Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 190

September 6, 2019: Academic Labor: Further Reading

[Usually around this time I’d be sharing Fall Semester Preview posts. I’m on sabbatical, so no teaching for me this Fall; instead I thought I’d connect Labor Day to issues of academic labor this week. Leading up to a special weekend tribute post!]A handful of the many texts and sites (in no particular order) that can help us continue thinking about and advocating for issues of academic labor:1)      Contingent magazine : Well, I lied—I did make one choice about the order of these five items, and that’s to start with one that doesn’t focus in its content on issues of academic labor. Instead, what makes this new public history magazine so important is that it is dedicated to publishing the voices and work of contingent faculty, and similarly is largely edited and run by colleagues in contingent positions (which makes becoming a donorto help keep the magazine going that much more vital). Publishing as an academic is difficult in all circumstances, but it can at times be nearly impossible for adjunct faculty, and this wonderful new publication represents a direct attempt to respond to and change those realities. 2)      New Faculty Majority: As I wrote on Tuesday, adjunct unionization has begun to become a genuine possibility in many places, and I am entirely here for it. But up until recently it wasn’t really possible (and it’s still not in many other places), and in the meantime NFM has for more than a decade been offering examples of both solidarity and labor activism for adjunct and contingent faculty around the country. I know I’m asking for money a good bit in this post (not my general MO, at least), but this is another organization that can really benefit from every donation, and more exactly our most precarious colleagues can benefit from them.3)      Adjunct Nation: The Adjunct Nation website also features various forms of legal and labor advocacy and activism, but it’s also more of a journalistic and community site, one that features numerous voices engaging with topics as widespread as news coverage, book reviews, job postings, pedagogical tips and strategies, and more. To reiterate Wednesday’s post, these are the kinds of conversations and issues that every scholarly organization (and every academic institution) should be featuring and sharing as well, but it’s not either-or, and a site like Adjunct Nation offers a great deal for all faculty members.4)      James M. Lang and Josh Eyler: Academic labor isn’t just about adjunct and contingent issues, of course, and it would be dangerous to pretend that these conversations don’t affect us all in multiple key ways. One way to push back on those narratives is to read the folks who are writing most thoughtfully about academic labor, teaching and learning, and related questions, and Lang and Eyler are two of those current voices for sure (as is my FSU colleague Kisha Tracy). Voices that have a great deal to tell us about our current academy as well as overarching and longstanding topics.5)      Hua Hsu’s “The Professor and the Adjunct”: Just one review essay in one magazine (albeit one by one of our best public scholarly journalistic voices in Hsu), but a great example of both the burgeoning body of writing on adjunct and contingent labor and of the fundamental questions that can be asked and engaged through reading those works. I hope in a small way this week’s series has added something to those continued and crucial conversations. Special tribute post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think?

