Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 161

August 22-23, 2020: Charlottesville in 2020

[As with everything else in this plague-ridden year, my sons and my annual summer trip to Charlottesville unfortunately hasn’t been able to happen as planned. But this blog will always return to my home state, this time for a series on a few of Virginia’s pivotal historical moments, leading up to this special post on my hometown in 2020.]A few updates on where things stand in Cville.1)      Those damn statues: I’ve been writing about Charlottesville’s now-infamous Lee and Jackson statues since well before they became the epicenter of so many 21st century American debates (Joe Biden even launched his presidential campaign through the lens of Charlottesville), and at times it feels like I’ll be writing about them for the rest of my life. Or perhaps not—as I draft this post in late May, a new ruling has made it more possible than ever that the statues will be removed from their downtown Cville locations, so perhaps by late August the town will finally have been able to move forward from those seemingly endless debates. Can’t say I’m particularly optimistic that that will be the case, though, and I’ll try to remember to edit this post to include any further developments between May and August. [Addenum: As of late August, the Lee and Jackson statues remain in limbo, but the University of Virginia has moved forward with the possibility of removing the white supremacist statue of George Rogers Clark, and neighboring Albemarle County likewise with the Confederate soldier outside the County Courthouse. I support both those efforts as well!]
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2)    Continued youthful activism: Yet if the statue conversations have seemed unable to move forward, many of those involved in the debates have definitely done so, and none have progressed more impressively than Zyahna Bryant, the Charlottesville High School student who spearheaded the initial
3)   Community leaders: Another reason for my continued, hard-fought optimism is the online communities of which I’m part, and the folks I’ve gotten to meet and be inspired by through those connections. That includes a number of Charlottesville community leaders in various arenas: UVa professors like Jalane Schmidt, Allison Wright, and John Edwin Mason; journalists like Jamelle Bouie; and members of the town’s broader activist community like Emily Gorcenski, Andy Orban, and Lyle Solla-Yates. These and many other folks make me proud to be born and raised in Charlottesville, and excited to see where the town’s communities and conversations can go from here (especially if we can maybe, just maybe, move and move past those damn statues). These and many other folks make me proud to be born and raised in Charlottesville, and excited to see where the town’s communities and conversations can go from here (especially if we can maybe, just maybe, move and move past those damn statues). Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginia histories or contexts you’d share?

August 21, 2020: Virginia Histories: The Virginia Tech Shooting

[As with everything else in this plague-ridden year, my sons and my annual summer trip to Charlottesville unfortunately hasn’t been able to happen as planned. But this blog will always return to my home state, this time for a series on a few of Virginia’s pivotal historical moments!]On two ways in which AmericanStudies can provide contexts for one of our most devastating recent tragedies.It’s very difficult for me to write a post about the Virginia Tech massacre. Partly that’s for personal reasons, on two different levels: my best friend is an alum of the engineering program at VT, the community in which many of those students and faculty killed worked (and many of my other high school friends and classmates likewise attended the university); and the shooting took place on April 16th, 2007, the birthday of my younger son. And partly it’s because the event and memories are still raw enough among many of my Virginia friends that I worry about offending or hurting those particularly affected and still grieving. But part of public AmericanStudies scholarship is engaging with all our histories, distant and recent, inspiring and horrific—and, when we can, finding ways to provide contexts through which we can better understand any individual event.One set of particularly complex such contexts relates to immigration and identity. I’ve written before about the grotesque and bigoted way in which Pat Buchanan used the Virginia Tech shooter’s Korean American identity to attack diversity, and won’t rehash my objections. But while I entirely disagree with Buchanan’s use of the term “alien” to describe Cho Seung-Hui, that doesn’t mean that Cho’s own sense of alienation—which came through so palpably in his various statements and documents—isn’t complicatedly connected to his struggles with assimilation, acculturation, and education in America. Leon Czolgosz, the Michigan-born son of Eastern European immigrants who assassinated President McKinley in September 1901, had suffered at least one significant mental breakdown in the years prior to that shooting. In he connected those struggles, and his attraction to anarchism, to a sense of alienation from America; and he described the president as a representation of that nation’s official structures and systems.In Czolgosz’s era, there was no significant attempt to understand those breakdowns as symptoms of any sort of mental illness—and even if there had been, he likely would have been only stigmatized further as a result. When I see the way in which clearly (to my mind) mentally ill criminals such as Cho, Jared Loughner, James Holmes, and others are described in media coverage, I wonder whether we have progressed far (if at all) in our communal narratives of mental illness. That is not to say that our resources or treatments are the same as they were in Dorothea Dix’s era—but I’m not at all sure that our conversations about mental illness have caught up to those medical shifts. Indeed, an engagement with Dix’s own efforts might reveal just how closely many of our narratives of criminals like Cho mirror the ways in which we have described the mentally ill for centuries—which, while it does not have to lessen in any way our outrage at what Cho did, might help us move toward a society that can respond to such illnesses more successfully and perhaps prevent future such outrages.Special Cville post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginia histories or contexts you’d share?

