Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 169

May 23-24, 2020: LibraryStudying: The NYPL

[On May 23rd, 1895, the project which would become the New York Public Library was launched. So for the 125th anniversary, I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of libraries and library contexts, leading up to this special post on the NYPL!]On three famous figures who helped with the century-long creation of the modern NYPL (along with John Jacob Astor, about whose 1848 posthumous donationI wrote in Tuesday’s post):1)      Washington Irving: With the help of Astor’s donation, the city constructed the Astor Library, which opened in 1854 as a free reference library (ie, its collection did not circulate). Irving, a longtime friend of Astor’s and one of the city’s and the nation’spreeminent early 19th century literary and cultural figures, served as President of the Astor Library’s Board of Trustees from 1848 until his 1859 death. Because of Irving’s strong interest in European culture (in contrast to more American-focused voices like the members of the period’s Young America movement), the library’s collection initially tilted heavily that way, an emphasis that continued to shape the library for many decades thereafter (as illustrated by the 1931 purchase of Russian Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich’s private library). But it’s fair to say that without such a literary heavyweight, the library might never have endured at all. 2)      Samuel Tilden: In 1870, the New York State Legislature incorporated a previously independent collection, the Lenox Library, based on bibliophile James Lenox’s extensive holdings. But both the Astor and Lenox Libraries continued to struggle financially (and neither allowed their collections to circulate), and the entire system might have gone under were it not for a timely and sizeable donation from Tilden, the former NY Governor and 1876 presidential candidate. When he died in 1886, Tilden left much of his estate--$2.4 million—so that the city could “establish and maintain a free library and reading room in the city of New York.” With that help of that endowment, the city was able to plan for a merger of the Astor and Lenox Libraries, and on March 23rd, 1895 (the date for the anniversary of which this week’s series exists) a number of prominent figures announced a formal plan for “the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.” 3)      Andrew Carnegie: In order to carry out that plan, however, the NYPL needed the land and resources to create a number of new branch libraries across the city. And for that, it needed and received another, even more sizable donation, from one of the Gilded Age’s leading philanthropists (and robber barons, a contradiction about which I’ve written in this space before), Andrew Carnegie. In March 1901, Carnegie agreed to donate $5.2 million to help the NYPL construct 65 branch libraries, an act that he called in his letter to NYPL Director John S. Billings “a rare privilege.” “Sixty-five libraries at one stroke probably breaks the record,” he added, “but this is a day of big operations, and New York is soon to be the biggest of Cities.” While there’s probably a Platonic ideal version of public libraries that can exist without political and business figures like Tilden and Carnegie, the truth of such large operations is that they certainly do need significant support and resources, and all three of these figures were instrumental in providing them for the New York Public Library. Memorial Day series starts Monday,BenPS. Thoughts on the NYPL, or other libraries you’d highlight/celebrate?

May 22, 2020: LibraryStudying: Working at Libraries

[On May 23rd, 1895, the project which would become the New York Public Library was launched. So for the 125th anniversary, I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of libraries and library contexts, leading up to a special post on the NYPL!]On three moments and ways that libraries have helped immeasurably with my research and writing.1)      Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: As a Harvard undergrad, I can’t say I took nearly enough advantage of the university’s amazing library system and resources. But at least one project stands out—for the final project for a class on 20thcentury American theater, I visited Houghton Library’s acclaimed Harvard Theatre Collection, and found a stunning resource: a manuscript copy of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) which featured handwritten comments from legendary director Elia Kazan (who would be directing the play’s first production) and responses from Williams himself. As this New York Times review reflects, Kazan made certain key changes in the play that fundamentally altered its themes, and these handwritten comments revealed the evolution of this debate between two artistic titans. I won’t pretend I remember what I ended up writing/arguing about that debate, but I know it was one of the first moments when I realized the tremendous research potential of our archives and libraries.2)      Gilded Age Literature: It was with my PhD dissertation/first book that I truly took advantage of such spaces and resources. Although I was a grad student at Temple University, I wrote my diss long-distance from the Boston area, and so was able to use my Special Borrower privileges (and I know full well how much of a privilege it is) to get back into the Harvard libraries. Browsing the seemingly endless stacks of Widener Library allowed me to find two largely unknown books that became central to dissertation/book chapters: William Justin Harsha’s Native American reform novel Ploughed Under (1881); and Mary Noailles Murfree’s Civil War/Reconstruction novel Where the Battle was Fought (1884). And returning to the system’s special collections yielded another stunning manuscript that became the sole focus of my concluding chapter: a draft of George Washington Cable’s multi-generational historical novel The Grandissimes (1881) on which the author engaged in extended, impassioned discussion and debate with his editor and two readers about key questions of voice, history, race, and literature.3)      Writing in the Needham Public Library: Since that first book, certain factors (particularly a couple very cute ones, but also teaching and other professional responsibilities) have made it far more difficult for me to get into archives as part of my research. But at the same time, a particular library setting was absolutely crucial to my work on books two through four (and remained a part of the equation for five): I wrote the majority of those books (as well as many of this blog’s nearly 3000 posts to date) at the same table toward the back of the Needham Public Library. Partly that was a matter of convenience—it provided a space that was close to where the boys were in day care and then school but distinct from home, thus offering a perfect combination for my research day when I didn’t have to go into FSU. But I think most writers would agree that routine is an important part of the writing process, and this space became a familiar, comfortable, and eventually important part of my process and productivity over nearly a decade of work. One more reason to love public libraries!NYPL post this weekend,BenPS. Thoughts on this post, or other libraries you’d highlight/celebrate?

