Draft: second of five

Mid-West American and Popular Culture Conference, Bowling Green, Ohio, November 1996

Endowing the Popular Culture Movement

II. The Roots of Popular Culture as a Academic Movement

Paul Rich FRSA FRSAnt FRAS FRSAA

University of the Americas-Puebla, Mexico

This is the second of a series of five papers about learned academic societies being presented at regional and national popular culture meetings. The series is intended to promote discusion of some fundamental questions which need to be considered as a prelude to plans for building a permanent endowment for the popular culture movement.

The motivation and premise of all five papers (given at Mid-Atlantic, Mid-West, Far West, Latin American and National) is that an effective endowment campaign has to be based on a vigorous dialogue about just why at this time it is important for the membership to think about the longterm prospects of the Popular Culture Association and of the American Culture Association.

Often in learned societies, and understandably, the subject matter gets all the attention and the machinery which perpetuates the society gets little. Most of the time that is entirely as it should be. Cooks worry about food, not about the compressor that powers the refrigerator. When we go to a conference of the American Rose Society or scan the contents of its journal, we expect to satisfy our horticultural interests rather than to be tutored in mailing list techniques or in the legalisms of bequests. People in academic societies such as the American Culture and Popular Culture Associations are generally anxious to talk about the subject matter and show little enthusiasm about the details of the day-to-day running of the organization. An evidence of that is the poor attendance at business meetings, regardless of what group is meeting.

However, there do come times when the idea of considering the compressor deserves some notice. The suggestion I would make today is that such a time has arrived for popular culture. That is partly because of the great success that the movement has enjoyed - the founding and growth of the regional associations, the internationalization now taking place, the growth of all kinds of subject areas which were not dreamed about thirty years ago.

The popular culture associations are at an awkward but promising stage, rather like a gangling teenager looking towards adulthood. The movement is no longer small, but it has not yet achieved the permanent organizational structure which will ensure that the regional and national organizations take advantage of the many opportunities which present themselves. And let it be emphasized that rather than discussing endowment, what we really are discussing is opportunity.

There will understandably be some regrets at coming of age, but maturity has compensations. The situaiton is reminiscent of the story of the young man in a small sports car and the elderly matron in a large Cadillac, both trying to park in the last available space in a downtown highrise garage. The young man slipped his sports car into the parking space ahead of the lady and jumped out, saying "That is the advantage of being young and nimble." As he headed towards the garage elevator he was horrified to see the Cadillac pushing his car out of the space and over the garage railing. The lady stepped out of her car and said, "That is the advantage of being old and rich."

Seeking a permanent financial base to encourage future expansion first involves important decisions about such matters as the headquarters site (At the Mid-Atlantic discussion of the first of these papers, the question was asked as to why PCA and ACA could not move to Washington!), the funding of the journals and their future as part of the World Wide Web, our ability to finance traveling lecturers and special conference programs, and other matters which of course do come back to money and raise the question of an endowment. But to justify upgrading the financial situation means we need to talk during the next two years at the regional and the national level about what our expectations are for popular culture studies. To begin this process we have to cosnider where we have come from. Thus this second paper in the series of five deals with the question of how our historic origins and those of learned societies in general can point us towards understanding our uniqueness as an academic movement.

Learned Societies and Turf Wars

Before considering our uniquenesses, and we are in respects unique, it is appropriate to look at what we have in common with other groups. The term "learned society" does not arise often at popular culture gatherings, but that is what the popular culture associations are. We can claim to be less formal and less protocol conscious than other academies and associations, but in the end we are of the same gender as the American Historical Association (AHA) or the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Ironically, in some ways we are much more traditional as a learned society than our contemporaries, much more as I shall point in tune with the learned societies of the past.We do include people who are not academics but it should be pointed out that so do other academic associations, For example, the AHA has had "lay" members for well over 100 years, members who sijmply loved history. Popular culture associations should do more to attract non-academics, but for the foreseeable future we are primarily dependant on academic members.

Turf Wars

Our present membership problems are much more similar to those of other societies that we possibly like to think. At the recent Mid-Atlantic Association meetings in Philadelphia when the first of these papers was given, there was considerable reference as to how the popular culture associations suffer from the invasion of territory by other associations which are including popular culture in their brief. The American Studies Association annual program, one commentator remarked, which once had almost no papers on popular culture, is now chockfull of popular culture papers.

