Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 167

June 16, 2020: American Horror Stories: Psycho, The Birds, and Defamiliarization

[On June 16th, 1960, Alfred Hitchcock premiered his new film Psycho in New York. So to celebrate that anniversary, this week I’ll contextualize Psycho and other horror films, leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post on your own spooky story studying!]On defamiliarization, horror, and prejudice.In his essay “Art as Technique,” pioneering Russian Formalist theorist Viktor Shklovsky (whom I never imagined I’d be discussing in this space, but I am an AmericanStudier and I contain multitudes) developed the concept of “defamiliarization”: the idea that one of art’s central goals and effects is to make us look at the world around us, and particularly those things with which we are most familiar, in a new and unfamiliar light. Such defamiliarizations can have many different tones and effects, including positive ones like opening our minds and inspiring new ideas; but it seems to me that one of their chief consistent effects is likely to be horror. After all, the familiar is often (even usually) the comfortable, and to be jarred out of that familiarity and comfort, whatever the long-term necessity and benefits, can be a terrifying thing.Steven King, by all accounts one of the modern masters of horror, seems well aware of that fact, having turned such familiar objects as dogs and cars into sources of primal terror. And Alfred Hitchcock, one of the 20th century’s such masters (and, yes, a Brit, but he set many of his films, including today’s two, in the U.S.), certainly was as well, as illustrated by one of his silliest yet also one of his scariest films: The Birds (1963). The film’s heroine Melanie, played by the inimitable Tippi Hedren, asks her boyfriend, “Mitch, do seagulls normally act this way?”; it’s a ridiculous line, but at the same time it nicely sums up the source of the film’s horror: we’re always surrounded by birds of one kind or another, and there are few ideas more terrifying than the notion that such accepted and generally harmless parts of our world could suddenly become constant threats. I defy anyone to watch Hitchcock’s film and not look askance at the next pigeon you come across.The Birds was Hitchcock’s second consecutive horror film, following on what was then and likely remains his biggest hit: Psycho (1960). Psycho relies for its horror more on a combination of slow-burn suspense and surprising and very famous jump scaresthan defamiliarization, with one crucial exception: the ending, and its relevation of the killer’s true identity and motivations. If that ending is meant to be the most terrifying part of all—and the film’s marketing campaign suggested as much very clearly—then there’s no way around it: the defamiliarization of gender and sexuality that accompanies the revelation of Norman Bates’ cross-dressing is presented as something fundamentally frightening, not only connected to Norman’s murderous ways but indeed the titular psychosis that produced them. That is, while those murderous birds are clearly deviating from their familiar behaviors, I would argue that Bates is presented as deviant in his normal behaviors—and that his gender and sexual deviancy represents, again, the film’s culminating and most shocking, and thus troubling and prejudiced, horror. Next horror story studying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other horror films or stories you’d highlight for the weekend post?

