Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 130
August 16, 2021
August 16, 2021: Birthday Bests: 2019-2020
[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 44th birthday. So as I do each year, here’s a series sharing some of my favorite posts from each year on the blog, leading up to a new post with 44 favorites from the last year. And as ever, you couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]
Here they are, 43 favorite posts from the past year on the blog:
August 23: Cville Influences: Satyendra Huja: It was fun to learn more about and share the story of a quietly pivotal figure from my Cville childhood.
September 2: Academic Labor: Adjunctification: In place of my annual fall preview series, for my sabbatical I wanted to think through the (now even more) crucial issues around academic labor, starting with the most fraught and fundamental such issue.
September 7-8: Academic Labor: Hire Jeff Reyne!: Sometimes the blog gets especially personal, and this was one such example. I stand by every word!
September 9: Slave Rebellions: The Stono Rebellion: This whole series was one of those from which I learned a great deal through the research and writing, and that was doubly true of the South Carolina revolt that provided the anniversary around which the series centered.
September 26: AmericanStudy a Banned Book: Heather Has Two Mommies: Some of my favorite posts are those on topics I literally had never thought about (at least not in an analytical context) until the series called for it. This one on a ground-breaking 1989 children’s book fits that description to a T.
October 2: Recent Reads: There There: Let’s just say this post’s main point, about necessary challenges to my critical optimism, has come to feel all too prescient as 2020 has unfolded.
October 21: The 1850 Women’s Rights Convention: Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis: I’m not sure how I went so long without knowing that the first national women’s rights convention was held in Worcester, but it was a lot of fun to learn about that convention and some of its pivotal figures.
October 26-27: Ariella Archer’s Guest Post: My Scary Thoughts: The Evolution of Three Horror Genres: Guest Posts remain my favorite part of the blog, and Ariella’s made for perfect Halloween week reading!
November 6: 9 Years of AmericanStudier: Sharing Your Voices: Speaking of, some anniversary week reflections on the best part of the blog (and how you can add your voice to it!).
November 16-17: Kent Rose’s Guest Post: How I Got to Nelson Algren: And the Guest Post trifecta concludes with singer-songwriter Kent Rose on an under-appreciated American novelist.
November 23-24: Teaching Local Color: Between fall sabbatical and the clusterfuck that was spring 2020, teaching has sure felt different over the last year—but it remains a key focus of my AmericanStudying, as of every aspect of my career and life.
December 11: 50s Musical Icons: Patti Page: Did you know that Page was the 50s top-charting and best-selling female artist? I didn’t until researching this fun post.
December 16: Book Talk Recaps: Temple Graduate English Program: My whole fall of We the People book talks was wonderful, but this return to my grad program was a special treat.
December 20: Book Talk Recaps: The Boston Athenaeum: But just as special in its own way was the chance to talk in this beautiful, historic space.
January 6: AmericanStudying Unbelievable: Sexual Assault: I’ve watched a ton of great TV over the last year, but at the top of the list is this Netflix original police show that’s also so much more.
January 25-26: 21st Century Voices of Civil Rights: I loved the chance to highlight a handful of the many activists, writers, and scholars who inspire my work every day.
January 31: Sports and Politics: The Nationals at the White House: Ah, those halcyon days when a controversial appearance by the World Series champs seemed like big news.
February 3: Immigration Laws: 19th Century Origins: Another of those whole series from which I learned a ton and which helped me continue thinking through a topic of central interest (to me and all of us).
February 15-16: Fantasy Stories I Love: African Fantasy: Although my spring semester didn’t go the way I hoped (to understate the case), it was still great to read and teach Kai Ashante Wilson’s Sorcerer of the Wildeeps as part of my larger engagement with African and African American fantasy.
February 22-23: Crowd-sourced Non-Favorites: Always one of my favorite posts of the year, and this year’s didn’t disappoint!
February 24: Leap Years: 1816: I was 42 years old when I learned about the Year without a Summer, but, as with everything I write about on the blog, better late than never!
March 2: Boston Sites: The Freedom Trail: The series led to some interesting, ongoing conversations with both the various historic sites and my old friend Nat Sheidley, now CEO of Revolutionary Spaces!
March 9: Last Week Recaps: SSN Boston and 2020 in Massachusetts: I had no idea the first week of March would be the last “normal” week of the year for me, but it was also a wonderfully full week for events, including this vital part of SSN Boston’s ongoing work.
March 18: StoweStudying: New England Local Color: I’ve strayed pretty far from my first book and my English PhD roots, but many of those subjects remain central to my AmericanStudying nonetheless. This post offers a great example!
March 23: AmericanStudying the Deuce: Lori, Emily Meade, and Exploitation: Some posts practically write themselves, and that was the case with this exploration of one of my favorite TV characters and performances of the last few years.
April 4-5: Dolemite is … the Subject of This Post: Another wonderful character and performance, and a lot of important cultural and American history to boot.
April 10: Poets We Should All Read: Robin Jewel Smith’s Suggestions: My favorite post in my National Poetry Month series was this group of contemporary poetry suggestions from one of our most talented young poets!
April 18-19: 21st Century Arab American Writers: Along those same lines, I ended my National Arab American Heritage Month series by highlighting a handful of our many talented and vital contemporary authors.
April 22: Models of Critical Patriotism: “Eulogy on King Philip”: Critical patriotism is a central subject of my next book, and I know few better examples than William Apess’s stunning speech.
May 5: American Epidemics: Yellow Fever: My first series to address directly our new 2020 realities, and a post on how such realities have influenced America since our origins.
May 11: Spring 2020 Tributes: Lisa Gim and My English Studies Department: I replaced my annual Spring semester recaps with a series of heartfelt tributes to those who helped me get through this toughest semester of my career—none more heartfelt than this one.
May 16-17: Spring 2020 Reflections: And I ended that series with a few of my own thoughts on teaching during COVID-19, which I hope might be useful for all of us as we continue navigating those uncharted waters.
May 19: LibraryStudying: The Boston Public Library: Did you know that a French ventriloquist was a key factor in the development of the BPL? Me neither until I researched this post!
June 4: MassMedia Studying: The March of Time and Newsreels: The prominence and influence of early 20th century newsreels remain under-appreciated, and I hope this post (like the new book I cite in it) might help change that conversation.
June 12: Portsmouth Posts: The Black Heritage Trail: A rare locked-down road trip with my sons led me to this series on the many histories and stories around the Portsmouth (NH) waterfront.
June 22: BoschStudying: Harry: One of my most recent TV binges was Amazon’s original cop drama Bosch, which inspired this series on the show’s five central characters.
July 4-5: Patriotism’s Contested Histories: Update on Of Thee I Sing!: A July 4thseries on the subject of my next book concludes with an update on that forthcoming project (now with a beautiful cover pictured above!).
July 6: Presidential Medals of Freedom: 1963 Recipients: It was fun to look back through the 50+ year history of our highest civilian honor, starting with this post on some of the first recipients.
July 13: AmericanStudying Watchmen: Tulsa: When I finally got to watch HBO’s Watchmen, it more than led up to the hype, and it was fun to revisit the show for this week of posts.
July 18-19: AmericanStudying Watchmen: Student Perspectives: And especially fun was the chance to share a few of my Spring 2020 Sci Fi/Fantasy course’s many great student takes on the Watchmengraphic novel!
July 30: Great Movie Speeches: Jaws: I try to remain open to where historic anniversaries might take me—and the anniversary of the USS Indianapolis tragedy led me to this series on great movie speeches, featuring Quint’s masterful monologue.
July 31: Great Movie Speeches: The American President: But also featuring one of the clearest and most inspiring statements of critical patriotism I’ve ever encountered, President Andrew Shepherd’s riveting press conference speech.
August 5: Military Massacres: Balangiga: Chances are most of my readers haven’t heard of this Philippine American War massacre, which speaks to a large problem of collective memory that I hope posts like this can help address.
