America, as Seen on TV: How Television Shapes Immigrant Expectations Around the Globe

In her latest book, Clara Rodríguez examines the “soft power” of American television in projecting U.S.-centric views around the globe. She analyzes the strong influence TV exercises on both young Americans and recent immigrants with regard to consumer behavior and their views on race, class, ethnicity, and gender.

The book is based on two studies: one focused on 71 immigrant adults over 18 who had watched U.S. TV in their home country, and one focused on 171 U.S.-born undergraduates from the Northeast. Many in the foreign-born group were surprised to find that their experience of the U.S. proved more racially and economically diverse than the mostly white, middle-class depictions of American life that they had seen back home on TV. And substantial majorities of both groups shared the sense that American TV is flawed in that it “does not accurately represent or reflect racial and ethnic relations in the United States.”

Still, Rodríguez notes, TV is “a medium in flux; it has changed greatly in the past decade, and the only thing we can be certain about is that it will continue to change.”

Back from the Brink: Saving Animals from Extinction by Nancy F. Castaldo, MC ’84 (Cornell University Press)

In Back from the Brink, Nancy Castaldo recounts the survival stories of seven species—whooping cranes, alligators, giant tortoises, bald eagles, gray wolves, condors, and bison.

“All of these animal populations plummeted,” she writes, “and yet, all of them survive today.”

She describes how each species got in trouble; relates the often controversial restoration efforts and their results; explains the need for apex predators; offers calls to action for young readers; and pays tribute to a group of “eco-heroes” (including President Richard Nixon, who in 1973 signed the Endangered Species Act) who “look out for the needs of creatures that cohabit this planet, even when these needs may conflict with our short-term economic goals.”

Feminism’s Forgotten Fight: The Unfinished Struggle for Work and Family by Kirsten Swinth, Ph.D., associate professor of history and American studies at Fordham (Harvard University Press)

From failed promises of women “having it all” to the contemporary struggle for equal wages for equal work, Kirsten Swinth exposes how government policies often undermined tenets of second-wave feminism during the 1960s and 1970s.

She argues that second-wave feminists did not fail to deliver on their promises; rather, a conformist society pushed back against far-reaching changes sought by these activists.

“My focus is on the story of a broad feminist vision that wasn’t fully realized,” Swinth notes. “There were a lot of gains generally, but the movement also generated an antifeminist backlash so that most of the aspirations, like a sane and sustainable balance for work and family, were defeated.”

She examines activists’ campaigns and draws from them “a set of lessons that we need to inspire us” to continue the fight “with a new energy.”

Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia by Steven Stoll, Ph.D., professor of history at Fordham (Hill and Wang)

To better understand the history of the United States, one should include the people who were displaced from lands they once called home, argues Steven Stoll. That story includes not only Native American tribes evicted by English and later American settlers but also poor whites who once called the mountains of Appalachia home.

In Ramp Hollow, he visits an area just outside of Morgantown, West Virginia, to explore how the people who once lived there were pushed out and forced to surrender a self-sustaining, agrarian life in exchange for a wage-based living tied to coal mining companies and lumber mills.

Brooklyn Before: Photographs, 1971–1983 by Larry Racioppo, FCRH ’72 (Cornell University Press)

New York City photographer Larry Racioppo honed his art and craft during the 1970s by taking pictures of family, friends, and kids in his working-class South Brooklyn neighborhood.

This collection of his early work highlights families—most of them Italian American, Irish American, and Puerto Rican—as they go about their daily lives, celebrating Catholic sacraments and holidays, playing stickball and congas on the sidewalk, hanging out on stoops and fire escapes, posing with boom boxes in front of graffiti-tagged walls, and taking part in patriotic parades and religious processions.

“I did not know it at the time, but I was recording a part of Brooklyn that would soon be remade by gentrification,” Racioppo writes.

Brando was not alone in his embrace of method acting, which was popularized at the time by Lee Strasberg’s Actors’ Studio, said Keri Walsh, Ph.D., associate professor of English. But his performance in the film had the effect of making it synonymous in the popular imagination with explosive, masculine, working-class characters. Women, it was thought, did not embrace it.

