The Red Badge of Courage raises two questions. First, with its straightforward presentation of its protagonist’s initial cowardice and eventual valor, is it a critique of war, an exaltation of battleground bravery, or simply a realistic portrayal of soldierly transformation? And secondly, how did Crane do it? Written thirty years after the war’s end by an author who had never seen military action, The Red Badge of Courage managed to create such a convincing sense of warfare that Civil War veterans claimed to have served with Crane.

The first question may be unanswerable. The second invites a bit of detective work. And that’s exactly what some undergraduates did this semester in our class “American Literature on Display.” After reading Crane’s novel, we examined some of the books and magazines of the late nineteenth century that Crane could have used to help him imagine the Civil War battlefields he so compellingly evoked. Students then described their research on our class blog.

We know that Crane read a series of articles about the Civil War in The Century Magazine. The many biographies, memoirs, criticisms and documents published in the “Civil War series” constituted a major national debate, and were eventually collected into a four-volume book. But what exactly did Crane glean from The Century? And what else might he have encountered in American print culture to shape his view of war? As it turns out, publications about the Civil War were voluminous at century’s end; Crane would have had access to a lot of material.

The Century often portrayed “war as a glorious entertainment, rather than a bloody conflict,” according to Katie Naymon. For example, “… the picture that… accompanies an article about the Battle of Bull Run… isn’t completely realistic… the focal point of the picture is a man on a horse, flag-waving, hand raised in victory.”

click any image to enlarge

This chivalric figure of victory seems to have been prevalent in the 1880s; Zoe Ovans discovers another work that also calls up “the image of a magnificent general, astride a gallant horse, posed and ready to outwit the enemy and defend his comrades… The Soldier in Our Civil War, a pictorial history of the American Civil War… focuses on the valor of the soldier in the field of battle… [One] image stands out among the rest: in the section describing the battle of Fischer’s Hill, there is a marvelous two-page spread featuring General Sheridan ‘riding along the lines of the Federal army.’”

Alyssa Zelicof notes, however, that while this volume “hones in on the gallantry and boldness of soldiers such as ‘Colonel Ash, Charging into J.E.B Stuart’s Camp, Near Charlottesville, V.A.’,” Crane’s narrative asks us to question that stereotype: “The sincere depiction of war given by Crane gives insight into the psyche of a soldier in battle, and forces one to question the thought process of soldiers such as Colonel Ash. As he charges gallantly into the camp, is he thinking about his children and wife at home? Although his face reads as unsympathetic, could he be silently praying to make it out of battle alive? Henry’s observations humanize the stoic actions of a soldier, and highlight the false depiction of bravery in war.”

The valor on display in the 1880s was not without precedent, as we learned when looking at materials published during or soon after the war. In fact, it can appear in some shocking places. Rachel Witkin finds a caricature of the heroic horseman in The Siege of Washington D.C.: Written Expressly For Little People, a strangely light-hearted history of 1867 that might help to explain why war often finds so many eager participants: “Children would most likely laugh at how ridiculous the general looks on his horse and think that war is nothing but a game, or think that the general looks important and want to enlist in war. The chapter name is even more chilling, as it suggests that war is a normal way to settle one’s differences. These children will glorify war, like Crane’s ‘youth’ did, and have no idea what’s actually in store for them.”

Civil War-era books not only romanticized war for children, but also romanticized the child who is already at war, as Tiffany Kim observes in A Selection of War Lyrics. The poem “The Color-Sergeant,” she explains, “is about a flag boy, Walter, who dies in battle. Moreover, it is about celebrating his death. A flag gives strong visual representation to otherwise intangible pride and morale. Therefore, the flag boy is extremely important to the idea of war, the idea being to protect what the flag represents. In the poem, Walter is honored for being a brave man and being ‘in the thick of the fight’ (line 14) to carry ‘the flag of the Free’ (line 4). Although he is not the big man on the battle field, he is seen as an important figure and a hero.”

Of course, for most Americans living through the Civil War, newspapers and magazines were important sources of information about wins, losses, casualties, advances. The Confederate press suffered from shortages of supplies and labor; many of the books published in the South in this period are poor in quality. The press of the North, without those constraints, was developing novel ways of delivering the news. Notable in this respect was Harper’s Weekly, with its many newsy illustrations. Since photographs could not be reproduced upon the printing press at this time—and since the paraphernalia of collodion process photography was too cumbersome, slow and fragile for action shots anyway—war-time images were conveyed through wood-engravings by artists like Thomas Nast and Winslow Homer.

