Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 191

August 26, 2019: Talking We the People: Early 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 distinct, complementary early audiences with whom I developed the book’s ideas and arguments.1)      A New Hampshire reading group: As I highlighted in that post, the first public space in which I talked about the concepts of exclusion and inclusion which would become the core of We the Peoplewas the restaurant in Jaffrey’s Monadnock Inn, where a group of adult learners were holding their monthly reading/discussion group. Adult learning programs and related conversations (such as the Women’s Circle Breakfasts at the Southgate community) have become one of the most consistent settings for my public American Studies scholarship and teaching, and for good reason—no audiences provide more thoughtful, careful, experienced, challenging perspective and responses than these, and no conversations have better modeled for me the kinds of dialogues I hope to help create and participate in everywhere. There’s no adult learning space or discussion group I wouldn’t be happy to join to talk more about We the People!2)      The Gardner Museum: A few months later, as I discussed in that post, I continued to develop my ideas at this wonderful historical and cultural museum in Gardner, Massachusetts. Ever since my phenomenal fall 2013 experience talking about my Chinese Exclusion Act book at New York’s Museum of the Chinese in America (MOCA), I’ve been trying to find more such museums and historic/cultural sites in which to share my work and thoughts. One such possibility for this book is the American Writers Museum in Chicago (for which I served as a scholarly advisor for many years while it was in development), and I’ll keep you all posted if that possibility develops as I very much hope it will. But in any case, I’m open to any and all other suggestions for museum and sites, as they provide an ideal backdrop and context for discussing these histories and stories.3)      Fitchburg State University’s Harrod Lecture: Building on those and other early talks, the ideas for We the People came together most fully in an academic setting, my February 2018 talk in FSU’s Harrod Lecture series. I’ve given more book talks in academic settings (both as separate lectures and to particular classes) than for any other audience, and for good reason—as I argue in the Introduction to that aforementioned Chinese Exclusion Act book, public scholarship is very parallel to teaching in its ideal forms, and my own ideas (including these) have developed in and through my teaching in central and crucial ways. So at the risk of repeating myself, there are literally no academic spaces, settings, or classes in which I wouldn’t be willing and happy to come share We the People and its histories and stories.Next book talk tomorrow,BenPS. Ideas or suggestions for future talks, in-person or online? I’d love to hear them!

August 24-25, 2019: Cville Influences: Bellamy Brown

[For this year’s annual post-Charlottesville-trip series, I wanted to share tributes to various folks who were important influences during my Cville years. Leading up to this special weekend post on a peer of mine who’s aiming to become a Cville influence in 2019!]On the 2019 political campaign of a Cville peer.As a kid growing up in Charlottesville, I can’t say I ever gave any thought to the City Council or its members (not surprisingly I suppose, given that I was just a kid and one without any particular political ambitions). But in recent years, thanks largely to the ongoing controversies over the city’s Confederate statues, the City Council has become a focal and famous topic of conversation and debate. Particular Council members like Wes Bellamy and Kristen Szakos have become nationally known figures, linked not just to the statue debates but also to related and equally fraught issues like insiders/outsiders, Cville products vs. “carpetbaggers” (yes, I have seen that exact Reconstruction-era term applied to non-Cville-born Council members like Szakos), race and representation, personal scandals, and more. In 2019, it’s difficult to imagine that any person with ties to Charlottesville—those of us who no longer live there just as much as those who do—doesn’t have some perspective on the Cville City Counil.Having a perspective is one thing, but running for Council is a whole ‘nother level, and that’s what my Charlottesville High School classmate (and current Facebook friend, in interests of full disclosure) Bellamy Brown is doing. A former Marine and current local businessman, Brown is running as an Independent, focusing so far on a couple of key messages: an emphasis on Cville’s African American community, representation, and related issues (which Brown argues both political parties have largely ignored or failed to address); and an attempt to move beyond partisan politics and focus on practical goals and efforts that will benefit not just particular communities like that one, but all the city’s residents. Hopefully I’m not misrepresenting Brown’s platform, about which he has a lot more to say in the above hyperlinked interview and which I’m sure will continue to develop and evolve ahead of the November 5th General Election.I’m not writing this post either to endorse Brown’s candidacy or to oppose it; obviously this blog has in recent years come to include contemporary politics more fully than it did back in 2010, but that’s still a bridge significantly further than I’m willing to go in this space. Instead, I wanted to highlight Brown’s campaign as one more way that my Cville cohort have become hugely influential in a number of social and cultural arenas. Besides the authors highlighted in that Beach Reads series, my peer group/class alone features prominent musicians and musical artists and performers, an up-and-coming cider brewer, and a well-known advocate for sustainability and post-carbon human society, among many others. If I was influenced throughout my young life by all the figures I’ve highlighted in this week’s series (and many more besides), as an adult I find myself influenced and inspired instead by my peers, from my Cville cohort and from around the nation and world. Brown’s City Council bid is one more impressive way that we’ve become the 21st century influencers we are.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Influential people you’d highlight?

