Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 162

August 12, 2020: Birthday Bests: 2014-2015

[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!]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,BenPS. You know what to do!

August 11, 2020: Birthday Bests: 2013-2014

[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!]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,BenPS. You know what to do!

August 10, 2020: Birthday Bests: 2012-2013

[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!]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,BenPS. You know what to do!

August 9, 2020: Birthday Bests: 2011-2012

[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!]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,BenPS. You know what to do!

August 8, 2020: Birthday Bests: 2010-2011

August 8, 2020: Birthday Bests: 2010-2011[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!]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,BenPS. You know what to do!

August 7, 2020: Military Massacres: My Lai

[August 6thmarks the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that fraught moment and four other histories of U.S. military massacres.]On three complex, flawed, and powerful engagements with one of our more recent and more troubling dark histories.Among our nation’s darkest histories, only the Japanese internment has produced an official governmental apology (and accompanying financial settlement). Yet it’s fair to say that remorse and regret are two of the central emotions which all such dark memories elicit (or would elicit if they were better remembered) from most Americans. It’s still pretty rare, however, for one of the principal actors in a dark and destructive event to offer his own public apology for that history, and thus to force us to engage communally with such emotions and perspectives. And that’s exactly what Lieutenant William Calley did in August of 2009, during a speech at a Columbus, GA Kiwanis club: apologize for his role more than forty-one years earlier in the Vietnam War’s controversial and infamous My Lai Massacre. The apology, which seems (particularly given the setting) to have been impromptu and thus entirely genuine, no more erases the massacre than the reparations did the Japanese internment—as the My Lai prosecutor put it upon hearing the news, “It’s hard to apologize for murdering so many people”—but it does provide a belated yet still meaningful model for an open engagement with the worst of what American history includes.For the last few decades, long before Calley’s apology, prominent American artists have created their own such engagements with My Lai, or at least with fictionalized versions of such massacres. Two very different 1980s films offer interestingly parallel portrayals: Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986) makes a My Lai-like village massacre the center of the conflict between its pair of deeply symbolic leaders, Willem Defoe’s angelic Elias and Tom Berenger’s devilish Barnes, with Charlie Sheen’s Chris Taylor nearly giving into Berenger’s demands to participate in the massacre but ultimately siding with Elias’s resistance to it; while Brian DePalma’s Casualties of War (1989) focuses on a much more intimate yet similar moral conflict, between Michael J. Fox’s idealistic Eriksson and Sean Penn’s cynical Meserve over whether they should rape and murder a captured Vietnamese woman. There’s at least one significant difference, however: in Stone’s film the massacre becomes one scene among many charting the men’s conflict and Taylor’s trajectory, and could thus be forgotten or minimized by an audience; whereas in DePalma’s film the debate over the Vietnamese prisoners forms the movie’s heart, and lingers into and beyond the complex final homecoming scene. Given the controversial and uncertain nature of both My Lai itself and the Vietnam War in general, it’s fair to say that each effect has its place in our engagement with them.And then there’s Tim O’Brien. The Vietnam War’s undisputed chief literary chronicler literature locates a My Lai-like massacre, or rather his protagonist’s post-war relationship to and memories of that event, at the ambiguous center of his most mysterious (in every sense) novel, In the Lake of the Woods (1994). It’s possible to argue that those ambiguities and mysteries make the massacre similarly uncertain, reflecting that side of My Lai’s presence in our national narratives; it’s also possible to argue that the massacre represents the novel’s sole and central certainty, reflecting how much My Lai has come to define Vietnam and its aftermath. The strongest analysis of O’Brien’s novel would probably argue for both sides—his book, after all, is both a mystery novel (which demands a certain answer to key questions of death, causation, and so on) and a postmodern novel (which resists any such certainty and portrays the many sides and versions of any story and history). And so it is with our darkest histories as well, of course—their existence and presence and role are unquestionable and vital; but how we remember them, what stories we tell of them, what they continue to mean for our future identity and community, are open and evolving and contested and crucial questions. Special birthday week series starts this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories you’d highlight?