These images served multiple purposes. Certainly, as Rosa Acheson notes, there were depictions of heroes. The cover of the issue for May 3, 1862, for example, contains eleven portraits of military leaders, each one framed like a keepsake. But these portraits seem more informational than epic. “Each portrait is a close up, showing just the torso and face, so we are really able to distinguish what each man looks like. Some of them have glasses, others mustaches. All of them, despite their war uniforms, look like regular men. Of course the public recognition of these men as Civil War heroes was earned. However, the intention here is instead to put a face to the brave actions, to characterize individuals who we otherwise might just consider a small part of the larger story.” Similarly, in a Harper’s picture called “The Captured Flag,” Bianca Kenworthy sees both the familiar image of bravery and an impulse towards factual accuracy that is in line with Crane’s story—and even surpasses it: “the trees and hill of the image’s landscape match those described in passages found in Crane’s novel; Crane’s emphasis on the confusion-laden regiments can be seen in the image by the clusters of people as well as those who are struggling and have fallen or been killed. However, as many similarities as there are, certain key and subtle differences between the picture and Crane’s prose should be noted. For example, Crane divorced his novel from any precise historical context by omitting dates and named locations whereas this image can be dated and placed, lending it a heightened sense of visual credibility.”

The tension inherent in war-time reporting, between baring the pain of sacrifices made and honoring and perhaps mythologizing those sacrifices, comes across even in personal narratives of the time, as Alex Hamm notes in his reading of The Boys in Blue, with its long nineteenth-century subtitle, Heroes of the “Rank and File.” Comprising Incidents and Reminiscences from Camp, Battle-Field, and Hospital, with Narratives of the Sacrifice, Suffering, and Triumphs of the Soldiers of the Republic. “In sharp contrast to the realism of Crane’s work of retrospective fiction, when we look at the visual representations that come from contemporary histories of the war, we see lots of order and decoration… this may have been a sort of propaganda by the illustrators of the 1860s in an effort to inspire the people after the Union victory… we can see the difference between what the people of the era wanted to believe and what they knew really was true.”

Several decades after the Civil War—around the time that Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage—half-tone technology was invented, allowing for the publication of photographs, and soon the war received another series of illustrated treatments. Do actual photographs of the war tell a more accurate story, without the temptations of heroic tales? Was Crane’s work a response, perhaps, to some new, more factual aesthetic? Well, if The Photographic History of the Civil War is any indication, maybe not. As Marah Formanek points out, this ten-volume series was published on the semi-centennial of the war, “as a token of remembrance and an explanation of the soldiers and the battles that occurred between 1861 and 1865. The photograph below depicts a scene of the Confederate soldiers, or the ‘Boys in Gray,’ before their first battle at Bull Run. They are young, jovial, and confident before their first encounter with the true tragedies of war. The photograph is captioned with the comment that, ‘there is not a serious face in the picture.’” Perhaps. But however you read the image, what is clear is that the commentators in 1911 were still expressing a kind of optimism that Crane, in contrast, was intent on challenging.

Watch this space for more from these students! They’ll be creating a digital exhibition to complement and extend “For Love or Money: Art, Commerce & Stephen Crane.”

The refreshed look of the digital collection includes a single search box placed front and center, three browsing options on the top page, and an updated graphic design. If you dig a little deeper, you will find some new options such as faceted searching (narrow your results set by date, composition type, etc.) and multiple display modes. By clicking on the three boxes in the upper-right corner of a search results screen, you can display covers plus some descriptive information, covers only, or titles only. This is very handy if you are looking for a specific title or for an interesting cover illustration. The new interface is also optimized for mobile devices and allows navigation through gestures such as the swipe.

The Levy Sheet Music Collection appeals to a much broader audience than musicians or musicologists. Mr. Levy assembled a treasure trove of popular songs that document American life in the 19th- and early 20th-centuries. Historians might be interested in topics such as presidential elections, the temperance movement, and the rise of the railroads. Sociologists can study how minority groups such as the Romani or African Americans were depicted in popular culture. Art historians can savor the rich illustration styles of subjects such as flowers or horses. And who would have suspected that there were popular songs about Darwin's theory of evolution? This collection truly has something for everybody.