August 20, 2020: Virginia Histories: Loving v. Virginia

[As with everything else in this plague-ridden year, my sons and my annual summer trip to Charlottesville unfortunately hasn’t been able to happen as planned. But this blog will always return to my home state, this time for a series on a few of Virginia’s pivotal historical moments!]On two under-remembered contexts for the 1967 decision, and why they matter.The Virginia law that Richard and Mildred Loving violated with their June 1958 marriage was less than forty years old. Passed by the Virginia General Assembly in March 1924, the Racial Integrity Act both required racial identification of all Virginians at birth (with only two possible categories, “white” and “colored”) and criminalized all marriages between members of those two racial categories. It’s easy to imagine (and I’m as guilty of this as anyone) that such anti-miscegenation laws had existed in Virginia for centuries, and of course they do have longer-term antecedents and heritages. But as with many of America’s most overt and discriminatory exclusionary laws and policies, it was in the 1920s that Virginia truly codified these odious aspects of Jim Crow racial segregation and opposition to interracial relationships. That more recent history doesn’t make the Loving’s marriage (performed in Washington, DC, although they lived in Central Point, Virginia) any less illegal in 1958, but it does at least reflect the evolving nature of such laws and debates.Just over a month later, the Lovings were arrested in their home for violating that law; in January 1959 they pled guilty to “cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth,” and to avoid serving the one-year prison sentence accepted a deal where they agreed to leave the state and not return together for at least 25 years. They moved together to Washington, DC, and it was that physical relocation that provided the origin point for their legal fight and eventual Supreme Court victory. That is, we might assume that the Lovings were unable to be married or together due to Virginia’s racist laws, but that wasn’t the case; it was instead the separation from their families (all of whom still lived in Virginia and whom the Lovings could not visit without risking prison) and their broader communities that by 1964 had become sufficiently intolerable that Mildred Loving wrote in protest to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, setting in motion the events that would lead them to the ACLU, legal appeals, and the Supreme Court’s ground-breaking 1967 decision. Of course love and marriage were vital components of those histories and victories, but it was really family and community that most directly drove the Lovings to pursue legal action.I would argue that both of those specific historical contexts are important to remember for at least two kinds of reasons. For one thing, they remind us that our overarching historical narratives—interracial relationships had been illegal in a place like Virginia forever; the Lovings just wanted to be able to be married to one another—are often at best simplified, and at worst fundamentally inaccurate to the details (which matter a great deal). And for another, both of these particular details highlight the role that images and ideals of community and place—both in exclusionary and in inclusive ways—can play in shaping other debates and histories. Indeed, the opposition between the 1924 law and the Loving’s goals came down in many ways to two competing visions of Virginia: an exclusionary one that broke the state down into white and colored inhabitants and sought to keep them separate from one another in even the most personal and intimate ways; and an inclusive one for which the ideal Virginia community would be not just the Loving’s and their three children, but also and perhaps especially the extended family and community that they shared in Central Point. In 1967, the Supreme Court sided with that inclusive vision, and helped extend it to all American families and communities.Last VA history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginia histories or contexts you’d share?