September 5, 2019: Academic Labor: SSN and the Promise and Cherish Acts

[Usually around this time I’d be sharing Fall Semester Preview posts. I’m on sabbatical, so no teaching for me this Fall; instead I thought I’d connect Labor Day to issues of academic labor this week. Leading up to a special weekend tribute post!]On two important pieces of proposed legislation, and how academics can get more actively involved in supporting them.I’ve been writing pieces for my Saturday Evening Post “Considering History” column every two weeks for more than a year and a half now, but one of my favorites was this one from March 2019, on both histories of public higher education in American and contemporary threats to public higher ed (with my institution of Fitchburg State University as an example for both topics). As usual I tried to end that post on a more optimistic note, and when it comes to those issues Massachusetts offers a couple particularly salient reasons for hope: the Promiseand Cherish Acts, two proposed bills in the state legislature that would redress funding inequities and disinvestments for both the secondary/primary and higher education systems in the Commonwealth. You can read more about all their details at those hyperlinks (among other places) and of course come to your own conclusions on them; for my purposes here, suffice it to say while no single law could engage all the factors in either or both of these complex trends, to my mind these represent a couple of very significant steps in increasing and equalizing educational funding in Massachusetts (and as potential models for all states).For most of my life, including much of my professional life, I would have said that the best an academic (or any private citizen) could do to support such pieces of legislation (or influence any political debate or decision) would be to take individual actions: calling a legislator’s office or if we were more ambitious meeting a legislator in person; writing a letter to the editor or if we were more fortunate getting an op ed published; and so on. Certainly there’s still value in all those actions, and I’ve taken the first one (calling a legislator) multiple times over the last few years (let’s be real, who hasn’t??). But over those same years I’ve also become part of a scholarly organization, the Scholars Strategy Network (SSN), which is dedicated to finding ways to connect scholars and their voices and work to policymakers and legislators (along with other political, organizational, and media contacts and conversations). After a few years of working with SSN as one of their Members, for the last two years I’ve served as one of the SSN Boston Chapter Co-Leaders, and in that role have been particularly focused on finding ways to connect SSN Boston and its Members to various legislative initiatives in the Commonwealth, including the Safe Communities Act and the Fight for $15 as well as the Promise and Cherish Acts. There are lots of reasons why I believe an organization like SSN is valuable for any scholar hoping to connect with and contribute to such conversations, including those elements of community and solidarity that I highlighted in yesterday’s post on other scholarly organizations (and perhaps even more so with SSN, as it’s a given that every scholar who has joined is overtly interested in making these kinds of public connections). But one of the best things about SSN is that its goals are never simply to connect scholars with policymakers (or whomever), but rather to create opportunities for scholars to share their ideas and research with those audiences. In the coming year, one of the central goals that me and my two co-leaders (Tiffany Chenault and Natasha Warikoo) have identified for SSN Boston is to create precisely such opportunities when it comes to the Promise and Cherish Acts—to find ways to connect both individual Members and the Chapter overall to not only lawmakers and political figures, but to other organizations (such as Tuesday’s subject the MSCA, for which Tiffany is the Salem State Chapter Director) who are engaged in the same fight. The scholars and research in that equation aren’t in any way limited to SSN Members or New England-area folks, so if you have work that could help in these ongoing political and social advocacies, please let me know!Last Labor week post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

September 4, 2019: Academic Labor: Scholarly Organizations as Advocates

[Usually around this time I’d be sharing Fall Semester Preview posts. I’m on sabbatical, so no teaching for me this Fall; instead I thought I’d connect Labor Day to issues of academic labor this week. Leading up to a special weekend tribute post!]On how a smaller and a larger scholarly organization can each take part in crucial conversations over academic labor.As I’ve highlighted in numerous posts across this blog’s nearly 9 (!) years of existence, two of the most consistent elements of my professional career for the last decade have been two regional scholarly organizations: the New England American Studies Association (NEASA) and the Northeast Modern Language Association(NeMLA). As scholarly organizations, both NEASA and NeMLA function first and foremost as communities through which academics can share their work and voices—both of them in their annual scholarly conferences; and NeMLA through other avenues such as its own academic journal, Modern Language Studies (MLS; currently edited by my colleague and friend Laurence Roth). Yet just as every individual academic is implicated in and affected by issues of academic labor (including but not limited to this week’s central focus, adjunctification), so too is every scholarly organization likewise linked to all those issues. And both NEASA and NeMLA offer, in distinct but complementary ways, examples of how scholarly organizations can engage with and help advance those conversations and efforts over labor issues.NEASA is a smaller organization—the largest annual conference, mine at Plimoth Plantation in 2011, featured about 120 participants; the number of active members at any given time is somewhere in that range as well—and so not one that can necessarily make any kind of national splash when it comes to issues of academic labor (or any others). But when NEASA can do, and indeed I would argue a more vital role for any academic organization than even the sharing of scholarship that I mentioned, is offer community, solidarity, and support for any and all scholars (defined as broadly as possible) who are able to be part of it. The way that NEASA has done so most consistently is through our second annual event, the Colloquium. I created the first Colloquium back in Spring 2011, but at that point it simply offered a more informal space in which folks could share their work; in the years since (and through the efforts of many other folks) it has evolved instead into an opportunity to discuss issues of the profession, of academic labor, of the humanities, and so on. The next one, upcoming at Roxbury Community College on Saturday September 21st, offers us a chance to enlarge that communal conversation to include CC faculty and students even more fully. NeMLA is a much bigger organization, which partly means that the annual conference becomes even more of a focus (our conferences average something like 1500 participants across four full days, and take a great deal of planning throughout the year from both the NeMLA staffand the Board) but also means that the organization has a more substantial platform through which to advocate for issues like those concerning academic labor. Take for example our Executive Board letter (scroll down to the May 23, 2017 news item) in response to Stony Brook University’s proposed closing of a number of academic programs, an example of the institutional retrenchment that has become all-too common and that demands collective response and engagement from all organizations. But precisely because NeMLA’s annual conference is so sizeable, the conference too can become an important platform for engaging and advocating for these kinds of issues—I was proud that at my presidential conference, in Hartford in 2016, we were able to feature a series of panels on adjunctification and academic labor, and the thread has been carried on throughout our subsequent conferences. Organizations can’t change these frustrating realities, no more than any one of us can; but they can offer both solidarity for all academics and spaces to voice these responses and advocacies, and I’m proud that both NEASA and NeMLA have done so and continue doing so.Next Labor week post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