“In fact, the method is a way of constructing and preparing for a performance, and it’s a way of working where you bring your personal life to the role, and you aim for a very naturalistic physicality through exercises,” she said, noting that physicality need not be of the blustery sort perfected by Brando.

“Those things could lead to any kinds of performances, so there were always women at the Actor’s Studio who went to Hollywood and had varying degrees of success.”

Walsh had explored method acting previously, in her latest book Mickey Rourke, (British Film Institute 2014), and was working on a follow up that would explore gender and sexuality and method acting. That lead her to realize that female method actors deserved their own story.

Support from Hollywood

This earned the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which recently named Walsh a 2018 Academy Film Scholar. The award includes a $25,000 grant to conduct research for a monograph be published by Routledge that is tentatively titled Stella’s Claim: Women, Method Acting, and the Hollywood Film.

It’s a big jump for Walsh, who is the founder of Fordham’s annual Irish Women Writers Symposium and editor of the modern editions of James Joyce’s Dubliners (Broadview Press, 2016) and The Letters of Sylvia Beach (Columbia University Press, 2010).

“There are fellowships that people know to apply for every year, like the National Endowment for the Humanities, but this one, I just found on my own. I thought I would throw in my hat, and actually was very stunned to receive the award,” she said.

Method acting, which is based on the teachings of the Russian theorist and director Konstantin Stanislavsky, places emphasis on bringing emotional truths and natural physical behavior to roles. Strasberg built on this, Walsh said, by guiding actors through exercises where they revisited a powerful memory from their own past.

“That helps you theoretically connect to some kind of powerful emotion. Then you have to find a way to bring that to the character,” she said.

“It’s this complex thing where you’re creating a relationship between your own emotional experience and the emotional experiences that you read about in the dramatic text that are those of your character.”

The Connection to Feminism

Because the process has some similarities to therapy, it occasionally gets a bad rap as mere navel-gazing. Walsh said these critiques miss the fact its popularity coincided with the rise of second-wave feminism and that actors such as Geraldine Page, Julie Harris, Shelley Winters, Kim Hunter, and Joanne Woodward found it to be extremely valuable to their work.

“When Ellen Burstyn talks about the experiences she had in her family as a woman, in her first marriage, an unexpected pregnancy, and all the experiences of her life that led her to become a feminist, those were experiences that she used in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” said Walsh.

“I argue that the personal basis of method acting was actually a way for women actors to say ‘I’m bringing my personal experiences of injustice and what I’ve noticed in society about being a woman to the role. Method acting invites me to do that and says, even if the script doesn’t currently contain that, you can bring it. You have a right as the actor to show what you know.”

One need only to look at Brando’s Streetcar co-star Kim Hunter, who won an Academy Award for her role as Stella Kowalski, said Walsh. As part of her research, Walsh examined notes that Hunter made to her copy of the film’s screenplay, and compared reviews of the 1947 Broadway production, which she also starred in, to the 1951 film to trace what she calls a “feminist evolution” of Hunter’s performance.

“Even though Elia Kazan, who directed both the Broadway and the film version, did not see her character as having much feminist potential or didn’t care much about her character, Hunter molded her character to be a very informed kind of treatment of domestic violence in the context of men coming home from the second World War,” Walsh said.

“We’ve really written that one performance off as just ‘Oh she’s just the abused wife, so the method must not be good for women.’ But if you actually look at how she approaches the role and changes it from Broadway to Hollywood, it actually is quite a feminist story of trying to take seriously what a woman is going through in that situation.”

A Career Focused on the Performing Arts

Although film is a relatively new area of research for Walsh, she has long explored performance art and theater. In 2016, she organized the New York gathering of Waking the Feminists, a movement that calls attention to the wealth of women’s voices that are excluded from Irish theater.

She said she’s fascinated by the self-transformation that actors undertake for their craft.

“I think of myself as a feminist cultural historian who is trying to listen to the voices of women who have been in the industry, whether it’s in Irish theater or in Hollywood. I try to do the archival work that reminds people that their stories really challenge the dominant paradigms,” she said.

Their stories are especially resonant in the #MeToo era, she said, because actresses who might have kept personal stories involving abuse sequestered to their acting classes have now taken their stories public instead.

“Was it fair to just say ‘We’re going to talk about this in acting class, and then you put it away and use it to fuel your performance?’ Female actors are saying ‘no,’” Walsh said.