August 19, 2020: Virginia Histories: Mr. Jefferson’s University

[As with everything else in this plague-ridden year, my sons and my annual summer trip to Charlottesville unfortunately hasn’t been able to happen as planned. But this blog will always return to my home state, this time for a series on a few of Virginia’s pivotal historical moments!]On the instructive early struggles of an educational pioneer.I’ve been pretty hard in this space on Cville’s favorite son and the namesake of my childhood street (among 2,832 other things in town), Thomas Jefferson, and I stand by those analytical critiques. But TJ also did a lot of great things in his long and influential life, and I agree with his tombstone’s argument that the founding of the University of Virginia was among his most impressive achievements. While the oft-shared narrative that UVa was the nation’s first state or public university is an inaccurate one, it was something even more significant: America’s first non-sectarian university, one created and designed with no denominational affiliation or sponsorship. Whether that made it entirely secular is a matter for debate, but absent such affiliation (and with, for example, no requirement for chapel attendance for its students), the university represented a significant shift in American higher education in any case.As is often the case when such norms are challenged, Jefferson’s university faced pushback and critique from religious leaders and other adversaries (such as its in-state rival and Jefferson’s alma mater, the overtly Anglican William and Mary College) in its early years. But as journalists Rex Bowman and Carlos Santos document in their book Rot, Riot, and Rebellion: Mr. Jefferson’s Struggle to Save the University That Changed America (2013), the far more extreme early struggles were those presented by the students themselves, a group of (mostly) spoiled plantation aristocrats who spent more time partying and dueling than studying, who (as that linked review quotes) “randomly [shot] as passersby” and “whip[ped] professors,” and a masked one of whom even murdered the popular law professor John A.G. Davis in 1840. Jefferson did (spoiler alert!) help the university change course, as did others including some of the students (who designed the famous Honor Code after the Davis killing), but in its early years UVa was seemingly as far from Jefferson’s ideal “academical village” as it could be.Fun stories to be sure (although slightly chilling ones for any professor to read!), but do they have a broader significance, beyond simply (if importantly) revising our perspective on this one university? I would argue that they do, on at least two levels. For one thing, anyone who finds him or herself critiquing 21stcentury college students for their excessive partying or lack of focus on their studies or the like should probably stop and realize a) college students have always been thus and b) things were far worse in certain places and moments than they are now! And for another, it’s worth considering one reason why UVa students could and did get away with these crazy and violent behaviors for so long with few if any reprisals: their privileged status, class, gender, and race. Mike Brown, the African American teenager famously killed by a police offer in Ferguson, Missouri, in the summer of 2014, was about to start his college career as well—and whatever Brown did or did not do on the day of his death, it’s fair to say that it wasn’t nearly as bad as much of what went on in the early days of Mr. Jefferson’s University.Next VA history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginia histories or contexts you’d share?