But we are not the only association to worry about the consequences of the competition that results from the overlaping of discipines. Everyone these days is determined to spread as wide an umbrellas as possible. The specialized associations such as the Amerian Dialect Society or the American Name Society are always trying to get support that otherwise will go to larger and more inclusive groups like the Modern Language Association. Nor are the big associations, with a claim on an already broad subject area, exempted from this. Much could be written about the growing overlap between such groups as the American Political Science Association and the American Economics Association, or between the International Studies Association and the Latin American Studies Association and the Middle East Studies Association. People can only afford to go to a certain number of conferences and can only find the money to pay for a certain number of membeships. This would be a strange audience if the majority here did not wish they coujld stretch their budgets to include at least a couple more associations which touch on their interests.

The fighting over turf is partly because of muddled thinking about what an academic association is and does. Instead of the competition being over who owns what subject, the competition should be over who can best service members. We have to stop worrying about other societies doing our subject and start worrying more about how we can be so good that people put us first when it comes to mailing out membership renewal checks. (I might add that we have to think seriously about life membership, something that once was available. Everyone else has it and we are missing the boat by not having it. It is one way one that on gets truly commited members.)

The war will be won not by proving that a subject "belongs" to one association or to another, but by showing beyond any question that PCA and ACA can best service members. For example, the PCA and ACA now have an enviable regional network, arguably better in terms of geographic coverage than that of other major academic societies. That is something to strengthen and to capitalize on.

Seventeenth-Century Popular Culture Associations

As for the battle over proprietory rights to subject material, and the virtues or vices of interdisciplinary studies, the fact is that all American academic associations can look back in time to the founding of the Royal Society In London in 1660. This was among the first of modern European academic associations. "Any man with pretensions to academic distinction," wrote Joy Hancox, "...would be flattered to be a member." The Royal Society was interdisciplinary and ecumenical in its interests to say the least. Programs included the examination of oddities such as a tooth with four fangs and a chicken with two hearts, suggesting possibilities yet to be plumbed at popular culture meetings. Associated with meetings were sessions at local taverns: at a 1725 gathering the members tackled salmon, neck of veal, pigeon pie, fowl and asparagus, and a large quantity of French wine.

The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were marked by the establishment of many academic groups, often overlaping with the Royal Society. These learned societies, membership in which today is often considered the ultimate crowning glory of a senior academic's career, have always been eclectic. The Royal Dublin Society, founded in 1731 and propsering still in 1996, was accused from the first of discussing farming but not being a farmers' society, of studying art but not being an artists's society, of pursuing science but not being a scientific society. The charge seems true, because the society interested itself at one time or another in manure, bee-keeping, the reconstruction of a fossil elk (which presented problems of storage because of its size), and the mummy of an Irishman who had been discovered in a bog and who I am glad to report was eventually reburied. The Royal Dublin also sought to raise money, and so notorious was one of its solicitors that when he called on a noble lord to get a contribution His Lordship avoided the interview by stripping off all his clothes and accompanying the retreating canvasser to the door in the buff.

Another antecedent of our intediscipinary fellowship in PCA and ACA would be Phi Beta Kappa, the grandfather of all honorary Greek societies and a society which has always been interdisciplinary. The Royal Society, the Royal Dublin, Phi Beta Kappa, and others which are so proudly included in the Who's Who biographies of star professors, are characterized and always have been characterized by the same broad approach to scholarship found in the PCA and ACA. Over the centuries they have been willing to entertain papers on a wide variety of subjects and they have not been afraid to have a jolly good time doing it. The criticism therefore of the broad appeal of PCA and ACA arises out of ignorance, because there is not a profesor living who would not give his or her right arm to be in some of the highly eclectic fellowhsips I have mentioned.

Nota bene that these societies must be referred to in the present tense because they also are characterized by thier grat longevity. They are still very much with us, having survived the centuries. Had they been more specialized, I wonder if they would have had acquired their great prestige or lasted as long as they have.

Being Human

There is perhaps a lesson to this brief excursion into history. Broad interests, ecumenical scholarship, interdiscipinary enthusiasms seem to be healthy for organizations. In of all places the PMLA, Michael Bérfubé of the University of Illinois takes issue with some of his fellow MLA members when he writes, "...as long as the scholarship in question concerns humans and is writen by humans, readers should at least entertain the possibility that nothing human should be alien to it." So say we all! But isn't it peculiar that we have to be reminded of the point.

Admittedly, if scholars originally supported interdisciplinary fellowships, more recently they have been abstemious, cranky and parsimonious about crossing departmental lines. Ascent on the academic ladder is not found at the intersections of disciplines, but safely within one's small potato patch. This seems to me to suggest insecurities, fears that a discipline might crumble if it got to close to other disciplines, that interdisciplinary activity is an admisison that one's own field is not that significant.

If interdisciplinary studies are somehow philistine and if popular cutlure is beneath the salt in some circles, than clearly we must do away with universities because they are themselves interdisciplinary. Undergraduate courses are highly suspect because by their very nature they are only surveys of topics which deserve a much more specialized approach.

