Haves and Have-Nots
For nearly 20 years, Matt Ruben’s Emily Balch Seminar entitled “Poverty, Affluence, and American Culture” has spoken to the issues and inequalities of the day.
For nearly 20 years, Matt Ruben has been teaching a version of his first-year Emily Balch Seminar “Poverty, Affluence, and American Culture.” And not a year goes by that the class isn’t as relevant as ever.
The “E-Sem” uses materials ranging from Benjamin Franklin’s The Way to Wealth to Jesse Jackson’s 1988 speech at the Democratic National Convention to explore wealth inequality, the reasons people are and stay poor, and the cultural narrative around those economic forces.
“What people have said and thought and written about all of that stuff has shaped the world we live in today,” Ruben says. “With that thesis, conceivably almost anything that is going on in the modern era can be connected to things people thought and wrote and did 100, 200, even 270 years ago.”
Sometimes the course focuses more on immigration, or labor, or economic inequality. For the fall of 2024, Ruben knew all of these would be tentpoles of his syllabus.
“I see how fundamentally influential these ideas have been historically, so I know these ideas are powerful now,” Ruben says.
The course presents students with materials Ruben knows they might disagree with, revealing flaws in lionized historical figures and challenging them to understand that despite how those ideas may seem now, they were influential at the time and shaped the culture.
History is not what it seems, and American culture is not what it seems."
Students in this first-year course experience this history in ways they likely haven’t during high school, reading primary sources and learning how to form an argument.
“They often have been taught a received version of history,” Ruben says. Students may think they know about many of these historical figures, but “reading what they actually wrote will give you a radically different understanding of history and American culture than the summaries we are typically exposed to. History is not what it seems, and American culture is not what it seems. And I like that because the reality is always complex and contradictory."
In addition to Franklin and other well-known voices, Ruben weaves in others that he believes should have been more influential than they were.
The PBS documentary Waging a Living follows four ordinary people to see how they make ends meet. Another documentary about Dolores Huerta, the cofounder of United Farm Workers, shows how despite being an effective organizer, she was minimized because of her gender.
“It was obvious to me before the course that our common understanding of wealth in America is lacking in an active analysis of the forces that enable poverty,” says Margeaux Thompson ’28. “However, Professor Ruben really opened my eyes to how the messages sent to the American public for centuries intentionally and insidiously discourage that analysis.”
The students themselves have an effect on the course and each year’s syllabus, driven by their interest in and knowledge of topics. One change Ruben has noticed over the years is that the current generation is increasingly more socially conscious.
Even so, Ruben says, the course still opens eyes. “There’s also a lot of ‘I can’t believe how we’re still dealing with these issues.’”
From the Syllabus
12 Million Black Voices
12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright is a nonfiction book that originated as a photo essay, commissioned as part of the New Deal, to accompany Farm Security Administration photos of Black Americans.
“Wright became so fascinated by these photos that he wrote an entire book,” Ruben says, “a history of Black Americans from the Middle Passage and slavery up to that moment. And it tells a very different history from what we are taught.”
Ragged Dick: Or, Street Life with the Boot Blacks
Ragged Dick: Or, Street Life with the Boot Blacks by Horatio Alger is a rags-to-riches story of a lovable protagonist who, because he is a hard worker, is granted an opportunity to make something of himself. “It was like the Harry Potter of its time,” Ruben says of the book’s popularity. But it also echoes sermons and essays from the period attributing success to personal responsibility while ignoring anti-immigrant sentiments that run through the book and were prevalent at the time.
Waging a Living
“I found the documentary Waging a Living to be the most interesting material,” says Ramona Shekhar ’28.
“It demonstrates harsh realities of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps in an impoverished state, contrary to what the ‘American Dream’ was trying to sell through its facade that anyone can attain financial success regardless of their circumstances.”
The Way to Wealth
Franklin wrote this famous self-help essay in 1758 for the 25th edition of his Poor Richard’s Almanac. “Surveys show most Americans think Franklin’s adage, ‘God helps them that help themselves’ is in the Bible," Ruben says. "That’s how ingrained his bootstrapping morality is.” Students also read about Franklin's sister Jane Mecom, who struggled with poverty. Though barely literate, Mecom wrote to Franklin in a letter that "Thousands ... have Probably been lost to the world, and lived and died in Ignorance and meanness, merely for want of being Placed in favourable Situations, and Injoying Proper Advantages.”
Emily Balch Seminars
Each Emily Balch Seminar, or E-Sem, focuses on a different topic—this fall’s courses examined everything from environmental ethics to the power of family secrets—but they all share certain aspects designed to prepare students for their academic journey at 911.
One of the core aspects of each seminar is the incorporation of methods to make sure students understand the process of revising work they’ll be asked to do at 911.
Ruben has each student meet with him at least five times during the semester to discuss their writing: “These meetings give students the opportunity to dialogue, think through, and work on their writing with the instructor. There’s no substitute for that kind of direct, one-on-one experience. It’s also the first time in their 911 careers that they get to work closely with a faculty member, and it happens when they are acclimating to being in college and living on campus, so the relationship forged in those meetings can impact their entire 911 experience in the first year.”
Published on: 02/12/2025