Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 132

July 28, 2021: AmericanStudiers to Highlight: Holly A. Pinheiro, Jr.

[This past weekend’s tribute to Daniel Immerwahr’s book reminded me that it’s been a while since I highlighted fellow AmericanStudiers. So this week I’ll share a handful of such voices and texts—I’d love to hear more scholars and works you’d add to the mix!]

The first two scholars I highlighted this week are folks I’ve had the chance to meet in person, but of course there are lots of amazing AmericanStudiers I haven’t yet met—partly because of, y’know, the last 18 months; but also because of a more positive factor, the countless scholars I’ve met online through the #twitterstorians community. One of those is Holly A. Pinheiro, Jr., a History Professor at Augusta University whose first book, The Families’ Civil War, will be coming out in June 2022 from the University of Georgia Press. I can’t lie, one reason I’m highlighting Holly in this series is that he’s perhaps the only person I’ve ever encountered who loves the film Glory even more than I do, and that’s not a fact I take at all lightly. But among the many other reasons is that Holly exemplifies how even the most seemingly exhausted topics—like the Civil War—are being given new life and salience through the work of phenomenal AmericanStudiers. Can’t wait to read his book!

Next highlight tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? AmericanStudies scholars or works you’d share?

July 27, 2021: AmericanStudiers to Highlight: Christina Proenza-Coles

[This past weekend’s tribute to Daniel Immerwahr’s book reminded me that it’s been a while since I highlighted fellow AmericanStudiers. So this week I’ll share a handful of such voices and texts—I’d love to hear more scholars and works you’d add to the mix!]

First things first: Christina Proenza-Coles’ book American Founders: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World(2019) is not only one of the best works of American historical scholarship of the last decade, but develops ideas at the heart of my last two books—an inclusive and a critical patriotic vision of both African American and American identity—as potently as I could ever hope to communicate them. You might think that could make me jealous, but when I had the chance to meet Christina in my hometown of Charlottesville a couple years back (where she was teaching in the UVa American Studies program, among other gigs), she was so generous and supportive and generally awesome that I was honored to share these ideas and interests with her. Can’t wait to see where her scholarship and writing take her, and us, next!

Next highlight tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? AmericanStudies scholars or works you’d share?

July 26, 2021: AmericanStudiers to Highlight: Ed Simon

[This past weekend’s tribute to Daniel Immerwahr’s book reminded me that it’s been a while since I highlighted fellow AmericanStudiers. So this week I’ll share a handful of such voices and texts—I’d love to hear more scholars and works you’d add to the mix!]

I’ve been a fan of Ed Simon’s public scholarship, journalism, and writing since he and Wade Linebaughcreated the wonderful ‘Merica Magazine, and I reviewed his excellent first book America and Other Fictions: On Radical Faith and Post-Religion (2018) for the LA Review of Books. But over the last few months Ed has outdone himself, with two phenomenal new books (bringing his total to a very high number indeed): An Alternative History of Pittsburgh; and The God Beat: What Journalism Says about Faith and Why It Matters (a collection co-edited with Costica Bradatan). Quite simply, there are no folks doing public scholarly American Studies (and religious studies, and other subjects to boot) journalism and writing any better than Ed these days, and we should all be reading and responding to his consistently unique, provocative, important works.

Next highlight tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? AmericanStudies scholars or works you’d share?

July 24-25, 2021: Expanding Histories: How to Hide an Empire

[July 17thmarks the 200thanniversary of the transfer of Florida from Spain to the U.S. The history of that addition is much more complex than that one date suggests, however—an idea which could be applied much more broadly as well. So this week I’ve highlighted a handful of texts that can help us engage more accurately with the fraught, multi-layered histories of U.S. expansion, leading up to this weekend tribute to one of the best scholarly resources for doing so!]

On a wonderful recent book that expands our whole frame for the US.

Part of the whole point of my week’s series has been that our collective memories and narratives of expansion have consistently been far too over-simplified and reductive (a premise that could be extended to all of American history, no doubt; but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think about its specific applications for particular histories like these). One of those over-simplifications, and one that I’ve been guilty of sharing and communicating even in recent years, is that while the US had flirtations with imperialism and expansion beyond the continent earlier in the 19th century (and of course did take that step in a way with the 1867 purchase of Alaska, which while part of the continent was entirely separated from the rest of the continental United States), it was really at the very end of the century that the US truly became an empire, with its expansions into Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and other late 1890s new territories.

