>> in your book venetian of outsiders you devote a whole chapter to j.d. salinger and the capture of the right. why? >> i think he's interesting because his character, holden coffield is the first rebel who comes from an elite upper-middle-class background in this post war irca he's not alienated because of his race or his class background or because he was a bohemian, he is a dropout the resident of a department, and this is the dawning of a new kind of

trouble. >> what was the effect of the book in 1951? >> it was really huge. the book style was very different from published fiction at the time. it was a kind of almost brad the sort of dialogue stifel that really caught the eye of young people of all ages but especially younger people and the book made quite an impression on the readers of the time throughout the 50's and into the 60's today as well for that matter. >> the subtitle of your book of the white middle class fell in love with rebellion, posed for america. >> besides j.d. salinger catcher of the right, what other sebelius figures were there? >> skill mcginn the initial post war period white middle class folks were attracted to a host of different figures the experience mostly from popular culture, for television country

magazine reading, life magazine especially those sorts of venues and also the movies. particularly in the 50's, rock-and-roll, the birth of rock and will particularly folks like elvis presley, certainly a huge favorite of young people and some older folks as well across the country who made a name for himself acting putting on a performance of black dress styles and musical styles though he was of course white and other figures followed him. so rock'n'roll would be one place people fell in love with rebels and also james dean of course a rebel without a cause became a kind of catch phrase for the rebels of the hero. that would certainly apply to holden coffield as well. these are folks who don't have a political problem, they don't have a class problem but they are alienated all the same place all of the movies, marlin

brando, many of his early movies, the wild one for example where he makes a wonderful line a young waitress asks what are you rebelling against and he says what do you got? so those are places you see her rebels and then also bohemia becomes more popular of the time. life magazine is a great job of bringing people from the sort of fringe is into the middle class homes across the country so people were able to pick up their life magazine and look at pictures of the writers like allen ginsberg and look at all one guard writers like jack pollock and folks they probably wouldn't have known much about unless they happened to be interested in the art world or poetry specifically that most middle class white americans wouldn't have known that much about. so those folks as well. >> william f. buckley is the ultimate outsider? [laughter] >> bulkeley is an interesting figure because he goes to yale in the late 40's if he's at yale

and he wouldn't have been an outsider most places in america. he believes the liberalism of professors really dominate not just the campus but the academic offerings of there's a kind of intellectual orthodoxy at yale constructed by these liberal professors and you don't have much room to stray outside of that and he comes to school from a very conservative family that half of it has troops in the deep south and the other not but a very conservative catholic white family with a very conservative politics and so he brings them with him and feels very much that he is a rebel against that i believe liberal culture. >> we've been talking quite a bit know about the 50's. what is the effect of this?

this white rebellion? >> and begins to grow our of the 60's and people make the leap from being interested in people they see as different into imagining themselves as rebels or outsiders, too and you see folks making the leap particularly young white college students through the revival is an important venue for the kind of thinking. people start out may be listening to the kingston trio or even harry belafonte and before you know the drudgery to the library of congress with a scratchy library of congress reporting and other recordings made and before you know they've got a guitar and picking out songs from their bedroom and thinking how can cast themselves as the kind folks music hero. there are many other folks who don't become famous but who take the guitar to the washington square park and sort of put on

this full and in for the music and try to find a way to play with a think of as an authentic manner. >> for the new white negro's? >> i use that term because of the time the 50's and 60's it is used pejoratively by southern traditionalists and segregationists. they call anybody that is interested in or supporting the civil rights struggles of blacks believe they are often called white negros. stuff a share a sealed at the white activists, those are used or ratings to the student nonviolent coordinating committee folks, singers like pete seeger get hate mail calling him a white negro, white nigger so i use that phrase to describe those white mostly

middle class folks who take an interest in black culture in black politics really again starting with rock and roll and then moving through the revival and into the port for some of them to support the civil rights organizing. >> professor if we are a nation of outsiders who are the insiders? >> those to be the ultimate outsiders today, what in the? , they are not a very large crowd, they would be the ultimate outsiders if you think about it from the outside is so popular but we are a nation that thinks about difference these days. it's one of the things that outsiders helped change. in the mid-20th century there is a powerful sense of white middle class culture as universal. white middle class way of life as the way that almost all americans live are the norm, the way that we should live, and the love of outsiders has a positive effect of helping people see the