• Humanities--Study and Teaching (Higher)--Data Processing
• Humanities--Research--Data Processing
• Information Storage and Retrieval Systems--Humanities

Jeesh!

Beyond just reading books (paradox that it is), what else can you do to keep up to date with DH, or even just get a basic foundation? This is a question my graduate students often ask me. Well, blogs are certainly one of the primary communications channels of the DH world. Here is a listing 20 of the best. Individual institutions also host DH blogs, like New York University, or MIT. I would add Digital Humanities Now and Stanford's blog to your reading list too.

Many of these blogs are linked to Twitter feeds, another *extremely* important DH communication channel. Try following one of the biggest names in DH, @nowviskie. That's Beth Nowviskie at UVA. Or #digitalhumanities. Wow. Hunting for good Twitter feeds on Google, I stumbled across this comprehensive list of resources. Such is the world of DH - endlessly rich and seemingly endless.

I'll close (for now) on a new DH resource, and one that illustrates a main concern of the digital humanities - the future of publishing. The MLA just brought online an evolving anthology of essays - Literary Studies in the Digital Age. This is perhaps the shape of things to come in scholarly humanities publishing. It at least bears watching.

Now you can learn even more! Join us on April 9 at 5:30 p.m. in the Mason Hall auditorium for “The Roland Park Company: Building History in Baltimore and Beyond.” Co-sponsored with the Department of History, a panel of urban studies and land planning scholars will discuss the impact of the Company’s projects on urban and suburban development. Reception to follow.

Panelists include:

• Mary Ryan (Panel Chair), John Martin Vincent Professor of History, Department of History
• Robert L. Fishman, Professor, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan
• Garrett Power, Professor Emeritus of Law, University of Maryland Carey School of Law
• Paige Glotzer, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Johns Hopkins University

Some other tips from Crane: you might try flunking out of college, twice; self-publishing a novel on the most shocking subject you can think of; living in a disgusting boarding-house with a bunch of medical students; disguising yourself as a homeless man in order to research a story… what? This isn’t what they teach in the Writing Sems?

You can learn more about Crane’s, um, unconventional approach to the writing life in the new exhibition For Love or Money: Art, Commerce & Stephen Crane, at the George Peabody Library in Mt. Vernon, which offers an unusual first-hand look at rare books, letters, photographs, and newspaper clippings documenting Crane’s literary output. The exhibition runs through June 14 and is free.

Crane got his first break as a teen-age journalist, writing up cultural events and fashion notes from the seaside resorts of New Jersey for New York newspapers. Not exactly Jersey Shore… but not entirely different. After the afore-mentioned aborted stint at college, he moved to New York and hung out with the city’s growing underclass: the denizens of saloons, flophouses, brothels, and tenements—the casualties of a nation dealing with a huge influx of immigrants and rapid industrialization. He got paid a few cents a word for his articles and stories about the urban poor—never quite enough to earn a decent living, but more than he would have gotten a decade or so earlier. He was able to scrape by because the newspapers and magazines that published his work were struggling to adapt to a new technological landscape (advances in printing machinery), new consumers (a lot of those immigrants were becoming literate) and increased competition. It was the time of “yellow journalism” and the great newspaper wars, when the New York World (owned by Joseph Pulitzer) and the New York Journal (owned by William Randolph Hearst) threw all kinds of juicy material at potential readers—political scandal, personal tragedy, celebrity gossip, sensational fiction—in the effort to attract customers.

Sure, Crane needed to sell his work, but he was also dedicated to what he called “the beautiful war” for truthful art; he wanted to write stories about real people dealing with real problems—which were often ugly or scary or sad. At the age of 21, he finished his first long work, a novella he called Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. (And yes, if “a girl of the streets” sounds salacious to you, you’re on the right track.) He couldn’t get a trade publisher to print Maggie because it was too risqué. So he used up a small inheritance and borrowed money from his brother to print it himself. He still couldn’t get anyone to buy it, however, so he tried his hand at guerilla marketing: he paid a couple of guys to sit on the elevated railways—the precursors to the subway—reading Maggie in full view of the crowd.

After the Maggie letdown, Crane was ready to write a potboiler. Perusing old copies of The Century Magazine, which ran a series on Civil War generals and battles, he decided to write a novel of the Civil War from a soldier’s point of view. But in the end, he couldn’t make himself color inside the stereotypic lines. The book that he produced is an utterly unique, vivid recreation of war from the perspective of a combatant. War from this angle isn’t a picture-perfect stage for glorious acts of heroism; it’s a messy roller-coaster ride of smoke, fear, bravery, pain, noise, solidarity and most of all, confusion. Ironically, Stephen Crane—who was born six years after the Civil War ended—had never seen military action. But even Civil War veterans were convinced by the story’s realism.