May 21, 2020: LibraryStudying: Little Free Libraries

[On May 23rd, 1895, the project which would become the New York Public Library was launched. So for the 125th anniversary, I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of libraries and library contexts, leading up to a special post on the NYPL!]On why it’s hard to criticize a recent bibliographic trend, and one way I would nonetheless.As far as my research on the intertubes reveals (always a foolproof method of information gathering, of course), no one (not even the official Little Free Library website) seems to know exactly when this trend began. I would say it was sometime in the last decade or so, anyway, that I started to notice these standing boxes of books springing up around various neighborhoods and communities, always with the message that the books were free to take but that the borrower should ideally leave a book of their own to replace the one that they were taking. To say that the concept has caught on would be to significantly understate the case: if we go by the official website’s map (which only highlights those little free libraries that have been formally registered by the “stewards” who maintain them, so likely leaves out many more boxes still), there are now thousands upon thousands of these little free libraries around the U.S. and the world.I’m a big fan of books (perhaps the least surprising clause I’ve ever written in this space), and so of course I like any concept which gets more books out into our communities and into more readers’ hands. Moreover, the official Little Free Library mission statement emphasizes goals of access and equity, of helping provide opportunities for kids (in particular) and families that might have a more difficult time getting their hands on books to do so, free of charge and 24/7. Of course public libraries (on which more in a moment) can offer similar such opportunities, but not with those unlimited hours of access, and I know that libraries in disadvantaged communities can be frustratingly underfunded (and likely will be even more so after this pandemic) and so can become less available to their residents than would be ideal. Little Free Libraries can thus be seen as complementary to public libraries, advancing the same basic goal and doing so in ways that might fill in gaps or address limitations of public libraries in our 21st century world.And yet (ah, how many paragraphs on this blog have I started with that phrase!). As I highlighted a bit in yesterday’s post, public libraries offer communal opportunities and benefits that go far beyond the opportunity for individuals and families to borrow books (fundamental as that will always be to a library’s mission). And they can likewise do so in particular and crucial ways for disadvantaged communities—offering free and accessible space for those who need somewhere to go, offering computers and internet access for those who don’t have them otherwise, providing additional programs and materials that can help with job interviews, and many more such offerings and opportunities. None of those are things that Little Free Libraries can offer, which isn’t in and of itself a criticism of them. But again, we’re in an era when public libraries are often underfunded and always (from what I can tell) battling to receive the support they need—and it seems to me that any popular, alternative form of book-borrowing risks making it seem that public libraries are less necessary or important. So at the very least, I would want us all to remember all the ways that public libraries remain vital, and that Little Free Libraries cannot and will not take their place. Last library tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this post, or other libraries you’d highlight/celebrate?

