Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 128

September 8, 2021: PageantStudying: American Pastoral

[September 7-8 marks the 100th anniversary of the first Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy histories and stories of pageants!]

On a superficial but still strikingly symbolic fictional character.

I wrote about one central thread and theme in Philip Roth’s historical novel American Pastoral (1997) in this post, and in lieu of my opening paragraph here would ask you to check that one out if you would and then come on back here.

Welcome back! If the character of Merry Levov is one complex female protagonist of Roth’s novel, the Swede’s wife Dawn Dwyer Levov is another. As is so often (if not indeed always) the case in Roth’s works, these women are filtered through multiple male lenses: that of the Swede himself, the perspective character for the novel’s 3rd-person section; and that of Nathan Zuckerman, the novelist-narratorfor the framing 1st-person section. And indeed Dawn, a former Miss New Jersey and Miss America contestant, is consistently portrayed through various superficial or physical elements that appeal in stereotypical but unquestionable ways to these male characters: her beauty; her allure to the Swede and his entire Jewish American community as a “shiksa” (a non-Jewish woman; “He’d done it,” Zuckerman writes of the moment when the community learns that the Swede had married a shiksa); her multiple plastic surgeries through which she attempts to maintain those elements over the years, dragging the Swede with her to exotic European clinics in the process; and her sex appeal, both in extended sex scenes with the Swede and then in (SPOILERS) the adulterous sex scene which comprises one of the novel’s final moments.

But while Dawn might not be successful as a three-dimensional character, she is nonetheless a strikingly successful representation of the novel’s historical, cultural, and national themes (on which I touched a bit in that prior post). The three generations of the Levov family reflect the myths and realities of the American Dream (and its flipside, what Zuckerman calls the “American berserk”), both for immigrant and ethnic communities and for all Americans. The most overt symbolic representation of those themes is the Swede and Dawn’s home in Old Rimrock, the fictional New Jersey community (with a history dating back to the Revolution) where they move to raise their all-American (in every sense) daughter Merry. But I would argue that it’s easy and wrong to overlook Dawn’s starting point as a Miss America contestant, not only in terms of what she represents to the Swede and his community, but also and even more importantly in terms of that event as a goal for Dawn herself. Indeed, that early flashback section of the novel is the place where Dawn’s character is most fully developed, and where we get a sense of what “Miss America” means for young Dawn Dwyer and her family and community, at least as much as it does for young Seymour Levov and his.  

Next PageantStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Pageant histories, stories, or contexts you’d share?

September 7, 2021: PageantStudying: Vanessa Williams

[September 7-8 marks the 100th anniversary of the first Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy histories and stories of pageants!]

On what’s deeply frustrating about a 1980s scandal, and how its subject transcended it nonetheless.

As all of this week’s posts will no doubt reveal, I have a number of issues with both beauty pageants in general and the Miss America pageant in particular. But with that said, there’s no denying the fact that 1984 Miss America winner Vanessa Williams comprised a striking and inspiring story. The descendant of one of the first African American state legislators in post-Civil War Tennessee (William A. Feilds), and the daughter of two elementary school music teachers (Helen Tinch and Milton Augustine Williams Jr.), Williams’ March 1963 birth announcement actually read “Here she is: Miss America.” When she won the September 1983 pageant as Miss New York (making her the 1984 Miss America, as the reign lasts for a full year), fulfilling that prescient prediction and bringing all that history and heritage to the stage with her, she became the first African American Miss America, a long-overdue and important step toward diversifying what had for too long been a profoundly white event.

Which makes the following year’s scandal all the more frustrating. In September 1984 (just a few weeks before Williams’ reign would have concluded at the next pageant) Penthouse magazine acquired private nude photos that a young Williams had taken and chose to publish them in the September issue, and Williams was pressured by the pageant organization to relinquish her title to the runner-up, Miss New Jersey Suzette Charles. This “scandal” was frustrating in part because of the false dichotomy between amateur and professional contestants about which I wrote in yesterday’s post—if we acknowledged that all contestants are in one way or another already professional models, I believe the photos would have been far less controversial. But it’s especially frustrating because of the stunning hypocrisy: the entire ethos of the Miss America pageant (like all beauty pageants) is to ogle the contestants, to treat them as objects to be scrutinized in every conceivable way (including while wearing very little in the swimsuit portion); so I have to think that the real problem with Williams’ photos was that they weren’t part of the pageant, not able to be controlled within that objectifying environment.