This year's bday post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. You know what to do!
August 15, 2021
August 15, 2021: Birthday Bests: 2018-2019
[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 44th birthday. So as I do each year, here’s a series sharing some of my favorite posts from each year on the blog, leading up to a new post with 44 favorites from the last year. And as ever, you couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]
Here they are, 42 favorite posts from the past year on the blog:
1) Cville a Year Later: I don’t imagine I’ll ever visit Cville without thinking about 2017, but last year was particularly poignant, and I tried to capture some of those thoughts in this post.
2) 21stCentury Massacres and Hate Crimes: While I hope always to do justice to the distinct histories on which many of my posts focus, I’ve become increasingly insistent on connecting to our contemporary moment as well. I hope I did so compellingly here.
3) Mass Protest Studying: The Whiskey Rebellion: Some of my favorite posts are those where I know only the topic when I start, and have no idea where that topic might take me. This was one of those!
4) Tina Powell’s Guest Post on Refugee Literatures: Guest Posts remain one of my favorite parts of the blog, and this was a particularly salient one.
5) American Gay Studies: The Society for Human Rights: I could tell you that I already knew about, indeed had heard of at all, America’s first, 1920s gay rights organization—but I’d never lie to you like that, fellow AmericanStudiers.
6) Akeia Benard’s Guest Post on the New Bedford Whaling Museum: It’s been awesome to watch my friend Akeia move into her role as the Whaling Museum’s Curator of Social History, and it was just as awesome to get some of her thoughts on that work here.
7) Video Game Studying: Doom: This whole series was super fun to research and write, and this particular post brought me right back to late nights in my college dorm room.
8) GhostStudying: Haunted Sites: Do I really need to sell a Halloween post on haunted historic sites around the US???
9) Major Midterms: 1874: Another post where I learned so much, and which really pushed me to rethink narratives of 1876 and the end of Federal Reconstruction.
10) Finally, a Book Update!: On a professional level, the publication of my fifth and most public book has been by far the best thing about this past year. Still looking for any and all opportunities to talk about it this fall!
11) GettysburgStudying: Board Games: It’s always fun to revisit our childhoods and see what our analytical lenses can help us understand—and, yes, nostalgically nerd out about historical board games.
12) Pearl Harbor Histories: The Varsity Victory Volunteers: The VVV are one of my favorite stories I learned for my book, and it was great to get to share a bit of that story here.
13) Revolutionary Writings: The Crisis: I love when my teaching informs my blog and vice versa, and both directions are part of this post on Tom Paine’s pamphlet.
14) The Year in Review: Electing America: Our current political climate continues to cause much despair, but figures like Veronica Escobar, Jahana Hayes, and Deb Haaland give me reasons to hope.
15) 2019 Anniversaries: President Grant: Nuance is hard, all the time and doubly so in such a heated moment as ours. But I keep striving for it, as I hope this post exemplifies.
16) 2019 Predictions: I also strive more these days, as I said above, to connect this blog to right now. Not sure yet whether I did so accurately here, but it was fun to try!
17) Cuban American Literature: I enjoyed writing this whole Cuban American series, but engaging with three wonderful recent literary texts made for a particularly fun endpoint.
18) Crowd-sourced Af Am Life Writing: It had been too long since I got to share a crowd-sourced post, and as always my fellow AmericanStudiers had a lot of great responses & ideas!
19) Great (Sports) Debates: LeBron or Michael?: As my sons get older, conversations with them make their way onto the blog a lot more often. This was one of those times!
20) The Philippine American War: War or Insurrection?: So many huge and crucial American histories remain entirely unremembered in our collective memories. This 20-year war is certainly high on that list.
21) Movies I Love: The Opposite of Sex and You Can Count on Me: Is my annual Valentine’s series an excuse to write analytical love letters to favorite things of mine? Well, duh!
22) Crowd-sourced Non-Favorites: I don’t imagine my annual crowd-sourced Airing of Grievances needs any further introduction.
23) The Salem Witch Trials: Tituba: Inclusive American histories don’t just highlight figures and stories we need to remember—they open up so many vital contexts for understanding all of us, past and present.
24) Remembering the Alamo: A Mexican Memoir: Another one of those texts and voices I might never have learned about if it weren’t for a blog series.
25) Irish American Literature: I know, I’m always adding more compelling texts to the Must Read list. #SorryNotSorry!
26) YA Series: The Chronicles of Prydain, Revisited: One of my favorite personal threads from the past year has been watching my older son get into fantasy series I loved as a kid. That started here, with the wonderful Lloyd Alexander!
27) NeMLA 2019 Recaps: Homi Bhabha: Thanks to the great Claire Sommers, NeMLA 2019 featured this stunning keynote address. Read all about it, then submit an abstract to join us at NeMLA 2020 in Boston!
28) 80s Comedies: Airplane!: Not to get all Talking Heads on ya, but you may find yourself writing about Airplane! on your public scholarly blog, and you may ask yourself, how awesome is that??
29) StatueStudying: Christ of the Ozarks: I’m sure plenty of folks already know that there’s a 65.5 foot tall statue of Jesus in Arkansas. But I sure didn’t!
30) Patriots’ Day Texts: “This Land”: If you think I would miss any opportunity to beg you to check out Gary Clark Jr.’s song and video if you haven’t yet, well, you’d be mistaken.
31) Earth Day Studying: Animated Activisms: Not gonna lie, writing about Captain Planet and FernGully brought.me.back.
32) Rodney King in Context: Rodney King: There are lots of reasons to revisit historical moments like the Rodney King riots, but doing more justice to the human figures at their center is very high on the list.
33) Travel Writing: Sarah Kemble Knight: I’m not sure anyone who doesn’t take an American Lit survey class (or read the Norton Anthology for fun) is likely to encounter Knight’s travel narrative. That’s a shame and one I tried to remedy here.
34) As American as Blue Jeans: Jean Jackets: This was another unexpected and fun series overall, but any post that features both The Boss and Miley Cyrus is gonna show up in the Birthday Bests.
35) Jewish American Journeys: Philip Roth and Sarah Silverman: Blogging allows me to experiment with ideas, and connections, I might otherwise never think about. I think it yielded some interesting analyses here!
36) Jewish American Journeys: Michael Hoberman’s Books: Blogging also allows me to pay tribute to wonderful colleagues and scholars like Michael!
37) AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Ian Williams’s Reproduction: This whole series was a lot of fun as always, but it was especially cool to learn more about my friend Ian’s debut novel!
38) 21stCentury Lit: Jericho Brown: I wrote about Brown’s inspiring Twitter page in this post, then he Retweeted my Tweet about the post and a ton more people get into the conversation. If that ain’t the best of 21C lit—well, it is, so there.
39) Alien America: Brother from Another Planet: Everybody should see John Sayles’s 1984 sci fi dramedy. I could say that about every Sayles film, but in this post I said it about that one!
40) Jeff Renye’s on The X-Files: My latest and one of my favorite Guest Posts from one of my favorite people!
41) 21stCentury American Anthems: It was fun to think about which recent songs (and one recent poem) would work well as new anthems. What would you nominate?
42) Remembering Marilyn Monroe: Her American Origins: I learned a ton about Monroe in the course of researching and writing this series, one more reminder that this blog has meant a great deal to my own continued growth, day in and day out!
Annual Cville series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. You know what to do!
August 14, 2021
August 14, 2021: Birthday Bests: 2017-2018
[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 44th birthday. So as I do each year, here’s a series sharing some of my favorite posts from each year on the blog, leading up to a new post with 44 favorites from the last year. And as ever, you couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]
Here they are, 41 favorite posts from the 2017-2018 year on the blog:
1) Famous Virginians: Arthur Ashe: I enjoyed researching all the posts in last year’s post-Cville series, but this one on three influences on the legendary athlete stands out for me.