June 15, 2020: American Horror Stories: The Scream Series and Meta-Storytelling

[On June 16th, 1960, Alfred Hitchcock premiered his new film Psycho in New York. So to celebrate that anniversary, this week I’ll contextualize Psycho and other horror films, leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post on your own spooky story studying!]On the benefits and the drawbacks of metafiction, in any genre.In this post on E.L. Doctorow, Robert Coover, and the Rosenbergs, I highlighted postmodern theorist Linda Hutcheon’s concept of “historiographic metafiction,” a genre of creative art that blurs the boundaries not only between fact and fiction (as do the found footage films I’ll discuss later in the week) but also between art and reality, the work and its audience. The characters and creators of such works step back to examine and address themselves, the works as creative works, and their audiences, among other layers to their metafictional engagements. In the mid-1990s, master filmmaker Wes Craven and his collaborators introduced such metafictional qualities into the horror genre: first in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) and then, far more successfully and influentially, in Scream (1996) and its multiple sequels.Scream has plenty of qualities of a straightforward slasher film, as the justifiably famous opening scene with Drew Barrymore amply demonstrates. But the discussion of “scary movies” integral to that opening scene is extended and amplified in the movie proper, which features a cast of characters who have been seemingly raised on such films and who engage in multiple (even constant) metafictional conversations about the genre’s “rules,” conventions, and expectations. The metafiction unquestionably works, elevating what would otherwise have been a largely unremarkable horror movie into an analytical commentary on its own existence, the legacy of which it is part, and the guilty pleasures it and its ilk offer (and make no mistake, Scream remains scary and gory despite, if not indeed through, these metafictional qualities).As with any genre and form, metafiction has its potential drawbacks and downsides, however, and as the Scream series evolved it reflected quite clearly one of those drawbacks: the tendency of such self-referential commentaries to multiply to the point where they’re chasing their own tails more than either analyzing or entertaining an audience. So, for example, Scream 2 features both a movie version of the first film’s events and a killer hoping to get caught so he could be the star of a televised trial; Scream 3 is set in Hollywood, on the film set of the third movie version of the prior films’ events; and so on. When metafiction amplifies both the effectiveness and the meanings of the text that features it, it can be an important quality of 21st century works of art; when it becomes an end unto itself, it can reflect our most self-aware and snarky sides. Or, to quote a film that was terrifying in entirely distinct ways, “it’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”Next horror story studying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other horror films or stories you’d highlight for the weekend post?

June 13-14, 2020: New England Historic Daytrips

[In early May, with the lockdown closing in around us a bit, my sons and I took a daytrip up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where we walked around the historic waterfront area (masked and at a social distance from fellow visitors, natch). So this week I’ve highlighted a handful of histories from that multi-layered New England community, leading up to this special post featuring prior posts on other NE historic daytrips!]As I draft this post in mid-May, I have no idea what will and won’t be possible when it comes to Summer 2020 daytripping. But even if we just drive places and look at them from our cars, I think we could all use a bit of that change of scenery. So here are some prior blog highlights of great such NE historic daytrips!Plimoth Plantation!The Salem Witch Trials Memorial!The Lowell Mills!Battleship Cove!Native American museums! Providence! Acadia National Park!Du Bois in Great Barrington!The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center!Fort Warren (okay, you can’t drive to that one, but it’s well worth the boat ride)!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other historic sites or daytrips you’d highlight?

June 12, 2020: Portsmouth Posts: The Black Heritage Trail

[In early May, with the lockdown closing in around us a bit, my sons and I took a daytrip up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where we walked around the historic waterfront area (masked and at a social distance from fellow visitors, natch). This week I’ll highlight a handful of histories from this multi-layered New England community, leading up to a special post on other NE historic daytrips!]On three of the many educational stops along a vital historic path.1)      The African Burying Ground: No engagement with Portsmouth’s history can avoid two crucial yet contradictory facts: the city reflects and exemplifies the foundational presence and influence of African Americans throughout colonial New England; yet until very recently that presence was entirely absent from the city’s public presentations of its histories and stories. Summing up both of those layers (literally as well as figuratively) is the city’s African Burying Ground, the only known 18th century cemetery for New England African Americans; yet one that as of a few years ago was invisible, paved over and turned into a parking lot. The reason I know and can share the first and more important part of that duality is thanks to the work of the folks at the African Burying Ground Trust, a community that overlaps closely with those who maintain the Black Heritage Trail (like Executive Director JerriAnne Boggis). Thanks to their efforts, these vital Portsmouth and American histories have begun to be written back into the landscape and our collective memories.2)      Noyes Academy: New Hampshire, like other New England states, began gradually abolishing slavery in the years after the Revolution (although I do mean gradual, and even that process required the voices and efforts of courageous enslaved African Americans and their allies). But if anyone thinks that abolition meant that the state became thoroughly inclusive or integrated, feel free to point them to the tragic, ugly history of Canaan’s Noyes Academy: founded in March 1835 by abolitionists as America’s first co-educational school for African Americans; and destroyed in August and September of that same year (after months of virulent opposition in the press) by rampaging mobs of white supremacist townspeople. In those few short months of operation, the school featured as students such vital future leaders as Henry Highland Garnet and Alexander Crummell, making it a doubly significant historic landmark. But there’s no escaping the most telling fact about Noyes Academy, as captured in its Canaan historic marker: that this inspiring educational community so “outraged opponents” that they turned to mob violence in response.3)      The Harriet Wilson Memorial Sculpture: History is told not just through the best and worst of such collective spaces and experiences, however, but also through the individuals who live and shape it. No New Hampshire individual has a more compelling story (in every sense) than Harriet Wilson (1825-1900), who from her birth and childhood of indentured servitude in Milford through her autobiographical novel Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (1859), Spiritualist lectures and séances, and late-life religious and educational ventures experienced and shaped a good deal of 19th century American society. Thanks to the efforts of the Harriet Wilson Project, which funded Fern Cunningham’s Wilson Memorial Sculpture in Milford’s Bicentennial Park among many other spots on the Milford Black Heritage Trail, this unique yet telling New Hampshire, New England, and American life can, like all these histories and stories, be more fully included in the landscape of our collective memories.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other historic sites or daytrips you’d highlight?