The Miss America folks seem to have belatedly recognized that fact as well, and at the September 2015 pageant CEO Sam Haskell offered an overdue public apology to both Williams and her mother. But in truth, it was all that Williams had done and accomplished over those intervening 32 years that truly reflected how far beyond Miss America she had gone (and perhaps had always been): eight studio albums to date that have included a #1 hit (“Save the Best for Last”) and multiple Grammy nominations; performances in more than 25 films, with NAACP and Harlem Film Festival awards for two of them (1997’s Soul Food and 2007’s My Brother); three Primetime Emmy nominations and one win for her role on Ugly Betty, one of countless TV shows of which she’s been part; a Tony nomination for her performance in a 2002 revival of Into the Woods; a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; and all sorts of work as an entrepreneur, spokesperson, and philanthropist. If the Miss America pageant truly seeks to celebrate the most impressive and inspiring American women, there couldn’t possibly be a more deserving winner than Vanessa Williams; and if, as the scandal indicates, the pageant has a far too narrow and conservative view of that identity, then Williams makes plain how silly and superficial that perspective is.

Next PageantStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Pageant histories, stories, or contexts you’d share?

September 6, 2021: PageantStudying: Miss America’s Origins

[September 7-8 marks the 100th anniversary of the first Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy histories and stories of pageants!]

On two interesting and important contexts for that 1921 origin point.

The first Miss America pageant(not yet known by that name, which was first used the following year) was really a combination of a few distinct events. More than 1500 women submitted photographic entries for a new contest, the Inter-City Beauty Contest, which promised to reward one finalist with the new “Golden Mermaid” award. But that was in fact a later stage in the process—the winner among the six Inter-City contest finalists, 16 year-old Margaret Gorman of Washington, DC, then competed against two winners from a simultaneous and longstanding Atlantic City contest, the Bather’s Revue: the “amateur winner,” Kathyrn Gearonof Camden; and the “professional beauty,” silent film actress Virginia Lee. Gorman was once again selected as the winner and awarded the Golden Mermaid, and would come back for the 1922 and 1923 pageants, identified in 1922 as “Miss America” which was the first time the phrase was used for the pageant and its winner (although it was still also known as the Inter-City Beauty Contest for many years thereafter).

The presence of “professional” as well as “amateur” contestants and categories in this first pageant importantly complicates longstanding (and I would argue still ongoing) narratives of beauty pageants as entirely amateur in nature. As with the Olympics, there’s a mythos around the image of all competitors as amateurs, one that masks the fundamentally profit-based nature of the event (on which more in the next paragraph). And as with the Olympic Games, the truth is that there has always been a spectrum of experiences and identities present at these events, from genuinely youthful and amateur participants like Gorman (who herself became at least semi-professional through her returns to the subsequent two pageants) through many variations of models, actresses, and other professional categories. Some of the scandals around particular pageant participants (such as Vanessa Williams, about whom I’ll have a lot more to say tomorrow) would dissipate if we did away with the mythic vision of all-amateur pageants, a vision which in any case also and troublingly seeks to distinguish between types of contestants and their motivations.

Moreover, whatever the motivations of individual contestants, the motivations behind this new 1921 pageant were clear and overt. Mass leisure and entertainment spots like Atlantic City were still relatively new in the early 20th century, and were finding themselves challenged to draw audiences at particular times, including for example the period after Labor Day. So the Inter-City Beauty Contest was created by the Businessmen’s League of Atlantic City and scheduled for this precise moment—and the longstanding Bather’s Revue pushed back from its regular summer spot—in order to keep tourists in and drew new ones to Atlantic City during that crucial post-Labor Day period. Even more strikingly, the contest and its winner were connected to broader narratives of American work and ideals, as illustrated by labor leader Samuel Gompers’ quote in the New York Timesabout Gorman: “She represents the type of womanhood America needs—strong, red-blooded, able to shoulder the responsibilities of homemaking and motherhood. It is in her type that the hope of the country rests.” Not sure I need to say much more about the multiple layers of AmericanStudies contexts present in that quote, and thus represented in this first Miss America pageant.

Next PageantStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Pageant histories, stories, or contexts you’d share?

September 4-5, 2021: Fall Semester Previews: Book Plans

[I tried to wait to write this Fall semester series until I felt certain about what the Fall would hold—but I don’t know if I ever will, not even as it unfolds. So I decided to share one thing I’m cautiously but definitely excited for with each of my Fall courses, because what can we do but hope—and work—for the best? Leading up to this special post on my plans for books, present and future!]

On one thing I’m especially excited about with my current and next book projects!