September 3, 2019: Academic Labor: My Union

[Usually around this time I’d be sharing Fall Semester Preview posts. I’m on sabbatical, so no teaching for me this Fall; instead I thought I’d connect Labor Day to issues of academic labor this week. Leading up to a special weekend tribute post!]On formal and informal ways that the Massachusetts State College Association (MSCA) represents the best of 21st century academic labor.There’s never been a moment in my academic career when I haven’t been connected to prominent conversations and debates about academic unionization—I’m pretty sure that TUGSA, the Temple University Graduate Student Association formally incorporated as a union in 2001 while I was a grad student in English at Temple, was the first successfully created graduate student union in the country, and it was definitely one of the first in any case. While I certainly supported both TUGSA and grad student unionization more generally, and took part in many of the marches and collective actions that led to the March 2001 unionization vote, I’ll admit that I found some of the rhetoric a bit over the top: for example, I remember a conversation with a fellow English grad student who was spearheading the unionization efforts in which I noted that I didn’t think it was helpful to frame us as if we were steel workers in Pittsburgh factories or the like, to which my colleague responded that he felt we were precisely the same as steel workers in Pittsburgh factories.I still believe there’s value in differentiating distinct forms and worlds of work; but the trends of adjunctification that I highlighted in yesterday’s post, along with many others, make clear that academic labor is certainly still labor, and thus that we still need labor unions to represent and advocate for those performing said labor. Over the last couple years both my overall faculty union the MSCA and my specific Fitchburg State University Chapter (currently led by my English Studies colleague and friend Aruna Krishnamurthy) have been absolutely essential in challenging some of the most destructive 21st century trends and fighting for all FSU and Massachusetts public faculty. Most overtly, the union has helped us navigate a painfully extended and uncertain contract situation—after more than a year of collective bargaining both faculty and administrators across the MSCA system signed a contract in July 2018, only to see another year pass without that contract being funded by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Among many other effects, that precarious situation meant that FSU faculty spent pretty much all of the last two years in Work-to-Rule status, a necessary form of collective action but one that only added to feelings of uncertainty and unease across the campus. I honestly can’t imagine how any of us, individually or collectively, could have navigated those years without the presence of Aruna and all the MSCA leaders; the fight continues to be sure, but as of this past July 8 we have secured MA funding for our contract.Collective action and bargaining are key elements of any labor union’s efforts, but they’re far from the only things that unions can do or offer. In more informal but just as important ways, unions can reflect community and solidarity, both practical and philosophical links between the individuals and groups that comprise them. The possibility of adjunct unionization has become a meaningful one throughout the country, and I certainly support the formation of such unions to advocate for the distinct and specific situations and issues that contingent faculty face. But at the same time, both while those processes unfold and even after such adjunct unions are created, I believe that all faculty unions can and should represent and advocate for every type of faculty member. And at FSU, Aruna and our whole Chapter have consistently expressed precisely that perspective toward adjunct and contingent faculty on campus, not only in communications but also and most importantly in workshops, actions, and other efforts to advocate for crucial elements like health insurance. While I have been fully convinced that all faculty need union representation, I believe that the most precarious among us—which certainly includes graduate students but especially means contingent faculty—need it with a particular and potent urgency.Next Labor week post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