June 11, 2020: Portsmouth Posts: Remembering the Marine Railway

[In early May, with the lockdown closing in around us a bit, my sons and I took a daytrip up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where we walked around the historic waterfront area (masked and at a social distance from fellow visitors, natch). This week I’ll highlight a handful of histories from this multi-layered New England community, leading up to a special post on other NE historic daytrips!]On the importance of remembering material culture histories, and why we also need to go beyond them.A few years back, in this post on the (then) newly christened Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park, I highlighted for comparison another exemplary such park—the Salem (MA) Maritime National Historic Site. The centerpiece of Salem Maritime is the Derby (pronounced DAR-by) Wharf, a long walk out into Salem Harbor which features a reconstructed ship, numerous historic markers, exhibits, and other information for visitors. Yet across all those wonderful interpretative areas, there is (or was as of the last time I was there, anyway) just one brief mention of slavery, a corner of a historic marker that highlights the so-called triangular trade which brought goods to Salem in direct relationship to bringing enslaved people to the Caribbean. Yet in truth, not only was the triangular trade far more central to Salem’s industries than the Wharf indicates, but the trade also brought enslaved people to Salem, where their work was similarly instrumental to every aspect of the town’s commerce for much of the 17th and 18thcenturies. Slavery isn’t the overt focus of Salem Maritime NHS, and I’m not arguing that it has to be—but it has always seemed to me that minimizing such human histories in favor of material culture exhibits (which is mostly what the recreated Derby Wharf features) means at best telling only a piece of the story, if not indeed separating pieces that are ultimately, entirely interconnected.I had a similar reaction to the historic marker along the Portsmouth waterfront which highlights the Portsmouth Marine Railway. To quote from the marker’s intro, “In 1833 a group of prominent Portsmouth merchants organized The Marine Railway Company and installed a set of tracks from the water to the brick machine house still standing today near this site. When coupled with two horses, the machinery could, as the owners proclaimed, ‘draw vessels of 500 tons and upwards, entirely out of water, placing them in a situation where any part of their hulls can be inspected or repaired with great dispatch.’ The Portsmouth Marine Railway Company continued to operate until the mid-1850s. Thereafter the wealthy merchant Leonard Cotton bought it and ran it as a private venture.” The remainder of the marker includes H.F. Walling’s map of the waterfront in 1850, a recent photo of the building that served as the Railway’s Headhouse, an etching of a “careened” ship being worked on, and two paintings of ships, including one by yesterday’s blog subject Thomas P. Moses. Taken together, the text and images certainly create a multi-layered portrait of both the Railway and its historical and economic contexts, offering a lens into a part of the waterfront’s material culture that has largely disappeared (the Headhouse remains, but the tracks and everything else are no more). I appreciate all those aspects of the marker and what it adds to my knowledge and understanding, but I can’t help but feel that something is missing from it: people! The intro text does feature those “prominent merchants” and later that “wealthy merchant,” so I suppose I mean something more specific: the working people who operated the Railway, repaired the careened ships, made this material and commercial enterprise happen. Even the caption for the careened ship image uses the passive voice to elide those workers: “ships were ‘careened,’” “This was done by attaching lines to their masts and rolling the vessels…” We learn about the two horses (and I don’t mean to downplay their role and labor in any way), but nothing about the human power that drove this Portsmouth innovation. By the 1830s and 40s those workers were not enslaved, so to be clear I’m not directly paralleling this to the Salem Maritime elision. But who were they? What do we know about their identities, communities, backgrounds, training, lives? Did any of them reflect upon either their work or this part of the waterfront commercial world? Were any injured or killed when a ship careened the wrong way? Those and many similar questions wouldn’t just add more of a human side to this marker—they are fundamental to the material culture and economic histories being highlighted there, and require much more awareness and engagement than they too often receive. Last Portsmouth post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other historic sites or daytrips you’d highlight?

