Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 2

September 24, 2025: Recent Scholarly Reads: The Rediscovery of America

[It’s beena while since I shared a series on scholarly books I’ve had the pleasure ofchecking out recently, and for this latest iteration I wanted to highlightrecent reads that have offered inspiration in these very tough times!]

The nexttwo books I’ll be highlighting in this series are especially meaningful to me,as they were my sons’ very thoughtful Father’s Day presents for me this pastJune (yet another example of how much Icontinue to learn from the boys!). Without our ever having talked about them,the boys chose two books that I had been meaning to check out for a while, andthat was especially the case with today’s subject: Ned Blackhawk’s TheRediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History(2024). In thislong-ago post I highlighted Ronald Takaki’s book ADifferent Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (1993), which asmuch as any single work I’ve read shifted my perspective on America’s foundationalidentity and community. I genuinely don’t think any work I’ve encountered sincehas achieved that goal as fully and potently as did Blackhawk’s book—while ofcourse I know a good deal more about American history and identity than I didwhen I first read Takaki, I still learned so much from Blackhawk’s book, aboutboth histories that I did have a sense of already and those that he added to myunderstanding (such as the attacks on California Native Americans by federally fundedmilitias in the early days of the Civil War). This book is truly, in everysense of the phrase, a must-read for all Americans.

Next recentread tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Recent reads you’d share?

September 23, 2025: Recent Scholarly Reads: We Now Belong to Ourselves

[It’s beena while since I shared a series on scholarly books I’ve had the pleasure ofchecking out recently, and for this latest iteration I wanted to highlightrecent reads that have offered inspiration in these very tough times!]

One of thebest things about my more than five years collectingand sharing public scholarship through my #ScholarSundaythreads (every one of which is available in that Google Doc) has been thechance to connect to voices and work that’s not traditionally academic, andthat reminds us that “academic” is only one of many frames or starting pointsfor scholarship. Exemplifying that idea is Arianne Edmonds’s WeNow Belong to Ourselves: J.L. Edmonds, The Black Press, and Black Citizenshipin America (2025), a book written by its main subject’s great-greatgranddaughter which features personal narratives of her own identity, familystory, and journey through the archives but also offers an analytical andprofoundly public scholarly lens on what this early 20th centuryBlack journalist reveals about his own time period and our own alike. In thisThanksgiving post from last year, I highlighted how a groundbreaking workof experimental narrative history helped inspire my podcast and my owncontinued evolution as a public scholar, and Edmonds’s equally groundbreaking bookis sure to do the same as I move forward with that work.

Next recentread tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Recent reads you’d share?

September 22, 2025: Recent Scholarly Reads: Action Without Hope

[It’s beena while since I shared a series on scholarly books I’ve had the pleasure ofchecking out recently, and for this latest iteration I wanted to highlightrecent reads that have offered inspiration in these very tough times!]

I’ve beendeeply invested in the concept of critical optimism since at least myfourth book, which for most of its development was entitled Hard-Won Hope(a concept that remained at its heart). But as I wrote in this August2021 Saturday Evening Post Considering History column, it’s becomeincreasingly difficult to find reasons for such critical optimism in the faceof unfolding histories like the climate crisis (among others in recent years). Whichmade me particularly excited to learn about and check out Nathan K. Hensley’s wonderfulbook Actionwithout Hope: Victorian Literature after Climate Collapse (2025). Itdoesn’t hurt that Hensley’s unique approach opens up really compelling newsides to longtime favorites of mine like George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Butultimately, Hensley’s book is a particularly vital example of the thing I spendso much of my time trying to model and support, in this space and everywhereelse: public scholarship, connecting our scholarly subjects to every layer ofour world and every audience that’s part of it.

Next recentread tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Recent reads you’d share?

September 20-21, 2025: Challenging Censorship in 2025

[On September19th, 1985, Congress held hearings over the concept ofparental advisory warnings for music. So this week, I’ve commemorated thatcomplex anniversary by highlighting histories of censorship in America, leadingup to this weekend post on how we can respond to the very fraught state ofthese issues in 2025.]

On threeways we can challenge the seemingly ubiquitous attempts to censor books,educators, and the truth itself here in 2025.

I’ve beenwriting about our moment’s attacks on teachers and librarians for agood while now, both in thisblog and in other settings like my SaturdayEvening Post Considering History column.I can’t imagine that I need to tell any reader of this blog that those attackshave only gotten more frequent and worse here in the first year of Trump 2.0. Sorather than dwell on that incredibly frustrating fact, I wanted in this weekendpost to briefly highlight three ways we can challenge this trend.