September 2, 2019: Academic Labor: Adjunctification

[Usually around this time I’d be sharing Fall Semester Preview posts. I’m on sabbatical, so no teaching for me this Fall; instead I thought I’d connect Labor Day to issues of academic labor this week. Leading up to a special weekend tribute post!]On the disastrous and dehumanizing trend at the heart of 21st century academia, and what to do about it.I don’t imagine it’s news to most readers of this blog that over the last couple decades, institutions of higher education in America (and I imagine around the world, but as usual on this blog I’ll focus in this post and series on America) have come to rely more and more fully on underpaid, unbenefited, too often unappreciated, always painfully precarious adjunct and contingent faculty labor. Wherever you look you can find striking statistics in support of that claim, but I would note two examples from the always reliable American Association of University Professors (AAUP): more than half of all faculty appointments are now part-time; and over 70% of all instructional appointments are non-tenure-track (meaning even if they’re not part-time, they don’t allow the instructors the chance of moving toward tenure and stability; such full-time non-tenure-track positions almost always have time limits as well, making them at best a temporary alternative to contingency). That AAUP site lays out the wide range of disastrous and destructive effects of these trends, not just for the faculty members but also for the institutions, for their students, and as a result for all Americans (since the success or failure of our education system affects us all). I would never want to argue for a hierarchy of those disastrous effects; indeed, it is precisely the combination of all of them that makes adjunctification as destructive (and short-sighted, if it even offers short-term financial benefits which that AAUP site persuasively argues it does not) as it is. But for those of us in the Humanities, one particularly horrific such effect is the dehumanization of our peers and colleagues. I don’t mean simply that adjunct faculty are generally treated as entirely interchangeable and replaceable cogs in a machine, although that is how far too many institutions and administrators (and, yes, tenure-track faculty; that piece was written by my friend and NeMLA colleague, and consistent advocate for adjunct faculty, Angela Fulk) seem to treat them. No, I mean the way that contingency consistently strips away even the most basic layers of human security, such as having a home or having enough food. Such stories of adjunct life might seem extreme, but I would argue the opposite—that they are frequent, if not indeed commonplace, reflections of an extreme system. I also refuse to give any credence to those who would argue that these faculty members should simply do something else for a living—besides being itself an inhuman response to inhuman conditions, that argument represents a destructive distraction from the core issue here: that numerous teachers are living in such conditions in 2019 America.So what can we do about this unavoidable and awful reality of 21st century higher education? The next few posts in this series will focus on my experiences with some of the ways through which particular communities, from labor unions to scholarly organizations to state legislatures, can help us collectively address and change the realities of adjunctification. But when it comes to us tenure-track or tenured faculty members, it seems to me that the first step is a simple but crucial one: to admit that luck, purely and entirely, is far and away the most important factor in our having such positions compared to our colleagues who do not. I thought about finding an article on that theme to hyperlink, but the truth is we shouldn’t need further evidence or other arguments beyond our own experiences, both of this system and of our own career. We do this because we love it, and so (even leaving aside natural human ego) it’s tempting to think that we deserve to find security and stability in this chosen life. But if we do (and I think we do), then we all do, full motherfucking stop. The fact that in 2019 only a minority of us are able to find those things, and the related fact that luck is the deciding (if not in many ways the only) factor in determining which of us do, are part of the horrific realities, and ones that each and every one of us has a responsibility to highlight and challenge.Next Labor week post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