2) #NoConfederateSyllabus: Working on this document with my colleague and friend Matthew Teutsch was a highlight of the last year—it’s still evolving, so check it out and contribute, please!
3) Pledge Posts: Protesting the Pledge: Both of my sons have continued their acts of civil disobedience, and to say that they are now more salient than ever is to understate the case.
4) The Worst and Best of Allegiance: Salient enough, even, that I’m highlighting a second post from that same series!
5) Crowd-sourced Legends of the Fall: Some of the best crowd-sourced posts are those that feature multiple topics and threads, as this great one on both autumn and falls from innocence reflects.
6) Early Civil Rights Histories: The Little Rock Nine: Better remembering American heroes like the Little Rock Nine is more crucial than ever, and here I highlighted three complementary ways we can do just that.
7) LongmireStudying: Standing Bear: Not the last time the wonderful TV show will appear on this list!
8) Indigenous Performers in Popular Culture: Two of these folks I knew virtually nothing about before researching this post—and the third is Graham Greene!
9) Guest Post: Nancy Caronia on Italian Americans and Columbus Day: A complex and crucial topic, handled with thoughtfulness and passion by a colleague and friend—describes all of my great Guest Posts, and doubly so this one!
10) Children’s Histories: The Forbidden Temptation of Baseball: A new young adult novel that can add importantly to our collective memories of the Chinese Exclusion Act era.
11) 7 Years of Scholarly Blogging: Matthew Teutsch: Connecting to fellow public scholars has been one of the very best parts of this blog for me, so I’m gonna highlight all of the posts in this week’s series to try to return that favor!
12) 7 Years of Scholarly Blogging: Emily Lauer on NYsferatu
13) 7 Years of Scholarly Blogging: Robert Greene II
14) 7 Years of Scholarly Blogging: Rob Velella
15) 7 Years of Scholarly Blogging: AmericanStudier
16) Veterans Days: The Harrisburg Veterans Parade: One of those stunning moments that embodies both the worst and best of America, the exclusionary yet inclusive sides on which I’m focusing in my new book project.
17) Curry, LeBron, and Sports in the Age of Trump: Another one of those posts that has become only (if frustratingly) more relevant since I wrote it.
18) 80s AlbumStudying: Thriller and Dualities: Any time you have the chance to write, and then to highlight, a post on Michael Jackson’s Thriller, you do so!
19) Reconstruction Figures: The Fisk Jubilee Singers: Some of my favorite posts here have allowed me to learn a great deal more about topics for which my knowledge was shamefully lacking. This is a very good example of that phenomenon!
20) Longmire Lessons: Walt and Cady: Back to Longmire one more time, for a (SPOILERiffic) examination of where we leave some of the show’s wonderful characters.
21) Reviewing Resistance: Fitchburg State University: For a series on the year in #Resist, it was fun to think about some of the many ways my campus is doing its part!
22) Gay Rights Histories: The Society for Human Rights (1924): Speaking of shamefully lacking knowledge, I knew exactly nothing about this pioneering activist organization before researching this post and series.
23) Gay Rights Histories: Fitchburg State’s Exhibition: Much closer to now and to home, it was fun to think about why this FSU exhibit impressed me as much as it did.
24) Famous Boy Scouts: Michael Jordan and Hank Aaron: Did you know that these two legendary but contrasting athletes were both Boy Scouts?
25) Learning to Love Mariah Carey: My annual Valentine’s series concluded with my newfound and deep admiration for the musical icon.
26) Anti-Favorites: The Geary Act: We really, really really, need to better remember the horrific excesses of the Chinese Exclusion Act era.
27) Boston Massacre Studying: My Sons’ Thoughts: You didn’t think I’d miss a chance to share this Guest Post of sorts featuring my sons’ takes on the Boston Massacre, didya?
28) Black Panther Studying: Erik Killmonger: I haven’t stopped thinking about Michael B. Jordan’s Black Panther character since I saw the film.
29) Great American Novel Studying: Recent Contenders: There’s no such thing as The Great American Novel—but it makes for a fun debate, and an even funner way to highlight deserving books like this handful of recent classics.
30) NeMLA Recaps: Back to the Board: I’m so glad to have returned to the Northeast MLA Board that I have to share this post on my reasons for doing so one more time!
31) AssassinationStudying: Squeaky Fromme: Why a seemingly silly potential assassin was anything but.
32) Scholarly Tribute: Erik Loomis: A series on the Haymarket Affair concluded with a tribute to one of our best labor historians and public scholars.
33) Hap & Leonard Studying: Redefining Lynching: As of this writing the wonderful SundanceTV show Hap & Leonard has been cancelled—but no matter what we have three amazing seasons to return to, highlighted by season two as I detail in this post.
34) Nursing Histories: Medal of Honor Medics: The chance to highlight a few of the amazing Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipients made for a great end to this pre-Memorial Day series.
35) BlockbusterStudying: The Last Jedi: The latest in a series of posts through which I critique Yoda, praise Luke, and rethink the American mythos that is Star Wars.
36) McCarthyism Contexts: McCarthy’s Lies and Rise: Joe McCarthy rose to destructive power by lying all the time, and nearly destroyed the country with his continued falsehoods. Seems worth remembering.
37) The Supreme Court and Progress: Loving v. Virginia: Loving Day is one of my favorite American moments, and has so much to teach us about both our past and our present.
38) Summer Class Readings: “Of the Passing of the First-Born”: This chapter from Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk is one of the toughest and most important American texts I know.
39) Representing Race: Seven Seconds: If you haven’t yet seen this Netflix original show, I highly recommend it, for all these reasons and more.
40) KennedyStudying: Chappaquiddick: Posts that challenge my own ideologies and perspectives are ones I always try to highlight in these series, and this one did just that.
41) 17thCentury Histories: Jamestown’s First Slaves: But so too are posts that help us unearth American histories and stories we all need to better remember, which remains my #1 priority in this blog and one I can’t wait to continue in the year to come!
New birthday best post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. You know what to do!
August 13, 2021
August 13, 2021: Birthday Bests: 2016-2017
[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 44th birthday. So as I do each year, here’s a series sharing some of my favorite posts from each year on the blog, leading up to a new post with 44 favorites from the last year. And as ever, you couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]
Here they are, 40 favorite posts from the 2016-2017 year on the blog:
1) Virginia Places: Fairfax Court House: Learning more about things I thought I already knew has been one of the blog’s enduring pleasures, and that was most definitely the case with this post and series on Virginia sites.
2) Cultural Work: Miner Texts: Any post in which I get to analyze John Sayles and Steve Earle is bound to be fun, but Diane Gillam Fisher’s Kettle Bottom might be the richest text here.
3) MusicalStudying: Allegiance and Hamilton: Perhaps not surprisingly, Hamilton has been the subject of more posts than any other text in the past year. This was the first.
4) Rhode Island Histories: Beavertail Lighthouse: Learning about things I knew precisely nothing about has been another enduring blog pleasure. Case in point here.
5) Legends of the Fall: Young Adult Lit: Returning to middle school is always a risky proposition, but I loved the chance to revisit A Separate Peace and The Chocolate War.
6) AmericanStudying The Americans: “Illegals”: Writing about one of my favorite TV shows made for a great week of posts, and this kicked them off.
7) Birth Control in America: Esther at the Doctor: I’ve taught Sylvia Plath’s The Bell-Jar many times, but analyzing it through this week’s lens offered new insights on a key sequence.
8) Black Panther Posts: Guns and Breakfasts: One of my favorite post titles, and an attempt to address the multiple, contradictory sides of an important community.
9) American Killers: Bundy and Dahmer: Not sure I would have ever imagined I’d be writing about serial killers in made for TV movies, but we go where the blog takes us!
10) ElectionStudying the Media: Ah, that halcyon final pre-election weekend. Everything may have changed the following Tuesday, but I think this post is still relevant.