August 23, 2019: Cville Influences: Satyendra Huja

[For this year’s annual post-Charlottesville-trip series, I wanted to share tributes to various folks who were important influences during my Cville years. Leading up to a special weekend post on a peer of mine who’s aiming to become a Cville influence in 2019!]On the quiet influence of diversity, and its potently loud effects.As I noted in this post on another influential Cville figure, Dave Matthews, the Charlottesville in which I grew up in the late 1970s and 1980s was in terms of ethnicity/culture a relatively non-diverse place. Certainly there were sizable white and African American populations, but beyond those two communities there were very few other visible cultures, or at least very small numbers of inhabitants from those cultures. The city’s culinary landscape offers one overt illustration of that demography—I remember distinctly when the first authentically Mexican(rather than the Tex-Mex of my childhood favorite, La Hacienda) restaurant opened in the late 1980s (or perhaps early 1990s; “distinctly” is still somewhat fuzzy when it comes to my 40-something brain, natch); and likewise remember the one and only (as far as I know) Asian restaurant throughout that era, a Szechuan Chinese restaurant of course. Similarly, while my classes and grades at school were generally evenly divided between white and African American students, I can remember only one or two Hispanic or Asian American peers from throughout my time in the Charlottesville Public Schools.One exception to that overall trend, particularly when it came to communal visibility, was Satyendra Huja, a Sikh American immigrant from India (and then a US citizen, as he was naturalized in a July 4, 1987 ceremony at Monticello) who throughout my childhood was Charlottesville’s Director of City Planning and Community Development (before becoming a two-term City Council member and then the city’s Mayor in the early 2000s). I can remember two particular childhood encounters with Mr. Huja—one when I had to interview him as part of a school project on some aspect of Charlottesville’s development; and one when he was simply riding in the same City Hall parking garage elevator with me and my parents. Interestingly, it’s the latter encounter that stands out much more sharply in my memory, I believe because we did not speak and so the encounter emphasized an element of Mr. Huja’s visual identity: he was the only Charlottesville resident I had ever seen (or to my recollection would ever see throughout my childhood) wearing a turban. I don’t want to overstate the significance of that single encounter, not for me (it’s not as if I thought much about it, then or since, until thinking back in order to write this post) and of course not for Mr. Huja (for whom it was just an elevator ride, likely one of many on that day as most days for a city employee). But I suppose that’s really my point—diversity in a community isn’t mostly about dramatic scenes or grand gestures, but about the day to day experience of living around and with distinct cultures and communities from one’s own and from whatever the mainstream/majority is in that place. To take this to a much darker place for a moment, I can’t imagine that the horrific series of hate crimes targeting Sikh Americans that we’ve seen in the last few years would have taken place if more Americans grew up around Sikh individuals and communities, recognized them (in every sense) as part of their own communities and worlds. Speaking for myself, anyway, that simple but crucial aspect of presence made Mr. Huja a very influential Cville community member indeed.Special post this weekend,BenPS. Influential people you’d highlight?

August 22, 2019: Cville Influences: Steve Cushman

[For this year’s annual post-Charlottesville-trip series, I wanted to share tributes to various folks who were important influences during my Cville years. Leading up to a special weekend post on a peer of mine who’s aiming to become a Cville influence in 2019!]On three reasons why I’ve been inspired by my second favorite Professor Stevefrom the University of Virginia (he’ll understand that ranking):1)      His Scholarship: In October 2014 Steve published two books, one a scholarly monograph and one a collection of poetry (on which more in a moment). That stunning productivity alone, emblematic of Steve’s continued writing and publishing throughout his career, has been and remains an inspiration to me to be sure. But the scholarly book, Belligerent Muse: Five Northern Writers and How They Shaped Our Understanding of the Civil War, is also on its own terms (as I argued in that hyperlinked post) a deeply impressive work of interdisciplinary, public American Studies scholarship, an engagement with literature and history, collective and Civil War Memory, and why literature matters. That it was produced by a childhood family friend only makes it that much more influential, as I know well the life balance, the evolving perspective, the sense of humor, the humanity behind the scholar who wrote this great book.2)      His Poetry: In the same month that he published Belligerent Muse Steve also published his fifth poetry collection, The Red List . Taking its title from the list of endangered species, Steve’s collection (or book-length poem) offers a biting, elegiac, angry, impassioned jeremiad on the changes and threats all around us, while at the same time recognizing that “There aren’t any jobs for more Jeremiahs.” Like all of Steve’s poetry, this book really captures the voice and perspective I grew up around, while at the same time that seemingly conversational or casual style masks what I believe is a highly sophisticated structure and form. I haven’t done much creative writing since early college, but that combination of voice and structure, of a conversational style and a rigorous form, is something I strive for in all of my writing, here and everywhere else, and another way that Steve has been inspiring to me.3)      His Home: Longtime family friends are their own special kind of influence of course, and while it’s very cool that Steve was able to model these aspects of my professional career, the truth is that as family friends he and his wife Sandy were even more directly influential to a young AmericanStudier. That’s especially true of their home, in the country outside of Charlottesville (on the incredibly evocatively named Lonesome Mountain Rd.); I have multiple distinct memories of visits to that home, of long walks with our dogs in nearby fields, of warm dinners together. An under-appreciated set of childhood lessons have to do with learning how to be social in genuine ways, to be yourself among friends, and the Cushman home was one main place where I observed and practiced that important life skill.Last Cville influence tomorrow,BenPS. Influential people you’d highlight?