If that narrative sounds accurate to you (and again, you’re not alone, as it largely did to me too until pretty recently), then you should check out one of the most unique and important books of the last few years: Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (2019). Immerwahr’s truly epic work of public scholarship certainly does engage at length with those late 19th century histories, as well as with a great deal of the 20th century (and into the 21st). But he also and most strikingly traces those imperial histories much further back, with roughly half of his book focused on earlier in the 19th century. A famous and wonderful example of all that he uncovered and shares in that half of the book is his section on Guano Islands, about which I can’t say much more than that without ruining the surprise inherent in learning about them from Immerwahr himself. But honestly every chapter, of the book as a whole but doubly so of that initial section, is truly mind-blowing, and will fundamentally shift much of what you thought you knew about US history (or at least it did for me, and many other readers it seems).

At the risk of over-explaining the pun at the heart of the week’s series (always a danger when it comes to Dad Jokes, of course), that’s exactly what I mean by “expanding histories”: not just that these are histories around the expansion of the United States, but also and especially that we need to expand our narratives and collective memories, to better engage with all the layers to expansion and all the salient contexts and connections. Fortunately as we work to do so we have not just the different kinds of primary sources I’ve written about throughout the series, but also the discoveries, analyses, and ideas of so many wonderful public scholarly voices and works. I know of no better one, and no more important one for expanding our histories of expansion, than Immerwahr’s book.

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Expansion texts or contexts you’d highlight?

July 23, 2021: Expanding Histories: The Squatter and the Don

[July 17thmarks the 200thanniversary of the transfer of Florida from Spain to the U.S. The history of that addition is much more complex than that one date suggests, however—an idea which could be applied much more broadly as well. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of texts that can help us engage more accurately with the fraught, multi-layered histories of U.S. expansion, leading up to a weekend tribute to one of the best scholarly resources for doing so!]

I’ve made the case in a number of prior posts and pieces for why we should better remember and read the Mexican American novelist and activist Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton and her historical novel The Squatter and the Don. One main reason is that she and the novel alike help us better locate Mexican American communities and histories within our understanding of US expansion, so for this post I’ll direct you to a handful of those prior pieces:

1)      This post for the American Writers Museum blog on why we should all read The Squatter and the Don (1885);

2)      This one for HuffPost on why Donald Trump in particular should read it;

3)      This one for CNN framing Ruiz de Burton as part of my book We the People’s arguments on exclusion and inclusion in American history;

4)      This one as part of a trio of Saturday Evening Post Considering History columns on Mexican American stories and texts;

5)      And this one for the blog, pairing Squatterwith George Washington Cable’s The Grandissimes (1881).

Scholarly tribute this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Expansion texts or contexts you’d highlight?

July 22, 2021: Expanding Histories: Life Among the Piutes

[July 17thmarks the 200thanniversary of the transfer of Florida from Spain to the U.S. The history of that addition is much more complex than that one date suggests, however—an idea which could be applied much more broadly as well. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of texts that can help us engage more accurately with the fraught, multi-layered histories of U.S. expansion, leading up to a weekend tribute to one of the best scholarly resources for doing so!]

On the horrifying and inspiring effects of reading a vital late 19th century text.

I’ve written about Sarah Winnemucca and her autoethnographic book Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883) many times, including in this column for We’re History. As I do sometimes, I’ll stop this first paragraph and ask you to check out that piece, and then come on back here for more.

Welcome back! There are lots of important 19th century textsthat help us engage with Native American histories and communities, but I don’t know any one that more potently traces the horrific effects of US expansion on indigenous Americans than does Winnemucca’s book. Much of that is due to her choice to begin the book with two interconnected subjects: the initial contact between US settlers and Winnemucca’s Paiute (the modern spelling) tribe; and the perspective of her grandfather, a tribal chief who welcomed the settlers and worked tirelessly and yet frustratingly unsuccessfully to create a positive relationship between the communities. Beginning her book as she does with the thorough shattering of this impressive man’s optimism and hope by the hostility and brutality of the US arrivals, Winnemucca immediately and powerfully locates her reader’s empathy with both that specific figure and the tribe as a whole; and the rest of the book, which traces with unrelenting detail the horrors of the removal policy, the “Indian Wars,” and the consistent aggressions of European settlers, builds on that initial empathy quite effectively.