Watch this space for more about Crane’s break-through novel The Red Badge of Courage—and additional installments on the vicissitudes of the literary life, circa 1895.

The title of Things Fall Apart references a line in the poem "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats, turning the tables on modernist malaise in the wake of World War I. The poem begins:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...

Achebe, who was educated in Nigeria by European teachers who focused on European history, literature and art, asserts through his title an African perspective on social disintegration and reminds us that colonial rivalries in Africa helped to create the conditions for World War I.

Things Fall Apart modelled an inspiring new Afrocentric literary sensibility, but it also laid the groundwork for several generations of African writers in a more practical sense. After the amazing loss and recovery of the manuscript, the novel was published by William Heinemann and was then republished in 1962 as the first in Heinemann's African Writers Series, with Achebe as the series' editor.

In celebration of Chinua Achebe's life and literary achievement, take a look at these works by and about him.

“We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own." — From The Education of a British-Protected Child

“If you don't like someone's story, write your own.” — From an interview with The Paris Review

The event starts with a reception and book signing at 6 pm in Mason Hall; admission is free. RSVP to libraryfriends@jhu.edu.

Parrotfish, courtesy of James Prosek.

Prosek, called "the Audubon of fish" by the New York Times, is the author of 11 books and numerous articles on nature. His most recently published work, Ocean Fishes (2012), is a collection of his water colors of fish from the world's oceans. His book on eels was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice for 2011 and formed the basis for next month's PBS Nature special "The Mystery of Eels."

In addition to his work as an author and artist, Prosek is a noted environmentalist and the cofounder of the World Trout Initiative. NPR discussed one of his early novels, The Day My Mother Left, as part of its Backseat Book Club in February, and the Nature Conservancy has a feature on Prosek's work and the intersection of art and conservation.

It all sounds very modern, very twenty-first century, right? But make a few changes to the paragraph above—remove the references to digital formats and adolescent vampires—and you’ve got a perfectly accurate description of the writing life circa 1895: the world of professional writing that Stephen Crane inhabited. You can get a close-up look at this world in For Love or Money: Art, Commerce & Stephen Crane, an exhibition of rare books, letters, historical magazines, and other cool old documents exploring Stephen Crane's work and the dilemmas of the writing life, from JHU's very own Wertheim-Frary Collection of Stephen Crane. The exhibition is on view at the George Peabody Library in Mt. Vernon from March 4 through June 14. And it’s free!

August Lundelius, Portrait of Stephen Crane in the early 1890s.

Stephen who, you say? Stephen Crane: you may have read his novel The Red Badge of Courage, or maybe Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. Both are classic works of fiction from a time when the literary marketplace was undergoing enormous shifts. The newspaper industry was expanding, new magazines were popping up left and right, and book publishers were trying out colorful graphic bindings and illustrations in the effort to attract readers.  All of these changes had to do with technological advances in printing—like roller presses and wood-pulp paper-making—and major social transformations around the world.  In the United States, immigration, urbanization, and public education generated a new population of readers. Industrialization produced a new class of goods that could be sold nationally and internationally, which gave momentum to an important revenue stream for publishers: ads.  And the development of transportation networks across the country provided new ways to move commercial products—including reading material—from manufacturers to consumers. It was the apex of a great information age: the one just before our own.

The really interesting thing about Stephen Crane’s writing life is not just how his work documents all this cultural change—in his stories and books and articles about the urban poor, Western pioneers, soldiers, and small-town Americans—but also, how it exemplifies these changes, through the forms in which it was published. Sending a given piece to just the right magazine or newspaper, double-dipping in the English and American press, republishing stories in book form, Crane had to manipulate all the venues available to him—as well as his own reputation—in order to get by.

Watch this space for more about Stephen Crane’s career, and be sure to stop by the George Peabody Library for a first-hand glimpse of the writing life—circa 1895.

The Articles of Confederation let each state operate nearly as an independent country. The Congress of Confederation, the overarching federal governing body at the time, could not raise funds or enforce any consequential decisions without a unanimous vote by the delegates representing each state. The new Constitution would allow for a stronger Federal government that would still preserve the sovereignty of each state.