August 21, 2019: Cville Influences: Four More Public School Teachers

[For this year’s annual post-Charlottesville-trip series, I wanted to share tributes to various folks who were important influences during my Cville years. Leading up to a special weekend post on a peer of mine who’s aiming to become a Cville influence in 2019!]Before I move on to two other influential figures, four more teachers who made my experience in the Cville Public Schools so much better:
1)      Mr. Hickerson and Bruce: My 8th grade English teacher, Mr. Alan Hickerson, runs a very close second to Monday’s subject, Mr. Heartwell, as the most inspiring and impressive teacher of my pre-college years. The whole of that year with him was hugely meaningful for me, but if I had to highlight one moment, it’d be a couple classes when he had us bring in and analyze songs of our choosing. My choice was Bruce’s “The River,” then and now probably my favorite single song of Bruce’s (although “American Skin (41 Shots)” always gives it a run for its money), and the resulting discussion, and especially my attempt to articulate why I read the end of the song (and thus its whole arc and story and meaning) in the way that I did, was a transformative moment for me for sure.
2)      Ms. Vandever, Ms. Wilroy, and Pop Quiz: I think it’s fair to say that feeling like a true part of a community can be tough for any high school student, and that it’s tougher still for those (like us nerds) who are decidedly uncool. Starting in my sophomore year of high school, I was very fortunate to find precisely such a nerdy community in our school’s Pop Quiz team, run by two wonderful English teachers, Ms. Patricia Vandever and Ms. Ivy Wilroy (now Caravati). I loved my teammates, our many competitions and trips (as far as Duke University and Washington, DC, among others), and, yes, our not-infrequent victories. But a great deal of what made Pop Quiz so special was the commitment and effort put in, and the atmosphere created, by these two teachers who gave so freely of their time and energy. To this day a number of my best childhood memories came from this community that they created.
3)      Ms. Perkins and Tutoring: In my senior year of high school, I was one of five students who were eligible for and chose to take a class in Multivariable Calculus. Because it was such a small cohort, our young and very enthusiastic and cool (in the best sense) teacher, Ms. Terri Perkins, made the class very much about our individual identities and perspectives, including a creative assignment for which I made a Choose Your Own Adventure math book that I still remember very fondly. But by far the most meaningful feature was a unit in which each of us worked with one student from a more remedial math class to help him or her pass a standardized test that they needed in order to move to their next year’s class; I know I had tutored before in one context or another, but I remember those couple of weeks, and even particular choices of mine (that did work, that didn’t) and exchanges between us, much more fully and specifically. My tutoree passed, and I don’t think I had a prouder or happier moment in high school.Next Cville influence tomorrow,BenPS. Influential people you’d highlight?

August 20, 2019: Cville Influences: William Byers

[For this year’s annual post-Charlottesville-trip series, I wanted to share tributes to various folks who were important influences during my Cville years. Leading up to a special weekend post on a peer of mine who’s aiming to become a Cville influence in 2019!]On one of the most insidious sites of American segregation, past and present, and the Cville influence who reveals its true ridiculousness.I learned to swim in the Charlottesville Public Schools, at the intimidating, demanding, impressive, and inspiring hands of one Mr. Williams Byers. A big African American man with a shaved head and booming voice, Mr. Byers was definitely scary to this young 7 year old AmericanStudier; I can still remember how, if I came out of the locker room with even mildly wet hair, he would wrap my head in a towel and dry so vigorously I thought my head might come clean off. But he was also incredibly good at his job; not only at teaching young kids to swim, but also at lifeguarding: he had been struck by lightning at least a few different times while trying to get the last swimmers out of a pool as a thunderstorm arrived. And he could be tender and caring as well, both in his lessons and when the unexpected occurred—it was while at a lesson with Mr. Byers that we watched the Challenger explosion, and I distinctly remember his calming presence in that terrible moment.Thanks to Mr. Byers, my memories of that tragic historical moment are a bit less traumatic than they might otherwise have been. But thanks to a more long-term and just as tragic American history, Mr. Byers wouldn’t have been welcome at—wouldn’t have been allowed entrance into—many of the swimming pools in his (and my) hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia. De jure racial segregation endured in Charlottesville as long as it did anywhere in the South; the public schools only gave in and desegregated in the late 1950s, nearly 5 years after Brown v. Board of Education (and after closing for a year in a last-ditch effort to avoid having to desegregate). continued for far longer still, as illustrated by the city’s swimming pools in the early 1980s of my childhood—most of the private pools and clubs prohibited African American members or visitors, making the city’s public pools almost entirely and exclusively African American as a result. Even where the segregation was not so overt, it tended to follow this overarching trend—my family’s pool, Fry’s Spring Beach Club, had desegregated in 1968, but in my memories it was still almost entirely white (despite being located near predominantly African American neighborhoods).We like to think that such de facto segregation is a thing of the past in America, but quite simply that’s not the case—as recent controversies involving proms, neighborhood covenants, and, yes, swimming pools amply demonstrate. But even where segregation is no longer either the law or the rule—and that’s most American places, of course—its potent legacies linger. As documented in this NPR interview and the book to which it connects, the history of race and swimming pools has produced a number of complex and ongoing effects—including the striking statistic that more than 50% of African American schoolchildren are not able to swim. Which is to say, not only would Mr. Byers have not been allowed to practice his craft at many of the pools in our shared hometown, but his lessons would also have been far less likely to make it to his young African American brethren. That’s not a history that we Americans much like to think about—but both for its own sake and for its present ramifications it’s vitally important that we do so.Next Cville influence tomorrow,BenPS. Influential people you’d highlight?