All those histories, and even more so their effects, comprised vital elements of US expansion, and Winnemucca’s book thus is a must-read for all Americans. But as I traced in that We’re History column, Winnemucca also exemplifies Native American resistance to those destructive histories—and, importantly, the successes that resistance achieved, at least as much as the tragedies with which it was met. To extend a bit of my topic from yesterday’s post, another reason why it’s not enough just to think about expansion through the lens of settler colonialism is that that frame too easily locates Native Americans entirely as victims, passively colonized by the arriving settlers. Whereas another layer to the story of expansion is the active response and role of indigenous communities, the countless ways they contributed to the evolving histories of these places and of the expanding nation as a whole. That far more inspiring layer is important to remember as well, and there are no figures nor texts that help us do so any better than do Winnemucca and her book.

Last expanded history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Expansion texts or contexts you’d highlight?

July 21, 2021: Expanding Histories: A True Picture of Emigration

[July 17thmarks the 200thanniversary of the transfer of Florida from Spain to the U.S. The history of that addition is much more complex than that one date suggests, however—an idea which could be applied much more broadly as well. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of texts that can help us engage more accurately with the fraught, multi-layered histories of U.S. expansion, leading up to a weekend tribute to one of the best scholarly resources for doing so!]

On a forgotten book that helps us consider the first part of a complex current concept.

I can’t remember exactly when I first heard the phrase “settler colonialism,” but it can’t have been too many years ago (which is partly a sign of my own ignorance I’m sure, but not solely that); yet over the last few years it has become one of the most dominant ideas in the scholarship of American history, identity, and culture. As someone who has spent his entire scholarly career working (not as my only goal, but as a consistent and central one, from my dissertation/first book right down to my most recent book) to make Native American histories far more present in every aspect of our collective memories and national narratives, I not only support and endorse but love the idea of emphasizing the ways in which European American colonists were also colonizers, part of a multi-century, imperial invasion (as Francis Jennings reminded us nearly 50 years ago) of a number of existing, sovereign nations. That’s not the only way to frame the story of America, but it has to be a far more central frame than it generally has been, and “settler colonialism” helps us get there.

That’s true not just of the initial European arrivals, but also of all the subsequent European and eventually United States expansions across the continent (and beyond, into Alaskaand Hawaii and etc. etc. etc.). Yet without minimizing or downplaying in any way the consistent, destructive effects that the expansion of US settler colonialism had on Native American communities and nations, I would add this: at times it feels that our use of the phrase emphasizes only the second word, the analysis of these arriving and expanding communities as colonizing ones. And while certainly the US military and government played far too consistent and destructive of a role in that process, the truth is that many expansions (and initial arrivals, but this week I’m focused on histories of expansion specifically) were driven by the category comprised in the first word: settlers, individuals and families and communities moving into these territories. And lumping all those settlers into one frame, while again entirely understandable in its emphasis on what these histories meant for Native Americans, doesn’t get us too far into understanding the specific and distinct identities and stories, lives and histories, included within this broad experience of expansion.

I know as a literary scholar I’m biased, but I don’t think there’s a better way to push back such generalizations and get inside more specific experiences and identities than by reading texts, and perhaps especially ones that have been previously under-read. One particularly interesting such text is A True Picture of Emigration (1848), written by Rebecca Burlend with the help of her son Edward. Burlend, her husband John, and their five young children emigrated from England to (eventually, after an arduous multi-stage journey) the woods of Illinois in 1831, and she wrote the book for a specific audience: other prospective English emigrants. But while that occasion and purpose offer important lenses through which to read Burlend’s book, the text is in no way simply a promotional guide or the like, and instead fully lives up to its title, featuring a multi-layered, nuanced, strikingly realistic depiction of many different layers to the experience of emigration and expansion. It’s only one such picture, of course, so needs to be complemented by plenty of other reading—but every one adds a bit more to our understanding of the settlers and stories that constituted expansion.

Next expanded history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Expansion texts or contexts you’d highlight?

July 20, 2021: Expanding Histories: United States v. Burr

[July 17thmarks the 200thanniversary of the transfer of Florida from Spain to the U.S. The history of that addition is much more complex than that one date suggests, however—an idea which could be applied much more broadly as well. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of texts that can help us engage more accurately with the fraught, multi-layered histories of U.S. expansion, leading up to a weekend tribute to one of the best scholarly resources for doing so!]

On two dark sides to expansion that an infamous trial helps us better remember.

