For an unworldly Hoosier boy, the prospect of going to Europe
sounded romantic and adventurous. Back in the 1960s, Notre Dame
began to develop its first study-abroad programs -- there are
now some 20 possibilities -- and the one based in Angers, France,
started in 1966, the fall of my freshman year. So that semester
I enrolled in a class with what you might call zero-based understanding
of the French language. Sans an iota of previous instruction,
I dreamily hoped I could conjugate enough verbs to spend sophomore
year in France.
I'm now convinced a mother's prayers rather than linguistic
mastery sent me across the Atlantic the following August. The
word callow grossly understates how at least one 18-year-old felt
during the initial weeks of innocence abroad.
To have lived in France at that time, particularly during the
massive student and laborer protests of spring 1968, allowed an
outsider to witness a country going through the throes of revolutionary
change. Schools, including the university where we studied, closed.
Workers struck. Postal and transportation systems stopped. Demonstrations,
often bloody, abounded.
What was happening back home proved just as engrossing, as I
learned the value of studying America from different vantage points.
The assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King and Senator
Robert Kennedy, the growing opposition to the Vietnam War, the
violent racial unrest and Lyndon Johnson's surprise decision not
to seek re-election all received maximum attention abroad. The
commentary raised searching questions about the stability and
future of the United States.
For the first time, I read beyond the sports pages of newspapers
and magazines. I developed the daily habit of picking up the International
Herald Tribune. As I went through the pages, my youthful
ambition of someday becoming a sportswriter began to fade.
What was occurring elsewhere at that tumultuous time constantly
competed with the daily enchantments of a provincial French city.
As I followed the swirling currents of events overseas, I started
to finagle for ways to get closer to them.
Saint Augustine once wrote, "The world is a book and those who
do not travel read only one page." The thinking behind that precept,
I realize today, influenced trips on my own away from Angers:
to Israel and its newly occupied (still controversial) territories,
to Greece under the control of a military junta that had just
seized power, and to the Soviet Union in some chillier days of
the Cold War, among other places.
I now better understand that period's career-shaping consequences.
In one of his countless quotable asides, G.K. Chesterton, a connoisseur
of paradox, observed: "The whole object of travel is not to set
foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country
as a foreign land." To a degree, my student experience served
that ironic purpose. Despite seductive diversions in journalism
and politics, I finished graduate work in American literature
and American studies, continuing all the while to remain fascinated
by what the New World means to the rest of the world's peoples,
cultures, political systems, businesses and everything else.
Since 1997, I've taught away from the Notre Dame campus on five
occasions. I trace this pedagogical wanderlust to my own, long-departed
student days at the University. After returning to Notre Dame
to join the faculty, I looked forward to a time when teaching
off-campus might arise. Learning a new language or revivifying
my moribund French seemed as remote as running a 4-minute mile,
but English-speaking assignments did present themselves.
In each case, I made sure to pack blank notebooks for the random
jottings that new activities and perceptions provoke. The teacher
would also be a student, learning about another country and more
about one's own in the process.
In a foreign clime, I discovered that the unexpected can be
amusing, even telling. During an atypical cold spell at the University
of Notre Dame Australia in Fremantle, I was surprised one morning
to find several sun-accustomed young Aussies wearing gloves as
they took notes. At University College Dublin, after encouraging
more robust discussion among Irish graduate students about America's
influence, each session lasted longer than the previous one, and,
blessedly, there was no impatient fidgeting. In a seminar at Saint
Augustine College of South Africa, I listened to passionate arguments
from blacks and whites that journalists there should concentrate
more on positive news to help build that country's fledgling,
post-apartheid democracy rather than being preoccupied with coverage
of social and political problems.
At one foreign post, a student expressed his cross-cultural
shock at my Yankee severity by complaining to the dean that the
visiting instructor actually seemed serious in demanding regular
attendance. Beyond such classroom contretemps, extended sojourns
elsewhere opened my eyes to distinctive traits of another culture
and what they signify for life there.
In Australia, for instance, you hear repeated reference to "the
tall poppy syndrome." This, I quickly learned, has no relevance
to gardening. Down Under, the egalitarian ethos remains so strong
that to stand out from everyone else raises eyebrows. The indigenous
impulse to find out why someone is different takes the shape of
public examination -- often undertaken by media sleuthing. That
process can, and usually does, reduce a person's standing, with
the "poppy" returning to the relatively same level occupied by
fellow Aussies.
In Ireland, it doesn't take long to realize that contemporary
politics intertwines with history at almost every turn. The Easter
Rising of 1916 is a key moment on the road to an independent Irish
Free State, formed in 1921 and followed in 1949 with the creation
of the Republic of Ireland. But the origins of the republican
movement, with its goal of ending British sovereignty throughout
the island, dates back to the 18th century -- and, to be sure,
Catholic/Protestant "troubles" took root a couple of hundred years
earlier than that. To understand the current Northern Ireland
peace process and general day-to-day political life in Ireland,
a historical primer is as essential as a morning newspaper.
