Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T15:42:49.990Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Beyond Passing: Transculturation in “Contact Zones”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2019

Lynne Tatlock
Affiliation:
Washington University
Get access

Summary

IT BEGAN WITH HUNGER for what I was not, hunger stoked by such mundane things as European peasant paper dolls, by whispered mentions of war brides, by appetites whetted by Midwestern 1950s educational practices in a time and place where international connections remained few and difficult for ordinary people to make. Less than two decades after the end of the Second World War, well-intentioned grade school teachers in Terre Haute, Indiana, made clumsy attempts to recognize and celebrate alien cultures—mainly European ones, that is, until Hawaii became a state and we grade-schoolers were taught to dance the hula. In third grade at the Laboratory School of Indiana State Teachers College, I was assigned to Denmark for a school pageant. My mother fashioned a costume from one of her old skirts. We danced and sang in Danish—unbeknownst to me at the time, it was a little love poem by Hans Christian Andersen. Much later on—I couldn't help myself—I learned Danish. Two years later, in another Indiana town, in the shadow of another university but not as part of it, we celebrated European cultures yet again. This time, my fifth-grade class was assigned Germany. Mother hauled out the Danish costume.

I have no idea what we sang in German, but I do remember my dance partner. He was tall and teased me as we rehearsed by stretching his right hand up as high as he could so I couldn't reach it for our dance, a folkdance, which, as I recall, required arm pumping. As soon as he would relent and lower his hand, I seized it and off we went. Later—I couldn't help myself—I learned German. This tussle with my flirtatious and slightly mean dance partner presaged things to come in my professional life. Fortunately, I learned strategies of stretching, and either the profession, on both sides of the Atlantic, became more welcoming to intruders or I became less intrusive.

The Public University as a Foreign Outpost

In my freshman year at Indiana University, I lived through a panty raid and a student strike as one era smashed against another.

Type
Chapter
Information
Transatlantic German Studies
Testimonies to the Profession
, pp. 231 - 248
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×