In the summer of 1807, former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr was tried for treason and high misdemeanor in a Virginia federal court, one presided over by none other than Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. While Burr has become much better known over the last few years due to his central role in the life and (especially) death of Alexander Hamilton, and while he lived a long and influential American life that included prominent roles in the Revolution and Founding, this trial focused on by far the most striking and controversial part of Burr’s story, what came to be known as the Burr Conspiracy: his 1805-06 efforts (begun while he was still VP, natch) to raise an independent military force in the Western United States and either use it to establish a separate nation with himself as the leader or to invade Mexico (possibly to enact the same purpose of carving out a distinct territory that he could rule). The uncertainties revealed by even that brief summary, however, along with other factors like the lack of reliable witnesses (other than one shady co-conspirator, James Wilkinson), led to an acquittal on both charges (despite President Thomas Jefferson’s ardent and possibly unconstitutional attempts to influence the outcome).

The histories around Burr’s conspiracy and trial, like all those in his incredibly complicated and compelling life, deserve their own specific attention and analysis. But this unique moment nonetheless also reflects a couple broader and quite dark realities of expansion, both in that early 19th century period and throughout our history. For one thing, we often frame expansion (at least in how it is presented in our educational texts and conversations) through the official mechanisms by which territory was added, whether treaties like the one that began this week’s posts or financial transactions like the 1803 Louisiana Purchase through which the Jefferson Administration (with Burr as VP) acquired these Western territories from France. Yet while such measures did formally add new lands to the expanding nation, the actual expansion of Americans (individually and collectively) into those territories was far, far more messy and bloody. I’ve long argued that the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889, in which US settlers invaded that future state while it was still all Indian Territory, was a striking and illegal historical moment—yet one could just as easily see it as emblematic of the chaotic and brutal way that US expansion always took place on the ground.

Moreover, the seeming dichotomy between (yet clear interconnections of) Founding Father and Vice President Burr and treasonous conspirator Burr is also emblematic of the unsavory (or at the very least far from idealized) roles performed by countless prominent Americans in the expansion process. Davy Crockett is a particularly good example, a folk hero who had his own Walt Disney TV show yet one who made his name in wars against Native Americans and then a pre-Civil War rebellion in defense of slavery (all of which were also in service of eventual US expansions, whether into the Southeast or Texas). But another example is none other than George Washington, whose first military service (which led directly to all his future military and political roles) was in the French and Indian War, a conflict precipitated by (if not at all limited to) the expansion of English settlements into new territories. Hell, many of the Civil War US Colored Troops (one of my favorite American communities) went on to serve with the post-war Buffalo Soldiers, regiments of all-Black cavalry that fought Native Americans throughout the late 19th century “Indian Wars.” When it comes to expansion, to quote my favorite line from my favorite depiction of that USCT community, “ain’t nobody clean.”

Next expanded history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Expansion texts or contexts you’d highlight?

July 19, 2021: Expanding Histories: The Treaty of Adams-Onís

[July 17thmarks the 200thanniversary of the transfer of Florida from Spain to the U.S. The history of that addition is much more complex than that one date suggests, however—an idea which could be applied much more broadly as well. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of texts that can help us engage more accurately with the fraught, multi-layered histories of U.S. expansion, leading up to a weekend tribute to one of the best scholarly resources for doing so!]

On two darker sides to the history of American expansion that the historic treaty exemplifies.

The long and windy road to the 1821 Transcontinental Treaty (also known as the Treaty of Adams-Onís) and the finalized acquisition of Spanish Florida by the United States took more than a decade. In 1810, American settlers in West Florida—who had been immigrating to the region since the late 18th century—rebelled, declaring themselves an Independent Republic separate from Spanish rule. Although that republic did not last long, the event encouraged the US government to claim that the region had in fact been part of the Louisiana Purchase, setting in motion extended negotiations with Spain that began in earnest with Spanish Minister to the United States Don Luis de Onís’ arrival in Washington in 1815. Those negotiations continued for years, both exacerbated yet also pushed forward by General Andrew Jackson’s semi-authorized seizure of multiple Spanish forts as part of an 1818 raid against the Seminole tribe during the conflict that came to be known as the First Seminole War. Eventually Onís and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams reached an agreement in February 1819, “whereby” (quoting this State Department website) “Spain ceded East Florida to the United States and renounced all claim to West Florida. Spain received no compensation, but the United States agreed to assume liability for $5 million in damage done by American citizens who rebelled against Spain.”