1)     Community:I really love that hyperlinked June news story on how the residents of a Minnesotaschool district restricted and stopped the School Board’s attempts to removecertain books (in order to appease the MAGA types, natch). If we take thearguments for censorship at face value—and I do believe at least some of thesefolks do genuinely want to protect kids—then they are all about doing what’sbest for their communities. So what better way could there be to challengethose efforts than by communities stepping up to make the opposite case?

2)     Creating:That’s not the only way we can do so, though, and I also love that hyperlinked piecefrom historian Averill Earls (excerpted from the Conclusion to her book Lovein the Lav) on how 20th century Irishwriter John Broderick kept writing through all attempts to censor hisworks. Too often the direct targets of our censorship efforts can’t fight back—they’rehistorical figures and communities, authors who are no longer with us, and soon. But one thing we can all do is continue creating, writing, sharing ourvoices and works, and you best believe I’m going to keep doing my part of that,here and everywhere.

3)     The Constitution: Creating in and of itself isa good bit of the battle, but of course the content of what we write and sayand share is important to consider as well. This past Wednesday we celebratedour latest Constitution Day, an occasion on which I’ve had the chance to sharemy public scholarly thoughts multiple times inthe past. The U.S. Constitution only directly addresses issues relevant tocensorship in (to my knowledge) one spot, although it’s a very prominent one:the 1stAmendment and its protection of “the freedom of speech” from government lawsand interference. But I also would argue that we can link that first amendmentto the Constitution’s other first thing, its Preamble,and in so doing can make the case that nothing is more important to thePreamble’s many goals for “We the People”—and most of all “securing theBlessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”—than our ability to learn,in all settings and forms, without our texts and truths being censored.

Next seriesstarts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Censorship histories or current events you’d highlight?

September 19, 2025: Censorship Histories: The 1985 Hearings

[On September19th, 1985, Congress held hearings over the concept ofparental advisory warnings for music. So this week, I’ll commemorate thatcomplex anniversary by highlighting histories of censorship in America, leadingup to a weekend post on the very fraught state of these issues in 2025.]

Three pairingsthat reflect the multiple angles through which the ParentsMusic Resource Center (PMRC) sought to censor pop music.

1)     Susan Baker andTipper Gore: The PMRC was formed in May 1985 by four powerful DC womenknown as the WashingtonWives: Baker (whose husband was Treasury Secretary James Baker), Gore (SenatorAl Gore), Pam Howar (realtor Raymond Howar), and Sally Nevius (City CouncilChairman John Nevius). All four played important roles in both the short-lived organizationoverall and the September 1985 Congressional hearings specifically, but it wasBaker and Gore who testified at length in those hearings, making an in-depthcase for at least labeling (and at worst directly censoring) pop music. Baker,for example, arguedthat pop songs feature “pervasive messages aimed at children which promoteand glorify suicide, rape, sadomasochism, and so on.”

2)     JosephCoors and Mike Love: As with most things in politics, it took a good bit offinancial support for the PMRC not just to come into being, but also and especiallyto become prominent enough to merit those Congressional hearings. One of theorganization’s chief funders isn’t a surprise: beer entrepreneur Joseph Coorshad been a key supporter of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign, and a longstandingconservative activist and fundraiser before (and after) this moment. Butthe other chief financial backer of the PMRC is much more surprising, at leastto this AmericanStudier: Beach Boys founding member and vocalist Mike Love.It’s fair to say that the PMRC might have had less of an impact if it hadn’tbeen able to highlight a pop music icon as one of its supporters, had seemedentirely like outsiders to the industry—so Love’s support for this pop music censorshipwas as meaningful as it is frustrating.

3)     Joe Stuessy andPaul King: As a professor and public scholar, though, it’s this finalpairing of “experts” who testified at the Congressional hearings which I find particularlyfrustrating. Paul King was a child and adolescent psychiatrist, and so Isuppose it stands to reason that he might be willing to share his perspectiveon factors that could negatively affect those groups (although I bet his teen patientsweren’t happy with him). But Stuessy was a professor of music at the Universityof Texas at San Antonio, and one who, as he says in the opening of histestimony (available at the hyperlink above, and also in thisvideo excerpt), had “taught a course in the history of rock music for 12years at two universities.” I don’t like to judge the teaching of my fellowprofessors, especially not from afar, but I have to think Stuessy’s course didn’tdo a good job tracing just how consistently and aggressively rock music hadbeen under attack since its origins—attacks that he helped continue and amplifyat these 1985 hearings.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Censorship histories or current events you’d highlight?