August 6, 2020: Military Massacres: Hiroshima

[August 6thmarks the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that fraught moment and four other histories of U.S. military massacres.]On an unanswerable question about the bombing, and how to reframe the conversation.I’ve written hundreds of online columns over the last six or seven years, many of which have prompted debate (which of course is a good thing and a continual goal) and even vitriol (which is significantly less of both), but one of the most controversial has to be this Talking Points Memo column from five years ago, on the 70th anniversary of the August 9th, 1945 dropping of an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. My specific argument there that the Nagasaki bombing “was always intended to impact and destroy a much more overtly and thoroughly civilian population” than the Hiroshima bombing three days earlier still seems to me entirely borne out by the evidence and difficult to dispute. But my broader connection of that framing to debates over whether the bombing was necessary and legal and thus to the question of war crimes (both at the time and since) led to a great deal of angry pushback, both in the comments on that column (which are still visible if you want to wade in) and in emails sent directly to me (the angriest of which got quite nasty indeed).If that was all the case for a column on Nagasaki, I can only imagine how amplified the pushback would be if I were to ask the same questions about the Hiroshima bombing, the 75thanniversary of which we commemorate today. And in truth, while I believe it’s important to question and analyze any military decision, especially one that results in more than 100,000 deathsamong many other destructive and enduring effects, it’s also, specifically important to separate the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings when it comes to the question of necessity. There is of course no way to know for sure what would have happened had the US not dropped the bomb—what the casualties on all sides would have been like had an invasion of mainland Japan later in 1945 become necessary, for example. That hypothetical certainly factors into our debates over Hiroshima (and Nagasaki, although I would separate the two as I say and as I argued in that TPM column), but at the end of the day it’s a fundamentally unanswerable question, and one that could thus always be framed differently depending on what one wanted to argue when it comes to Hiroshima and the atomic bomb.So how can we talk about Hiroshima without falling into the trap of such answerable and highly subjective questions? One key way to do so is to think about the bombing’s human effects and stories, which took place and demand our attention regardless of how we see the military action itself. And I know of few texts that better depict such humanity than Alain Resnais and Marguerite Duras’s film Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). I wrote at length in that hyperlinked post about what that French film set in a Japanese city can offer specifically American audiences, and won’t repeat all that here. But on the bombing’s 75th anniversary, I will reiterate what I argue in that post’s final paragraph—that the film is particularly unique and evocative when it comes to the subject of memories, both individual and collective (indeed, I first encountered the film through reading the screenplay in a graduate course on memory with the great Professor Lyn Tribble). Whatever we think and argue about the causes of Hiroshima, the question of its effects—and the interconnected and perhaps even more fundamental question of its memories—should be a shared one to consider, today most of all. Last massacre tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories you’d highlight?

August 5, 2020: Military Massacres: Balangiga

[August 6thmarks the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that fraught moment and four other histories of U.S. military massacres.]On why it matters how we refer to a 1901 event, and to get beyond that question in any case.As part of my February 2019 weeklong series on the Philippine American War, I wrote about the seemingly semantic question of whether we call that conflict a war or an insurrection, and why such debates over terminology and classification are in fact quite significant when it comes to how we remember, narrate, and understand contested histories. It stands to reason that such debates over the struggle as a whole would likewise trickle down to our collective memories of particular contested events, and among the most contested from the Philippine American War are the September-October, 1901 conflicts between American soldiers and Filipino villagers near the town of Balangiga, on Samar Island; this fraught, multi-layered series of events has been known not only as the Balangiga Massacre, but also as the Balangiga Encounter (Filipinos in the region commemorate Balangiga Encounter Day to this day), the Balangiga Incident, and the Balangiga Conflict. Even if we agree to call it the Balangiga Massacre, that phrase nonetheless contains two entirely distinct and opposed historical analyses of these contested 1901 events. From the perspective of the American military, the phrase refers to the September 28thearly morning attack on unsuspecting US soldiers (most of whom were eating breakfast in the mess hall at the time) by Filipino villagers, an attack which resulted in the deaths of 48 US servicemen (leading to its frequent description as the most destructive defeat of US military members since the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876). From the perspective of Filipino communities, on the other hand, the massacre refers to the subsequent US military retaliation, an 11-day campaign of violence against local villages which was led by two particularly brutal officers (General Jacob Smith and Major Littleton Waller, both later court-martialed for their actions) and which resulted in at least thousands (and by some historical accounts tens of thousands) of Filipino deaths (most of them civilians). All of those historical events took place, and all are of course interconnected, so one way to escape this duality would be to think about all of them as part of the massacre (or, perhaps, to use a word like “conflict” instead, since “massacre” is so loaded that it might be impossible not to take sides through the use of it). But at the same, I’d say that the question with which I started this post is deeply relevant to this particular issue—if we define the overarching conflict as a war (which I argued in that prior post we should), then the attack on US forces was justified, while the subsequent attacks on civilian populations would have to be classified as a war crime. And indeed, General Smith’s infamous instructions to Major Waller left no doubt that it was precisely such a crime he sought: “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn, the better it will please me... The interior of Samar must be made a howling wilderness.” Coincidentally, I’m drafting this post on Memorial Day, so I certainly think we should remember the US soldiers killed at Balangiga—but a more comprehensive and accurate account of the Filipino American War demands that we also and especially remember the horrors that followed. Next massacre tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories you’d highlight?