May 20, 2020: LibraryStudying: Childhood Libraries

[On May 23rd, 1895, the project which would become the New York Public Library was launched. So for the 125th anniversary, I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of libraries and library contexts, leading up to a special post on the NYPL!]On stand-out memories and moments, and their delightful echoes in my parenting life.As I approach my 43rd birthday, it’s fair to say (and of course inevitable) that childhood memories continue to become fewer, further between, and fuzzier (there seems to be a point of older age where the trend reverses and they start to become clearer than current events, but I’m apparently not there yet). So I don’t have a ton of specific such memories when it comes to Charlottesville’s two public libraries: the main branch, the evocatively named Jefferson-Madison Regional Library downtown; and the Gordon Avenue branch that’s near the University of Virginia and my first childhood home. But I do have at least two such memories that come to mind: excitedly finding a copy of the newest volume in Lloyd Alexander’s Vesper Holly series (probably 1988’s The Drackenberg Adventure ) on the shelves; and signing up for half-hours slots on the library’s one public computer (before we had our own at home, and in those pre-internet late 1980s days when computer games were about the coolest thing I’d ever seen) to play a round or two of Oregon Trail or Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?Without putting too much pressure on a couple of relatively random memories, I would say that those two do reflect two distinct but complementary and equally important roles of public libraries, for everyone but perhaps especially for kids. Reading is in many ways a profoundly individual and intimate activity, and libraries help us tap into and amplify that part of our lives, offering so many more books than even the most devoted bibliophile (and I used to walk down the halls of my high school reading a book, so guilty as charged) could ever possess in a lifetime, as well as ones we’d likely never have learned about at all without the library’s stacks. But at the same time, libraries are communal spaces, offering opportunities for connections to the world that are likewise distinct from those at home (and often unavailable there). Of course many of those opportunities are face-to-face, but over the last few decades at least as many have been virtual and digital. Carmen Sandiego might not be a real person, but damned if she (and the library that helped me connect to her) didn’t help ten-year old me explore the world nonetheless. As E.B. White knew very well, one of the complex but wonderful joys of parenting is seeing our children have experiences that parallel (and thus echo, but also diverge from in inevitable and important ways) our own childhoods, and I’ve definitely seen that with my sons and the great public libraries around which they’ve grown up. The shelves of the Needham Public Library have provided countless finds, from the next volume by favorite authors like Anthony Horowitz or Rick Riordan to unexpected treasures like the works of John Bellairs (about whose books I had almost entirely forgotten until we rediscovered them on the Needham library’s shelves). And one of my strongest memories from my first years living in Waltham(where I lived from January 2013 to August 2019, so much of the boys’ childhoods) is of the boys on the communal iPads at the Waltham Public Library, playing a Spiderman game that led to a year-long obsession with the comic book superhero and his world. There’s a lot that we can’t control about our children’s lives and stories, of course, but I’ve been very glad to be able to help make libraries an important part of where my sons’ have begun.Next library tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on these libraries, or other libraries you’d highlight/celebrate?

May 19, 2020: LibraryStudying: The Boston Public Library

[On May 23rd, 1895, the project which would become the New York Public Library was launched. So for the 125th anniversary, I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of libraries and library contexts, leading up to a special post on the NYPL!]On three distinct but interconnected influences on the development of the historic public library.1)      A French Ventriloquist: It would be difficult for me to improve on the surprise and delight offered by the following sentence from that hyperlinked BPL history, so I won’t try to do so: “In 1839, French ventriloquist Nicholas Marie Alexandre Vattemare became the original advocate for a public library in Boston when he proposed the idea of a book and prints exchange between American and French libraries.” Vattemare was apparently such a prominent and talented ventriloquist that no less a literary giant than Sir Walter Scott wrote an 1824 epigram about him, calling him “Alexandre and Co.” for his ability to conjure multiple voices. But it was through his foundational role in developing the concept of inter-library loan that Vattemare truly helped so many voices travel around the world; and while it took about a decade for his idea to take hold in Boston, it’s so pitch-perfect that a Frenchman helped create this vital American space. 2)      A New York Millionaire: While Boston luminaries like Harvard professor George Ticknorand Mayor Josiah Quincy likewise supported creating a public library, it unsurprisingly took the city’s rivalry with New York to push the concept forward. When German American businessman and real estate mogul John Jacob Astor died in March 1848, he left a significant part ($400,000) of his sizable fortune to New York City in the hopes of helping establish a public library. I’ve always had the sense that NYC doesn’t much care about what Boston does or thinks (or at least does a good job pretending not to), but it’s difficult to overstate how much the opposite is not the case: few influences drive Bostonians more consistently and thoroughly than a desire to beat New York (and not just in sports). I can’t say for sure whether Astor’s death and donation directly influenced the BPL, but I do know that the Massachusetts General Court passed the initial legislation to fund such a public library in that same month of March 1848. A fun example of that enduring Boston-NYC connection in any case!3)      The Boston Cosmopolitans: The BPL occupied a couple different locations over its first few decades: a Reading Room in a former schoolhouse on Mason Street from 1854-1858; and then beginning in 1858 a building of its own on Boylston Street. By the 1870s that building was too small for the library’s growing collection, and in 1880 the state legislature authorized the construction of a new building at the city’s prominent Copley Square. In 1887 the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, & Whitewere chosen to design the new building, and Charles McKim would work closely with sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and other artists to plan the building’s decorations. Saint-Gaudens was part of that cohort of late 19th century Bostonian and American artists and activists who came to be known as the Cosmopolitans; as I detailed in that post, it’s easy and not entirely wrong to accuse that community of elitism. But I argued there (referencing my friend Mark Rennella’s book) for the democratizing goals of much of their work and efforts, and that word certainly describes their contributions to and support for the Boston Public Library.Next library tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on the BPL, or other libraries you’d highlight/celebrate?

