{"id":18654,"date":"2012-10-04T20:23:07","date_gmt":"2012-10-05T01:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=18654"},"modified":"2012-10-04T20:23:07","modified_gmt":"2012-10-05T01:23:07","slug":"r-i-p-eugene-d-genovese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2012\/10\/r-i-p-eugene-d-genovese\/","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. Eugene D. Genovese"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The death of distinguished historian Eugene D. Genovese on September 26 led me to reflect on both his scholarly accomplishments and his intellectual and political thought.\u00a0 No book inspired me more as a graduate student than Genovese\u2019s Roll, Jordan, Roll<\/em> (1975), but Genovese\u2019s sharp turn to the right in his later years was troubling indeed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Genovese was the son of dockworker in Brooklyn, and he briefly belonged to the Communist Party as a young man.\u00a0 He earned a Ph.D. from Columbia, worked at a half dozen major universities, and served as President of the Organization of American Historians from 1978-79. Roll, Jordan, Roll<\/em> superbly captured the way slaves struggled (and largely succeeded) in maintaining their humanity.\u00a0 The book was awarded the Bancroft Prize in history, and in 1994 Edward Ayres called it \u201cthe best book ever written about American slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0A dozen books followed, some co-written by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Genovese\u2019s wife and fellow historian, and the best of these books utilized a Marxist-feminist perspective to illuminate the pre-Civil War South.\u00a0 But in the mid-1980s Genovese abandoned his prior critical alignment.\u00a0 He deplored \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d among historians, and he opposed abortion rights, argued religion should be taught in the public schools, and expressed tolerance for discrimination against gay men and lesbians.\u00a0 Conservative Republican Pat Buchanan became his favorite political figure.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What can we make of this?\u00a0 How does one change from being a leading voice for liberation and empowerment to being a champion of inequality and social control?\u00a0 Perhaps there is a danger that a critically minded man or woman \u2013 a person who struggles against the dehumanizing hegemony of western social life \u2013 can be beaten down and succumb to intellectual crankiness.\u00a0 I know from my own experience that an intellectual outside the mainstream spends a great deal of time alone with his or her own thoughts.\u00a0 Those thoughts can get twisted and turned upside down.\u00a0 It was sad to see where Genovese\u2019s journey ended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The death of distinguished historian Eugene D. Genovese on September 26 led me to reflect on both his scholarly accomplishments and his intellectual and political thought.\u00a0 No book inspired me more as a graduate student than Genovese\u2019s Roll, Jordan, Roll (1975), but Genovese\u2019s sharp turn to the right in his later years was troubling indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[98,64,122,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-legal-history","category-public","category-race-and-the-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}