September 18, 2025: Censorship Histories: Banning vs. Challenging Books

[On September19th, 1985, Congress held hearings over the concept ofparental advisory warnings for music. So this week, I’ll commemorate thatcomplex anniversary by highlighting histories of censorship in America, leadingup to a weekend post on the very fraught state of these issues in 2025.]

On why theconcept of “banned books” isn’t quite as obviously wrong as we might think.

You’re not likelyto find a more lifelong opponent of banning books, and I do mean lifelong—as Inoted in the intro to this2019 series, one of my favorite sweatshirts in high school (what can I say,I was an uber-nerd) read “Celebrate Freedom, Read a Banned Book” and then listed a group of works that have been bannedat one time or another. So it wasn’t easy for me to write the teaser sentenceabove, believe me. But the truth is that in our conversations about banning andcensorship we tend to conflate a couple pretty different actions: attempting to remove books from schools and/or libraries (a practice that I thoroughly oppose); andadvocating that we not teach books in particular classes, for certain gradelevels, and so on. The latter, which is generally known instead as “challenging” those books, is certainly complicated and often problematic, but is not the same asbanning the book from those institutions.

For a case inpoint, we could go to the ur-source for such conversations: Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Within a year of its 1885 American publication the novel was banned by the Concord Public Library, the first of many such bannings. But even if we agree with the premisethat the CPL and other banning institutions were mistaken (and I do), itdoesn’t necessarily follow that Huckis (for example) perfectly fine to teach in middle or high school Englishclassrooms (both places where it has been taught with some frequency). On that question I tend to agree with my late Dad, Stephen Railton, who argued that the book’s defenders have short-changed genuine questions about itslanguage and racial depictions, particularly when it comes to the challenges ofpresenting them to younger readers. Which is to say, challenges of Huck in the classroom not only aren’tthe same as banning or censorship—they also have, at least, a leg to stand on.

And then there’sthe case of Lois Lowry’s The Giver (1993). Lowry’s award-winning novel is one of the most acclaimed young adult books of the last few decades,and so it stands to reason that it would be a good choice to teach in middleschool classrooms. But while the novel does not include unintentionallyproblematic or objectional material like Twain’s book, it does create anincredibly complex and dark dystopian world, one in which characters,situations, and themes are far more sophisticated and troubling than in manyother young adult works. There’s something—a great deal, in fact—to be said forteaching precisely such complex works, provided there is sufficient time andspace for the teacher and students to discuss and analyze and engage with thosecomplexities. But there’s also something to be said for parents andorganizations worrying that, in the absence of those resources, Lowry’s novelwill affect students more negatively than positively. I don’t agree with the challenges that Lowry’s novel has received, but I understand them—and they shouldn’t all be dismissed as simplecensorship.

Lastcensored history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Censorship histories or current events you’d highlight?

September 17, 2025: Censorship Histories: The Sedition Act

[On September19th, 1985, Congress held hearings over the concept ofparental advisory warnings for music. So this week, I’ll commemorate thatcomplex anniversary by highlighting histories of censorship in America, leadingup to a weekend post on the very fraught state of these issues in 2025.]

On three frustratingexamples of federal censorship under the aegis of the Sedition Act.

In 1918,Congress passed theSedition Act, a follow-up to the 1917 Espionage Act and a law which made itillegal to “willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous,or abusive language” about a wide range of topics including the government, theConstitution, the military, and the flag. In lieu of a full first paragraph, I’llask you to check out thisprior post where I discussed these two laws, and then come on back for a fewexamples of how the Sedition Act in particular was applied to censor Americans.

Welcomeback! In Chapter 5 of Of Thee I Sing, I write about a couple examples offederal censorship under these laws: “The PostmasterGeneral refused to mail copies of TheJeffersonian, a newsletter published by the Southern populist andanti-war activist Tom Watson; when Watson foughtback in court a federal judge called the publication and its pacifistsentiments “poison” … And eight members of the religious organization the WatchTower Bible and Tract Society were convictedunder the Espionage Act, based on charges stemming largely from thefollowing sentence in their anti-war book The Finished Mystery:‘And yet under the guise of patriotism civil governments of the earth demand ofpeace-loving men the sacrifice of themselves and their loved ones and thebutchery of their fellows, and hail it as a duty demanded by the laws ofheaven.’” Defining pacificism and critical patriotism as “sedition” and “espionage”are pitch-perfect examples of the kind of vague rationalizations for censorshipI discussed in yesterday’s post.