May 18, 2020: LibraryStudying: The Library Company of Philadelphia

[On May 23rd, 1895, the project which would become the New York Public Library was launched. So for the 125th anniversary, I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of libraries and library contexts, leading up to a special post on the NYPL!]On the groundbreaking communal library that helped democratize such spaces.Libraries seem to have been around about as long as human societies—as illustrated by the prominent and tragic case of the Egyptian Great Library of Alexandria—but it’s fair to say that for their first couple millennia they were significantly elitist in both practice and purpose. That is, it’s not just that libraries tended to be accessible only to those with the privilege necessary to access and use them (and, for much of human history, with the literacy that came along with said privilege)—I would also argue that the purpose of such libraries was precisely to reinforce and extend that privilege, indeed to help ensure that it would be passed down from generation to generation (hence the preponderance of royaland family libraries, and then their creation as part of the university systemwhich likewise functioned as another site of privilege for hundreds of years). None of that means that the texts and knowledge contained in these libraries were any less meaningful, but it’s nonetheless important to recognize the social and hierarchical roles that the spaces themselves generally played.Those roles didn’t evolve or shift toward our current, far more democratized world of public libraries in any single moment, of course—but as with any historical change, there are at the same time particular events that serve as signposts along the way. At least in American history, one of the earliest and most significant such signposts was the July 1st, 1731 founding of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Ben Franklin had been in the city for nearly a decade by this time, having first moved there from Boston in 1723 (at the age of 17), and had over the prior few years formed with other intellectually and civically inclined young men an informal discussion group (or, as he put it in his Autobiography, a “club for mutual benefit and improvement”) known as the Junto. They needed books for their pursuits, but were each of limited means and purchasing books (generally at the time from London) was prohibitively expensive. So they pooled both their existing books and their book budgets, and in the process (in a very Ben Franklin-like move) drew up formal articles to constitute this shared collection as a library. They even hired America’s first librarian, Philadelphia printer Louis Timothee, to manage that collection and its lending practices. Those practices didn’t entirely mirror how 21st century public libraries work: as detailed in the Company’s founding articles, “members” (like the founders, but also all those who sought to join subsequently) had to pay a subscription fee (40 shillings upon joining, and 10 shillings a year after that), and then were able to borrow the books for free. But of course the Company had no governmental nor public support, so this fee was necessary both to purchase books and pay the librarian. Moreover, in a piece entitled “A Short Account of the Library” and included in the Company’s 1741 catalog, Franklin notes that the collection was also accessible to non-members; when they borrowed a book they had to deposit money equal to its cost, but their money would be paid back when they returned the book, meaning that the collection was ultimately free for non-members as well. That detail makes clear that membership was intended to be practical and communal but not elitist or exclusionary, and that, like so many of Franklin’s civic-minded ideas for his adopted city, the Library Company of Philadelphia was indeed created as a groundbreaking and inspiring way to democratize books and reading. Next library tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on the Library Company, or other libraries you’d highlight/celebrate?