August 31-September 1, 2019: August 2019 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]August 5: Remembering Marilyn Monroe: Her Death: On the anniversary of Monroe’s tragic death, a MonroeStudying series starts with why that tragedy has become unnecessarily controversial.August 6: Remembering Marilyn Monroe: Her American Origins: The series continues with three under-remembered, tellingly American details from Monroe’s early life and identity.August 7: Remembering Marilyn Monroe: Her Films: Three stages of Monroe’s brief but impressively multi-layered filmography, as the series rolls on.August 8: Remembering Marilyn Monroe: Her Marriages: How each of Monroe’s three marriages reflects different mid-20th century American contexts.August 9: Remembering Marilyn Monroe: “Candle in the Wind”: The series concludes with three ways Elton John’s iconic song captures key elements of Monroe in and beyond the myths.August 10: Birthday Bests: 2010-2011: My annual bday series starts with 34 favorite posts from the blog’s first year.August 11: Birthday Bests: 2011-2012: 35 favorites from year 2!August 12: Birthday Bests: 2012-2013: 36 from year 3!August 13: Birthday Bests: 2013-2014: 37 from year 4!August 14: Birthday Bests: 2014-2015: 38 from year 5!August 15: Birthday Bests: 2015-2016: 39 from year 6!August 16: Birthday Bests: 2016-2017: 40 from year 7!August 17: Birthday Bests: 2017-2018: 41 from year 8!August 18: Birthday Bests: 2018-2019: And my newest bday post, 42 favorites from this past, 9th year of AmericanStudying!August 19: Cville Influences: Proal Heartwell: For my annual post-Charlottesville series, I focused on influences from my Cville childhood, starting with my favorite teacher.August 20: Cville Influences: William Byers: The series continues with the man who taught me to swim and can teach us all about the histories of segregation and race in Cville.August 21: Cville Influences: Four More Public School Teachers: Four more wonderful Charlottesville public school teachers and influences, as the series rolls on.August 22: Cville Influences: Steve Cushman: Professional, poetic, and personal inspirations from my second favorite University of Virginia Professor.August 23: Cville Influences: Satyendra Huja: The series concludes with the quiet influences of diversity and their potently loud effects.August 24-25: Cville Influences: Bellamy Brown: The City Council campaign of a Cville peer helps me highlight how my own generation are adding our influences to the city and world.August 26: Talking We the People: Early Talks: A series on book talks for my new book starts with how I shaped the ideas through early talks at a NH discussion group, the Gardner Museum, and FSU.August 27: Talking We the People: Shirley Prison: The series continues with what was distinct about talking We the Peoplein a prison classroom, and what was inspiringly the same.August 28: Talking We the People: Needham Public Library: An amazing chance to talk about the book in the library where I wrote it (and my last three), and in front of the two young men who inspired it.August 29: Talking We the People: Toadstool Bookstore: Three inspiring individual conversations at my most recent book talk, as the series reads on.August 30: Talking We the People: Upcoming Talks: The series concludes with three upcoming talks that illustrate the breadth of spaces and audiences for which I’d love to talk We the People!Next series begins Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