The Constitution, for which conflicting plans had been proposed, was signed after Roger Sherman proposed his Great Compromise -- also called the Connecticut Compromise. The first Congress opened on March 4, 1789, which became the first date selected for Inauguration Day. It was changed to January 20th by the Twentieth Amendment. George Washington's inauguration was held on a different day: April 30th, 1789.

Animated debates occurred during the Convention on the issues of the Bill of Rights (no civil rights were quoted in the Constitution) and of slavery (regulation of trade and taxation were discussed). The Constitution was amended 27 times after its ratification in 1789. The Bill of Rights comprises the first ten Amendments. The "Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves," signed in 1807, would take effect in 1808. The final draft of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was signed 150 years ago on January 1st, 1863, but the Civil War was going on (Lincoln would give the Gettysburg Address in November the same year) and freedom from slavery could be ensured only after succeeded in having the Thirteenth Amendment adopted in 1865, thus making abolition of slavery part of the Constitution.

The government was created with three different branches, each one balancing the power of the others. Article I of the Constitution established the legislative branch (Congress, composed of the House of Representatives and of the Senate). Article II established the executive branch (the President). And, Article III established the judicial branch (the Supreme Court and U.S District Courts).

Along with the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, the original text of the Constitution is held at the National Archives Building. The Constitution with its 27 Amendments is very much present in our daily lives. It is an essential document for the United States and a model of democracy. It is still the object of many discussions and interpretations and it informs many present-day debates on citizens’ fundamental rights. Attitudes towards the Constitution vary, some presidents, like Andrew Jackson, have proposed their own interpretation of the Constitution against the Supreme Court, but no one denies the importance of the Constitution and a Constitution Day has even been created.

As most people do these days, I started my search with Google. It came back with two hits that I found most interesting. One was a Wikipedia article and the other was a link to history.com. Both articles brought up some interesting points, but since free websites like those are not always reliable, I decided to investigate further.

My next step was to explore the scholarly resources available from the library. I searched Catalyst - a tool that combines the library's online catalog with a quick article search - to see what came up. And then I searched in the "encyclopedias" section of JHSearch, which is the complete listing of subscription databases available to the Hopkins community. Of course one of my challenges was how the name was indexed in the various databases. Was it "St. Valentine" or "Saint Valentine" or just "Valentine"? For my searches I started with Valentine generally and got more specific as needed.

I discovered a number of cool things. According to legend, St. Valentine's Day has its roots in a story about a priest named Valentine who defied Emperior Claudius II and married people illegally. Secondly, there are apparently associations between St. Valentine’s Day and a Roman holiday called Lupercalia and birds' mating season. And oddly enough, there were apparently multiple St Valentines.

So, how many St. Valentines actually existed? The Wikipedia article and an article in the U.S. Catholic, a popular magazine, mentioned three. But in more scholarly sources like Encyclopedia Britannica, The New Catholic Encyclopedia, and Early English Books Online (EEBO), I found references to only two. The one in EEBO was neat because it is written in early modern English, a form of the language that is quite a bit different from English of today. Of course, I was inclined to believe the subscription sources - but I was still not convinced. So I went, forgive the expression, “old school” and got a few printed books off the shelves. In A Biographical Dictionary of the Saints, there are actually thirty-four entries for Valentine but only two have a feast day of February fourteenth. And in The Book of Saints, there are twelve entries for Valentine but again only two have feast days on the fourteenth. A third book I found was Saints and Their Attributes. In this book, it explains that St Valentine is the patron saint of “beekeepers, engaged couples, travelers, and young people” (page 100). So the result is that there are two St. Valentines whose feast day is February fourteenth.

Next, I looked into the Roman holiday of Lupercalia. I found an article in the Encyclopedia of Religion, which took me on an interesting tangent involving Faunus (or Pan) and the legend of Romulus and Remus. I was able to find articles online for these topics as well in Encyclopedia Mythica and Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia. There is also a book on Remus in the library collection and a book titled Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic. I learned a lot.

In my searching, two other results were interesting. One is that Chaucer is the reason we associate romance with St Valentine’s Day. The other is the Valentine’s Day Massacre that occurred in Chicago in 1929, which put a real damper on the romantic history of Feb 14th.

So now we know that Valentine's Day is actually a holiday that has been around for centuries, a day of romance and affection that has its roots in both history and legend.