August 19, 2019: Cville Influences: Proal Heartwell

[For this year’s annual post-Charlottesville-trip series, I wanted to share tributes to various folks who were important influences during my Cville years. Leading up to a special weekend post on a peer of mine who’s aiming to become a Cville influence in 2019!][NB. This post is a repeat, and I have indeed been able to share it with Mr. Heartwell and see him in recent years!]On the challenging and vital art of getting through.
I like to say that I gave some thought to teaching high school English before settling on grad school and college teaching, and that’s not untrue, but the bottom line—and I’ve always known it at some level—is that I knew I couldn’t get through a career teaching at the high school level. In my admittedly individual and limited experiences (in public schools, which are the only ones I can speak to), many of those English teachers who had made it to retirement age in that demanding and under-appreciated and –paid profession did so by shutting down in significant ways, by dulling their love of the subject or their desire to connect with their students on a day to day basis or similar core aspects of what we do. I’ll never forget my junior year American lit teacher, for example, who, realizing that we didn’t have time to read Melville’s Billy Budd as planned, told us we would watch the movie instead—and then, when we ran out of time for even that, just spent five minutes telling us the entire plot and ended by saying, “That’ll do.” The really passionate and committed and innovative English teachers, on the other hand, the ones who clearly couldn’t do their job without staying in the room every day and in every way, seemed to burn out very young and leave the profession.
As I saw it then and as I have heard from friends and grad students who teach in the public schools up here, there are plenty of practical and administrative reasons for that trend—requirements from the school system and the state (and now standardized testing and outside agencies), the difficulties and dangers of assigning works that might be controversial or anger parents or fall outside of certain boundaries, the need to do things like grammar and vocabulary in ways that might have nothing to do with one’s own pedagogical ideas and goals, and many others—, but if I had to identify one overarching factor, it’d be the difficulty of getting through to the students themselves. If and when I complain about trying to get my students to read or be interested in what we’re doing, I try to remember how much more difficult it would be with 15 year olds, kids who aren’t paying to be there and didn’t in any sense choose to be and have everything going on that 15 year olds do and often think it’s nerdy and horrible to show any interest in a class text or topic and etc. And when thinking about that doesn’t make me feel any more inspired, I remember that getting through to those kids—to any class—is difficult but not impossible, remember a soft-spoken man with a Southern accent and an abiding love for Faulkner and singer-songwriters and the Black Mountain poets, remember maybe the most pitch-perfect, Robin Williams-movie-like name of any teacher I’ve ever had: Mr. Heartwell.
I had Proal Heartwell for two classes—AP English and Advanced Composition—in my senior year of high school, a time when you’d think, when I thought, that my love for reading and writing was already pretty fully developed (I had, after all, signed up for AP English and Advanced Composition). But Mr. Heartwell proved us both wrong, on an almost daily basis, and in more ways than I can possibly detail here. The first thing in the morning journal free writes set to music that each of us got to bring in and share with our classmates; the unit on close reading song lyrics of our choice (as a sneaky way to get us analyzing poetry) that I have shamelessly cribbed for my own Writing I syllabus; the dense and difficult texts (from As I Lay Dying to multiple Shakespeare plays to, yeah, the Black Mountain Poets) that he found ways to get us to open up for ourselves, to feel as if we were making them alive and new; the cassette tape with more than an hour of feedback that he gave each of us for our short stories; the poetry reading he organized for us and emceed at a downtown book store. I don’t think I remember with any real specificity or vividness any one assignment or unit from any other high school class—most of my high school memories are of that time I should have asked her to dance, that humiliating day at lunch, and, y’know, that other 15-year old kind of stuff—but I remember all of those from Mr. Heartwell’s classes, and many more besides. Would I have majored in History and Literature in college, written a thesis on historical fiction and American culture, gone to grad school for a PhD in English, published my first article on Faulkner, if I didn’t take those classes with Mr. Heartwell? Maybe. But I’m not sure I would have gotten through senior year and high school without him, and I know I wouldn’t be the teacher and reader and writer and person I am.
I don’t think I ever quite told Mr. Heartwell any of this—no final scene with all of us standing on our desks in this movie, at least in part because luckily no one forced Mr. Heartwell out; he did leave at a later point to found an innovative middle school for girls, inspired I believe by his own daughter. But I have to believe that he already knows how much he was getting through to us, how much he got through the obstacles and requirements and got right to the core of what makes teaching and literature and reading and writing alive and vibrant, meaningful and valuable. Next Cville influence tomorrow,BenPS. Influential people you’d highlight?