August 4, 2020: Military Massacres: The Pullman Strike

[August 6thmarks the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that fraught moment and four other histories of U.S. military massacres.]On how 1890s anti-labor violence parallels Wounded Knee, and a key difference. I wrote about the 1894 Pullman Strike as part of this post on contexts for an indivisible yet deeply divided United States in the era of the Pledge of Allegiance, and in lieu of a full first paragraph here would ask you to check that one out for a good bit of what I’d say about this national labor activism and the violent federal, military response to it. Thanks!And welcome back! President Grover Cleveland’s use of the military—well more than 10,000 soldiers, not only in the strike’s Chicago epicenter but in a number of other cities as well—to quell the strike could be compellingly linked to yesterday’s subject, the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre. In both cases, the military was used to put down prominent and influential protest movements, attacking unarmed American communities in the process; the casualty numbers in 1894 (in Chicago alone, 30 strikers killed and dozens more wounded) were not nearly as large as at Wounded Knee, but both similarly reflect the military’s willingness to use fatal force in these settings of domestic unrest. There’s been a great deal of discussion in recent years (such as in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina) of the legality of military forces being used in domestic situations, but in truth these 1890s events (and much older ones, like the 1791 Whiskey Rebellion) highlight that such practices have always been a fraught but undeniable part of our landscape and histories. It’s important to acknowledge the through-line across those different historical moments, but it’s just as important to recognize and engage with differences between them. Perhaps the most overt such distinction between the Pullman Strike and Wounded Knee would be the ways in which many prominent political and media voices sided with the Pullman Strikers and against Cleveland and the military—that list included Chicago Mayor John Hopkins, Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld, and at least in part the New York Times, which editorialized that the strike represented “a struggle between the greatest and most important labor organization and the entire railroad capital.” These figures and voices were able to publicly express that perspective, I would argue, because the strike was generally perceived as a conflict between various American communities (although xenophobic fears of foreign activists did make their way into the opposition to the strike). Far too much of the time, in contrast, Native American communities such as the Lakota were not seen as part of the United States (but rather as an obstacle to the nation’s continued expansion), making public, political or media support for them (even in response to brutalities like Wounded Knee) far less common. Next massacre tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories you’d highlight?

August 3, 2020: Military Massacres: Wounded Knee

[August 6thmarks the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that fraught moment and four other histories of U.S. military massacres.]On three distinct attempts to raise our national awareness of a horrific event.It’s nothing short of a national travesty that we don’t better remember the 1890 massacre at South Dakota’s Wounded Knee Creek, perhaps the most egregious and symbolic violence committed against Native Americans by the US military (although that’s a long and tragically competitive list). That’s my take, but it’s also one of the central arguments of Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (1970), among the truly pioneering works of Native American history and studies, multiculturalism, and ethnic and American studies. As its subtitle suggests, Brown’s book covers much more than just Wounded Knee—but throughout, his overt and impassioned purpose is to force such events into our collective memories and histories, to use his recovered sources and scholarly analysis to change Americans’ awareness and perspectives.Obviously I’m on board with such a project, and Brown’s book was a best-seller for more than a year, suggesting that his message reached far more readers than do most scholarly works. But it’s also possible to imagine that most of those readers were already sympathetic to Native American experiences and voices, and thus that while his book might have enriched and enlarged such perspectives, it didn’t necessarily change them. Genuine and sweeping change, this argument might go, requires more aggressive actions, ones that demand national attention and response on both political and social levels—actions like those undertaken by members of the American Indian Movement, including their 1973 “occupation” of Wounded Knee. That 71-day occupation, the resulting federal “siege,” and the accompanying and subsequent threats and even acts of violence, eerily mirrored certain aspects of the original Wounded Knee massacre—but that, as much as anything, was precisely AIM’s point: that so long as we don’t engage with histories and communities such as those connected to Wounded Knee, we will simply continue to replicate and reinforce those histories and further destroy those communities.  I couldn’t agree more, and despite the legal and controversial challenges that significantly derailed AIM’s efforts later in the decade, the group most definitely brought such awareness to Native American voices and histories. Yet as the Wounded Knee occupation illustrates, they did so in an explicitly confrontational manner, one likely to create as much anger as empathy in broader American audiences; while such activism is entirely appropriate and even necessary, it’s worth considering whether and how it can be complemented by efforts to entertain as well as educate those broader audiences. To that end, I would point to Michael Apted’s film Thunderheart (1992), a murder mystery and thriller that stars Val Kilmer and Sam Shepard, features a great deal of humor and suspense, and is in many ways a Hollywood movie. Yet at its heart, the film centers on, and connects the spiritual and psychological awakening of Kilmer’s protagonist to, two historical events: a fictionalized representation of AIM’s efforts; and an accurate engagement with the Wounded Knee Massacre. Thunderheart’s broad American audiences wouldn’t necessarily know they were learning about Wounded Knee and its related histories and contexts—but there’s no question that they, like Kilmer’s character, would come away with significantly strengthened perspectives on those questions.Next massacre tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories you’d highlight?