difference and recognize difference. it may be goes overboard but by the time you have george w. bush running as an outsider for president choose a man who went to an elite school in england, harvard and yale graduate of both of those institutions. the son of a president, yet he runs this very effectively as an outsider some of the things i want to highlight is just how much that means our understanding of outside and inside center and margins has changed if we can see somebody like george w. bush as an alves fighter. >> who do you consider to be outsiders today? >> i don't actually try to think about it in terms of who i think of as an outsider. i am interested in why people see themselves as outsiders and why they position themselves that way in public. so i think it's interesting that obama is one of the recent presidential candidates who hasn't pushed himself or run or constructed in narrative of himself as that much of an outsider especially in his more

recent writings and performance during the campaign, and i think that race has a lot to do with it. he's trying to downplay the difference as an african-american and one of the more successful candidates for the president who didn't really pursue a kind of - himself as an outsider. think of bill clinton, ran as an outsider. we already mentioned george bush, so i think that's interesting. certainly a group that's working the outsider shtick today would be the tea party, very energized by that sense of opposition to a kind of corrupt mainstream america that's gone astray. >> how did you grow up, white will class? >> were you attracted to outside causes? >> writing is hard to be a young person in america since the 50's especially since devotee era of

holden coffield and moss yourself as an outsider and certainly i was attracted to that too. i went to college from suburban out into where i grew up to the university of georgia, which at that time was breaking out with all kind of crazy bohemian musicians, r.e.m. was playing for free in venues around town and people thought it was the music capital of the nation. so yes i certainly enjoyed that and certainly took part in that. >> would you teach at the university virginia? >> i teach 20th century cultural history and the history of the u.s. south and i deutsch work for the history department as well as the american studies program. >> how did you get attracted to the area of study? >> one of my daughter said mom, you have the greatest job in the world to get to watch movies all day. i said if you live your life correctly, someday you can have this job as well.

in all seriousness, it really is a wonderful joy to be able to spend your time reading 20th century literature and poetry and watching films and listening to music and i've just always been profoundly interested in the period that started out more interest in the 1920's and then the forties and kind of leapfrog into the interest in the 70's and haven't really were not the decade with a century, excuse me. >> so professor, what at the end of the semester do you want your students to take away from your class is and what do you want people to take away from a nation of outsiders? >> i want my students to take away the ability to think historically and critically about the category de u.s to make meaning in their everyday lives, to think about ideas and concepts as having a history and not just people or nations. so for our example, if we are going to talk about racism i

want them to be able to understand that doesn't mean the same thing in 1860 as it does and 89 diaz 1960 but that is a concept that changes over time. the concept of racial identity changing over time that would be one example. but i want them to be able to think about ideas and concepts and categories having a history to so that it doesn't mean the same thing across the time and space and it's interesting to think about those kind of things. >> this is the book and it's published by oxford in asian and outsiders. it is grace e. elizabeth hale's second book, how. around the 90's and the first decade of the century,

this other paradigm emerged for how to create what was basically turned loose on the internet and had observed what people say to it. >> it's like a martian and someone says holly and heap of a giant rolodex and says humans often begin conversations by saying hale. interesting. [laughter] and in the martian walks down the street and comes up to someone and says hale and then that person says hey, what's up. in the marchand says cubans say hey, what's up when you say hi to read in the painstaking process in the course of many cases decades of just hanging out on line waiting for people to you know, cross paths and talk to a builds this massive database of stuff that people said. when you interact with this kind

of software, this very uncanny ability to respond to all sorts of things. as for example, i attempted to see if it would reply to me if i spoke in french. they actually corrected. sort of condescendingly it told me the grammatically correct version of the sentence i had given it, and you often find if you try to give it song lyrics it will sink back to you so i had a conversation i started typing lyrics from bohemian rhapsody. so i said skarmoosh skarmoosh and said will you do the fandango. [laughter] and there is something truly eerie about a program that can do this. but part of what you learn as you enteck