August 18, 2019: Birthday Bests: 2018-2019

[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier discovers the meaning of life; well, I turn 42, anyway. So as I do each year, here’s a series sharing some of my favorite posts from each year on the blog, leading up to a new post with 42 favorites from the last year. And as ever, you couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]Here they are, 42 favorite posts from the past year on the blog:1)      Cville a Year Later: I don’t imagine I’ll ever visit Cville without thinking about 2017, but last year was particularly poignant, and I tried to capture some of those thoughts in this post.2)      21stCentury Massacres and Hate Crimes: While I hope always to do justice to the distinct histories on which many of my posts focus, I’ve become increasingly insistent on connecting to our contemporary moment as well. I hope I did so compellingly here.3)      Mass Protest Studying: The Whiskey Rebellion: Some of my favorite posts are those where I know only the topic when I start, and have no idea where that topic might take me. This was one of those!4)      Tina Powell’s Guest Post on Refugee Literatures: Guest Posts remain one of my favorite parts of the blog, and this was a particularly salient one.5)      American Gay Studies: The Society for Human Rights: I could tell you that I already knew about, indeed had heard of at all, America’s first, 1920s gay rights organization—but I’d never lie to you like that, fellow AmericanStudiers.6)      Akeia Benard’s Guest Post on the New Bedford Whaling Museum: It’s been awesome to watch my friend Akeia move into her role as the Whaling Museum’s Curator of Social History, and it was just as awesome to get some of her thoughts on that work here.7)      Video Game Studying: Doom: This whole series was super fun to research and write, and this particular post brought me right back to late nights in my college dorm room.8)      GhostStudying: Haunted Sites: Do I really need to sell a Halloween post on haunted historic sites around the US???9)      Major Midterms: 1874: Another post where I learned so much, and which really pushed me to rethink narratives of 1876 and the end of Federal Reconstruction.10)   Finally, a Book Update!: On a professional level, the publication of my fifth and most public book has been by far the best thing about this past year. Still looking for any and all opportunities to talk about it this fall!11)   GettysburgStudying: Board Games: It’s always fun to revisit our childhoods and see what our analytical lenses can help us understand—and, yes, nostalgically nerd out about historical board games.12)   Pearl Harbor Histories: The Varsity Victory Volunteers: The VVV are one of my favorite stories I learned for my book, and it was great to get to share a bit of that story here.13)   Revolutionary Writings: The Crisis: I love when my teaching informs my blog and vice versa, and both directions are part of this post on Tom Paine’s pamphlet.14)   The Year in Review: Electing America: Our current political climate continues to cause much despair, but figures like Veronica Escobar, Jahana Hayes, and Deb Haaland give me reasons to hope.15)   2019 Anniversaries: President Grant: Nuance is hard, all the time and doubly so in such a heated moment as ours. But I keep striving for it, as I hope this post exemplifies.16)   2019 Predictions: I also strive more these days, as I said above, to connect this blog to right now. Not sure yet whether I did so accurately here, but it was fun to try!17)   Cuban American Literature: I enjoyed writing this whole Cuban American series, but engaging with three wonderful recent literary texts made for a particularly fun endpoint.18)   Crowd-sourced Af Am Life Writing: It had been too long since I got to share a crowd-sourced post, and as always my fellow AmericanStudiers had a lot of great responses & ideas!19)   Great (Sports) Debates: LeBron or Michael?: As my sons get older, conversations with them make their way onto the blog a lot more often. This was one of those times!20)   The Philippine American War: War or Insurrection?: So many huge and crucial American histories remain entirely