11) Jeff Renye on Stranger Things: The New Weird Made Old?: A Stranger Things series concluded with this great Guest Post, and a truly inspiring student conversation in comments!
12) Thanksgiving and Supporting an Inclusive American Community: This was the first post in which I dealt directly with the election’s aftermath, and also the first in which I began to move toward my fifth book project.
13) James MonroeStudying: Remembering Monroe: A series on the 5thPresident concluded with these reflections on whether and how to better remember Monroe.
14) Fall 2016 Reflections: Conversations with My Sons: Maybe my favorite single post from the six and two-thirds years of blogging.
15) Basketball’s Birthday: LeBron and Activism: My sons have just gotten into the NBA in the past year, and it was fun to take a closer look at this side of the league’s biggest star.
16) 2016 in Review: The Cubs Win!: There were far more serious 2016 news stories, and I engaged with them in this end of year series as well. But c’mon, the Cubs won the Series!
17) 21stCentury Ellis Islands: A 125th anniversary series concluded with three very distinct ways to connect the famous immigration station to our present moment.
18) Special Guest Post: Oana Godeanu-Kenworty on Thomas Haliburton and 19thCentury Populism: Readers, take note—nothing makes me happier than when I’m contacted by someone who wants to share a Guest Post, and I was very excited at the chance to share this one!
19) Luke Cage Studying: #BlackLivesMatter on TV: A series on another great contemporary TV show concluded with this multitextual analysis.
20) NASAStudying: Sputnik and von Braun: Another example of a post for which I learned a ton, and which fundamentally shifted my perspective on the week’s subject.
21) Women and Sports: Title IX: With the groundbreaking law under siege from Trump’s Department of Education, this post is more important than ever.
22) History for Kids: Kate Milford’s The Boneshaker: The best book I read in the past year might well be this Young Adult novel the boys and I read together.
23) AmericanStudier Hearts Justified: Appalachian Action: Man, I wrote a lot this year about TV shows I love. And I’m not the slightest bit sorry!
24) Crowd-sourced Non-Favorites: The annual series concludes, as always, with my favorite crowd-sourced post of the year, the airing of grievances! Not too late to share yours!
25) : On Arnaz’s 100th birthday, he helped us consider a different side to Cuban American histories.
26) AmericanStudies Events: Why We Teach at BOLLI: Expanding my adult learning opportunities has been one of the best parts of the last year. Here’s one prominent example!
27) Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump: Sometimes a planned series of my own intersects with where the public conversations are going. This was one of those times.
28) Televised Fools: Archer: I can’t say I was expecting to enjoy Archer as much as I have—but surprises are a good thing, in life and in blogging!
29) NeMLA Recaps: Forum on Immigration Executive Orders and Actions: This could be the most important thing NeMLA ever does—but it needs your help to get there!
30) Aviation Histories: Charles Lindbergh: For my own sake as much as anyone else’s, trying to dig past the controversies to recover the history behind the history.
31) Animating History: Earth Day Animations: I hadn’t thought about Captain Planet or FernGullyin a couple decades. It was fun to do so again!
32) Civil Disobedience: Muhammad Ali: Commemorating anniversaries has become an important part of this blog, and the 50th of Ali’s draft resistance was an important one for sure.
33) DisasterStudying: The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake: Did you know that William James experienced and wrote about the earthquake? Me neither!
34) The Scholars Strategy Network and Me: Online Writing: This was a really fun reflection to write—and then it got picked up by John Fea’s great blog, which is even more fun!
35) Star Wars Studying: Yoda, Luke, and Love: I loved the chance to share one of the boys’ and my favorite theories about one of our favorite galaxies.
36) Matthew Teutsch’s Guest Post: Five African American Books We Should All Read: Getting to feature one of my favorite scholarly bloggers and five wonderful books made for a great Guest Post.
37) The Pulitzers at 100: Angle of Repose: I’d been looking for a chance to write about Wallace Stegner’s moving novel for a while now. It was nice to finally do so!
38) Mysterious Beach Reads: Tana French: Ditto French’s amazing series of novels—which are Irish, but AmericanStudies is large and contains multitudes.
39) Representing the Revolution: Hamilton: I promised that the smash musical would return to this list, and return it did.
40) Troubled Children: Dennis the Menace: Gotta end with another one of those posts I never would have imagined writing—and that, as always, I enjoyed a great deal. Hope you’d say the same!
Next birthday best post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. You know what to do!
August 12, 2021
August 12, 2021: Birthday Bests: 2015-2016
[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 44th birthday. So as I do each year, here’s a series sharing some of my favorite posts from each year on the blog, leading up to a new post with 44 favorites from the last year. And as ever, you couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]
Here they are, 39 favorite posts from the 2015-2016 year on the blog:
1) Cape Cod Stories: The Changing Cape: One of my favorite things about blogging remains the chance to explore in depth topics about which I thought I knew a lot already—Cape Cod certainly qualifies, and this whole series was a wonderful reminder of how much I have to learn.
2) AmericanStudying 9/11: The Siege: I can’t imagine a work of art, in any genre, that more Americans should see and engage with in 2016 than Ed Zwick’s prescient 1998 film.
3) Given Days: The Great Molasses Flood: I never expected a Dennis Lehane novel would give me a week’s worth of topics, but The Given Day did, and this largely forgotten historical moment stands out.
4) September Texts: See You in September: Little inside blog-baseball here: sometimes I create a series and then see what might fill it. The results are always surprising, and I hope as interesting to read as they are to search and write!
5) AMST in 2015: The chance to share great AmericanStudies voices and sites is always welcome, and these three are just as worth your time in 2016!
6) Before the Revolution: Crispus Attucks: Think you know all about Mr. Attucks, first casualty of the Revolution? Well, so did I until I researched and wrote this post.
7) Siobhan Senier’s Guest Post on Dawnland Voices: Voicesis one of the most important American anthologies ever published, and it was an honor to share these thoughts by its editor.
8) 21stCentury Villains: Wilson Fisk: If I couldn’t write about an American character and performance as rich as Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk, why maintain this blog??
9) American Inventors: Eli Whitney’s Effects: But at the same time, the cotton gin is just as crucial to a blog called AmericanStudies as is a streaming Netflix superhero show!
10) SHA Follow Ups: Little Rock and Race: My first visit to Little Rock, for the Southern Historical Association conference, was just as inspiring as you would expect.
11) Cultural Thanks-givings: Longmire: Am I sharing this post only because I got into a Twitter conversation with Lou Diamond Phillips thanks to it? No, but that doesn’t hurt!
12) AmendmentStudying: On Not Taking the 13th Amendment for Granted: It’s not easy to really think through all the paths American history could have taken, and why each moment is so complex and central. But it’s important that we try, as I did in this post.
13) Circles of Friends: The Darker Side of Friends: It’s also not easy to critique works of art that give us pleasure, but just as important that we do so.
14) Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: Ida B. Wells’ Crossroads: There’s a reason this moment will be at the heart of my next book—there are few more inspiring ones in our history.
15) AmericanStudying 2015: Trump: Hard to remember the way we felt about candidate Trump back in late December—but even more crucial to AmericanStudy his unprecedented and historically horrific campaign now, of course.
16) DisneyStudying: Tom Sawyer Island: If you guessed that my first trip to Disney World would yield some rich AmericanStudies topics, well, you guessed right!
17) 21stCentury Civil Rights: An MLK Day series concluded with some of the many current fronts in the ongoing battle for civil rights and equality for all.
18) Colonial Williamsburg: The Governor’s Palace Maze: There’s nothing quite like researching and writing a blog post about a favorite childhood place.
19) Football Debates: Missouri Activism Update: Our 24-hour news cycle culture moves way too quickly past stories on which we should linger—and the Missouri football team’s inspiring activism is one such story to be sure.