May 16-17, 2020: Spring 2020 Reflections

[This would be the last week of classes, if the Spring 2020 semester had gone as scheduled. To say that it didn’t is just to scratch the surface of this chaotic, crazy, challenging spring, though. So for my usual semester recaps, this time I’ve focused on brief tributes to those folks who helped us make it through this incredibly tough time, leading up to this special weekend post of my own reflections on teaching in this new world.]On three takeaways of mine from the most unprecedented teaching experience of my life.1)      Un-Grading: The first decision I made as I began to shift my classes (and, more exactly, my thinking) to this emergency distance instruction model (a phrase I greatly prefer to “online teaching,” which I have done many times and this most definitely was not) was that I would not be grading any of the remaining work. That is, if the students turned in said work, they would get full credit for it; I would still send extensive feedback, but not attached to (and thus not needing to justify) grades. Eventually FSU, like many institutions, offered that option (known as Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory here) for most students and classes, but I think it mattered a lot, to me as well as to the students, that I had made this emphasis clear and central from my first communications as we shifted gears. I get the concerns about an absence of grades, both immediate (students might not focus on the work) and long-term (what this will mean for GPAs, transcripts, future applications, etc.). But to be honest I believe those issues would have been in play for this semester no matter what, and that my decision to do away with grades greatly amplified my ability to focus entirely on items 2 and 3 in this post. 2)      What Matters Most: The second decision I made, and one that I’ve likewise seen echoed by many voices (including those in the resources from my colleague Kisha Tracy that I highlighted earlier this week), was to make many aspects of my classes optional, including some of those that are most central to my regular pedagogy (like the weekly email responses that are an integral element of just about every class I teach). This was a significantly tougher call, as it meant for example that we would have far less in-depth conversations about most of our readings (as did my concurrent decision to make our weekly Zoom check-ins much more about questions, concerns, and community than about focusing on any particular course content). But I would argue that this was the ultimate test of what I’ve always called my student-centered pedagogy: that if my fundamental emphasis is on helping students develop their voices and perspectives and ideas, rather than on any particular readings or content, I had to reflect that emphasis through my choices in a setting where we quite simply could not do all of the things my face-to-face classes seek to do. 3)      Make It Personal: One of the main such things I did still want to do was have the students complete versions of their remaining individual work: a multi-textual seminar paper in my Intro to Sci Fi/Fantasy class, their senior portfolios in English Studies Capstone, and two papers in First-Year Writing II (a comparison between two multimedia texts and a research paper). Again, these assignments wouldn’t be graded, but I wanted students to complete them, and I especially wanted them to feel meaningful rather than busy work or hoops to jump through. All of those assignments were already pretty individualized (ie, students could choose their own texts and topics), but what I tried to stress for them as clearly as I could was that they should make their work as personal as possible: connect it to ideas and issues and conversations and genres that have been and/or are significant in their own lives and identities. To put it bluntly, my most important collective academic goal for this semester—which was somewhere outside the top 10 most important goals overall—was that we all came away from it remembering the reasons why we’re in college, the value and meaning of the work we do in spaces like this. I hope in these ways that my classes offered that chance for my students, as I know it did for me.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Reflections or tributes of your own on Spring 2020?

May 15, 2020: Spring 2020 Tributes: Social Media Communities

[This would be the last week of classes, if the Spring 2020 semester had gone as scheduled. To say that it didn’t is just to scratch the surface of this chaotic, crazy, challenging spring, though. So for my usual semester recaps, this time I’ll focus on brief tributes to those folks who helped us make it through this incredibly tough time, leading up to a weekend post of my own reflections on teaching in this new world.]On the communities and conversations that kept me going as everything came to a crashing halt.On March 26th, I Tweeted out a video of me reading a brief passage from Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony (1977). My friend and frequent collaborator Matthew Teutsch had tagged me in a project to read favorite literary passages, and I chose an excerpt from perhaps my single favorite such passage of all (which I managed to find even though that novel, like most of my books, has been quarantined in my FSU office since mid-March). It was very nice to be reminded of Silko’s moving words, to get to read them aloud on a quiet solo lockdown Thursday, and most of all to have the chance to share them with my many Twitter friends and colleagues near and far (and then to do so on Facebook as well, because it felt so good to do so on Twitter!). That one moment, and the contexts in which it happened, embodies the overarching and absolutely crucial role that social media communities and conversations have played for me over the last few months. During the weeks I’ve had my sons with me, they have of course been my central focus, even more than they always would be as our home became the sole site of both education and socialization over this period. But during the alternating solo weeks (and even during most of the early mornings and late nights on our weeks together, since I generally hadn’t been able to see and certainly hadn’t interacted at length with another adult throughout those days either), it was in these online spaces that I found vital solidarity and support. From the photos and memes of Facebook and Instagram to the historical and social contextualizing of #twitterstorians and the commiserating across all three sites with faculty shifting their classes online, these social media communities have helped me feel significantly less alone in the most isolating moment of my life to date.I’m drafting this post on an early morning in late March, with no idea whether the situation will be exactly the same, even worse, or slightly better by May 15th(my money is on pretty much exactly the same). But whenever we do manage to get back to a world in which we can interact with our fellow humans in person, I hope we can bottle up the feeling of these social media solidarities and carry them forward into our new world. Over the last few years, one of the most frustrating of the many, many many many, frustrating things I’ve felt has been the sense that we (as a society and a world) are so fully divided in so many ways. Certainly this virus has highlighted and in some ways amplified those debates and divisions, of course. But I’ve seen and felt as well a sense of unity and community that reminds me of the best of us, and it has been absolutely vital for me and I hope we can all remember it in the difficult months and years to come. Special post this weekend,BenPS. Reflections or tributes of your own on Spring 2020?