unremembered in our collective memories. This 20-year war is certainly high on that list.21)   Movies I Love: The Opposite of Sex and You Can Count on Me: Is my annual Valentine’s series an excuse to write analytical love letters to favorite things of mine? Well, duh!22)   Crowd-sourced Non-Favorites: I don’t imagine my annual crowd-sourced Airing of Grievances needs any further introduction.23)   The Salem Witch Trials: Tituba: Inclusive American histories don’t just highlight figures and stories we need to remember—they open up so many vital contexts for understanding all of us, past and present.24)   Remembering the Alamo: A Mexican Memoir: Another one of those texts and voices I might never have learned about if it weren’t for a blog series.25)   Irish American Literature: I know, I’m always adding more compelling texts to the Must Read list. #SorryNotSorry!26)   YA Series: The Chronicles of Prydain, Revisited: One of my favorite personal threads from the past year has been watching my older son get into fantasy series I loved as a kid. That started here, with the wonderful Lloyd Alexander!27)   NeMLA 2019 Recaps: Homi Bhabha: Thanks to the great Claire Sommers, NeMLA 2019 featured this stunning keynote address. Read all about it, then submit an abstract to join us at NeMLA 2020 in Boston!28)   80s Comedies: Airplane!: Not to get all Talking Heads on ya, but you may find yourself writing about Airplane! on your public scholarly blog, and you may ask yourself, how awesome is that??29)   StatueStudying: Christ of the Ozarks: I’m sure plenty of folks already know that there’s a 65.5 foot tall statue of Jesus in Arkansas. But I sure didn’t!30)   Patriots’ Day Texts: “This Land”: If you think I would miss any opportunity to beg you to check out Gary Clark Jr.’s song and video if you haven’t yet, well, you’d be mistaken.31)   Earth Day Studying: Animated Activisms: Not gonna lie, writing about Captain Planet and FernGully brought.me.back.32)   Rodney King in Context: Rodney King: There are lots of reasons to revisit historical moments like the Rodney King riots, but doing more justice to the human figures at their center is very high on the list.33)   Travel Writing: Sarah Kemble Knight: I’m not sure anyone who doesn’t take an American Lit survey class (or read the Norton Anthology for fun) is likely to encounter Knight’s travel narrative. That’s a shame and one I tried to remedy here.34)   As American as Blue Jeans: Jean Jackets: This was another unexpected and fun series overall, but any post that features both The Boss and Miley Cyrus is gonna show up in the Birthday Bests.35)   Jewish American Journeys: Philip Roth and Sarah Silverman: Blogging allows me to experiment with ideas, and connections, I might otherwise never think about. I think it yielded some interesting analyses here!36)   Jewish American Journeys: Michael Hoberman’s Books: Blogging also allows me to pay tribute to wonderful colleagues and scholars like Michael!37)   AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Ian Williams’s Reproduction: This whole series was a lot of fun as always, but it was especially cool to learn more about my friend Ian’s debut novel!38)   21stCentury Lit: Jericho Brown: I wrote about Brown’s inspiring Twitter page in this post, then he Retweeted my Tweet about the post and a ton more people get into the conversation. If that ain’t the best of 21C lit—well, it is, so there.39)   Alien America: Brother from Another Planet: Everybody should see John Sayles’s 1984 sci fi dramedy. I could say that about every Sayles film, but in this post I said it about that one!40)   Jeff Renye’s on The X-Files: My latest and one of my favorite Guest Posts from one of my favorite people!41)   21stCentury American Anthems: It was fun to think about which recent songs (and one recent poem) would work well as new anthems. What would you nominate?42)   Remembering Marilyn Monroe: Her American Origins: I learned a ton about Monroe in the course of researching and writing this series, one more reminder that this blog has meant a great deal to my own continued growth, day in and day out!Annual Cville series starts Monday,BenPS. You know what to do!

