Dana D. Nelson
Encyclopedia
Dana D. Nelson is a professor of English at Vanderbilt University
and a prominent progressive
advocate for citizenship and democracy. She is notable for her criticism in her books such as Bad for Democracy
of excessive presidential power and for exposing a tendency by Americans to neglect basic citizenship duties while hoping the president will solve most problems, or presidentialism. Her scholarship focuses on early American literature
relating to citizenship
and democratic government.
in 1984 and master’s (1986) and doctoral degrees (1989) from Michigan State University
. She was associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky
in 1998. Nelson's The Word in Black and White: Reading "Race" in American Literature, 1638-1867 was named the "an Outstanding Academic Book of 1992-1993 by Choice." The book explored how eleven "Anglo-American authors constructed 'race'" including a study of The Last of the Mohicans
and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
, and earned positive reviews.
She taught at the University of Kentucky
, Duke University
, the University of Washington
, and Louisiana State University
. In 2006, she co-edited with Russ Castronovo a collection of essays entitled Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics. One reviewer described the effort as an "ambitious, multi-disciplinary effort to make the subjective turn by warning against the danger of reducing democracy to 'an exclusively moral category that is no longer connected with political, economic, or social categories.'" In 2007, she wrote an essay entitled Democracy in Theory in the journal of American Literary History. She edited 19th century abolitionist Lydia Marie Child's A Romance of the Republic in 2003.
In 2009, Dana D. Nelson is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt professor of English and American studies at Vanderbilt University
. She teaches U.S. literature, history, and culture and courses that connect activism, volunteering, and citizenship. She has lectured at colleges such as Purdue University
and the University of Kentucky
. She has published numerous books, essay collections, and articles on U.S. literature and the history of citizenship and democratic culture. Nelson lives in Nashville where she is involved in a program that helps incarcerated women develop better decision-making skills and works with an innovative activist group fighting homelessness in the area.
, Nelson criticizes presidentialism which she sees as worship of the presidency and federal politics to the exclusion of all else. She believes the presidency has become too powerful. She thinks the presidency has become a cult and is harmful for democracy. One reviewer wrote that Nelson's conception was that presidentialism was a "result of the American citizenry's tendency to look to the sitting president as simultaneously a unifier of the citizenry and a protector from political threats." Another reviewer wrote: "Bad for Democracy
surveys the evolving role of the president in the national psyche, and examines how presidential powers have expanded far beyond the intentions of the Constitution's framers ... Nelson combines her analysis with a plea for a return to grassroots democracy and activism."
Nelson explained in an interview: "My book argues that our habit of putting the president at the center of democracy and asking him to be its superhero works to deskill us for the work of democracy. And, it argues that the presidency itself has actually come to work against democracy." She argues Americans tend to "super-size the presidency" and this is at odds with what the founding fathers might have wanted.
Newspaper columnist David Sirota
wrote "this culture of 'presidentialism,' as Vanderbilt Professor Dana Nelson calls it, has justified the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretaps and a radical theory of the unitary executive that aims to provide a jurisprudential rationale for total White House
supremacy over all government." Nelson advocates a grassroots effort to restore democracy. She explained in 2009: "We stop waiting for someone else to do it for us. We organize together, using public spaces and the internet. We form blogs, we write letters to the editor, we show up at Congress, we protest, we call, we lobby, we boycott, we buycott, we email our representatives, we find supporters, we get them moving, we grow the movement. We ignore the idea that the right president will do it for us and find every way we can to do it ourselves. Great if the president will help but totally unnecessary." Nelson has spoken on National Public Radio.
She wrote an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times about the theory of the unitary executive. All presidents have striven to expand executive power but she cites Ronald Reagan
who expanded unilateral powers and promised "undivided presidential control of the executive branch and its agencies" as well as adversarial relations with Congress. Proponents of the unitary executive "want to expand the many existing uncheckable executive powers -- such as executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements -- that already allow presidents to enact a good deal of foreign and domestic policy without aid, interference or consent from Congress." She added "each president since 1980 has used the theory to seize more and more power."
She is writing Ugly Democracy which explores alternative notions of democracy and why they were lost from our "democratic archive for citizenship" and probes possible alternatives for today.
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
and a prominent progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
advocate for citizenship and democracy. She is notable for her criticism in her books such as Bad for Democracy
Bad for Democracy
Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People is a non-fiction book written by Vanderbilt professor Dana D. Nelson. It is notable for criticism of excessive presidential power and for her call for substantive political reform...
of excessive presidential power and for exposing a tendency by Americans to neglect basic citizenship duties while hoping the president will solve most problems, or presidentialism. Her scholarship focuses on early American literature
American literature
American literature is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of British...
relating to citizenship
Citizenship
Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...
and democratic government.
Academic career
Nelson earned a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University of PennsylvaniaIndiana University of Pennsylvania
Indiana University of Pennsylvania is a public university in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, USA. The university is northeast of Pittsburgh. It is the largest university in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and is the commonwealth's fifth largest university...
in 1984 and master’s (1986) and doctoral degrees (1989) from Michigan State University
Michigan State University
Michigan State University is a public research university in East Lansing, Michigan, USA. Founded in 1855, it was the pioneer land-grant institution and served as a model for future land-grant colleges in the United States under the 1862 Morrill Act.MSU pioneered the studies of packaging,...