1)      Talking Of Thee I Sing: As that hyperlinked list illustrates, I’ve already had the chance to share the book and the contested history of American patriotism in a variety of spaces and conversations, from virtual talks to podcasts, interviews to columns. I’ve got a few more of those in the works already, but I’d love to add more to the list, and I’d especially love the chance to share the book with students and classes (at all levels, of all types, in all settings). If you’ve got ideas or connections for any such opportunities, including but not at all limited to your own spaces and communities, please let me know, here or by email!

2)      An agent for Two Sandlots: I’m still in the early stages of my next book project, so I won’t say too much about it other than that it’s inspired by the same stories at the heart of this Saturday Evening Post Considering History column of mine. I’m determined that this will be the project with which I transition to mass market/trade publishing, and so I’m especially excited that I’m now represented by a really wonderful agent who focuses on precisely that shift: Suzy Evans of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. Watch this space for lots more on all Suzy and I work on together as this project moves forward!

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Fall courses or work you’re (cautiously) excited for?

September 3, 2021: Fall Semester Previews: Adult Learning Course on the 1920s

[I tried to wait to write this Fall semester series until I felt certain about what the Fall would hold—but I don’t know if I ever will, not even as it unfolds. So I decided to share one thing I’m cautiously but definitely excited for with each of my Fall courses, because what can we do but hope—and work—for the best?]

Gonna keep this one short and sweet. Here’s the description for my Fall course for the WISE adult ed program:

“As Mark Twain noted, history doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes. One of the most significant rhymes for our 2021 moment can be found a century ago, in the America of the 1920s. In this course we will move through a handful of such echoes: from the aftermaths of a pandemic to debates over immigration and the border, from white supremacist racist violence to labor and educational activisms, and concluding with the role of literature and culture in helping us chart a path forward.”

Obviously I’ve got some planned topics in mind, but I’ve got a bit of time to figure out specific texts, voices, stories, and more—and can always add or shift the overall topics too—so I’d love your input and ideas, all! Share ‘em here or shoot me an email, and thanks in advance!

Special post on book plans this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Fall courses or work you’re (cautiously) excited for?

September 2, 2021: Fall Semester Previews: American Lit II Online

[I tried to wait to write this Fall semester series until I felt certain about what the Fall would hold—but I don’t know if I ever will, not even as it unfolds. So I decided to share one thing I’m cautiously but definitely excited for with each of my Fall courses, because what can we do but hope—and work—for the best?]

On something I’m excited to try for the first time in my next online class.

I’ve been teaching all-online courses for many years now—long before so many face-to-face classes went online or hybrid during the last three, COVID-affected semesters; those I’m hopeful will return to face-to-face as much as possible, but these intentionally online courses will remain part of my rotation regardless—and over that time have gotten more and more comfortable with many aspects of that particular mode of instruction. From working with all shorter readings (an emphasis that crossed over to many of my COVID-affected courses as well) to finding new ways to frame weekly Blackboard posts and conversations, I’ve come to feel like something of an expert in teaching literature online, or at least to feel as comfortable in this setting as I do in person. But one area has continued to feel frustratingly less than ideal when I teach a survey course like American Lit II online: how I present the historical/cultural/literary contexts that frame each of our units/time periods.

As I taught my latest Am Lit II online class this past summer, I finally reached a breaking point with the Word document versions of those contexts that I was providing students, and that clearly very few of them were reading; that’s entirely understandable, since they really didn’t have to read those docs in order to do the work of the class successfully. The experience was enough to push me to try something in this upcoming Fall semester online course that I’ve long contemplated but never managed to do: recording brief videos of me sharing and discussing these unit/time period contexts. I don’t know whether I’ll manage to jazz up those videos as much as some of the truly impressive ones that colleagues have shared on twitter (seriously, we’ve got some Oscar-worthy filmmakers out there), but I know this: they will feature my voice and my enthusiasm for this material far more fully than any written document ever could.

Obviously voice and enthusiasm alone don’t guarantee student engagement, and I’m also working to find ways to ask the students to include these contexts as part of their weekly work a bit more often and more meaningfully. But I do believe that voice and enthusiasm, coupled with the kinds of multi-media presentations with which 21stcentury students have become so familiar and comfortable, will go a long way toward making these class contexts and conversations more accessible for students than they’ve ever been in these document versions. And at the very least, planning and recording these video mini-lectures will offer a way for me to make this online class, now in something like my 8th or 9thsection, feel fresh and engaging for me, no small effect here in Fall 2021.

Last Fall preview tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Fall courses or work you’re (cautiously) excited for?