August 17, 2019: Birthday Bests: 2017-2018

[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier discovers the meaning of life; well, I turn 42, anyway. So as I do each year, here’s a series sharing some of my favorite posts from each year on the blog, leading up to a new post with 42 favorites from the last year. And as ever, you couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]Here they are, 41 favorite posts from the 2017-2018 year on the blog:1)      Famous Virginians: Arthur Ashe: I enjoyed researching all the posts in last year’s post-Cville series, but this one on three influences on the legendary athlete stands out for me.2)      #NoConfederateSyllabus: Working on this document with my colleague and friend Matthew Teutsch was a highlight of the last year—it’s still evolving, so check it out and contribute, please!3)      Pledge Posts: Protesting the Pledge: Both of my sons have continued their acts of civil disobedience, and to say that they are now more salient than ever is to understate the case.4)      The Worst and Best of Allegiance: Salient enough, even, that I’m highlighting a second post from that same series!5)      Crowd-sourced Legends of the Fall: Some of the best crowd-sourced posts are those that feature multiple topics and threads, as this great one on both autumn and falls from innocence reflects.6)      Early Civil Rights Histories: The Little Rock Nine: Better remembering American heroes like the Little Rock Nine is more crucial than ever, and here I highlighted three complementary ways we can do just that.7)      LongmireStudying: Standing Bear: Not the last time the wonderful TV show will appear on this list!8)      Indigenous Performers in Popular Culture: Two of these folks I knew virtually nothing about before researching this post—and the third is Graham Greene!9)      Guest Post: Nancy Caronia on Italian Americans and Columbus Day: A complex and crucial topic, handled with thoughtfulness and passion by a colleague and friend—describes all of my great Guest Posts, and doubly so this one!10)   Children’s Histories: The Forbidden Temptation of Baseball: A new young adult novel that can add importantly to our collective memories of the Chinese Exclusion Act era.11)   7 Years of Scholarly Blogging: Matthew Teutsch: Connecting to fellow public scholars has been one of the very best parts of this blog for me, so I’m gonna highlight all of the posts in this week’s series to try to return that favor!12)   7 Years of Scholarly Blogging: Emily Lauer on NYsferatu13)   7 Years of Scholarly Blogging: Robert Greene II14)   7 Years of Scholarly Blogging: Rob Velella15)   7 Years of Scholarly Blogging: AmericanStudier16)   Veterans Days: The Harrisburg Veterans Parade: One of those stunning moments that embodies both the worst and best of America, the exclusionary yet inclusive sides on which I’m focusing in my new book project.17)   Curry, LeBron, and Sports in the Age of Trump: Another one of those posts that has become only (if frustratingly) more relevant since I wrote it.18)   80s AlbumStudying: Thriller and Dualities: Any time you have the chance to write, and then to highlight, a post on Michael Jackson’s Thriller, you do so!19)   Reconstruction Figures: The Fisk Jubilee Singers: Some of my favorite posts here have allowed me to learn a great deal more about topics for which my knowledge was shamefully lacking. This is a very good example of that phenomenon!20)   Longmire Lessons: Walt and Cady: Back to Longmire one more time, for a (SPOILERiffic) examination of where we leave some of the show’s wonderful characters.21)   Reviewing Resistance: Fitchburg State University: For a series on the year in #Resist, it was fun to think about some of the many ways my campus is doing its part!22)   Gay Rights Histories: The Society for Human Rights (1924): Speaking of shamefully lacking knowledge, I knew exactly nothing about this pioneering activist organization before researching this post and series.23)   Gay Rights Histories: Fitchburg State’s Exhibition: Much closer to now and to home, it was fun to think about why this FSU exhibit impressed me as much as it did.24)   Famous Boy Scouts: Michael Jordan and Hank Aaron: Did you know that these two legendary but contrasting athletes were both Boy Scouts? 25)   Learning to Love Mariah Carey: My annual Valentine’s series concluded with my newfound and deep admiration for the musical icon.26)   Anti-Favorites: The Geary Act: We really, really really, need to better remember the horrific excesses of the Chinese Exclusion Act era.27)   Boston Massacre Studying: My Sons’ Thoughts: You didn’t think I’d miss a chance to share this Guest Post of sorts featuring my sons’ takes on the Boston Massacre, didya?28)   Black Panther Studying: Erik Killmonger: I haven’t stopped thinking about Michael B. Jordan’s Black Panther character since I saw the film.29)   Great American Novel Studying: Recent Contenders: There’s no such thing as The Great American Novel—but it makes for a fun debate, and an even funner way to highlight deserving books like this handful of recent classics.30)   NeMLA Recaps: Back to the Board: I’m so glad to have returned to the Northeast MLA Board that I have to share this post on my reasons for doing so one more time!31)   AssassinationStudying: Squeaky Fromme: Why a seemingly silly potential assassin was anything but.32)   Scholarly Tribute: Erik Loomis: A series on the Haymarket Affair concluded with a tribute to one of our best labor historians and public scholars.33)   Hap & Leonard Studying: Redefining Lynching: As of this writing the wonderful SundanceTV show Hap & Leonard has been cancelled—but no matter what we have three amazing seasons to return to, highlighted by season two as I detail in this post.34)   Nursing Histories: Medal of Honor Medics: The chance to highlight a few of the amazing Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipients made for a great end to this pre-Memorial Day series.35)   BlockbusterStudying: The Last Jedi: The latest in a series of posts through which I critique Yoda, praise Luke, and rethink the American mythos that is Star Wars.36)   McCarthyism Contexts: McCarthy’s Lies and Rise: Joe McCarthy rose to destructive power by lying all the time, and nearly destroyed the country with his continued falsehoods. Seems worth remembering.37)   The Supreme Court and Progress: Loving v. Virginia: Loving Day is one of my favorite American moments, and has so much to teach us about both our past and our present.38)   Summer Class Readings: “Of the Passing of the First-Born”: This chapter from Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk is one of the toughest and most important American texts I know.39)   Representing Race: Seven Seconds: If you haven’t yet seen this Netflix original show, I highly recommend it, for all these reasons and more.40)   KennedyStudying: Chappaquiddick: Posts that challenge my own ideologies and perspectives are ones I always try to highlight in these series, and this one did just that.41)   17thCentury Histories: Jamestown’s First Slaves: But so too are posts that help us unearth American histories and stories we all need to better remember, which remains my #1 priority in this blog and one I can’t wait to continue in the year to come!New birthday best post tomorrow,BenPS. You know what to do!