20) Teacher Tributes: My Fiancé: Every post in this week of teacher tributes was special to me—but this Valentine’s Day post remains one of my favorites in the blog’s history.
21) AmericanStudying Non-favorites: “Africa” and Graceland: Paul Simon fans didn’t appreciate this one so much, and I got some reasoned and convincing pushback—but I still would call Simon’s album dangerously close to cultural appropriation.
22) Rap Readings: Macklemore, J. Cole, and #BlackLivesMatter: This was a seriously fun series to think about and write, and these are songs and artists well worth your time.
23) Montreal Memories: Anglais and French: I took a lot away from my first trip to Montreal, but perhaps most striking was the multi-lingual model the city offers us in the US.
24) Puerto Rican Posts: The Statehood Debate: We’ve recently seen another troubling moment in this evolving and too-often-overlooked American history.
25) NeMLA Recaps: Many Thanks: I loved everything about my NeMLA conference in Hartford, and about writing this recap series. But I have to highlight here one more time my overwhelming gratitude for all those who made it happen and supported it.
26) 19thCentury Humor: Melville’s Chimney: This deeply weird short story had stuck with me for decades, and AmericanStudying it offered some much-needed analytical therapy.
27) Remembering Reconstruction: The Civil Rights Act of 1866: The battle for whether and how we should remember Reconstruction during its sesquicentennial will likely continue for a good long while—and I fully expect to keep adding my voice to that debate.
28) American Outlaws: Bonnie and Clyde: One of those posts where I started in a totally different place from where the research and histories took me.
29) 21stCentury Patriots: Deepa Iyer: Highlighting contemporary critical patriots was a lot of fun, and I’d emphasize in particular this increasingly vital new book.
30) Classical Music Icons: Florence Foster Jenkins: Before you see the Meryl Streep movie, read the Ben Railton post!
31) Semester Reflections: A Writing Associate in Major Authors: The opportunity to share inspiring favorite FSU students is always a blog highlight.
32) AmericanStudying 60s Rock: Jimi Hendrix’s Covers: From Florence Foster Jenkins to Jimi Hendrix—the six degrees of AmericanStudier!
33) New Scholarly Books: Finding Light between the Pages: You should read all the wonderful books in this series—but for my birthday week, I’ll share this one on my own forthcoming project!
34) The 1876 Election and 2016: If you need any more reason to see this election as a crucial one, history offers us a compelling such argument.
35) Crowd-sourced Beach Reads: Crowd-sourced posts are always great, but the beach reads series brings out a particularly wide and deep group of voices and nominees.
36) ApologyStudying: Lessons from Canada: It can be tough to let current events impact the blog when I’m trying to write and schedule them in advance—but it’s always worthwhile, and this post and series are great illustrations of that.
37) SummerStudying: Irony and “Summertime Sadness”: Cleanth Brooks, Emily Dickinson, T.S Eliot, and Lana Del Rey—ain’t that AmericanStudies!
38) Gone with the Wind Turns 80: Revisiting Rhett Butler: I enjoyed the chance to revisit the subject of my first article, and to see where my ideas have shifted and where they’ve endured.
39) Modeling Critical Patriotism: Frederick Douglass’ July 4th Speech: No better place to end this list than with a figure and text that offer pitch-perfect exemplification of all that I’m trying to do, here and everywhere.
Next birthday best post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. You know what to do!
August 11, 2021
August 11, 2021: Birthday Bests: 2014-2015
[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 44th birthday. So as I do each year, here’s a series sharing some of my favorite posts from each year on the blog, leading up to a new post with 44 favorites from the last year. And as ever, you couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]
In honor of my 38th birthday, 38 favorite posts from 2014-2015 on the blog!
1) August 18: Films for the Dog Days: Dog Day Afternoon: A part of a sweltering summer series, I analyzed the gritty crime drama that’s sneakily subversive.
2) September 5: Fall Forward: A New Teaching Challenge: My Fall 2014 semester included a brand new course on a brand new (to me) topic, and that was a very good thing.
3) September 11: More Cville Stories: Fry’s Spring: Four exemplary stages to the Virginia hotspot where I spent many a summer’s day.
4) September 15: Country Music and Society: Gender and Identity: On Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and gender-bending in one of our most traditional cultural genres.
5) September 23: Women and War: Rosie the Riveter: Two ways to complicate and enrich our collective memories of an enduring American icon.
6) October 8: AmericanStudying Appalachia: Murfree’s Mountains: An AppalachianStudying series gave me a chance to write about one of our most complex and talented authors.
7) October 25-26: De Lange Follow Ups: My Fellow Tweeters: My whole experience as a Social Media Fellow at the De Lange Conference was amazing, and I’d love for you to check out the weeklong series of follow ups. But I can’t not focus on my amazing fellow Fellows!
8) October 29: AmericanSpooking: The Birds and Psycho: For my annual Halloween series, I considered defamiliarization, horror, and prejudice.
9) November 7: Exemplary Elections: 1994: My election week series ended with this highly influential recent election—and with this Lawyers, Guns, and Money post discussing and greatly amplifying my own thoughts.
10) November 14: Veterans Days: Miyoko Hikiji: The veteran and book that help broaden and enrich our concept of American veterans—and now she’s running for the Iowa State Senate!
11) November 28: 21st Century Thanks: E-Colleagues: A Thanksgiving series concludes with five colleagues I haven’t had the chance to meet in person, yet!
12) December 3: AmericanWinters: The Blizzard of 78: Two AmericanStudies contexts for an epic winter storm (which little did I know in December we’d end up surpassing in terms of total Boston snowfall in one winter!).
13) December 13-14: Andrea Grenadier’s Guest Post on Charles Ives: Another great year for Guest Posts, including this gem from Andrea on a difficult and important composer.
14) December 24: AmericanWishing: Chesnutt’s “Wife”: Charles Dickens, one of my favorite American short stories, and holiday introspection were on my wish list this year.
15) December 31: End of Year Stories: The Immigration Debate: Two online pieces of mine that have contributed to an ongoing political and American debate.
16) January 6: Waltham Histories: The Waverly Trail: Three profoundly American moments in the history of a beautiful natural wonder.
17) January 20: MLK Stories: Selma: What’s important and inspiring, and what’s a bit more problematic, about the wonderful recent film.
18) January 26: AmericanStudying Sports Movies: Bad News Bears and Boys: A Super Bowl series starts with our obsession with lovable losers.
19) February 2: American Conspiracy Theories: Roswell: Historical and cultural contexts for one of our craziest American conspiracy theories.
20) February 20: American Studying Non-Favorites: Low Five: Five historical figures with whom I have a bone—or a whole skeleton—to pick!
21) February 26: Western Mass. Histories: The Bridge of Flowers: Three evocative stages of a unique Massachusetts landmark.
22) March 2: Forgotten Wars: The Second Barbary War: The anniversary of a forgotten Early Republic conflict inspired this post and series on wars we should better remember.
23) March 14-15: All That Crowd-sourced Jazz: Crowd-sourcing at its finest, with fellow AmericanStudiers adding wonderful nominations to my week’s series on jazz.
24) March 24: American Epidemics: The Measles: An all-too-timely post, on three stages in the history of a frustratingly persistent disease.
25) April 2: April Fools: Minstrel Shows: What we do with comic art that’s just not funny any more.
26) April 6: Baseball Lives: Hank Greenberg: Why we should remember one of our greatest Jewish American athletes—and an inspiring icon.
27) April 18-19: Crowd-sourced Reading List: Another great crowd-sourced post, this one on nominations for an AmericanStudies reading list.
28) April 27: Communist Culture: “The Palace-Burner”: What one of my favorite American poems can teach us about difference, empathy, and identity.
29) May 11: Semester Conclusions: I Can’t Breathe: Remembering one of my most radical classroom moments, and why it wasn’t.
