GLAZING A HISTORY
critically examines the narthex windows of All Saints' Chapel, situating their aesthetic and narrative choices and strategies in the historical and social context of their design and installation in the Cold War and Civil Rights Era of 1957-1960.
Skip ahead to the videos by using the links below, or scroll down for a summary of the project and brief description of each video.
PROJECT SUMMARY
In presenting the history of the first hundred years of the University of the South’s existence, the narthex windows underline several themes: the alignment of the University in the 1950s with the "Old South" and the Confederacy, the University’s students and leaders as ideal “Sewanee Men” shaped by their studies and athletic programs here, generous donors and the ongoing work they made possible, and the institution’s role in creating men prepared for war.
The windows are not an accurate or complete representation of the institution’s history.
Crafted in the 1950s, they neither represent a full picture of our past, nor express who we as a University community are now and are working to become. In regard to slavery and its critical role in the founding of the University, the windows are entirely silent.
"any historical narrative is a ... bundle of silences" —Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past
The generations of African Americans, from the tens of thousands enslaved by the University's founders to the many hundreds who labored for the University during its first century and a half, are another exclusion from the stories depicted in these windows. This "bundle of silences" exposes the windows as productions in line with the racist teachings and practices of white Southerners' Lost Cause campaign to erase slavery's central importance in fracturing the American nation in 1861.
Locating these "silences" even as we give a critical reading to what is heard from the windows will not only expose "the roots of the noble Lost Cause" in the windows' conception and execution. It also will help the Sewanee community better understand our past as an institution of higher education even while building a more inclusive and welcoming present and future. That is why a group of collaborators from across Sewanee’s campus undertook this project. The public presentation of Glazing a History reflects a joint project between the Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation and the University Art Gallery, with the invaluable assistance and support of the William R. Laurie University Archives and Special Collections.
This project’s interdisciplinary nature, its focus on understanding the place in which we dwell together, and its goal of sharing that work broadly demonstrate the richness of the liberal arts and place-based learning so special to Sewanee and the University of the South.
THE VIDEOS
Glazing a History is divided into five parts: an overview and introduction, and a segment on each of the four windows. You may watch them in any order you choose, although we recommend watching them in this order.
Overview
These windows were called the historical windows because they represent a set of specific moments in the history of the University, and they do so by means of carefully chosen portrait likenesses and verifiable details. The inclusion of portraits and anecdotal details gives the windows a kind of reality effect, makes them credible, but they're telling a particular kind of story, and they leave out so much.
Window 1: Antebellum Origins
We begin with an image that presents our foundational moment as the writing of a letter, when Leonidas Polk wrote to propose the creation of a university to the other Southern bishops, and we conclude … with the dedication of the cornerstone in 1860. … These windows … present a visual argument about the ideals and allegiances of the University, as those were imagined by the institution's leadership in the 1950s.
Window 2: From the Ashes
This window moves us from the Civil War through Charlotte Manigault's historic donation to the University in 1875. As with the other windows, there are many individualized portraits and verifiable details in these episodes … These windows communicate much more than what happened on a particular day or who might have been present, and they tell us one story in order not to tell us another. This window, too, … tells the story of the institution to align it with a sense of divine mission and with the Confederacy.
Window 3: The Sewanee Man
This window moves us from the early 1890s through World War I … the founding of the Sewanee Review, the hospital, Sewanee Athletics, Planning the Semi-Centennial celebration of 1907, President Howard Taft's visit in 1911, and the service of Sewanee’s volunteer ambulance unit in World War I … These windows were planned to communicate thematically—about essential donors and contributions to campus buildings, about a balance of science, humanistic study, and athletics as training for political and military leadership and service, and about gender and the ideal Sewanee man as imagined in the 1950s.
Window 4: Cold War Military Training and Readiness
The fourth of the four so-called “historical” windows … [brings] the viewer up to the Centennial Celebration of 1958 … We have worked to show how calculated this visual representation of the story of the University of the South was, and the themes, allegiances and segregationist practices this version of the story was designed to underline. Understanding how and why the story of the institution was told this way in the 1950s is crucial to full and critical understanding of the history of this place and institution.
The "Glazing a History" Production Team
Shelley MacLaren (on the right), Ph.D., is Director and Curator of Academic Engagement, University Art Gallery.
Woody Register (on the left), C'80, Ph.D., is Francis S. Houghteling Professor of American History and Director of the Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation.
David Syler (center) produced and edited the audio and video of Glazing a History.
Additional research support was provided by the staff of the William R. Laurie University Archives and Special Collections.