Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 20

February 28, 2025: AlaskaStudying: McKinley or Denali?

[100years ago this week, Calvin Coolidge designated Alaska’s Glacier Bay aNational Monument. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that beautiful spot andother Alaskan places, people, and stories!]

On twoways to contextualize formal renamings.

Nearly adecade ago, I wrote for my TalkingPoints Memo column about the controversies over President Obama formallyrenaming Mount McKinley as Denali. I’d ask you to check out that column if youwould, and then come on back for a couple more layers to such debates.

Welcomeback! I’m glad that I focused most of that column on Native American historiesand perspectives, and would very much still argue that any debate over suchrenamings which in any way centers white Americans is a non-starter from thejump. There is of course a good deal of irony (as the I included in that post argues) in using Native American names for places that,in almost every case, have been forcibly taken from those communities, a removalprocess without which (for example) theNational Park system quite literally would not exist. But at the same time,these places remain important (and in many cases sacred) to those indigenouscommunities, a key reason why they and their allies advocate for returningthe names of places like McKinley to their indigenous names instead. It is,to be honest, the least we can do to honor those demands.

When wedo, though, it doesn’t mean we should forget the complexand telling histories that led to names like Mount McKinley for a peakthousands of miles away from William McKinley’s Ohio birthplace. I tend tobelieve (as I argued inthis post nearly four years ago) that the phrase “settler colonialism” getsused a bit willy-nilly these days without the necessary contexts and nuances, orat least without a great deal of thought as to what it helps us understand. Butwhatever we want to call it, there’s something profoundly telling about recentwhite arrivals to a place like Alaska deciding to rename one of its moststriking natural wonders (and indeed thetallest mountain in all of North America) after a white leader with prettymuch no connection whatsoever to that place (other than that he was presidentof the entire United States, of course). Such brazen intellectual ownershipover places and communities in a setting with such rich natural and human historiesis, I would argue, far more foolish than anything Seward could have ever done.

February Recapthis weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Alaska contexts you’d share?

February 27, 2025: AlaskaStudying: Nenana Ice Classic

[100years ago this week, Calvin Coolidge designated Alaska’s Glacier Bay aNational Monument. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that beautiful spot andother Alaskan places, people, and stories!]

On what aunique Alaskan tradition tells us about both Alaska and tradition.

The annual contest in whichparticipants bet on the exact day and time that ice will break up on the TananaRiver near the small community of Nenana,Alaska developed in a fewdistinct stages. It started very informally in 1906, with six locals forming abetting pool and the winner getting treated to a couple drinks at the localbar. It was revived a decade later in 1916 on a larger but still local scale,with railroad workers and other Nenana residents buying tickets at Jimmy Duke’sRoadhouse. And when the word was spread by railroad workers across the region,the 1917 contest was opened to all residents of both the Alaska and Yukonterritories. That 1917 contest is the one that the official websitehighlights as the contest’s genuine origin point, and it has been run everyyear since, with the original betting pool of $800 reaching nearly half amillion dollars in some recent years (and over $200,000 in the 2023edition). The technology involved in determining the precise moment whenthe ice breaks up has also evolved significantly over that century, as this local newsstory details.

One of themost important but complicated things for any AmericanStudier to try to wraptheir head around is just how big and multi-part this nation of ours is, withevery state featuring some pretty distinct layers and contexts that have helpedshape its identity and community and that it contributes to the whole of theU.S. as a result. I believe that’s genuinely true for every state, but as Idiscovered during my one visit to Alaska in the summer of 2005, I’d say Alaskais one of the most distinct and unique of all 50 states (perhaps onlyrivalled by the one territory which gainedstatehood later, Hawai’i). Part of Alaska’s uniqueness is unquestionably due toits natural landscapes, an environment utterly different from anywhere else inthe United States and one primarily defined by ice (although I’m sad to thinkabout how much thathas changed in recent years). And part is due to the way in which a greatdeal of the territory and state have been constituted by migratory communities,both individuals and broader cohorts like railroad workers (all, of course,alongside Alaska’sindigenous communities). We can see all those layers to Alaska’sstory and identity in the Nenana Ice Classic, both its existence and how itevolved to become the annual tradition it remains.

This wholeblog series focused on such distinctive local traditions, but I hope it alsooffered windows to consider the overarching concept of tradition and how it iscreated, how it evolves, and how it works in a society (all topics about whichI learned a great deal from one of my favorite scholarly books, MichaelKammen’s Mystic Chords of Memory). In thecase of the Nenana Ice Classic in particular, I’d say that we can see how atradition can be at once quite genuinely connected to key aspects of its localcommunity (as I argued above) and yet thoroughly constructed over time,constructions driven as likely always by a combination of more cynical factorslike tourism and capitalism and more sentimental ones like fun and communitypride. One thing I try really hard not to be is the kind of scholar who leansso far into the cynicism or even the analysis that I lose sight of those latterfactors, and so I’ll end this post with something I’d say for each and everyentry in the series: I’d love the chance to be at an event like the Nenana IceClassic, preferably with my sons and other loved ones, and to enjoy this uniquetradition for all that it is.

LastAlaskaStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Alaska contexts you’d share?

February 26, 2025: AlaskaStudying: Glacier Bay

[100years ago this week, Calvin Coolidge designated Alaska’s Glacier Bay aNational Monument. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that beautiful spot andother Alaskan places, people, and stories!]

On threeforces of nature who together helped preserve Glacier Bay (on the 100th anniversary of its designation).