30) May 19: BlockbusterStudying II: Ghostbusters: Science, the supernatural, and Weird Tales in one of our funnier and more original summer blockbusters.
31) May 26: Decoration Day Histories: Frederick Douglass: As part of a series on Memorial Day’s origins, I highlighted Douglass’s amazing 1871 Decoration Day speech.
32) June 2: Mount Auburn Connections: Blanche Linden: Three inspiring sides to a hugely influential AmericanStudier, scholar, and teacher.
33) June 12: North Carolina Stories: Moral Mondays: Two historical parallels for the crucial contemporary protests and activism.
34) June 19: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: A Tragic, Compelling Life: Why we should get serious at the beach, and the perfect book to help us do so.
35) June 26: Gordon Parks and America: Portrait Photos and the Past: A series inspired by a wonderful (and ongoing) MFA exhibit concludes with some thoughts on what portraits can’t teach us about the past, and what they can.
36) July 1: The 4th in Focus: Fireworks: The history, symbolism, and limitations of an American holiday tradition.
37) July 11-12: Samuel Southworth’s Guest Post: In Honor of the 150thAnniversary of the US Secret Service: In my most recent Guest Post, Sam considers the organization’s history, role, and importance, with a fascinating foonote in comments to boot.
38) July 20: Billboard #1s: “I’ll Never Smile Again”: A series on Billboard hits starts with what’s hugely different about 1940’s #1 hit, and what’s not so different at all.
Next birthday best post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. You know what to do!
August 10, 2021
August 10, 2021: Birthday Bests: 2013-2014
[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 44th birthday. So as I do each year, here’s a series sharing some of my favorite posts from each year on the blog, leading up to a new post with 44 favorites from the last year. And as ever, you couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]
Thirty-seven favorites from the 2013-2014 year on the blog!
1) August 23: Still Studying: Known Unknowns: A series on things I’m still learning concludes with a post on three recent takeaways from that 21stcentury resource, Twitter.
2) August 30: Fall Forward: Three Years: In honor of the blog’s upcoming third anniversary, three of my favorite memories from those first three years.
3) September 13: Newport Stories: To Preserve or Not to Preserve: A series on stories and histories surrounding The Breakers wonders whether and how we should preserve such historic homes.
4) September 17: Gloucester Stories: The Sense of the Past: As part of a series on the Massachusetts fishing town, why it’s so important to better remember that community.
5) September 25: Justice Is Not Color Blind: Duke: The most complex post in my series on race and justice in America, on expectations, realities, and the role of public scholars.
6) October 14: John Sayles’ America: Secaucus and the 60s: A series AmericanStudying my favorite filmmaker starts with the movie that echoes but also challenges our narratives of a turbulent decade.
7) October 21: Book Talk Thoughts: MOCA: With my year of book talks underway, a post on the inspiringly pitch-perfect New York museum that helped inaugurate those talks.
8) October 28: Symbolic Scares: The Wendigo: A Halloween series starts with the supernatural legend that offers cultural and cross-cultural commentaries.
9) November 7: Berkshire Stories: The Housatonic: Three complex and compelling sides to a New England river, part of a series on histories from this beautiful Western Mass. Region.
10) November 12: Veteran’s Week: Band of Brothers: As part of a Veteran’s Day series, nostalgia and nuance in one of our best recent depictions of war.
11) November 19: Times Like These: 1935: The debates over Social Security and how they do and don’t echo our own divided moment.
12) November 29: Giving Thanks: Future AmericanStudiers: A Thanksgiving series concludes with an inspiring moment where past and future were in conversation.
13) December 20: Representing Slavery: 12 Years a Slave: A series on cultural images of slavery concludes with two takes on the wonderful recent film, my own…
14) December 21-22: Representing Slavery: Joe Moser’s Guest Post: And that of my friend and colleague (and Irish film expert) Joe Moser!
15) December 24: AmericanStudies Wishes: Reform Now!: My annual series of wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves included this post on the very American reasons why we need immigration reform.
16) January 4-5: Ani DiFranco and Slavery: A special addition to a year-in-review series, on a couple historical contexts for a very current controversy.
17) January 23: Civil Rights Histories: George Wallace: Why we shouldn’t judge a lifetime by its worst moments, but why we do have to focus on them nonetheless.
18) January 27: Football Focalizes: Concussions and Hypocrisy: A Super Bowl series opens with the gap between what we know and what we do, in football as in history.
19) February 7: House Histories: Our Own Broad Daylight: A series on the House of the Seven Gables concludes with a post on the literary and communal presences of the past.
20) February 11: I Love Du Bois to His Daughter: My Valentine’s Day series included this tribute to an amazing letter from my American idol to his teenage daughter.
21) February 17: YA Lit: Little House on the Prairie: What we can and can’t learn about history from young adult lit kicks off a chapter-book-inspired series.
22) March 8-9: Crowd-sourced Non-Favorites: One of my most epic crowd-sourced posts ever rounded out a series on American things that don’t quite do it for us.
23) March 21: Cville Stories: 21st Century Tensions: Nostalgia, fear, and the current divisions that threaten communities like Charlottesville and America.
24) March 27: Caribbean Connections: Bob Marley: On whether it’s entirely possible for an artist to cross cultural borders, and why the crossing matters in any case.
25) April 2: Baseball Stories: Field of Dreams and The Brothers K: My Opening Day series included this post on divisive decades and histories, and whether baseball can bring us together.
26) April 16: Animated History: The Princess and the Frog: On race, representation, and seeing ourselves and our histories on screen.
27) April 28: Reading New England Women: Catharine Maria Sedgwick: A series on 19thcentury New England women kicks off with a funny, telling story that was way ahead of its time.
28) May 7: NeMLA Follow Ups: Roundtable on Contingent Faculty: Three meaningful ways we can move forward with a crucial issue.
29) May 12: Spring 2014 Recaps: 21st Century Writing: A semester recap series starts with three wonderful student papers from my Writing II course.
30) May 22: AmericanStudying Harvard Movies: Love Story: On the enduring appeal of fantasies, romantic and communal, and what it means to share them with future generations.
31) June 14-15: War Stories: Board Games: A D-Day series concludes with a special post on three board games from which I learned a good deal about histories of war.
32) June 17: AmericanStudying Summer Jams: Summertime Blues: The summer song that gave multi-layered voice to the experience of youth.
33) June 24: AmericanStudier Camp: Hello Muddah: As part of a summer camp series, the novelty song with an extended, very American afterlife.
34) July 14: American Beaches: Revere Beach: A beach series kicks off with three telling stages of one of our most historic beaches.
35) July 22: American Autobiographers: Olaudah Equiano: The controversial personal narrative that should be required reading whatever its genre.
36) August 1: Uncles and Aunts: Uncle Elephant: A series inspired by my sister’s birthday concludes with the children’s book that’s as sad and as joyous as life itself.
37) August 5: Virginia Voices: Thomas Nelson Page: For my latest return to VA, I highlighted interesting Virginia authors, including the question of whether and why we should read this once-popular writer at all.
Next birthday best post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. You know what to do!
August 9, 2021
August 9, 2021: Birthday Bests: 2012-2013
[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 44th birthday. So as I do each year, here’s a series sharing some of my favorite posts from each year on the blog, leading up to a new post with 44 favorites from the last year. And as ever, you couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]
For my 36th birthday I highlighted 36 of my favorite posts from the blog’s third year:
1) Bad Memories, Part Four: As part of a series on how we could better remember our darkest histories, I considered memoir, photography, and fiction of the Japanese Internment.
2) Crowd-Sourcing Bad Memories: Perhaps my favorite of the crowd-sourced posts to date, as many fellow AmericanStudiers weighed in on the week’s theme.
3) Books That Shaped AmericanStudier, Childhood: I began a series on books that have hugely impacted me with one of my first favorites, the Hardy Boys series.