June 10, 2020: Portsmouth Posts: Thomas P. Moses

[In early May, with the lockdown closing in around us a bit, my sons and I took a daytrip up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where we walked around the historic waterfront area (masked and at a social distance from fellow visitors, natch). This week I’ll highlight a handful of histories from this multi-layered New England community, leading up to a special post on other NE historic daytrips!]On two stages to and the broader meanings of a 19th century Renaissance life.To quote the waterfront historic marker dedicated to him (from which I first learned about him, natch), Thomas P. Moses (1808-1881) “was born near Sagamore Creek in Portsmouth and became the town’s leading musician and poet during the 1830s and 1840s. A book of poems and essays was locally published in 1849 as well as a colorful ‘autobiography’ in 1850 that insulted all his ‘enemies.’” (Not for lack of trying, I can’t find an online version of, or even any further info online about, that latter book, to my eternal regret.) Without having had the chance to read either of those books yet, it nonetheless seems quite likely to me that these literary works of Moses’ were inspired in part by the Transcendentalists, whose Concord focal point was not too far from Portsmouth and who often combined multiple literary genres in the same works (and certainly in the same moments and careers) as Moses apparently did. But on the other hand (or rather at the same time), the autobiography sounds quite a bit like Edgar Allan Poe, who was the era’s master at coming after his perceived enemies in print. Whatever the inspiration for this burst of literary productivity and publication, it was apparently short-lived, as (to quote the marker once more) “from the 1850s on he transformed himself into one of Portsmouth’s most interesting Victorian painters and cultural entrepreneurs.” In yesterday’s post I highlighted one of Moses’ most famous individual paintings, an 1870 . Indeed, as you might expect from a Portsmouth painter, many of Moses’ work focused on nautical scenes and subjects, including the three featured on that historic marker: American Ship Entering Portsmouth Harbor (1850s); Coming from the Navy Yard, Portsmouth (1867); and The Schooner Charles Carroll (1875, and his last Portsmouth painting “before he left the city to teach music at an academy in Marietta, South Carolina). Unlike the Cherbourg painting, those works—like most of Moses’ paintings, it seems—depicted Portsmouth subjects, and Portsmouth itself; that is, while his focus is often on ships, Moses consistently situates those ships within the Portsmouth landscape, making his paintings an important part of the historical record of the city overall and its waterfront spaces in particular.A published author, a prolific painter, and a talented even musician to get a job teaching at a music academy—Moses was clearly a Renaissance man (or rather Renaissance person—I want always to be clear that the concept can apply to anyone). But so what, you might ask? Sure, it’s impressive when someone is talented enough in different arenas to leave a legacy of work (published and otherwise) across them. But beyond appreciating them as individuals (which is never a bad thing and indeed one goal of many of my blog posts and public scholarly pieces), does that kind of breadth have collective or social significance? I would argue that it does, in a couple distinct and equally important ways. For one thing, it means that these individual figures can help us better remember many different sides to their cultures and communities, which is to my mind one consistent, overarching purpose of any contributions to our collective memories. And for another, figures like Moses can help inspire us to consider how we might contribute to multiple sides to our own moment and society. I’m not suggesting we all have to publish, paint, and perform (my trombone-playing was never anywhere near my writing, and the less said about my visual artwork the better). Just that, as with academic disciplines and departments, in the wider world the boundaries between forms are far less clear, and far less worth worrying about. Next Portsmouth post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other historic sites or daytrips you’d highlight?