Those histories are specific and complex on their own terms, but they also illustrate two broader (and quite dark) threads within the pattern of 19th century American expansion. For one thing, the US acquisition of Florida began quite similarly to the Mexican American War which produced the century’s single largest land acquisition (through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo): with an illegal incursion into a sovereign nation’s territory, one undertaken in support of American rebels fighting against that nation’s legal sovereignty over its own land. Jackson’s seizure of Spanish forts was even more blatant and aggressive than the actions undertaken by US forces in both the Nueces Strip and Alta California in late 1845 and early 1846; but in both cases, these were illegal occupations of sovereign foreign territory, and ones used by the US government as a pretext for further conflict and, eventually, the acquisition of a great deal of that territory. While we’ve begun in recent decades to collectively grapple with the ways in which American expansion depended on the theft of Native American land, I don’t know that we’ve even considered yet the illegal invasions of Spanish and Mexican territory without which the US might never have acquired Florida and much of the Southwest and West respectively.

Moreover, Jackson’s invasion also reveals even darker layers to the white supremacist histories that motivated such military actions (and the First Seminole War as a whole). His authorized invasion was motivated not just by a desire to destroy the Seminoles, but also to recapture enslaved people who had escaped from Georgia plantations and joined the Seminole nation; this cross-cultural Florida community was perceived as a threat to Georgia and the US. Indeed, as part of his invasion Jackson famously and controversially executed two British citizens, Alexander George Arbuthnot and Robert C. Armbrister, who were accused of encouraging both those runaway enslaved people and the ongoing Seminole resistance to the United States. Neither that action nor Jackson’s invasion overall were solely responsible for the US acquisition of Florida, of course—but they both played a significant role and reflected the overarching reality that such territorial expansions were always intertwined with white supremacist American histories and narratives. All part of the story of Florida and the expanding early 19thcentury United States.

Next expanded history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Expansion texts or contexts you’d highlight?

July 17-18, 2021: Crowd-sourced Summer Camping

[This summer my sons return (after a frustrating Covid hiatus last year) to their favorite sleepaway camp. As ever that gives me serious empty nest syndrome, but more relevantly it also gave me an opportunity for a week of Summer CampStudying! Leading up to this crowd-sourced weekend post on the summer camp experiences, stories, and perspectives of fellow AmericanStudiers.]

First, I wanted to share here my most recent Saturday Evening Post Considering History column, on the worst and best takeaways from an enraging experiences my boys had at camp this year.

Some great responses to Wednesday’s post on Jewish camps:

Betsy Cazden tweets “Do you have the book Raising Reds? It includes the camp I went to as a child, Camp Woodland, which was a lot of NY Jewish lefties plus Black kids and staff plus Pete Seeger and Odetta—pretty radical in the 1950s. My parents were staff; Katha Pollittwas in my cabin.”

Elissa Taub tweets, “Love this! My son is at Jewish summer camp in MS (yes, you read that right). The camp is a great connector for Jewish kids from small and large towns thru-out the Deep South. Some campers are the only Jewish kids in their schools. It's such a great outlet for them!”

And Eric, the Animated Chefshares these couple books on Jewish camps, as well as a fewgreat blog postsof his own on those settings and experiences.

Other great CampStudying responses:

Olivia Lucierwrites, “I went to Camp Green Eyrie in Harvard, MA for many many many years and loved it. Some of the best summer memories…except one summer. Our platform tent had an ants nest under it and they traveled into my BAG and laid eggs in my bag! It was disgusting and traumatizing because of the thousands and thousands of ants in my suitcase! Other than that happy memories.”

Robin Field shares, “I went to a ‘young writers’ camp for two weeks at Duke when I was 13. It was gratifying to be around a lot of writer nerd teens. Later I went to a journalism camp for a week when I was 16 at Ball State University, since I was about to be editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper. I won first prize for my feature story on interracial dating. These academic camps were really helpful in showing I had a tribe.”

Alison Dassatti Allegresso writes, “My dad went to an overnight camp as a kid, and on the first night, all the teenage councilors cruelly threw the young campers’ rolled up sleeping bags down a hill, only to take them and throw them back down when the kids retrieved them. It was so miserable, my dad decided on the spot that when he one day had children of his own, he would never send them to summer camp. So, my brother and I never went.”

Mimi Murray shares, “I went to Rockbrook Camp for girls for eight summers as a camper and two as a counselor—I'm still in a private FB group of women I'm friends with from camp. RBC just celebrated its 100th anniversary.”

And I’ll end with this wonderful poem from Floyd Cheung.

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Summer camp stories you’d share or histories you’d highlight?