Maria Diaz-Gonzalez

Critical Compromise

The central statement in Dang’s thesis was that Santo Domingo affair represented the moment when the nation turned away from the post bellum promise of equality and liberty for African Americans. Dang uses several African American luminaries’ reaction to the affair to evidence this final change in direction. The thesis leveraged primary accounts of Reconstruction and the debates surrounding Santo Domingo to further argue that the different opinions that emerged in the African American community were the result of the distance that prominent members sometimes had to the violence that was regularly inflicted upon Southern black people.

This thesis confused me a bit as I sensed an unresolved tension between Dang’s insistence in the sincerity of Frederick Douglass’ belief that the United States could help Dominicans and his classification of them as uncivilized. I think perhaps an explanation of the differences or similarities between the ideas of helping and saving would have allowed me to better understand the sections pertaining to Douglass.

Additionally, I am wondering how much of the criticism leveled towards Haiti by supporters of annexation - black and white - was a response to the threat of black republic won through revolution. I think it a consideration of Haiti as a threat to white imperialism could have been important here, while acknowledging that I am unfamiliar with the history surrounding the Santo Domingo Affair.

I found the thesis to be well organized, with each section building clearly on the one that preceded it. I also appreciated the sharp rationale that the author gave for their choice of sources. In doing this, they defined the scope of their project, gave further legitimacy to the conclusions they reached and explained why these conclusions could encompass that moment in Reconstruction America.

Race, Memory and Law

Unterreiner’s thesis was a case study that explored how the rhetoric used to marshal support for African American rights and the Union cause was simultaneously used to precipitate the expulsion of Chinese Americans from the city of Tacoma. The thesis was styled as the story of the events that precipitated the 1885 expulsion and the legal battle that ensued.

This thesis succeeded at giving a human face to the subject it was tackling. Unterreiner used his sources to give voice to the perpetrators of anti-Chinese violence and more importantly to its victims. Often, he detailed the lives of the Chinese residents of Tacoma and used anecdotes and pieces of their testimonies to write a thesis that was ultimately as much about people as it was about the elements and processes of history. I really appreciated that some of the very first pieces of information the reader received chronicled precisely the human lives of the people Unterreiner chose to write about. I also enjoyed the tense endings of several of his chapters; ending with phrases like “by November 4, they were all gone” stimulated me to keep reading and created an emotional investment in his writing.

In his writing, Unterreiner situated himself very well among the existing literature on the topic. He referenced several specific works and clearly stated several different (rather than similar) reasons why his research represented a new perspective in the field. His writing powerfully contested the claim that liberation for any certain group guarantees the same for others. He showed that the tools for some pursuits of justice can be tailored to the pursuit of injustice in other contexts.

Toward a More Perfect World

In his thesis Knowles posits that while the violence of them attracts many to the movies of Clint Eastwood, throughout his career the actor and filmmaker challenged the American paradigm of glorified violence. By examining several of Eastwood’s films he traces the evolution of their messages concerning violence and demonstrates that these films object to and warn against violence in many forms.

Throughout his work, Knowles had very vivid descriptions of the scenes that unfolded in Eastwood’s films. What stuck me about these descriptions was that they all contributed to his argument. He described vividly, but not excessively and his point was rarely lost as he tried to paint an image of these films for readers who might not have seen them. I also appreciated how the importance of his argument shone through his writing; through examining Clint Eastwood, Knowles made several points about broader issues such as the futility of war. He clearly stated the relevance of his thesis to seemingly permanent issues of violence and war.

One aspect of the thesis that I am unsure about is the centering of the humanity of Clint Eastwood and his characters in moments where perhaps that was not the most salient issue. For example, the centering of his ability to change his racist perceptions of his Hmong neighbors seemed to place his individual ability to change over the systemic racism that ensured the poverty in which these neighbors lived. I think that, while perhaps outside the scope of the thesis, the systemic nature of violence was a bit obscured by the individual grappling that seemed to characterize Eastwood’s films.