August 16, 2019: Birthday Bests: 2016-2017

[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier discovers the meaning of life; well, I turn 42, anyway. So as I do each year, here’s a series sharing some of my favorite posts from each year on the blog, leading up to a new post with 42 favorites from the last year. And as ever, you couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]Here they are, 40 favorite posts from the 2016-2017 year on the blog:1)      Virginia Places: Fairfax Court House: Learning more about things I thought I already knew has been one of the blog’s enduring pleasures, and that was most definitely the case with this post and series on Virginia sites.2)      Cultural Work: Miner Texts: Any post in which I get to analyze John Sayles and Steve Earle is bound to be fun, but Diane Gillam Fisher’s Kettle Bottom might be the richest text here.3)      MusicalStudying: Allegiance and Hamilton: Perhaps not surprisingly, Hamilton has been the subject of more posts than any other text in the past year. This was the first.4)      Rhode Island Histories: Beavertail Lighthouse: Learning about things I knew precisely nothing about has been another enduring blog pleasure. Case in point here.5)      Legends of the Fall: Young Adult Lit: Returning to middle school is always a risky proposition, but I loved the chance to revisit A Separate Peace and The Chocolate War.6)      AmericanStudying The Americans: “Illegals”: Writing about one of my favorite TV shows made for a great week of posts, and this kicked them off.7)      Birth Control in America: Esther at the Doctor: I’ve taught Sylvia Plath’s The Bell-Jar many times, but analyzing it through this week’s lens offered new insights on a key sequence.8)      Black Panther Posts: Guns and Breakfasts: One of my favorite post titles, and an attempt to address the multiple, contradictory sides of an important community.9)      American Killers: Bundy and Dahmer: Not sure I would have ever imagined I’d be writing about serial killers in made for TV movies, but we go where the blog takes us!10)   ElectionStudying the Media: Ah, that halcyon final pre-election weekend. Everything may have changed the following Tuesday, but I think this post is still relevant.11)   Jeff Renye on Stranger Things: The New Weird Made Old?: A Stranger Things series concluded with this great Guest Post, and a truly inspiring student conversation in comments!12)   Thanksgiving and Supporting an Inclusive American Community: This was the first post in which I dealt directly with the election’s aftermath, and also the first in which I began to move toward my fifth book project.13)   James MonroeStudying: Remembering Monroe: A series on the 5thPresident concluded with these reflections on whether and how to better remember Monroe.14)   Fall 2016 Reflections: Conversations with My Sons: Maybe my favorite single post from the six and two-thirds years of blogging.15)   Basketball’s Birthday: LeBron and Activism: My sons have just gotten into the NBA in the past year, and it was fun to take a closer look at this side of the league’s biggest star.16)   2016 in Review: The Cubs Win!: There were far more serious 2016 news stories, and I engaged with them in this end of year series as well. But c’mon, the Cubs won the Series!17)   21stCentury Ellis Islands: A 125th anniversary series concluded with three very distinct ways to connect the famous immigration station to our present moment.18)   Special Guest Post: Oana Godeanu-Kenworty on Thomas Haliburton and 19thCentury Populism: Readers, take note—nothing makes me happier than when I’m contacted by someone who wants to share a Guest Post, and I was very excited at the chance to share this one!19)   Luke Cage Studying: #BlackLivesMatter on TV: A series on another great contemporary TV show concluded with this multitextual analysis.20)   NASAStudying: Sputnik and von Braun: Another example of a post for which I learned a ton, and which fundamentally shifted my perspective on the week’s subject.21)   Women and Sports: Title IX: With the groundbreaking law under siege from Trump’s Department of Education, this post is more important than ever.22)   History for Kids: Kate Milford’s The Boneshaker: The best book I read in the past year might well be this Young Adult novel the boys and I read together.23)   AmericanStudier Hearts Justified: Appalachian Action: Man, I wrote a lot this year about TV shows I love. And I’m not the slightest bit sorry!24)   Crowd-sourced Non-Favorites: The annual series concludes, as always, with my favorite crowd-sourced post of the year, the airing of grievances! Not too late to share yours!25)   : On Arnaz’s 100th birthday, he helped us consider a different side to Cuban American histories.26)   AmericanStudies Events: Why We Teach at BOLLI: Expanding my adult learning opportunities has been one of the best parts of the last year. Here’s one prominent example!27)   Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump: Sometimes a planned series of my own intersects with where the public conversations are going. This was one of those times.28)   Televised Fools: Archer: I can’t say I was expecting to enjoy Archer as much as I have—but surprises are a good thing, in life and in blogging!29)   NeMLA Recaps: Forum on Immigration Executive Orders and Actions: This could be the most important thing NeMLA ever does—but it needs your help to get there!30)   Aviation Histories: Charles Lindbergh: For my own sake as much as anyone else’s, trying to dig past the controversies to recover the history behind the history.31)   Animating History: Earth Day Animations: I hadn’t thought about Captain Planet or FernGullyin a couple decades. It was fun to do so again!32)   Civil Disobedience: Muhammad Ali: Commemorating anniversaries has become an important part of this blog, and the 50th of Ali’s draft resistance was an important one for sure.33)   DisasterStudying: The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake: Did you know that William James experienced and wrote about the earthquake? Me neither!34)   The Scholars Strategy Network and Me: Online Writing: This was a really fun reflection to write—and then it got picked up by John Fea’s great blog, which is even more fun!35)   Star Wars Studying: Yoda, Luke, and Love: I loved the chance to share one of the boys’ and my favorite theories about one of our favorite galaxies.36)   Matthew Teutsch’s Guest Post: Five African American Books We Should All Read: Getting to feature one of my favorite scholarly bloggers and five wonderful books made for a great Guest Post.37)   The Pulitzers at 100: Angle of Repose: I’d been looking for a chance to write about Wallace Stegner’s moving novel for a while now. It was nice to finally do so!38)   Mysterious Beach Reads: Tana French: Ditto French’s amazing series of novels—which are Irish, but AmericanStudies is large and contains multitudes.39)   Representing the Revolution: Hamilton: I promised that the smash musical would return to this list, and return it did.40)   Troubled Children: Dennis the Menace: Gotta end with another one of those posts I never would have imagined writing—and that, as always, I enjoyed a great deal. Hope you’d say the same!Next birthday best post tomorrow,BenPS. You know what to do!