A distant cousin has been sending me boxes of archival material from that side of the family. He, no less than his siblings, were some kind of pieces of work. A sister wrote the first presidential assassination-conspiracy theory book, which became a best-seller. His oldest brother, A.C. Dixon, a fire-breathing conservative minister, was among other things editor of the journal that became the foundation of Christian fundamentalism, and lent its name to the movement. As far as I know the only upside was yet another sister who became the first woman woman doctor in North or South Carolina. Oh, and his dad, like Thomas and A.C. a Baptist minister, was one of the early members of the then-breakaway Southern Baptists. Which makes sense since he was also a slaveowner.

Charming family. My goal is to keep them perpetually turning in their graves.

figleaf

Dixon used to be of interest in American Studies because of “Birth of a Nation,” but more recently certain critics in Amlit have been making arguments that there are common strands between Dixon’s brand of white supremacist argument and 1) US imperialist nationalist and 2) certain strands of identity politics.

Happy holidays!!!

Janice–thanks for the report on your research. I once got very interested in the print culture of the Colonial Revival, and its invention of Priscilla Alden in the mythology of early Plymouth, so I’m a little familiar with some of the sources from the era you’re looking at. So much effort expended to authorize a particular version of the past! (Only in the case of Priscilla, it was more about reading 19th C gender roles (rather than racialist ideology) back into the colonial period, or earlier.)

The fights in the 19th century over where Vinland would be found were pretty interesting, too. Was it Cape Cod, Nova Scotia, the Chesapeake Bay area or somewhere else? Scholars and amateurs devoted to various theories fought it out in the journals and on the talk circuit. Because so many of them lacked physical evidence (or the physical evidence was so wrong, as in the case of the Newport Tower which is pretty clearly a 17th century windmill (and so not like any Norse building yet found or discussed in any literature).

The funny thing is that PhysioWife wanted to go check out this garage sale, and I was complaining like a WATB that I didn’t want to go. I was so glad she dragged me!

I’ve branched into research on the Norse discovery of North America (or, more properly, how that discovery was understood and used by subsequent cultures) and have stumbled upon a wealth of books and ephemera, especially from the 19th and 20th centuries that expound on one crackpot aspect or another. So far, most of those discoveries have been developed via ILL or microform reading, but I have started acquiring a few such print works when I can find them!