August 18, 2020: Virginia Histories: Bacon’s Rebellion

[As with everything else in this plague-ridden year, my sons and my annual summer trip to Charlottesville unfortunately hasn’t been able to happen as planned. But this blog will always return to my home state, this time for a series on a few of Virginia’s pivotal historical moments!]On the myths and realities of a 17th century uprising, and why the latter matter so much.I’m not going to pretend that I can remember my early experiences with Social Studies as a Virginia public school student with any particular clarity or precision (other than the Camp Virginia trips on which my 4th grade Social Studies teacher Mr. Kirby took us), but I do have a general sense of how some of our state’s histories were presented in those settings. And I’m pretty sure that when it came to Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676, the dominant educational frame was one of class revolt, of one of the first moments in post-contact Virginian (and perhaps American) history when settlers of non-elite status rose up against the colony’s elites and power structure. Nathaniel Bacon himself was a landed planter, and a member of the Governor’s Council to boot, and thus entirely part of that elite power structure, and I don’t think those educational narratives presented him otherwise. But nonetheless, as I remember it the principal emphasis remained on the surprising coalition of lower-class white settlers and African American slavesthat Bacon assembled in support of his short-lived rebellion (it ended when Bacon died of dysentery on October 26th) against his distant relative Governor William Berkeley and what Bacon and the rebels perceived as Berkeley and his cohort’s various affronts to the colonists. And then there are the specifics of those affronts. I hope I don’t lose my VirginiaAmericanStudier credentials when I admit that I had not read Bacon’s “Declaration” in full until researching this post, and thus had not realized just how thoroughly it focuses on racist and white supremacist depictions of the colony’s Native American inhabitants. While the first two of the Declaration’s eight criticisms focus on broad abuses of power, the remaining six are entirely linked to “the barbarous heathen” and Berkeley’s unwillingness either to make total war on them himself or to allow the colonists to do so. The Declaration’s concluding section makes clear that such war is precisely the overall goal of the rebellion and its cross-cultural community: “This we, the commons of Virginia, do declare, desiring a firm union amongst ourselves that we may jointly and with one accord defend ourselves against the common enemy.” This PBS page quotes Bacon as saying that the battle was “against all Indians in general, for that they were all Enemies”; I can’t find verification of that quote elsewhere at the moment, but the sentiment is entirely in keeping with the Declaration’s arguments and goals. Bacon’s Rebellion may have featured Virginians of a certain status rising up against those of another, that is, but they did so in service of white supremacist and genocidal goals rather than class warfare ones. I would highlight two definite and one more potential (but still important) effect of better remembering those details of Bacon’s Rebellion. For one thing, the Declaration is as straightforward a 17th century historical document as one could find; we can’t know why every individual participant in the uprising joined, but we can and should be clear on why its titular leader started it and what his (and thus its) goals were. For another, there’s a broader through-line between Bacon’s combinatory coalition in service of such white supremacist goals and various other American histories: the Confederacy’s reliance on so many non-slaveholding whites to fight and die in service of the slaveholding elite and their white supremacist system; the late 19thcentury Populist and Suffrage movements’ tendencies to unite white perspectives through racial segregation and prejudice; exclusionary appeals to African Americans to oppose immigrant communities; and many more. And for a third, I would argue that the white supremacist realities of Bacon’s Rebellion offer an important counterpoint to the many well-intentioned 21stcentury progressives who claim that class, not race, is the most important element in our current political and social debates. It’s not an either-or, of course, but too often in American history, as in July 1676, “class” has been used as a tool to further oppress and exclude Americans of color.Next VA history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginia histories or contexts you’d share?

August 17, 2020: Birthday Bests: 2019-2020

 

[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 43rd (and strangest) 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 43 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.

Annual Virginia series starts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. You know what to do!

August 16, 2020: Birthday Bests: 2018-2019

[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 43rd (and strangest) 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 43 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 2018-2019 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!New birthday post tomorrow,BenPS. You know what to do!

August 15, 2020: Birthday Bests: 2017-2018

[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 43rd (and strangest) 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 43 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 NYsferatu13)   7 Years of Scholarly Blogging: Robert Greene II14)   7 Years of Scholarly Blogging: Rob Velella15)   7 Years of Scholarly Blogging: AmericanStudier16)   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,BenPS. You know what to do!

August 14, 2020: Birthday Bests: 2016-2017

[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 43rd (and strangest) 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 43 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,BenPS. You know what to do!

August 13, 2020: Birthday Bests: 2015-2016

[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 43rd (and strangest) 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 43 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,BenPS. You know what to do!