Hollis Robbins on 19th Century Life and Literature
Conversations with Tyler
Conversations with Tyler
4.8 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 28 August 2019
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As a graduate student, Hollis Robbins helped Henry Louis Gates, Jr. unravel a mystery about the provenance of a mid-19th century book. Robbins helped date the book by discovering allusions to popular literature of that period — her focus at the time. The realization that this perspective would bring valuable insight to other 19th century African American literature prompted her to make that her specialty.
Now a dean at Sonoma Sate University, Robbins joined Tyler to discuss 19th-century life and literature and more, including why the 1840s were a turning point in US history, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Calvinism, whether 12 Years a Slave and Django Unchained are appropriate portraits of slavery, the best argument for reparations, how prepaid postage changed America, the second best Herman Melville book, why Ayn Rand and Margaret Mitchell are ignored by English departments, growing up the daughter of a tech entrepreneur, and why teachers should be like quarterbacks.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Recorded June 21st, 2019
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, |
| 0:08.3 | bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. |
| 0:12.5 | Learn more at mercatis.org. |
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| 0:20.4 | ConversationsWithTyler.com. |
| 0:23.4 | I'm very pleased to be here today with Hollis Robbins, who was one of the leading scholars |
| 0:36.1 | of African American history and literature, and she is also now dean at Sonoma State University. |
| 0:42.4 | Welcome Hollis. |
| 0:43.4 | Thank you. |
| 0:44.4 | Opening question. |
| 0:46.1 | Why were the 1840s the most central and determinative decade in American history? |
| 0:51.5 | Well, the 1840s was a time of change, as I've said publicly, that the 1850s is actually |
| 1:00.0 | my decade. |
| 1:01.0 | I think very deeply about the 1850s, widely across the world, what was happening. |
| 1:06.1 | So for me, the 1840s were the decades that opened the door to the decade that I study. |
| 1:12.0 | But it's the decade that saw Frederick Douglass. |
| 1:14.8 | It's the decade that saw the beginnings of the postal reforms. |
| 1:19.5 | It's the decade you see a beginning of a real political understanding that slavery is |
| 1:25.7 | going to have to end. |
| 1:27.6 | It becomes clear America will be a very large nation, right, for the first time. |
| 1:31.5 | Yes. |
| 1:32.5 | And there you see changes in Europe that will revolutions in Europe that will change the |
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