June 9, 2020: Portsmouth Posts: The Navy Yard

[In early May, with the lockdown closing in around us a bit, my sons and I took a daytrip up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where we walked around the historic waterfront area (masked and at a social distance from fellow visitors, natch). This week I’ll highlight a handful of histories from this multi-layered New England community, leading up to a special post on other NE historic daytrips!]On two famous products of a historic, still operational naval construction facility, and one darker history present there.1)      USS Kearsage : The Portsmouth Navy Yard (officially located in the neighboring town of Kittery, Maine, but visible from the historic waterfront) went into operation in 1800, but it was with the Civil War, and specifically the 1861 emergency shipbuilding program, that the yard became a center of US naval production. Without question its most famous product during that intense period was the Kearsage, a warship named for New Hampshire’s Mount Kearsage and launched on September 11th, 1861. For the next couple years the Kearsagehunted for Confederate ships across the Atlantic, with a particular focus on the CSS Alabama, one of the Confederacy’s most successful raiders; in June 1864 the Kearsage finally found the Alabamaat the French port of Cherbourg, and on June 19th the two ships fought one of the Civil War’s most brutal and famous (captured there in a painting by Portsmouth’s own Thomas P. Moses, on whom more see tomorrow’s post). The Kearsage’s eventual victory marked a naval counterpoint to other 1864 Union triumphs and turning points in the war. 2)      The L-8: The Civil War saw the first use of military submarines in the US, but it was in the early 20thcentury that these vessels became more fully part of the US Navy. The first submarine built at a government navy yard was the L-8, which was constructed from 1915 to 1917 and launched from the Portsmouth yard in April 1917. As this article traces, although the L-8 never fired a shot during World War I, it served an important role in safe-guarding shipping from German U-boats, embodying this new side to 20th century naval warfare. During World War II, the Portsmouth yard constructed 79 submarines, with a record four launched on January 27th, 1944 alone; it would also construct a number of nuclear submarines between Swordfish in 1957 and Sand Lance in 1969. But all that, and indeed the central role of submarines in 20th century US naval operations, began with the L-8. 3)      The Prison: The Portsmouth Navy Yard became particularly prominent in 1905, when President Theodore Roosevelt hosted there the Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War (and garnered Roosevelt the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize). But significant as that treaty may have been, it was another 1905 event that would have long-lasting effects for the US navy and armed forces: the start of construction on the Portsmouth Naval Prison (or “the Castle,” as it was often known). Also called the “Alcatraz of the East” due to its remote location and (especially) its harsh conditions, the prison became the principal detention facility for the US Navy and Marine Corps, and reached its peak during World War II, when it housed over 3000 German sailors and marines. The prison was closed in 1974, after a commission deemed it “wholly inadequate by modern standards of incarceration.” But the site remains, a testimony to a very different side to this historically productive military facility. Next Portsmouth post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other historic sites or daytrips you’d highlight?