August 30, 2019: Talking We the People: Upcoming Talks

[I’ve long been a fan of book talks, but since my most recent book, We the People: The 500-Year Battle over Who is American , is intended to be my most public yet, I’ve redoubled my dedication to talking about it anywhere and everywhere. Since I’m on sabbatical this fall and even more flexible, I wanted to take this week to highlight some of my prior and upcoming talks, as examples that I hope can lead to more such opportunities! I’ll travel and talk anywhere and am happy to pay my own way for the chance to share these stories and histories!]On three Fall 2019 talks that illustrate the breadth of audiences/conversations with which I’d love to share this book.1)      Boxborough Public Library: Along with independent bookstores like yesterday’s subject, the Toadstool, public libraries have been and remain one of my favorite venues for talks. I love everything about such talks, from the ethos of the institution to the consistently helpful staff to the diverse and engaged audiences, and I would do everything in my power to get to a library anywhere in the country. Currently I have one more library talk scheduled, at the Boxborough (MA) Public Library in early October, and I’m excited to share We the People there. But again, I’ll never say no to a talk at a library, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know or feel free to reach out to them directly!2)      Southgate Women’s Circle Breakfast: Reading and discussion groups, like the New Hampshire one I highlighted in Monday’s post, offer a distinct kind of audience and conversation from most other spaces and talks, and I’d love to find ways to connect the book to more such groups and communities. I had the chance to speak at the Women’s Circle Breakfast a year and a half ago, and am excited to be returning to talk with this group once more, this time about connections between We the People and competing forms/visions of patriotism in America (likely the subject of my next book, for more on which watch this space!). I’ll say again, if you are part of or know of other reading/discussion groups for which you think We the People or related topics might be of interest, please feel free to pass those along!3)      The Lillian E. Smith Center: Academic and educational settings and institutions will likely always remain a central destination for my talks, and rightly so—way back in the intro to my third book I called public scholarship a form of education, and I continue to believe that the two modes of inquiry and discussion are deeply intertwined. I’ve got a few academic talks in the works for the fall, but one that’s definitely on the schedule is my contribution to the Smith Center’s Symposium. My online friend (and soon to be in-person friend, finally!) Matthew Teutschis the Smith Center’s new Director, and that’s just one more reason I’m beyond for the chance to learn more about Smith and her works, take part in this Symposium, and share my ideas of exclusion and inclusion as part of that conversation. Just one of the many reasons I’m very stoked for a fall full of book talks!August Recap this weekend,BenPS. Ideas or suggestions for future talks, in-person or online? I’d love to hear them!

August 29, 2019: Talking We the People: Toadstool Bookstore

[I’ve long been a fan of book talks, but since my most recent book, We the People: The 500-Year Battle over Who is American , is intended to be my most public yet, I’ve redoubled my dedication to talking about it anywhere and everywhere. Since I’m on sabbatical this fall and even more flexible, I wanted to take this week to highlight some of my prior and upcoming talks, as examples that I hope can lead to more such opportunities! I’ll travel and talk anywhere and am happy to pay my own way for the chance to share these stories and histories!]On three distinct, equally inspiring conversations I experienced at my most recent book talk.1)      An Early Engagement: As is my wont, I arrived significantly early at Peterborough’s wonderful Toadstool Bookstore for my talk this past Saturday afternoon. That perpetual earliness is both a blessing and a curse, but this time it was certainly more of the former, as my seat next to the display of my book and talk info meant that I was able to sell a couple copies before the talk began. That was much appreciated, but I appreciated even more my conversations with those potential readers, and especially one with a young man who is considering writing his own book (on why, contrary to popular stereotypes, millennials will save the US and the world). The conversation about writing, publishing, and many related topics offered an excellent reminder that the community of writers (past, present, and potential) is another vital form of solidarity for my work, and got the whole event off to a really inspiring start. 2)      A Cultural Context: The Q&A/discussion after the talk was, as has been the case with just about every talk I’ve ever given, the best part, as each and every audience member had an interesting perspective to add into the mix. But I was especially struck by the perspective of a woman who at a young age moved to the mainland from Puerto Rico, and was able to offer an analysis of the exclusionary definition of America from the point of view of someone (and a family and community/culture behind her) who has become part of the nation in every meaningful sense, yet still felt and feels that sense of separation. I’ve written in this space about the song “America” from the musical West Side Story, and how much it captures that insider-outsider dynamics when it comes to the Puerto Rican American community. But this audience member offered a far more personal, intimate, and thoughtful perspective on those questions, and I’ll carry that perspective with me in all future discussions of the book.3)      A Present Problem: As I imagine will be the case at pretty much all my book talks, our conversation—before, during, and after the talk—was never too far removed from current events, and particularly from (to quote the title of my book’s Conclusion) “The Battle in the Age of Trump.” There’s a valuable therapeutic quality to such conversation to be sure, a sense of solidarity that is part of why I love giving talks and engaging audiences of all types; but I find that such collective connections of historical/scholarly topics to current events can also genuinely model practical ways to engage our present problems. I felt both those effects at many moments during this talk, but never more so than in my one-on-one conversations with John Willis, a retired professor and Peterborough resident who came to the talk wearing a “Make Racism Wrong Again” hat and a “Black Lives Matter” pin, and whose thoughtful historical and contemporary ideas more than bore out those adornments. As this series has consistently illustrated, my talks are always as much about the perspectives I hear as those I share, and John, like all the folks at the Toadstool, exemplified that inspiring balance.Upcoming book talks tomorrow,BenPS. Ideas or suggestions for future talks, in-person or online? I’d love to hear them!