4) Isabella Stewart Gardner: A Gardner Museum-inspired series began with a post on Gardner herself, one of my favorite Americans.
5) John Singer Sargent: Posts on Gardner and Sargent go together as perfectly as, well, Gardner and Sargent did!
6) Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Any post that allows me to write more about the greatest American sculptor, and one of the most inspiring Americans period, is well worth sharing again.
7-11) The five posts in this series on American hope remain perhaps my most definitive statements of the complexities, contexts, and crucial importance of this elusive emotion.
12) Up in the Air, Part Five: Summer camps, childhood memories, and nostalgia—one of my more universal and, I believe, broadly relevant posts.
13) Ezra Jack Keats: This post, in a series on children’s books, expressed the importance of this pioneering author—and was linked to by the Keats Foundation!
14-18) Another series in which I need to highlight all five posts—this has been the longest and hardest year of my life, and writing these posts on how Americans have responded to adversity helped me get through it.
19) American Spooking, Part 3: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Grant Wood, and American Horror Story help me think about whether America can have homegrown horror, and where we might find it.
20) Extra Thanks: A Thanksgiving series concludes with a few reflections on one of my most unexpected and inspiring moments of the year.
21) American Winter, Part Four: The very different but equally American perspectives at the heart of two winter classics.
22) AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part Four: On the limitations and lessons of a childhood spent building models.
23) Lincoln, Culture, and History: Some of my thoughts on Steven Spielberg’s popular and important historical film (with this additional post after I saw it!).
24) Making My List (Again), Part Five: A series of wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves ends with the educational experience I wish all children could have.
25) AmericanStudying Our Biggest Issues: Climate Change: As I’ve shifted more fully to an emphasis on public scholarship, I’ve worked hard to find ways to connect my subjects to contemporary concerns—and this post exemplifies that goal.
26) American Homes, Part Four: The American narratives inside (perhaps deep inside) one of our silliest films.
27) Remembering Wheatley and Washington: A Black History Month series on conversations begins with the time the poet met the (future) president.
28) I Love Three Pages in Ceremony: I’ve always wanted to write about my single favorite moment in American fiction. Here I did!
29) Popular Fiction: Christian Novels: It’s always fun to write (and so learn) about subjects I myself know too little about, and this post definitely qualifies.
30) Supreme Contexts: Santa Clara County and Revision: Few Supreme Court decisions are as relevant to our contemporary moment, and thus worth remembering, as this one.
31) Spring in America: Children’s Stories: Two pioneering children’s classics that captures two opposing sides to a new season.
32) Baseball in America: The Black Sox: This whole baseball series was fun to research and write, so I’ll just highlight one of its posts (yes, the one that includes John Sayles!).
33) Comic Book Heroes: Wonder Woman: Ditto for this comic book series, but this post was the one for which I learned the most and had my eyes opened most completely.
34) Roopika Risam’s Guest Post: I could include any and all guest posts in this list—but Roopika’s was certainly a wonderful addition to the blog.
35) American Swims: Cheever’s Swimmer: Part of the fun of this blog is sharing American texts that I think we should all read, and Cheever’s short story is a great example.
36) Book Release Reflections, Part Four: I have to end the list with one of the things I’m most excited about in the year to come (and I now have at least 20 talks definitely coming up!).
Next birthday best post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. You know what to do!
August 8, 2021
August 8, 2021: Birthday Bests: 2011-2012
[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 44th birthday. So as I do each year, here’s a series sharing some of my favorite posts from each year on the blog, leading up to a new post with 44 favorites from the last year. And as ever, you couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]
35 of my favorite posts from my blog’s second year!
August 16: Me Too: In which I follow up the birthday favorites by highlighting five posts that make clear just how much I too continue to learn about America.
August 23: Virginia, Cradle of American Studies: The first post in what I believe was my first series (now of course the blog’s central format), on a few of Virginia’s American Studies connections.
September 1: First Questions: A back to school post, highlighting both the role that teaching plays in my American Studying and my (continued!) desire for your input on my topics here.
September 2: Not Tortured Enough: On torture, American ideals and realities, and how contemporary politics and overarching American questions intersect.
September 12: The Neverending Story: Perhaps the most vital American Studies response I can imagine to September 11th and its decade-long aftermath.
October 6: Native Voices: Linking the NEASA conference at Plimoth Plantation, the hardest part of my dissertation and first book, and a key American question.
October 11: Remembering an Iconoclastic Genius: One of my most important jobs here, I think, is to help us better remember important (and often inspiring) people and histories and stories that we’ve forgotten; Derreck Bell is one such person.
October 19: The Importance of Reading Ernest: Making the case for an under-read American great, and remembering to keep my literary interests present in this space at the same time.
November 7: Moments That Remain 1: The fall’s NEASA conference was one of the best weekends of my life, and it was very exciting to be able to bring a bit of it to the blog.
November 14: Kids Say the Darnedest Things 1: Of the few different ways I’ve tried to grapple with the Penn State scandal in this space, I think this series, using student voices and ideas to remember the best of what college should be, is my favorite.
November 28: Bond, Racist Bond?: It’s not easy to analyze something we love—but I tried that here, with one of my favorite films in my favorite series.
December 5: Defining Diversity: Transitioning from a topical post (one responding to other American commentators) to the continued development of my own ideas about American culture and identity.
December 12: Cross-Culture 1: It’s Not Only Rock and Roll: And then extending those ideas to one of the many different media, genres, and disciplines that American Studies helps us analyze.
December 19: Making My List 1: Memory Days: The Memory Days have become a separate and ongoing project and page here, but this is where they began.
December 29: Year in Review 4: School for Scandal: Another stab at Penn State—not searching for answers so much as highlighting some of the key American Studies questions.
January 4: Gaga for American Studies: What American Studies can help us see in and say about Lady Gaga. Enough said.
January 21: American Studies for Lifelong Learning: A series that helped me plan the spring semester, connect my teaching to this blog, and, in this case, move me toward both a new experience and what would turn out to be my third book.
January 23: Mexican American Studies: I’m maybe most proud of this series out of all that I’ve done in this space this year, and this is where it started.
February 2: The Three Acts of John Rocker: Trying to do complex justice to a figure and story that are both close to my heart (or at least the Atlanta Braves are) and easily over-simplified.
February 16: Remembering Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Another far-too forgotten figure, and a post inspired by an idea from a friend (which was the origin for the now-frequent crowd-sourced posts).
February 24: Detroit Connections: I think it’s fair to say that I hadn’t thought about this topic at all prior to coming up with the series and writing the post. That’s part of what a blog allows us to do, and while the results have to speak for themselves, I love the opportunity.
March 6: Celebrating Zitkala-Sa: The whole Women’s History series was a lot of fun, but any time I get the chance to recommend this unique and amazing author, I take it.
March 21: Balboa Park: Family vacations will never be the same, now that they’re part of my American Studying and blogging too. That’s fine by me.
March 27: Race and Danny Chen: Like the prior day’s subject, Trayvon Martin, Chen is a tragically killed American whose story we should all know and with which we have to engage.
April 4: Melville’s Confidence Man: A good reminder that both literature and laughter have their place on the blog too.
April 19: How Would a Patriot Act? Part Three: This post on the amazing and inspiring Yung Wing helped me continue developing book three.
April 26: Great American Stories, Part Four: One of the very best American short stories, by one of my very favorite authors.
May 10: Maurice Sendak: Sometimes I feel locked into a week’s series, but Sendak’s death reminded me that sometimes I need to shift gears and write about a topical and important subject.
May 29: Remembering Pat Tillman: I hope I did justice to the complexities and ambiguities in this American life and death; this remains by far my most-read post on the Open Salon version of this blog, so it seems like it struck a chord with folks.
June 2-3: Remembering or Commemorating War: Michael Kammen, Kurt Vonnegut and Clint Eastwood, and big American questions—if that’s not American Studying, what is?
