay in a super patriotism that focused on the creation of a national spirit embracing a cultural whole. The same carried on in the writings of Walt Whitman.

Well, American Literature as an academic discipline was becoming pretty well established by 1933, say, when the Modern Language Association of America was fifty years old, and when the row of bearded poets was giving way in serious studies to the Twains, Foes, Melvilles, Emily Dickensons, Faulkners, Hemingways, and a list as long as your arm of exciting writers. Think now, of the accompanying framework that was building up as comprehensive guides for students. Moses Coyt Tyler, back in l878 had written in elegant style a History of American Literature, but by the time of the First World War the four volume Cambridge History of American Literature appeared, and by 1960 it had been supplanted by the monumental Literary History of the United States composed by a large Committee of brilliant American scholars.

Columbia University had a long tradition in the American field with the Trents, the Van Dorens and others, and Robert Whitney Bolwell was a Ph.D from Columbia. Perhaps by osmosis he caught something of the Americanisms going on there. One teacher may have influenced him mightily. That was Professor Carleton J.H. Hayes, the American historian and diplomat. His name was on Bobby's lips again and again in-the early 1930s.

Of the many writings by Hayes, one which came out in 1926 was called Essays on Nationalism. On an occasion such as we celebrate today it is instructive to look into these essays, for Bolwell seeking to strengthen the new discipline at GW, and Bolwell as Dean of the emerging Graduate Council (which by 1939 was offering the Ph.D.) had felt a drive to broaden the base of the constituent disciplines which were contributing to the cultural richness of American writings. “Literary” nationalism as a topic intrigued him. So here he set up a program (within the English Department) in American Thought and Civilization- not just literature.

So serious was his commitment to this widened area of study that he took a semester off in the winter of 1932 to travel across the country and see America in all its diversity, stopping at universities en route to discover the part played by American literature in their academic curricula.

He traveled alone by automobile sweeping south as far as Miami, then over to New Orleans, to Santa Fe, on to Los Angeles, up to San Francisco, thence to Seattle, back across to Salt Lake and boulder, east to St Louis and home. He was in no hurry to make mileage. He lingered to examine town and country-side, and to talk with citizens of every class.

The Great Depression was moving along at a clip. Banks had closed en route, but bars dispensing 3% beer cheerfully opened along the way. He saw elegance and deterioration in the South, staying mostly at cheap hotels and guest houses. He noted the attitudes of natives towards life and politics. He played on public golf courses, joining in with various foursomes. Every evening he wrote up his daily adventures in what turned out to be a most interesting seventy-page diary of events and impressions.

The flora and fauna en route particularly interested him- the birds and birdsong, and the scurrying small wild animals. Sunsets and rivers impressed him especially in the Everglades. These were matched by rock formations, prairie and desert landscapes in the west, all topped by the unbelievable sights in the Yosemite, and the majesty of the Grand Canyon. He saw the Mardi Gras rained out in New Orleans, and in Pasadena felt the heavy tremors of the great Long Beach earthquake.

His visits with academics are of interest for us. At Duke Clarence Gohdes gave him Creel's new book on Tom Paine to review. He spent five days at the Huntington among the Tom Paine manuscripts. At luncheons talk centered on the desirability and probable success of a program in American Thought and Civilization. But there, he wrote, nothing much came of it. At UCLA he found no real graduate work going on in American Literature, and the courses in the subject seemed to him to be perfunctory. He listened to a lecture in Berkeley (given to a class of 400 students) on American Literature. His comment: “They are not doing very much in my line out here. I'm beginning to think that GWU is already in a position of importance in the American Literature field.”

He was feted at the University of Washington, and returned to D.C. with a sheaf of notes and a mind full of impressions from sand storms to sunsets, from swamps to the peaks of the Rockies, from gas station attendants, hitch hikers, cattlemen and sheep herders, to great library collections, and the scholars who were working them.

Back for a moment to Carleton J.H. Hayes. In that American Thought and Civilization thrust, thought Bolwell, “What focus would provide a field of stimulating research for prospective doctoral candidates?” He firmed up in his mind a concept of “Literary Nationalism”, and he looked more and more to a challenge set forth by Hayes who had noted that no profound systematic study of nationalism had yet been made. "To undertake such a treatment would be a gigantic task," he wrote. "One would have to know a vast amount of history, and history of ideas as much as actions; further since patriotism is a matter more of feeling than of thought, one would have to be trained in social psychology as well as in philosophy and history, and finally also before one could advance into the heart of contemporary nationalism one would be forced into the wide fields and devious paths of anthropology. “Small wonder,” Hayes concluded, “that publicists have bungled, and professors have been afraid.”