June 8, 2020: Portsmouth Posts: The Sheafe Warehouse

[In early May, with the lockdown closing in around us a bit, my sons and I took a daytrip up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where we walked around the historic waterfront area (masked and at a social distance from fellow visitors, natch). This week I’ll highlight a handful of histories from this multi-layered New England community, leading up to a special post on other NE historic daytrips!]I learned a great deal about the Sheafe Warehouse, one of America’s oldest preserved commercial buildings, from this post on the Walk Portsmouth blog. Here I wanted to use three generations of Sampson Sheafes to highlight three stages of 18th century New Hampshire and America:1)      Sampson I (1646-1725): The elder Sampson was born in London and immigrated to New England around 1668, where he lived in multiple towns before settling in New Castle, New Hampshire (the state’s easternmost town and one also known as Great Island as it is located entirely on islands). He represents what I would call the first truly commercial generation of New England settlers, and alongside starting the family’s influential shipping business (and possibly building the Portsmouth Warehouse, although as the aforementioned blog post indicates that fact is disputed), he also served in important civic roles such as Deputy Collector of Customs, Clerk of the Superior Court, and Provincial Councilor and Secretary. But despite those commercial and civic developments, New England was far from stable during this turn of the 18th century period, as another of Sampson’s roles reflects: he helped lead the region’s military forces (as Commissary) in a failed 1711 invasion of Quebec (part of the larger conflict known as Queen Anne’s War). 2)      Sampson II (1683-~1772): The elder Sampson and his wife Mehitable had five children, and they named their fourth (and second son) Sampson. Sampson II (they apparently didn’t actually use roman numerals to differentiate the generations, so that’s just my own usage for clarity) reflects a next stage in the family’s New England development, as he attended Harvard College, graduating in 1702. He subsequently extended the Sheafe merchant shipping trade, and was possibly the Sampson who built the Portsmouth Warehouse (the blogger seems to think this is the most likely scenario, which would put the construction at about 1740, near the outset of what would be known as the “Great Age of Sail”). In the final decades of his life he attained a particularly high status, serving on the King’s Council from 1740 to 1762. But the region’s colonial wars with France likewise continued, and in 1745 Sampson II served as Commissary for the New England armed forces during the siege of Louisbourg(capital of the French colony on Cape Breton Island), part of the conflict known as King George’s War. 3)      Sampson III (1713-unknown): Sampson II and his wife Sarah had ten children, and they named their second son (and oldest surviving child) Sampson. For whatever reason (perhaps that large number of siblings), less seems to be known about Sampson III; but if the family Warehouse was indeed built around 1740, the 27 year-old Sampson III was likely involved in its construction (and if so, given its endurance for nearly three centuries, he did a good job!). Sampson III also reflects in two ways a very different colonial war, the Revolutionary one with England: he may have participated in the December 1774 raid on the English Fort William and Mary on New Castle Island; and his son Sampson (duh), born in 1750 and a merchant sailor, was impressed by the English and held at Dartmoor Prison for at least a portion of the Revolution. Four generations of an influential New Hampshire, New England, and American family, all tied to this one historic waterfront building.                           Next Portsmouth post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other historic sites or daytrips you’d highlight?

June 6-7, 2020: Mass MediaStudying: Joseph Adelman’s Revolutionary Networks

[On June 1st, 1980, the Cable News Network (CNN) aired its first broadcast. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied cable news and four other significant evolutions in American mass media, leading up to this special post on one of the best scholarly studies of media and the Revolution!]My original plan for this post was to write a bit about what makes Joseph Adelman’s Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789 (2019) so impressive and worth your purchase, reading, and time. But just over a month ago, the great historian Lindsay Chervinsky (herself the author of a wonderful new book on George Washington’s Cabinet) created History Summit 2020, an event where the authors behind new and recent books got to share videos featuring their own thoughts and work (as well as engage with readers on Twitter). As a result, you don’t have to take my word for it—here’s Adelman’s History Summit page and video on Revolutionary Networks!All I’ll add is this: as I hope this week’s series has illustrated, mass media has been not just a consistent but a hugely influential presence across all of American history. While historians and other scholars recognize that fact, I don’t know that our broader public conversations or collective memories sufficiently do, and the Revolution is a good example—our collective memories of the Revolutionary era tend to focus on particular individuals (Paul Revere, Betsy Ross, the Founding Fathers) and events (the Boston Tea Party, the Declaration of Independence, Lexington and Concord), and even many of my arguments for expanding those memories have emphasized other individuals or communities (Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker, Loyalists). But for the vast majority of Americans in the Revolutionary era, the kinds of news networks that Adelman analyses were far more present and influential in their lives than any individuals or events, however prominent. Which is a good argument for making Mass MediaStudying a more consistent part of our AmericanStudying—starting with great scholarly works like Adelman’s book!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other mass media moments or movements you’d highlight?