Outside the classroom, citizens of others countries are naturally
eager to tell a visitor about their own domestic matters. Before
long, however, the discussions evolve into questions (and opinions)
about the United States. In today's globalized world, fascination
abounds about our influence and dominance, especially in the realms
of popular culture, economic involvement and governmental policies.
Few conversations circumvent political matters. What's striking
to a visitor is the fixation on the American presidency that exists
abroad. The United States might be this time's sole acknowledged
superpower, yet that status tends to get personalized by focusing
on the occupant of the White House. It's as though there's a realization
that our president's decisions will ultimately mean something
-- for better or for worse -- to everyone beyond our borders.
During the later years of Bill Clinton's time in office, it
was common to be interrogated in winking, wry ways about the relevance
of his private appetites, leading to the more encompassing concern
about whether Puritanism survives as the American creed for someone
in public life. With George W. Bush, a certain quizzical fear
about his administration's foreign policy has constantly competed
with the broader fascination with the U.S. role in the world.
I was stunned by the question a South African woman stood up
to ask in Johannesburg at a public lecture that took place even
before the war in Iraq began. She wanted to know if I thought
September 11 was "fortuitous" in permitting the president to pursue
his international objectives.
By implying that the multiple tragedies of that September day
could have been fortunate happenstance suggested a depth of worry
and criticism I never expected -- and tried, however vainly, to
refute. As it turned out, though, her question proved more restrained
than some of the pointedly scabrous queries that followed. It
was an unsettling but instructive evening.
A year later, during the U.S. occupation in Iraq and while teaching
at Notre Dame's London Centre, I was struck by the assessments
about America one found in European sources. Books, magazines
and newspapers surveyed the subject from several angles, and the
BBC World Service devoted a six-part radio documentary, "Age of
Empire," to the global reach and stature of the United States
today. Examining these appraisals, I came to the conclusion that
foreigners view us differently from how we see ourselves.
In his 2004 State of the Union address, President Bush repeated
an assertion he had made in earlier speeches: "We have no desire
to dominate, no ambitions of empire." Such statements notwithstanding,
people abroad perceive an empire in fact (of daily commerce, cultural
influence, political involvement and military presence) that belies
protestations to the contrary.
Explaining this "no, I'm not/yes, you are" phenomenon, one British
analyst has written: "The United States is now an empire in all
but name -- the first case in history of an empire in denial."
Another non-American observer puts it in less starkly Freudian
terms: "It [the United States] is an empire, in other words, without
consciousness of itself as such."
How foreigners, rightly or wrongly, react to what they interpret
as Yankee imperialism covers a spectrum of response. Support,
rejection and bewilderment joust with each other whenever the
subject comes up. Sometimes, however, a reaction can be worrying.
During office hours last spring, a Notre Dame student in the London
program told me about a troubling recent occurrence. While reading
by herself in a coffee shop, she sensed an older man at a nearby
table watching her. As she looked up, he asked, "You American?"
When she admitted her citizenship, he began yelling at her in
an unknown tongue before storming out and abandoning a fresh cup
of coffee. Now the object of everyone's attention, the student
promptly departed, wondering what triggered his outburst. She'll
never know -- but also will never forget the incident.
Particularly with a foreign program, what happens away from
the classroom can rival in educational benefit the more formal
course work. In my own student days, I happened to be in Moscow
when Robert Kennedy was assassinated in California during his
presidential campaign.
At the Tass News Agency office, as I stood in front of several
huge, black-and-white pictures of the New York senator sprawled
out on the floor after the shooting, the man next to me inquired
if I might be American. I nodded a yes. I remember his next question
as though it were posed yesterday: "Why do you Americans kill
the Kennedys?" His curiosity about national complicity -- rather
than the tangled webs of conspiracy theories -- put the matter
in a sobering, even disturbing perspective.
Near the end of my last overseas sojourn in London, I spent
a rewarding Saturday morning touring the Chelsea home (with its
soundproof writing study) of Thomas Carlyle, the 19th-century
historian and essayist. My attention focused on an observation
of his I stumbled upon: "What we become depends on what we read
after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest
university of all is a collection of books."
Carlyle is right -- but only up to a point. Continuing enlightenment
also comes from immersing oneself in the surroundings and cultures
of people other than ourselves. Recognizing this makes the world
beyond our shores less foreign -- and our understanding of America
more acute. In addition, one would hope, it somehow helps the
perennial student-traveler in trying to become a better teacher.
Robert Schmuhl is professor of American studies and director
of the John W. Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics & Democracy
at the University.
(January 2005)