“I think Hollywood is ready in some quarters to listen to this. The fact that my project got this award from the Motion Picture Academy; I think they are saying, ‘We want to hear the stories and tell the history now.’”

The book, Feminism’s Forgotten Fight: The Unfinished Struggle for Work and Family (Harvard University Press, 2018), argues that second-wave feminists did not fail to deliver on their promises; rather, a conformist society pushed back against far-reaching changes sought by these activists. The book’s arc begins with the intimate sphere of the family in the 1950s and then moves on to larger societal changes where two-income families became the unavoidable economic norm.

“My focus is on the story of a broad feminist vision that wasn’t fully realized,” said Swinth. “There were a lot of gains generally, but the movement also generated an antifeminist backlash so that most of the aspirations, like a sane and sustainable balance for work and family, were defeated.”

Swinth said the movement was affected by a brand of far-right conservatism that would take hold in the Reagan administration but actually began in the early 1970s in the Nixon administration.

“Their opposition undercut feminism’s most far reaching aspirations, many of which are so urgently needed today, so it was a missed opportunity,” said Swinth.

President Nixon initially supported the Comprehensive Child Development Act that would have provided universal child care, she said. But conservatives, like Pat Buchanan, advised Nixon to withhold support, equating it to communist childcare. Swinth said the defeat was the “very early inkling of the conservative right” that would go on to elect Ronald Reagan and now runs the Republican Party.

“Working women were deeply threatening to the established norms of male patriarchy,” said Swinth.

But feminists were simply facing the economic reality of both parents needing to work, which would mean that children would need care outside of the home, said Swinth. Feminists just wanted what was “normal and fair” and called out what they saw as “unfair and unjust,” shifting the national culture in the process.

Swinth said much of the groundwork had been laid by African-American and Latina feminists in the welfare rights and guaranteed income movements.

“They understood that all mothers should be able to take care of their children, so they fought to change the discussion of welfare to one that recognized the value of women’s labor to society,” said Swinth. “Plus, there was and is a social stake in raising families.”

Swinth said the idea that second wave feminism was a “white feminism” is a distortion of the historical record.

“African-American women and Latinas were self-identified feminists who negotiated a distinct position through nationalism rights, civil rights, and their own developing feminism,” she said. “Women of color had some of the most vanguard, pioneering ideas. When we declare 1960s and ’70s as white feminism, we delegitimize the claims they have on the feminist movement. They made a set of pioneering arguments for support of poor mothers by advocating for jobs that were compatible with caring for the kids.”

Swinth said that while today people talk about work and family balance, this certainly wasn’t the case in the era before the 1960s, when the family’s care was the mother’s realm. As such, the feminist cause had to go beyond policy and toward perceptions, she said.

“Feminists struggled to create shared labor with men through caretaking and changing men’s roles, and the very meaning of fatherhood,” she said.

Swinth said that she also researched several male feminists who, she said, understood that being “involved fathers was good for men, for the kids, and good for equality.”

Much of the book focuses on issues outside of the home, from grassroots organizing to a chapter detailing Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s fight to end pregnancy discrimination. As an assistant adjunct law professor at Rutgers University in the 1960s, Ginsberg hid her pregnancy out of fear she’d lose her job. Later, as a tenured professor at Columbia University, she helped draft the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which made it illegal to discriminate against pregnant women in the workplace.

“Employers could fire someone who became pregnant or drop her insurance because the man would support her. Why would you need to make any accommodations for a worker to leave?” Swinth asked rhetorically.

But by the late 1970s, women’s earning power had become essential, she said, forcing many to acknowledge the reality that women weren’t about to “step out of the wager force.” Swinth noted that while many feminists were indeed “radical socialists” with visions of 24-hour child care, local activists negotiated more realistic after-school child care at local libraries. Local activism in turn spawned women leaders in city government, which eventually led to representation at the state and federal levels.

“It’s absolutely critical history for us to have as women so we can continue to fight with a new energy and a set of lessons that we need to inspire us,” Swinth said of the book. “There’s a past here where we can recognize ourselves and our needs. We should continue to be inspired by the determinations and creativity of these women—and men—from our past.”