August 28, 2019: Talking We the People: Needham Public Library

[I’ve long been a fan of book talks, but since my most recent book, We the People: The 500-Year Battle over Who is American , is intended to be my most public yet, I’ve redoubled my dedication to talking about it anywhere and everywhere. Since I’m on sabbatical this fall and even more flexible, I wanted to take this week to highlight some of my prior and upcoming talks, as examples that I hope can lead to more such opportunities! I’ll travel and talk anywhere and am happy to pay my own way for the chance to share these stories and histories!]On two ways in which a particularly special setting helped reframe my book.Libraries have been (after academic spaces) the second most common setting for books talks of mine (and I’m up for journeying to any library, in New England or beyond, to give book talks this fall), from the Him Mark Lai Branch of the San Francisco Public Library to my longtime hometown Waltham’s Public Library and many others in between, but there was still something unique about giving a talk at the Needham Free Public Library. Starting with my second book, and carrying right on through We the People, significant portions of all my book projects (and this blog, and my grading, and most other aspects of my professional life over the last decade-plus) have been completed in that library; and since I’ve just moved back to Needham this summer, to an apartment literally steps away from the library, I’m pretty sure my ongoing work will happen in that space quite frequently as well. Change has been a constant over my last decade, as I suppose it is for all of us in various ways, but the Needham library has provided a consistent home base throughout that period, and it was wonderful to have the chance to give a book talk there.That’s not just about good feelings, either—giving a talk there produced some compelling effects when it comes to my ongoing thinking about We the People. More exactly, talking about this book in the space where I also wrote each of my prior three books pushed me to consider the interconnections between these projects more than I had previously been able to do. That’s straightforward enough when it comes to the Chinese Exclusion Act book, since I have a chapter in We the People on that era and on inclusive Chinese American responses to it. But I likewise thought about connections to fourth and second books: with the most recent, History and Hope in American Literature , I thought about how that project’s lens of “critical patriotism” applies not only to most of my inclusive figures and stories, but also to what I’m trying to accomplish with this book itself; and with Redefining American Identity , I realized that I’ve been thinking about competing definitions of America for about the last decade, and that We the People is thus not just the culmination (I hope and believe) of my moves toward public scholarly writing, but also of that long period of engagement with questions of national definition.None of that, of course, has been the most defining personal experience of mine over the last decade-plus: that would be my sons, now 13 and 12 years old. And thanks to their Mom being kind enough not only to attend this talk but to bring the boys as well, I had the chance to share a book talk with them for the first time in this special space. I can’t lie, their repeated “Dad, you’re god-tier!” after the talk was definitely the best feedback I’ve ever gotten. But they were a genuinely attentive audience, and that was the really significant thing about this very neat aspect of the talk—that it forced me to think about how I wanted to present my focal histories and stories to a teen/pre-teen audience, how the talk and its topics might connect with them without losing its possible connections to the other (all adult) audience members. I’ve talked with their elementary school classes before, but this was quite distinct, an opportunity to think about differentiating my talk across multiple audiences ages, about how to make clear the stakes and significance of these topics for all those different cohorts. One more very exciting side to a unique and special book talk.Next book talk tomorrow,BenPS. Ideas or suggestions for future talks, in-person or online? I’d love to hear them!