. She was associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky
University of Kentucky
The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...
in 1998. Nelson's The Word in Black and White: Reading "Race" in American Literature, 1638-1867 was named the "an Outstanding Academic Book of 1992-1993 by Choice." The book explored how eleven "Anglo-American authors constructed 'race'" including a study of The Last of the Mohicans
The Last of the Mohicans
The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 is a historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper, first published in February 1826. It is the second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy and the best known...
and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a book that was published in 1861 by Harriet Jacobs, using the pen name "Linda Brent". While on one level it chronicles the experiences of Harriet Jacobs as a slave, and the various humiliations she had to endure in that unhappy state, it also deals with...
, and earned positive reviews.
She taught at the University of Kentucky
University of Kentucky
The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...
, Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
, the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
, and Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, most often referred to as Louisiana State University, or LSU, is a public coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The University was founded in 1853 in what is now known as Pineville, Louisiana, under the name...
. In 2006, she co-edited with Russ Castronovo a collection of essays entitled Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics. One reviewer described the effort as an "ambitious, multi-disciplinary effort to make the subjective turn by warning against the danger of reducing democracy to 'an exclusively moral category that is no longer connected with political, economic, or social categories.'" In 2007, she wrote an essay entitled Democracy in Theory in the journal of American Literary History. She edited 19th century abolitionist Lydia Marie Child's A Romance of the Republic in 2003.
In 2009, Dana D. Nelson is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt professor of English and American studies at Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
. She teaches U.S. literature, history, and culture and courses that connect activism, volunteering, and citizenship. She has lectured at colleges such as Purdue University
Purdue University
Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...
and the University of Kentucky
University of Kentucky
The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...
. She has published numerous books, essay collections, and articles on U.S. literature and the history of citizenship and democratic culture. Nelson lives in Nashville where she is involved in a program that helps incarcerated women develop better decision-making skills and works with an innovative activist group fighting homelessness in the area.
Books, Scholarship, Activism
In her 2008 book Bad for DemocracyBad for Democracy
Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People is a non-fiction book written by Vanderbilt professor Dana D. Nelson. It is notable for criticism of excessive presidential power and for her call for substantive political reform...
, Nelson criticizes presidentialism which she sees as worship of the presidency and federal politics to the exclusion of all else. She believes the presidency has become too powerful. She thinks the presidency has become a cult and is harmful for democracy. One reviewer wrote that Nelson's conception was that presidentialism was a "result of the American citizenry's tendency to look to the sitting president as simultaneously a unifier of the citizenry and a protector from political threats." Another reviewer wrote: "Bad for Democracy
Bad for Democracy
Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People is a non-fiction book written by Vanderbilt professor Dana D. Nelson. It is notable for criticism of excessive presidential power and for her call for substantive political reform...
surveys the evolving role of the president in the national psyche, and examines how presidential powers have expanded far beyond the intentions of the Constitution's framers ... Nelson combines her analysis with a plea for a return to grassroots democracy and activism."
Nelson explained in an interview: "My book argues that our habit of putting the president at the center of democracy and asking him to be its superhero works to deskill us for the work of democracy. And, it argues that the presidency itself has actually come to work against democracy." She argues Americans tend to "super-size the presidency" and this is at odds with what the founding fathers might have wanted.
Newspaper columnist David Sirota
David Sirota
David J. Sirota is a progressive Denver-based American political figure, radio show host and commentator. He is an author, book reviewer, nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, a Democratic political strategist, political operative, Democratic spokesperson, and blogger...
wrote "this culture of 'presidentialism,' as Vanderbilt Professor Dana Nelson calls it, has justified the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretaps and a radical theory of the unitary executive that aims to provide a jurisprudential rationale for total White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
supremacy over all government." Nelson advocates a grassroots effort to restore democracy. She explained in 2009: "We stop waiting for someone else to do it for us. We organize together, using public spaces and the internet. We form blogs, we write letters to the editor, we show up at Congress, we protest, we call, we lobby, we boycott, we buycott, we email our representatives, we find supporters, we get them moving, we grow the movement. We ignore the idea that the right president will do it for us and find every way we can to do it ourselves. Great if the president will help but totally unnecessary." Nelson has spoken on National Public Radio.
She wrote an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times about the theory of the unitary executive. All presidents have striven to expand executive power but she cites Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
who expanded unilateral powers and promised "undivided presidential control of the executive branch and its agencies" as well as adversarial relations with Congress. Proponents of the unitary executive "want to expand the many existing uncheckable executive powers -- such as executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements -- that already allow presidents to enact a good deal of foreign and domestic policy without aid, interference or consent from Congress." She added "each president since 1980 has used the theory to seize more and more power."
She is writing Ugly Democracy which explores alternative notions of democracy and why they were lost from our "democratic archive for citizenship" and probes possible alternatives for today.
See also
- History of citizenship in the United States
Publications
- 2009, (pending; writing in progress), Ugly Democracy
- 2008, Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People
- 2007, Democracy in Theory, American Literary History
- 2005, AmBushed: On the Costs of Macht-Politik
- 2003, (editor) A Romance of the Republic
- 2002, (co-editor with Russ Castronovo), Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics
- 2001, (co-edited with Houston Baker) Violence, the Body and The South
- 1998, National Manhood: Capitalist Citizenship and the Imagined Fraternity of White Men
- 1997, (editor) Lydia Maria Child, Romance of the Republic
- 1994, Principles and Privilege: Two Women's Lives on a Georgia Plantation
- 1993, Rebecca Rush, Kelroy
- 1992, The Word in Black and White: Reading ‘Race’ in American Literature, 1638-1867