Cat Reynolds, a junior at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, readily admits that she is not the first person to discover that Santa’s reindeer would have to be female.

But she’s likely the first person to get a job after making the observation.

Recently Reynolds, an English major with a creative writing concentration, found herself watching the YouTube video Science Christmas Carols ft. Jon Cozart, which repurposes Christmas songs to address scientific tidbits, like black holes and the carbon footprints of fake Christmas trees.

“One of them was about Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and the fact that female reindeer retain their antlers over the winter, while male reindeer shed them,” she said.

“I was wondering, is that true?  There are a couple of articles written about it already, but I got excited and tweeted about it.”

Her December 11 tweet read:

Within just a few days, her tweet had achieved viral status, with 205,593 retweets and 674,917 likes as of Dec. 15. The observation about female reindeer—which, by the way, like cattle are actually called “cows,” not “does,”—also drew the attention of Bustle, People magazine, Good Morning America and made an impression across the Atlantic as well. Reynolds said the U.K.-based New Statesman  has hired her to write a satirical article for them.

“It’s so weird that my first paid writing assignment is resulting from an odd tweet about reindeer,” she said.

An editor for the Lincoln Center campus literary magazine the Comma, Reynolds said she hopes to write for publications such as National Geographic upon graduation, with an eye toward the sensibilities of the Science Christmas Carols video that inspired her.

“I really like the fun little spinoffs that catch people’s attention. I don’t know that I would have ever read an article about the environmental implications of fake Christmas trees, but this funny, cute video really caught my attention,” she said.

On the heels of Abounding in Kindness: Writings for the People of God (Orbis Books, 2015), comes Johnson’s new book, The Strength of Her Witness: Jesus Christ in the Global Voices of Women (Orbis Books, 2016), an anthology of essays by women theologians.

“The 25 authors in this book speak out boldly about the significance of Jesus, but from very different perspectives,” said Johnson, Distinguished Professor of Theology. “The point brought to the fore is that women in different cultures have their own faith experiences, and when Jesus is seen with the female gaze, powerful new insights break forth.”

While Johnson has long called for a greater inclusion of women’s voices in theological discourse, the book was inspired by pragmatic reasons, as well.

“When teaching courses on ‘Christ in World Cultures,’ I became frustrated by the fact that the good standard books were written almost exclusively by men scholars,” she said. “Using the library reserve system I was forever supplementing these materials with essays written by women in various countries.”

The title of the book is an allusion to chapter four of John’s gospel, which tells the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. In the story, the woman has a lengthy conversation with Jesus and is moved so deeply that she leaves her jug at the well and returns to town to tell everyone about her encounter. Her testimony leads many people to believe that Jesus is the messiah.

Like the Samaritan woman, the authors featured in The Strength of Her Witness testify to the significance of Jesus, Johnson said, offering diverse perspectives on critical contemporary issues, such as racism, sexism, poverty, and the exclusion of LGBT persons.

The authors have clear recommendations for these issues: amidst racism, Christ’s message includes a “profound endorsement” of black women’s human dignity; amidst sexism, Christ’s first appearance to Mary Magdalene and his instruction to “Go and tell” provides grounds for women’s public leadership today; amidst poverty, working for justice provides a liberating force.

“The authors in this book signal the dawn of a new historical era,” Johnson said. “Their work, by turn challenging, comforting, and creative, makes clear the rich contributions that flow when women are empowered, both personally and structurally. It also demonstrates how much poorer church and society remain when only one gender speaks and decides.”

In addition to prioritizing women’s voices, the book is intentional in its inclusion of authors from around the world, Johnson said. This geographic diversity illustrates that the significance of Christ is not limited to American theology or to the Western world, but arises in and belongs to all cultures and nations.

“To bring women’s voices into a long-standing male conversation is one important effort of this book. To emphasize different cultural circumstances adds even more complexity,” she said.

Both the content of the book and its editorial arrangement have a clear implication: The message, though delivered by women, is meant for all people.

“The Samaritan woman of this book’s title did not address her words to women only, but to the whole town… women and men alike,” Johnson said. “Everyone can benefit from listening to wisdom, whatever the source. The riches in this book are not for women only, but for all who seek to immerse themselves more deeply into the meaning of Jesus Christ.”