In place of universities, if one takes seriously the critics of popular cutlure and of interdisciplinary studies, a much more respectable alternative would be autonomous specialized institutions to prevent interdisciplinary contamination. Moreover, since undergraduates cannot effectively study arcane topics, the teaching of undergraduates should be abolished on the grounds that undergraduates are popular culture personified.

It also follows that the Royal Society and Phi Beta Kappa lack respectability because of their interdisciplianry nature, and would join the universities on the scrapheap which the opponents of popular culture seem to think should be the fate of any pursuit of general knowledge. Libraries too would seem dangerous because after all the books on various fields are shelves in unseemly togetherness.

We should remind ourselves that we stand in a long tradition of academic or scholarly societies dating back to the seventeenth century, and that the more successful have been very much cut from popular culture and interdisciplianry cloth. We need to remind ourselves that our profession as scholars is very much tied to gatherings like this, linked to the coffee house and tavern discussions of old.

New Fields

To avoid reinventing the wheel, brainstorming about the future of popular culture requires looking carefully at how other academic groups face thieir growing pains, at areas which the PCA and ACA membership feel could produce growth, and at issues involving globalization and intellectual stimulation.

We also must give consideration to the proposition that one of the principal reasons for enhancing the movement's finances is that this is a special time for the development of new academic fields. Discussion is needed about the relationship between the movement's finances and the exciting prospect that it can provide the major academic home for some of the growing new disciplines. At the Mid-Atlantic meetings I took the three examples of criminal, gender, and subaltern studies, but there are many others.

Crucial to developing a fundraising agenda is to consider the opportunities that a PCA and ACA endowment would give. Money is very directly related to opportunity taking. As this audience is well aware, academic disciplines are largely a creation of the twentieth century and at critical times a nudge or push would have created a different assortment of what are the so-called mainstream academic subjects, if mainstream is defined at least partly by a university's departments and faculties.

Minority gender studies are a prominent example of these emergent subjects and an area where popular culturists do and can play an increasing role. The increased inclusion of gender studies as part of the popular culture movement, including ethnic, lesbian, gay and other topics, illustrates this point about being strong enough to take advantage of opportunities. If these now fast growing disciplines centering on gender are to find their principal home in the popular culture movement, we need to undergird the publishing program and membership services. If capital were available, the popular culture organizations would be the umbrella for much of the gender scholarship now developing.

Gender studies are only one example of the opportunities which exist because of the interdisciplinary and openminded nature of popular culture scholarship. With more money, the popular culture associations can be more aggressive in providing an academic home for new scholarship. We are in a friendly competition with other academic movements and other disciplines, and success or failure largely depends on financing. Money is a way by which we can build a movement that will attract scholars who might otherwise set up shop in what for lack of a better word can be called our competitors.

Which group will achieve the critical mass necessary to make its conferences and publications the recognized principal meeting ground depends on what canb e done by way of giving the PCA and ACA a solid permanent financial footing.

So far the popular culture movement has fared amazingly well, but that does not preclude more vigorous efforts to build programs to attract those in subjects such as gender which have shown growth and promise. The affinities between gender studies and popular culture studies are numerous. Popular culture meetings could be attracting far more gender specialists than have been attending. The simple fact is that many working on gender don't know about us.

To summarize this particular aspect of the challenge, the popular culture movement is the natural home for many emerging areas of study. Po

pular culture scholars should be among the more sympathetic to new fields since theirs is itself a field which has had to struggle for recognition. Gender studies in general face the same difficulties that popular culture has faced in winning a place in the curriculum. Like popular culture, gender scholarship runs smack against a number of self-imposed constraints that academics have masochistically adopted.

The challenge now is to reconstruct a multi-tiered reality, which is in a sense what popular culture is all about. Study of the so-called gender minorities or any of the other areas I have disccuessed is a necessary part of that process. Popular culture thus has a global and ecumenizing opportunity, with the potential to help give proper due to the growing pluralism and ethnocultural mixing of the world.

Now, there are of course a large number of ways in which an endowment fund to make into realities some of the good things we would like to see happen in thePCA and ACA and the regionals. What is suggested here is that the first step is to let people dream and develop a wish list - but not for too long! Out of all the ideas hopefully offered will come the motivation for an approach to fund raising. Despite the obstacles, popular culture has a bright future. It has potential allies that will enable it to grow far more than it already has. An ingredient of success is going to be to do all that can be done to reach out to the other new disciplines and assure them that there is a place for them in the associations, meetings and journals of the popular culture community. An endowment fund just for the sake of having an endowment fundis not the point. The point is what we can do together if we can articulate what we want the PCA and ACA to be in the years ahead and then have a program by which we can get the resources to make our ideas come true.