September 1, 2021: Fall Semester Previews: English Studies Capstone

[I tried to wait to write this Fall semester series until I felt certain about what the Fall would hold—but I don’t know if I ever will, not even as it unfolds. So I decided to share one thing I’m cautiously but definitely excited for with each of my Fall courses, because what can we do but hope—and work—for the best?]

For this latest section of another course I’ve been fortunate enough to teach many times, and specifically for the mini-unit on Education within that course (the class features units and readings for each of the tracks we offer in our English Studies major, including Secondary Education), I’m very excited to share Kevin Gannon’s Radical Hope with these seniors. That last hyperlinked post highlights why, so I’ll ask you to check that one out in lieu of repeating myself here!

Next Fall preview tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Fall courses or work you’re (cautiously) excited for?

August 31, 2021: Fall Semester Previews: Honors Lit Seminar

[I tried to wait to write this Fall semester series until I felt certain about what the Fall would hold—but I don’t know if I ever will, not even as it unfolds. So I decided to share one thing I’m cautiously but definitely excited for with each of my Fall courses, because what can we do but hope—and work—for the best?]

On two reasons why I keep going back to one of my earliest scholarly subjects.

If the First Year Experience seminar about which I wrote yesterday represents a brand-new course in my rotation, my Honors Lit Seminar on America in the Gilded Age is by contrast one of my most familiar classes. Not only because I’ve taught this particular course four prior times over the last half-dozen years, but also because (as I wrote in that hyperlinked post) the very first new class I ever created at FSU was an English Studies Senior Seminar on the same subject. That original Gilded Age seminar was based closely on my dissertation/first book on the time period, and while the class has of course evolved a bit over the 15 years since, it nonetheless remains in some central ways quite similar to where I began these investigations as a grad student and young teacher (including the four thematic units, on the West, women, work, and race/ethnicity, that parallel chapters in that project).

There are many reasons why I keep returning to the Gilded Age as a subject for these in-depth, literature seminar explorations, but there are two in particular that I’m especially excited about as I gear up for the next such exploration. One is the contemporary connections about which I wrote in this post, and which have only become more and more pronounced the last couple times I’ve taught this course. Indeed, while I called those contemporary contexts “unspoken” in that Fall 2017 reflection, it’s become impossible not to speak of them, and I’m okay with that—doesn’t mean I’m telling the students what to make of such echoes or parallels (no more than I ever tell them what to make of anything we read or discuss in a class of mine), but rather that I’m very open to us engaging and exploring together what we can learn from links between the Gilded Age and our own moment (as well as distinctions or changes between the periods, of course). Such connections help us recognize the true stakes of why we learn about our histories, and teaching this class offers so many potent cases in point.

At the same time, there’s equal value in discovering and engaging with voices and texts, figures and stories from our past that are unique, distinctive, and surprising, and another reason why I keep coming back to the Gilded Age is that so many of my favorite American authors and texts (nearly all of them profoundly under-read and –remembered) are from this period. From Sarah Piatt to Sarah Winnemucca, Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton to Sui Sin Far, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps to Charles Chesnutt, and so many more, this syllabus is just littered with voices and works that embody the best of American literature, culture, and identity at any moment and in any context. Getting to share these folks and readings with students, and then to talk about them together, is one of the best parts of what I do, and even in the toughest of times and semesters—indeed, especially in those moments—I’m so excited for another chance to do so.

Next Fall preview tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Fall courses or work you’re (cautiously) excited for?

August 30, 2021: Fall Semester Previews: First Year Experience Seminar

[I tried to wait to write this Fall semester series until I felt certain about what the Fall would hold—but I don’t know if I ever will, not even as it unfolds. So I decided to share one thing I’m cautiously but definitely excited for with each of my Fall courses, because what can we do but hope—and work—for the best?]

On the many things I’m looking forward to with a new course, and the one I’m most excited about.

I start my 17thyear at Fitchburg State this Fall—that’s 17 years of teaching a 4-4 load (often in reality a 5-5 load with an overload grad and/or online course each semester)—which means (among many other things about the last nearly two decades of my work and life) that there aren’t a lot of types of classes I haven’t had the chance to teach. Indeed, the last time I taught an entirely new type of class—not just a new course, but one within a category I hadn’t taught before—was seven years ago, with my Fall 2014 section of Intro to Speech. So it’s been quite something to spend a good bit of the summer thinking—both on my own and in a series of required professional development trainings—about such an entirely new type of class: our FSU First Year Experience seminar. We’ve piloted this course and program for at least two academic years now, but an English Studies colleague taught our department’s first couple sections of the seminar, so this Fall will be my first opportunity to do so.