The rise and manifestations of "Literary Nationalism" seemed to provide a proper area for study. So Bolwell, defining literature as "the body of written works in any language" announced that his PhD students would take segments of 10 to2b-year periods beginning in 1775 to analyze and set forth the phenomenon, Three such studies were made by Charles Cole, James Coberley, and Henry Birnbaum, covering the years 1775 through 1825 .

Bolwell’s announcement of this focus he made in a paper read at the MLA meeting of 1938 in New York, wherein he spoke of “Literature as an expression of a people’s thinking and feeling, rather than the individual and personal creation of literary art.” He wanted his students to look for the exploitation of American themes -- the continent, the government, characteristics of the land, the people, social life, history and destiny. He had already, in his Thought and Civilization major (193b), laid the background for what eventually was to become “American Studies”. That major dwelt upon ten constant cultural features of American life- geography, government, philosophy, literature, arts & crafts, immigration, history, education, religion, and communication.

The program, however, was not, nor could it be, a one-man affair. By the academic year 1936-37 Bolwell had the support of two like-minded colleagues, for about that time Professors Wood Gray and Howard Merriman were expanding the offerings of the History Department from English and European theatres to six courses in American history rejoicing in such titles as “The Social History of the United States,” The Economic History of the United States, "The Development of American Civilization," and the like. They and Bolwell shared students.

Bolwell, also, introduced at GW the coordinating pro-seminar which laid heavy demands upon students to bring into cohesive whole information gleaned from a diversity of courses, and this to prepare for a comprehensive examination as some proof of the acquisition and organization of knowledge. We in the English major speedily took this mechanism over ourselves.

Bolwell was an excellent and lively teacher, with a charming classroom presence. He was also a lively, restless dynamic fellow. He built, by himself two houses on a large spread of land in White Oak Maryland. There he created a sporty 9-hole golf course, dammed up a stream for a cool swimming pool, leveled off a space for a good tennis court. He felled huge trees, gang-mowed acres of lawn, installed a large pipe organ in his living room (an instrument which he played beautifully) and enjoyed the company of two airdales, a Chesapeake retriever, and a terrier. He and Lady Bolwell were gracious hosts each week end to faculty members and students, as well as to lawyers, and dentists. He was the only academic I knew who was also a member of the American Dental Association and regularly att6ded its annual meetings. Early on he had been a pre-med student before being lured away by the sirens of Renaissance literature.

The American Thought and Civilization major, and its graduate extension formed ripe fields for the succeeding growth of American Studies Programs which walked off on their own feet out of Departments of English. One supposes that a general atmosphere following World War II was conducive to this maturing. I recall the numerous “Language and Area Studies Programs” which sprang up, emanating from concerns during the war to know not just a single discipline, but the language, history, economics, politics, art and so forth of various areas of the world- breaking ground for combined studies for third-world countries. Stimulating stuff indeed! And well funded for awhile by the wealth of the Ford (and other) foundations.

Nationally the American Literature Group remained within the structure of the Modern Language Association, but the broadened group, the American Studies Association, formalized and became chartered in 1951. It had had its own scholarly journal, The American Quarterly, from 1949 on, but Robert Whitney Boswell in a sense by his thinking, action, and organizing ability may be said to have put it on its feet, here at GW at least, starting in 1938.

In the bleak year of 1932 he criss-crossed the Untied States (perhaps as Noah Webster had done up and down the east coast) to get a feeling for the complex elements making up the culture of the country. Twenty years later in the more plush years of 1952, as a visiting Professor at the University of Gottingen, he carried the word of his broad definition of American literature overseas. Others can tell you of the outreach that has occurred in the US, at 6, and beyond both oceans, and how many scholars in seemingly unrelated fields the broadened concept has served. I simply tell the story of the beginnings as I remember them.

George Winchester Stone, Jr.
Dean Emeritus of Libraries, NYU

Document Information

Images: 0
Photographic Credit: n/a
Author or Source: American Studies Department/RG0082
Document Location: University Archives
Date Added to Encyclopedia: January 12, 2007
Prepared by: Lyle Slovick, Assistant University Archivist

For more information about GW history

Contact:

Special Collections Research Center
The Melvin Gelman Library
The George Washington University
2130 H Street, NW Suite 704
Washington, DC 20052
202-994-7549
archives@gwu.edu
Please send us your questions and comments about the encyclopedia.
This site is maintained by the Special Collections Research Center and the Web Development Group.