H. Bruce Franklin

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For the guitarist refer to Bruce Franklin (guitarist)

H. Bruce Franklin (born 1934) is an American cultural historian who has authored or edited nineteen books on a range of subjects

After serving three years as a navigator and intelligence officer in the Strategic Air Command, Franklin got his doctorate at Stanford University and then became an associate professor of English there. He was a prominent activist in the movement against the Vietnam War. In the late 1960s, he was one of the founders of the Revolutionary Union, a Maoist organization, but in 1971 he split, along with about half the membership of the RU, to join the revolutionary Venceremos Organization. Franklin's version of the reason for this split is that it had to do with racial issues: originally, Venceremos had been a Chicano organization, while the RU had a policy of suggesting to prospective black members that they join the Black Panthers instead. Franklin and others believed that this racial separation of the organizations was inappropriate, and after the split, Venceremos became a multi-ethnic organization. Some sources say that the issue was Venceremos's belief that revolution was imminent, but Franklin says that is incorrect. Still other sources say that the split had to do with ideology, with Venceremos having a more voluntarist or anarchist approach, rather than a Marxist one. Venceremos and Franklin were targeted by the FBI COINTELPRO effort.

It may be difficult to piece together an accurate picture of Franklin's political views and actions, since he was a direct target of the Nixon Administration's COINTELPRO, which used disinformation, agents provocateurs, and violent acts to discredit leftist organizations. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show many attempts by the FBI to "neutralize" Franklin.

Stanford fired Franklin, even though he had academic tenure, for leading a group of students to occupy the computer center^[1] in 1972 and urging students and faculty to strike in protest against the invasion of Laos and Stanford's involvement in the war. Franklin was blacklisted and without regular employment for three years (although he did have brief visiting faculty positions at Wesleyan University and Yale), but eventually was hired as a full professor at Rutgers in 1975.

Franklin has authored or edited four books about the Vietnam War, including "Vietnam and Other American Fantasies." This book, along with his earlier M.I.A., Or, Mythmaking in America, shows that the existence of surviving U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam after the war is a myth created post-1980 with the aid or tacit approval of the Reagan White House; the psychological foundation of the myth arguably lies in the justifications the Nixon White House was offering for the Vietnam War in the years before 1973, namely, that it was a war to bring the POWs home.

Franklin has published prolifically on American cultural history. He first attained prominence as a Melville scholar and has served as president of the Melville Society. His award-winning books and teaching on science fiction played a major role in establishing academic study of the genre. His books on American prison literature have been said to open an entirely new field of study. His most recent work has focused on relations between the marine environment and American cultural history. He is currently the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.

1 Books
2 See also
3 External links
4 Notes

[edit] Books

Vietnam & Other American Fantasies (University of Massachusetts Press, 2001)
War Stars: The Superweapon in the American Imagination(Oxford University Press)
Prison Literature in America: The Victim as Criminal and Artist (Oxford University Press)
Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the 19th Century (Oxford University Press; Rutgers University Press)
Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction(Oxford University Press)
Countdown to Midnight(DAW Books)
Back Where You Came From(Harper Magazine Press)
The Essential Stalin (Anchor Books)
Prison Writing in 20th-Century America (Penguin)
Vietnam and America: A Documented History (co-author)(Grove/Atlantic)
The Vietnam War in American Stories, Songs, and Poems(Bedford/St. Martins)
The Wake of the Gods: Melville's Mythology(Stanford University Press)
M.I.A., Or, Mythmaking in America, New York: Lawrence Hill and Co., 1992. Revised and expanded paperback edition, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-8135-2001-0
"The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America" (Island Press)