Even morevague and broad was the useof the law to charge and jail the prominent socialist leader Eugene Debs.Debs had pledged his support to three men imprisoned for violating the Espionageand Sedition Acts, and based only on those words of his he too was charged; as hewrote to a friend, “I am expecting nothing but conviction under a lawflagrantly unconstitutional and which was framed especially for the suppressionof free speech.” Not only was he frustratingly correct, but the Supreme Court wouldgo on to uphold his conviction in Debs v. United States (1919).When words of support can be legally censored—and indeed can lead to legalcharges and criminal convictions—we’re only a very short distance away from “thoughtpolice,” which is, I would argue, the ultimate goal of all forms of censorship.

Nextcensored history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Censorship histories or current events you’d highlight?

September 16, 2025: Censorship Histories: The Comstock Act

[On September19th, 1985, Congress held hearings over the concept ofparental advisory warnings for music. So this week, I’ll commemorate thatcomplex anniversary by highlighting histories of censorship in America, leadingup to a weekend post on the very fraught state of these issues in 2025.]

On onegenuinely important application of a controversial law, and a far moresignificant underlying problem.

In lieu ofa full first paragraph here, I’m going to ask you to check out a couple prior pieces.There’s this January2023 post of mine on 1873 anniversaries, where I say a bit about theComstock Act. And there’s this trio of pieces for thewonderful Nursing Clio blog that trace different histories and contemporary contextsfor the Act. Those should give a bit of helpful framing for this controversial andenduring 1873 law (as does that 19th News article), and thencome on back for a couple further thoughts.

Welcomeback! One of the key goals of the Comstock Act was to definefor the first time, at least in terms of legal debates in the UnitedStates, concepts like “obscenity” and “pornography.” I’ll get to the significantand evolving problems with that goal in a moment, but it’s important to notethat one consistent and entirely laudatory applicationof these elements of the Act over the last half-century has been toprosecute child pornographers. See for example this CatholicNews Agency interview with retired FBI agent Roger Young, who specializedin such cases and who argues that “when I first began working child pornographycases early in 1977, there were no child porn laws. We used obscenity laws toprosecute child porn.” As recently as 2021, ThomasAlan Arthur was, through the application of the Comstock Act, successfullyprosecuted and sentenced to 40 years in prison for running a website featuringchild pornography (a 21st century application of the law’s emphasison sending obscene materials throughthe mail).

Child pornographyis, I hope we can all agree, obscene and worth stopping by any legal means possible.But the problem with the Comstock Act is that its definition of obscenity is purposefullyand strikingly vague, and as a result it can, has been, and is continuingto be applied far more broadly and troublingly. That has most consistently beenthe case when it comes to reproductive rights—Comstockwas famously draconian when it came to sex and sexuality, and so the law andits terms were both initially designed to challenge things like birthcontrol and abortionand have been used as such frequently (applications which are seeing a resurgencein 2025). But, as we’ll see again tomorrow with the use of “sedition” as a legalconcept in the early 20th century, censorship and those who seek topractice it depend on precisely this kind of vague, broad language. If we wantto ban child pornography, as we should and must, then the relevant laws shouldstate that goal specifically and clearly; if we seek to ban all that’s “obscene,”we are inevitably going to find ourselves at the mercy of how our leaders (and,often, our most extremist leaders at that) define that concept.  

Nextcensored history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Censorship histories or current events you’d highlight?

September 15, 2025: Censorship Histories: The Zenger Case

[On September19th, 1985, Congress held hearings over the concept ofparental advisory warnings for music. So this week, I’ll commemorate thatcomplex anniversary by highlighting histories of censorship in America, leadingup to a weekend post on the very fraught state of these issues in 2025.]

On twodistinct but interconnected lessons from a groundbreaking censorship trial.

