This conference paper emerged from a new piece I am working on for a forthcoming anthology on the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition of 1898 in Omaha, Nebraska, a world’s fair that is less scholarly traversed than the 1893 and 1904 fairs of that period.  When researching the making of this fair for my book, From Liberation to Conquest: the Visual and Popular Cultures of the Spanish-American War of 1898 (UMass Press, 2011), I sought to analyze how fair representations reflected evolving attitudes toward American’s new colonies acquired in the war with Spain of the same year.  One set of representations I found fascinating, but did little with in the book, was a set of commemorative stamps that the Post Office issued in 1898 to celebrate and promote the Omaha world’s fair (the second commemorative series in our nation’s history!).  My paper will examine this set of nine stamps closely, attempting to ascertain why certain images were selected to appear in the stamp series and why others were not chosen.  This process of selection illuminates the collaboration of fair organizers and government officials in constructing an image of the West in line with the nation’s evolving ideas of expansion and empire. 

For the purposes of this blog, I thought I would say a little about one of the nine stamps in the series, by way of previewing the ideological work of these compact, visual statements in selling a fictionalized narrative of the West.  Third Assistant Postmaster General John A. Merritt intended for the commemorative stamp issue, like the exposition itself, to celebrate the pioneering, exploring, and settling of the Trans-Mississippi region.  This iconographic direction fit the prescription of historical mythmaking of the American West, underscoring themes of inevitability and entitlement at the expense of chronicling the actual negotiations and displacement transpiring there.  This endeavor, at times, came at the expense of historical accuracy, as in the case of the $1 stamp in the series, titled “Western Cattle in Storm.”  Based on a painting by British artist John MacWhirter, its depiction of a cattle herd represented a quintessential ranching scene on the Great Plains.  But the Post Office Department incorrectly labeled the setting, and to the dismay of Merritt, it later came out that the image was actually of cattle in the Scottish highlands, not the American West.  The Post Office Department formally apologized for the misrepresentation to the owner of the painting, Lord Blythswood of Scotland, inviting less than laudatory publicity for the fair.  Despite the carelessness of the choice, in choosing the image the Bureau of Printing staff as well as fair promoters sought to celebrate the Western sublime as well as promote its commercial possibilities.

By examining the selection of visual material for the stamps in relation to the wider historical and cultural currents of the 1890s, the intent of my paper is to frame the different ways that government officials, fair organizers, promoters, and collectors engaged in larger conversations about regional, national, and imperial identities through their production and consumption of this widely acclaimed commemorative stamp series.

   - Bonnie M. Miller, Associate Professor of American Studies, UMass Boston

Richard Cobden and the Influence of Transatlantic Travel on the Victorian Self

The paper that I will be presenting is based on the travel diary of Richard Cobden, who, as a 21-year-old calico manufacturer from Manchester, England, made a tour of the United States by coach, rail, and steamship in 1835. Cobden is better known for his later role as an MP who obtained the repeal of the Corn Laws and gave his name to the “Cobden Club,” which promoted free trade. From an early age, however, he loved the U.S. Before he even set foot on American soil, he wrote a pamphlet, England, Ireland, and America, which celebrated our system of universal education, our ingenuity, and our policies on trade and nonintervention.

I became interested in Cobden’s diary in the context of my research on the cultural influences of early, 1830s, railroads. The project developed in a seminar with Prof. Maurice Lee at Boston University, “Information Revolutions and 19th-century Transatlantic Literature,” but it has also given me the opportunity to engage ideas of Romanticism and modernity that I explored in a seminar with Prof. Charles Capper.

I visualize Cobden’s personal growth in three-dimensions. He physically moves through the American landscape along one axis, through time and space. Simultaneously, he is growing along a second axis as a Romantic and a modern individual. At the same time, he is being pulled into a third dimension by transatlantic influences. I am working with the trope of what Laura Stevens calls the “cracked mirror.” In this manner, both “American and British authors experience the uncanny as they read each other, seeing a culture that resembles but reconfigures their own, and their writing is often a meditation on the distorted reflection they see.”

The central problem that I am now trying to address has to do with whether or not I am trying to do too much in this paper. Perhaps my narrative would be more effective if I followed only one thread: travel, or the tension between the Romantic and the modern, or Transatlanticism. Yet in Cobden’s story these themes appear to be inextricably connected. I remain hopeful that there is a way of telling the story that can articulate these mutual influences in a lucid and elegant fashion.

I look forward to your thoughts on the paper. At the very least, I look forward to leading you in Cobden’s footsteps from the warehouses of Manchester, to New York Harbor in 1835, to the timeless thunder and mists of Niagara Falls. It is an amazing journey.

Kate Viens  

Boston University and the Massachusetts Historical Society

Welcome to the NEASA pre-conference blog!

This is the pre-conference blog for New England American Studies Association conference, to be held this September 27-28 at the  Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Reseach Center  in Connecticut.