May 14, 2020: Spring 2020 Tributes: Aruna Krishnamurthy and Unions

[This would be the last week of classes, if the Spring 2020 semester had gone as scheduled. To say that it didn’t is just to scratch the surface of this chaotic, crazy, challenging spring, though. So for my usual semester recaps, this time I’ll focus mostly on brief to those folks who helped us make it through this incredibly tough time, leading up to a weekend post of my own reflections on teaching in this new world.]On the union chapter president who exemplifies the need for this form of organization and collective action.Last spring, I wrote a piece for my bimonthly Saturday Evening Post Considering History column on the funding crisis facing public higher education. In the piece’s last paragraph, I highlight two proposed pieces of legislation, the Promise and Cherish Acts, through which (if they are passed, which I am hopeful will be the case) Massachusetts could begin to redress those funding gaps and failures for both higher and secondary/primary education. Those bills, and the campaign to garner support for them, have both been led by two unions: the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) and the Massachusetts State College Association (MSCA). At FSU, the MSCA Chapter President is my English Studies colleagues and friend Aruna Krishnamurthy. Aruna’s been a wonderful chapter president from the jump, but this spring she took her and the chapter’s work to a whole new level. While the first weeks of the unfolding COVID-19 crisis (in early March) are largely and will always remain a chaotic blur in my memory, one thing that stands out like the beacon it was is that it was Aruna we FSU faculty heard from most consistently and helpfully—indeed, I want to say that we got as many pieces of advice, clarification, guidance, and support from Aruna as far all other FSU folks combined in those early weeks. As I wrote in this September post, the MSCA embodies the best of academic, public, and labor unions, and I’ve never felt that more strongly—nor recognized the crucial role performed by leaders like Aruna more fully—than I did over the course of this Spring semester. Last tribute tomorrow,BenPS. Reflections or tributes of your own on Spring 2020?

May 13, 2020: Spring 2020 Tributes: Kisha Tracy and Collective Efforts

[This would be the last week of classes, if the Spring 2020 semester had gone as scheduled. To say that it didn’t is just to scratch the surface of this chaotic, crazy, challenging spring, though. So for my usual semester recaps, this time I’ll focus on brief tributes to those folks who helped us make it through this incredibly tough time, leading up to a weekend post of my own reflections on teaching in this new world.]On the crucial benefits of being in it together. Longtime AmericanStudies readers will be familiar with my colleague Kisha Tracy—from her great Guest Post, and from the other opportunities I’ve had to share and highlight her great work. As I mention in that last post, Kisha and our History colleague Kate Jewell co-directed for many years our FSU Center for Teaching & Learning; although they have handed the reins over to our Math colleague Sarah Wright, Kisha has continued to serve as a vital teaching resource and mentor to not just me but the entire FSU community. And she did so with particular potency over the last few months, assembling and curating this amazing GoogleDoc on “Transitioning to Online Teaching During COVID-19.” I mainly wanted to write this post to thank Kisha publicly for all that work, and to share that great resource, which will certainly continue to come in handy whatever our teaching, universities, and society look like over the summer and into the fall. But I also wanted to highlight this as an especially salient example of solidarity, of how much better things like “converting all my face-to-face classes to online/remote learning in a week mid-semester” go when we’re sharing our resources, experiences, ideas, perspectives, challenges, and more. I think a fair number of us (or at least this AmericanStudier) tend to approach things too often in an iconoclastic way, and there are some sides to this profession that are certainly individual and necessarily isolated. But as with most things in this world, a significant percentage of our work goes best when we remember that we’re in it together—and I don’t know anyone who models that principle better than Kisha Tracy. Next tribute tomorrow,BenPS. Reflections or tributes of your own on Spring 2020?