In 1733,the German American immigrant, printer, and journalist John Peter Zenger(1697-1746) began publishingstrident critiques of New York’s colonial governor William Cosby in Zenger’snewspaper The NewYork Weekly Journal. Cosby had been abusing his power since his appointmentto the post, and Zenger used his paper to call out these abuses, sharing hisown arguments as well as those of others in the state’s Popular Party. The enragedCosby issueda proclamation condemning the paper as “scandalous, virulent, false, andseditious,” and when that did not stop its publication he had Zenger arrestedand charged with libel in 1734. After nearly a year in prison, Zenger’s casewas brought totrial in August 1735; although the Judge James DeLancey was a hand-pickedfavorite of Cosby’s, Zenger’s lawyer Andrew Hamilton argued his case directly to thejury, and after only ten minutes of deliberation they returneda verdict of not guilty (in opposition to the judge’s instructions to focusonly on the question of whether Zenger had in fact published the articles inquestion, not their veracity, making this an early example of jury nullification).

Inreturning that groundbreaking verdict, the Zenger jury were also helpingadvance an important idea about the freedom of the press: namely, that truth isan absolute defense against libel. Ironically, that same idea had been thesubject of a February1733 opinion piece in The New York Weekly Journal, authored by “Cato”(a pen name shared by the journalists John Trenchardand Thomas Gordon). In that op ed, which closely parallels Gordon’s earlierpiece “ReflectionsUpon Libelling,” Cato makes the case that even though “a libel is not lessthe libel for being true,” it remains vital to highlight “when the crimes ofmen come to affect the public…states have suffered or perished for not having,or for neglecting, the power to accuse great men who were criminals, or thoughtto be so…surely it cannot be more pernicious to calumniate even good men, than notto be able to accuse ill ones.” When Judge DeLancey instructed the jury only toconsider whether Zenger had published his critiques of Cosby, he was trying to instituteprecisely the opposite idea in law; and when the jury rejected those instructionsand ruled that Zenger was not guilty because his articles were true, they werestriking a vital blow for the future of a free press in the colonies.

Thatprinciple is, or at least should be, universal to every era and everycommunity. But I would nonetheless note that Zenger’s own identity andcommunity, his status as a German immigrant (from the region known as the German Palatinate)to New York and the colonies, adds important layers to these histories. Partlythat’s because after Zenger’s family immigrated to New York when he was ateeanger, he was apprenticedto a local printer (WilliamBradford), as a result of a policy through which all immigrant childrenfrom that German region would be apprenticed out. But I would also argue thatthis community as a whole not only reflects the significant diversityfound in 18th century New York, but also and especially remindsus that it is precisely this foundational diversity which has so oftencontributed to our shared national ideals (including the freedoms of the press,speech, religion,and more). That is, while Zenger’s heritage had nothing to do with the truth ofhis accusations against Governor Cosby, it nonetheless represents another vitaltruth about 18th century America—and its legacies to this day.

Nextcensored history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Censorship histories or current events you’d highlight?

September 13-14, 2025: Comic Strip Studying: Fellow ComicsStudiers

[150 yearsago this week, the New York Daily Graphic debutedthe first comic strip to appear in an American newspaper. So inhonor of that anniversary, this week I’ve blogged about that strip and fourother examples of how the medium has evolved, leading up to this specialweekend post highlighting other ComicsStudiers!]

A handfulof the many awesome folks we should all be reading to learn more aboutComicsStudying.

I have tostart by sharing a vital resource that also features a wealth of citations offellow ComicsStudiers: this excellent ReviewRoulette newsletter from Vaughn Joy, where she shared an early publicationof hers that both models and teaches analyzing comics and engages and cites aton of great scholars as well. Make sure to read the whole thing and my workhere will be done!

One of themost important individual scholars of all things comics is IanGordon, as illustrated by his book ComicStrips and Consumer Culture, 1890-1945 (1998), edited collections like Comics and Ideology(2001), and much more.

Ian also editedacollection on Charles Schultz, and for a recent public scholarlypublication focused on all things Peanuts, check out Blake Scott Ball’s CharlieBrown’s America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts(2021).

One of the best current ComicsStudiers is my friend Matthew Teutsch, as illustrated by this recent post of his on using comics in the Comp/Rhet classroom.

Muchcomics studying has focused on male cartoonists, so for an important correctiveto that trend check out Trina Robbins’s book A Century of WomenCartoonists (1993).

Similarly, I love the revisionist use of comics and graphic images in Walter Greason & Tim Fielder's The Graphic History of Hip Hop (2024).

Finally, I’dbe remiss if I didn’t include the single most famous work of comics studying,Scott McCloud’s graphic book UnderstandingComics: The Invisible Art (1993).

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Comics scholars or strips you’d highlight?

PPS. I also have to highlight here the responses to Tuesday's post that the great historian J.L. Bell shared on Bluesky, in response to this post in particular.