The reason for all that summer PD is that our FYE program uses a specific pedagogical and learning model: the reading apprenticeship framework. It hasn’t been easy to wrap my head around an entirely new way to approach my teaching—you know what they say about old dogs, and this one is quite fond of his particular version of a student-centered approach—but the more we’ve talked about this framework, the more I’ve come to look forward to using it to help my class of first-year students strengthen many different skills and habits that will be crucial to their success throughout their time at Fitchburg State. I’m a particularly big fan of the varied, multi-layered approaches to reading that the framework provides, not just because I teach predominantly literature courses (although yes) but also because I’ve long wanted to teach reading more overtly but hadn’t quite had the language or tools to do so. Strategies like think aloudand talk-to-the-textwill be great resources, not just for this class but for many others of mine as well.

I’m most excited for the specific theme on which my FYE section will focus, however. That’s a complicated thing to say, because this is a course where the content is significantly less important than the skills and methods—and moreover, that’s always been the case in my student-centered pedagogy (which doesn’t mean the content isn’t important, just that there’s always a hierarchy). I’m certainly on board with that emphasis, but I’m nonetheless very excited to talk with these first-year students about our section’s theme: cultural representations of Black Lives Matter and identity. After all, an intro to college can’t just be about skills and habits for individual success—it also has to be about introducing the kinds of challenging communal conversations and concepts that students will be learning, engaging, analyzing, and sharing across their time in college. I can’t think of any such conversations that are more challenging nor more crucial in September 2021 than ones around race and identity in America, and I’m really excited to talk and work with these incoming FSU students on those questions and ideas, and to see how their voices, perspectives, and ideas keep developing.

Next Fall preview tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Fall courses or work you’re (cautiously) excited for?

August 28-29, 2021: August 2021 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

July 31-August 1: Hettie Williams’ Guest Post on Black Women in America: The month started with my most recent Guest Post and another awesome one—share your ideas for Guest Posts and add your voice to that mix!

August 2: AmericanStudies Websites: Steve Railton’s Trio: On the web’s 30thanniversary, a series on AMST websites kicks off with the three created by my favorite digital AmericanStudier!

August 3: AmericanStudies Websites: The Valley of the Shadow: The series continues with a few things we can still learn from a groundbreaking early site.

August 4: AmericanStudies Websites: Crossroads: The frustrating fragility of the internet and the need for collective memory, as the series links on.

August 5: AmericanStudies Websites: The Octo: The series concludes with the vital role of community and solidarity in navigating the scholarly web.

August 6: Crowd-sourced AmericanStudies Websites: Crowd-sourced AMST websites, including a couple more from me as well—add your nominees in comments, please!

August 7: Birthday Bests: 2010-2011: My annual series of bday highlights kicks off (I won’t say any more about the rest, but here are the links if you want to check them out)!

August 8: Birthday Bests: 2011-2012:

August 9: Birthday Bests: 2012-2013:

August 10: Birthday Bests: 2013-2014:

August 11: Birthday Bests: 2014-2015:

August 12: Birthday Bests: 2015-2016:

August 13: Birthday Bests: 2016-2017:

August 14: Birthday Bests: 2017-2018:

August 15: Birthday Bests: 2018-2019:

August 16: Birthday Bests: 2019-2020:

August 17: Birthday Bests: 2020-2021:

August 18: Cville Updates: Those Statues: My annual post-bday Virginia series kicks off with a few options for what to do now that those damn statues have finally come down.

August 19: Cville Updates: UVa Memorials to Enslaved Laborers: The series continues with a couple awesome things about a wonderful new Cville memorial.

August 20: Cville Updates: Proal Heartwell: Three great books by my favorite Charlottesville High School teacher, as the series updates on.

August 21-22: Mark Lorenzoni: The series concludes with a tribute post to an awesome Cville leader who made sure my youthful long-distance running was never lonely.

August 23: American Teens: “Summertime Blues” and the 26th Amendment: In honor of my two (!) high schoolers (!!!), a TeenStudying series kicks off with a classic song and a generation-shifting amendment.

August 24: American Teens: Lost Boys: The series continues with contextualizing and challenging 80s pop cultural texts that feature boys who are adrift and endangered.

August 25: American Teens: Good Will Hunting and Ordinary People: How two films use therapy to tell the stories of two troubled, telling teens, as the series rolls on.

August 26: American Teens: “All Summer Long” and Nostalgia: Classic rock, pseud-nostalgia, and the role of pop culture in all of our 21stcentury lives.

August 27: American Teens: John Hughes Films: The series concludes with AmericanStudies takeaways from three of the director’s classic teen flicks!

Fall semester previews start Monday,

Ben

PS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!