June 12: Playing with America, Part 2: But this is American Studying too—analyzing some of the cultural and historical causes behind the hula hoop fad.
June 16-17: Crowd-sourced Post on Material Culture: My first crowd-sourced post, now one of my favorite aspects of the blog. Add your thoughts for this week’s!
July 6: Newton’s Histories, Part 5: To come full circle to the August 16thpost, Jonathan Walker reminds me of how much I still have to learn about American history and culture.
July 27: Jennings on the Long Haul: And the inspiring life and career of Frances Jennings reminds me of why continuing to learn, study, analyze, teach, and write about America is so important and so rewarding.
Next birthday best post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. You know what to do!
August 7, 2021
August 7, 2021: Birthday Bests: 2010-2011
[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 44th birthday. So as I do each year, here’s a series sharing some of my favorite posts from each year on the blog, leading up to a new post with 44 favorites from the last year. And as ever, you couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]
In honor of this AmericanStudier’s 34th birthday in 2011, here (from oldest to most recent) were 34 of my favorite posts from the blog’s first year:
1) The Wilmington Massacre and The Marrow of Tradition: My first full post, but also my first stab at two of this blog’s central purposes: narrating largely forgotten histories; and recommending texts we should all read.
2) Pine Ridge, the American Indian Movement, and Apted’s Films: Ditto to those purposes, but also a post in which I interwove history, politics, identity, and different media in, I hope, a pretty exemplary American Studies way.
3) The Shaw Memorial: I’ll freely admit that my first handful of posts were also just dedicated to texts and figures and moments and histories that I love—but the Memorial, like Chesnutt’s novel and Thunderheart in those first two links, is also a deeply inspiring work of American art.
4) The Chinese Exclusion Act and the Most Amazing Baseball Game Ever: Probably my favorite post to date, maybe because it tells my favorite American story.
5) Ely Parker: The post in which I came up with my idea for Ben’s American Hall of Inspiration; I know many of my posts can be pretty depressing, but hopefully the Hall can be a way for me to keep coming back to Americans whose stories and legacies are anything but.
6) My Colleague Ian Williams’ Work with Incarcerated Americans: The first post where I made clear that we don’t need to look into our national history to find truly inspiring Americans and efforts.
7) Rush Limbaugh’s Thanksgiving Nonsense: My first request, and the first post to engage directly with the kinds of false American histories being advanced by the contemporary right.
8) The Pledge of Allegiance: Another central purpose for this blog is to complicate, and at times directly challenge and seek to change, some of our most accepted national and historical narratives. This is one of the most important such challenges.
9) Public Enemy, N.W.A., and Rap: If you’re going to be an AmericanStudier, you have to be willing to analyze even those media and genres on which you’re far from an expert, and hopefully find interesting and valuable things to say in the process.
10) Chinatown and the History of LA: At the same time, the best AmericanStudiers likewise have to be able to analyze their very favorite things (like this 1974 film, for me), and find ways to link them to broader American narratives and histories.
11) The Statue of Liberty: Our national narratives about Lady Liberty are at least as ingrained as those about the Pledge of Allegiance—and just about as inaccurate.
12) Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” and Parenting: Maybe the first post in which I really admitted my personal and intimate stakes in the topics I’m discussing here, and another of those texts everybody should read to boot.
13) Dorothea Dix and Mental Health Reform: When it comes to a number of the people on whom I’ve focused here, I didn’t know nearly enough myself at the start of my research—making the posts as valuable for me as I could hope them to be for any other reader. This is one of those.
14) Ben Franklin and Anti-Immigrant Sentiments: As with many dominant narratives, those Americans who argue most loudy in favor of limiting immigration usually do so in large part through false, or at best greatly oversimplified and partial, versions of our past.
15) Divorce in American History: Some of our narratives about the past and present seem so obvious as to be beyond dispute: such as the idea that divorce has become more common and more accepted in our contemporary society. Maybe, but as with every topic I’ve discussed here, the reality is a good bit more complicated.
16) My Mom’s Guest Post on Margaret Wise Brown: The first of the many great guest posts I’ve been fortunate enough to feature here; I won’t link to the others, as you can and should find them by clicking the “Guest Posts” category on the right. And please—whether I’ve asked you specifically or not—feel free to contribute your own guest post down the road!
17) JFK, Tucson, and the Rhetoric and Reality of Political Violence: The first post in which I deviated from my planned schedule to respond directly to a current event—something I’ve incorporated very fully into this blog in the months since.
18) Tribute Post to Professor Alan Heimert: I’d say the same about the tribute posts that I did for the guest posts—both that they exemplify how fortunate I’ve been (in this case in the many amazing people and influences I’ve known) and that you should read them all (at the “Tribute Posts” category on the right).
19) Martin Luther King: How do we remember the real, hugely complicated, and to my mind even more inspiring man, rather than the mythic ideal we’ve created of him? A pretty key AmericanStudies question, one worth asking of every truly inspiring American.
20) Angel Island and Sui Sin Far’s “In the Land of the Free”: Immigration has been, I believe, my first frequent theme here, perhaps because, as this post illustrates, it can connect us so fully to so many of the darkest, richest, most powerful and significant national places and events, texts and histories.
21) Dresden and Slaughterhouse Five: One of the events we Americans have worked most hard to forget, and one of the novels that most beautifully and compelling argues for the need to remember and retell every story.
22) Valentine’s Day Lessons: Maybe my least analytical post, and also one of my favorites. It ain’t all academic, y’know.
23) Tori Amos, Lara Logan, and Stories of Rape: One of the greatest songs I’ve ever heard helps me respond to one of the year’s most horrific stories.
24) Peter Gomes and Faith: A tribute to one of the most inspiring Americans I’ve ever met, and some thoughts on the particularly complicated and important American theme he embodies for me.
25) The Treaty of Tripoli and the Founders on Church and State: Sometimes our historical narratives are a lot more complicated than we think. And sometimes they’re just a lot simpler. Sorry, David Barton and Glenn Beck, but there’s literally no doubt of what the Founders felt about the separation of church and state the idea of America as a “Christian nation.”
26) Newt Gingrich, Definitions of America, and Why We’re Here: The first of many posts (such as all those included in the “Book Posts” category on the right) in which I bring the ideas at the heart of my second book into my responses to AmericanStudies narratives and myths.
27) Du Bois, Affirmative Action, and Obama: Donald Trump quickly and thoroughly revealed himself to be a racist jackass, but the core reasons for much of the opposition to affirmative action are both more widespread and more worth responding to than Trump’s buffoonery.
28) Illegal Immigrants, Our Current Deportation Policies, and Empathy: What does deportation really mean and entail, who is affected, and at what human cost?
29) Tribute to My Grandfather Art Railton: The saddest Railton event of the year leads me to reflect on the many inspiring qualities of my grandfather’s life, identity, and especially perspective.
30) My Clearest Immigration Post: Cutting through some of the complexities and stating things as plainly as possible, in response to Sarah Palin’s historical falsehoods. Repeated and renamed with even more force here.
31) Paul Revere, Longfellow, and Wikipedia: Another Sarah Palin-inspired post, this time on her revisions to the Paul Revere story and the question of what is “common knowledge” and what purposes it serves in our communal conversations.
32) “Us vs. them” narratives, Muslim Americans, and Illegal Immigrants: The first of a couple posts to consider these particularly frustrating and divisive national narratives. The second, which also followed up my Norwegian terrorism response (linked below), is here.
33) Abraham Cahan: The many impressive genres and writings of this turn of the century Jewish American, and why AmericanStudiers should work to push down boundaries between disciplines as much as possible.
34) Terrorism, Norway, and Rhetoric: One of the latest and most important iterations of my using a current event to drive some American analyses—and likewise an illustration of just how fully interconnected international and American events and histories are.
Next birthday best post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. You know what to do!
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