June 5, 2020: Mass MediaStudying: The Internet

[On June 1st, 1980, the Cable News Network (CNN) aired its first broadcast. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy cable news and four other significant evolutions in American mass media, leading up to a special post on one of the best scholarly studies of media and the Revolution!]On the variations, limitations, and possibilities of journalism online.Through the development of my own online writing over the last decade (beginning with this blog’s November 2010 origins), I’ve had the chance to connect with four distinct online journalistic sites and communities (among many others, but these have been the four with which I’ve had the most consistent and in-depth relationships). Not long after I began this blog, I started mirroring it on OpenSalon, a now-defunct blogging site connected to the groundbreaking and influential online magazine Salon. My first consistent online writing gig (from late 2014 to early 2016) was a column for Josh Marshall’s longstanding political news and commentary site Talking Points Memo. My second such gig (from 2016 through the end of 2017) was a column for Arianna Huffington’s political and cultural online periodical HuffPost (then still known by its original name Huffington Post). And for my current and favorite such gig (from January 2018 on) I write the monthly (previously bimonthly, but 2020, y’know) Considering History column for the online version of one of the nation’s oldest magazines, the Saturday Evening Post . I’m sure Media Studies scholars would define each of those four sites as occupying a different place on the landscape of online journalism and publication, and I’ve seen plenty of significant differences as well, from their typical content and intended audience to their visual layout and stylistic preferences (among others). But I would also link all four through one structure and form shared by most of their pieces: short-form online writing, pieces in the range of 1000 words. Having been working in that form ever since I started this blog, it has come to feel hugely familiar and comfortable to me, and so using that form for my contributions to these sites has likewise come pretty easily (while I have worked to adjust my content and voice for the different audiences in particular). But at the same time I believe it’s important for us to analyze critically even those forms that we really love, and when it comes to short-form online journalism it is unquestionably true that it cannot offer the same deep dives that long-form journalism (whether more investigative or more narrative) features. While of course the internet does include great long-form writing (this website and podcast collect and dive into some of the best examples), I think it’s fair to say that it is more geared toward shorter-form work, as illustrated by these longstanding and influential sites and most others I’ve encountered.At the same time, online journalism also offers possibilities that print journalism does not, and in my experience the most important is very straight-forward but impossible to overstate: eyeballs, readers, audiences. My first column for Talking Points Memo hit more than 110,000 discrete readers before it stopped counting; while that was an extreme case (and the site’s 4thmost-read TPM Café column of 2014), there’s no doubt in my mind that more folks saw and read each piece I published there than ever have a print article of mine. I know the arguments that “clicks” are a misleading or even destructive emphasis, and certainly have no patience for obvious clickbait. But to put it simply, every writer writes in the hopes of being read (yes, even Emily Dickinson), and that’s even more true for journalism than for creative writing (which could be said to be written first for the writer her- or himself). Finding an audience might not be our ultimate goal—for my online, public AmericanStudies writing, my hope is that my audiences will both learn from my work and set out to learn even more still—but it’s the primary one from which all others stem. Online journalism offers the chance to find such audiences more broadly and more potently than any other form of writing I’ve encountered, making it a truly groundbreaking form of 21st century mass media. Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other mass media moments or movements you’d highlight?