August 27, 2019: Talking We the People: Shirley Prison

[I’ve long been a fan of book talks, but since my most recent book, We the People: The 500-Year Battle over Who is American , is intended to be my most public yet, I’ve redoubled my dedication to talking about it anywhere and everywhere. Since I’m on sabbatical this fall and even more flexible, I wanted to take this week to highlight some of my prior and upcoming talks, as examples that I hope can lead to more such opportunities! I’ll travel and talk anywhere and am happy to pay my own way for the chance to share these stories and histories!]On what’s different about a book talk for a prison class, and what’s importantly not.In one of my earliest, November 2010 blog posts I highlighted the inspiring teaching that my colleague and friend Ian Williamswas doing (alongside FSU students he brought with him) in Massachusetts prisons; while I didn’t say it there in so many words, clearly I felt that I should find a way to enter those all-too-forgotten and important pedagogical and social spaces as well. I’m ashamed to admit that it took me almost eight years to achieve that goal, but this past fall, thanks to my friend and colleague Kate Smith who has been teaching in the MA prison system for a good while, I was able to talk about immigration with a class of hers at Gardner’s North Central Correctional Institution. The experience was such a positive one (for me for sure, and it seems for the students as well) that we found a way to do it again in the spring, this time at MCI-Shirley and this time focused specifically on the ideas, histories, and stories at the heart of We the People. To one degree or another I try to connect every book talk (and every talk period) with the specific audience and setting for which I’m giving it, but I felt the need to do that even more strongly in this setting—in large part because this is a community that in so many of our collective conversations receive either no or entirely negative attention and focus. And that was precisely where I chose to begin this talk: by noting that “exclusion and inclusion” as concepts connect to all Americans in one way or another; and by using as an example the ways in which incarcerated Americans are so easily and often excluded from our sense of civic society. I highlighted in particular how many states do not allow convicted felons to vote—virtually all states do not allow them to do so while they are incarcerated (Maine and Vermont are the only current exceptions); and many continue denying them this fundamental right after their release. For a long time we did not even publicly debate those exclusions (Florida’s landmark 2018 Amendment 4 has helped change that, although it is receiving continued exclusionary pushback), which truly reflects how deeply engrained the exclusion of incarcerated Americans from this key civic practice has been.I don’t know that I would have made that connection without the need to do so for this particular audience and setting, and that’s a small but telling corollary reason to continue finding ways to be part of these classes (for book talks or otherwise). But when it came to the Q&A/discussion after my talk, I would make precisely the opposite point: that conversation did not feel distinct or specific at all, but rather like the best versions of such discussions I’ve experienced at any talks and with any audiences (especially with adult learning communities like the ones I highlighted in yesterday’s post). I hope that doesn’t sound condescending—I’m not suggesting that incarcerated Americans are fundamentally any different from all Americans; but am rather noting that they are generally denied access to things like the internet and many texts/materials, restrictions which you might think would limit where and how such conversations might develop. But my experience in Shirley was, again, exactly the opposite—the questions and responses challenged and extended and deepened my ideas, and I took as much away from this talk as I have from any book talk, with this project and overall.Next book talk tomorrow,BenPS. Ideas or suggestions for future talks, in-person or online? I’d love to hear them!