1)     TheHuna Tlingit: As with every history in Alaska—and every history in America—thestory of Glacier Bay is inextricablyinterconnected with the worst and best of Native American histories. We can’tcelebrate its natural beauty, nor its evolution from endangered site to NationalMonument to (when Jimmy Carter signed the act intolaw in 1980) National Park, without recognizing and mourning the removal ofthe Huna Tlingit people from the area. But we can’t only mourn, either—even beforethe Huna Tlingit were able to return to and reconnect with Glacier Bay inrecent decades, as traced in the first hyperlink above, their legacy waseverywhere in this iconic place, and defining in shaping it across centuries ifnot millenia. Every visitor to Glacier Bay must remember and engage with thatworst and best of its, and our, histories.

2)     John Muir:Speaking of the worst and best. As that hyperlinked article notes, Muir reliedon Tlingit guides for his exploration of Glacier Bay; yet despite his unquestionableadmiration for Native Americans, Muir was also far too often a purveyorof racist attitudes towards these American communities. That’s all part ofMuir’s story and legacy, and of what he found and advocated for in Glacier Bay.But at the same time, I don’t know of any more beautiful writing about America’snatural wonders than Muir’s chapter “InCamp at Glacier Bay” in his book Travelsin Alaska (1915), among the many other places in that book where hewrites movingly about Glacier Bay. As he did with so much of America’swilderness, Muir’s perspective on Alaska helped his audiences see this placedifferently, a vital step toward preserving rather than simply exploiting ournatural wonders.  

3)     WilliamS. Cooper: Muir was an advocate for all of our natural spaces, but the plantecologist and activist WilliamS. Cooper made Glacier Bay his specific, lifelong focus. Cooper firstvisited Glacier Bay a year after Muir’s book was published, fell in love, andmade the area aliving laboratory for his researches for the rest of his groundbreakingcareer. But he also and especially became a determined advocate for thepreservation of Glacier Bay, writing to anyone and everyone about theimportance of not turning this natural wonder over to those who saw only profitin it (and continuingthose efforts for decades after the 1920s act). Conservation is acollective effort, but it also requires individuals like Cooper (or others I’vewritten about in this space such as MarjoryStoneman Douglas), and I’m deeply grateful for every one of them.

NextAlaskaStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Alaska contexts you’d share?

February 25, 2025: AlaskaStudying: Mardy Murie

[100years ago this week, Calvin Coolidge designated Alaska’s Glacier Bay aNational Monument. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that beautiful spot andother Alaskan places, people, and stories!]

On threefactors that help explain the unique life and legacy of the “Grandmotherof the Conservation Movement.”

1)     Alaska: Born Margaret Elizabeth Thomas inSeattle in 1902, Mardy and her family moved to Fairbanks, Alaska when she was9; although she briefly attended colleges in both Oregon and Massachusetts, shewould return to Alaska to finish school at the AlaskaAgricultural College and School of Mines[ (becoming its first female graduatein 1924). While her life,inspiring marriage (on which more momentarily), and conservation efforts wouldtake her to many other places for much of the rest of her life, Alaska alwaysremained a focal point, as illustrated by her successful 1956 campaign tocreate the ArcticNational Wildlife Refuge and her late 1970s testimony in support ofthe AlaskaNational Interests Lands Conservation Act (signed by President Carter in 1980).Alaska is of course hugely singular on the American landscape, but it’s alsolong served as an exemplification of the broader need to protect public lands,and no one has been more instrumental to those efforts than Mardy Murie.

2)     Her Marriage: She was Mardy Murie because of OlausMurie, a biologist and fellow conservationist she met in Fairbanks and married (atsunrise in the village of Anvik) the same year she graduated college. I’m notsure any single detail could better capture their genuine partnership than thefact that theirhoneymoon consisted of a 500-mile dogsled journey around Alaska to researchits wildlife and ecosystems. The lifelong, deeply inspiring partnership thatdeveloped from there would eventually take the Muries to Moose, Wyoming (nearJackson Hole), where the ranch that served as both their home and theirresearch base has since become a NationalHistoric Landmark (linked to Grand Teton National Park) as wellas an operatingscientific and conservation school. Mardy’s activisms weren’t defined(and certainly weren’t circumscribed) by her marriage, but they were absolutelycomplemented and amplified by it, as were his.

3)     TheWilderness Act: While it doesn’t really make sense to boil centuries-longmovements down to individual moments or laws, it’s nonetheless fair to say thatone of the most significant such turning points for the environmental andconservation movements in America was the 1964 passage of theWilderness Act, the first law to create a national legal definition of“wilderness.” That act was written by the then-Executive Director of theWilderness Society, HowardZahniser, and in both its creation and its nearly decade-long fight forpassage represented a collaboration between many of the leading voices in thatlongstanding organization—a community that featured Mardy and Olaus Muriethroughout their lives. While Olaus had tragically passed away in 1963, Mardyattended the ceremony at which President Lyndon Johnson signed theAct, as is only appropriate for an activist without whom every 20thcentury conservation effort would look different and far less successful.

NextAlaskaStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Alaska contexts you’d share?

February 24, 2025: AlaskaStudying: Seward’s Folly

[100years ago this week, Calvin Coolidge designated Alaska’s Glacier Bay aNational Monument. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that beautiful spot andother Alaskan places, people, and stories!]

A fewexamples of why it’s not at all foolish to consider the specifics of how, when,and why America’s territory expanded.

Let me getthis out of the way at the start: despite having had the singular dishonor ofvaulting SarahPalin, and her erroneousand destructive visions of American identity and history, onto thenational stage, Alaska is a very welcome part of our 21st centuryAmerican community. Everything I wrote about Sitka inthis post on complex and instructive American places isequally true of the state overall; it opens up landscapes, histories, andcommunities without which we’d be a less rich and diverse nation. Yet we can’tfully appreciate much of what Alaska brings and means if we don’t betterunderstand the contexts of its addition to our nation: the complexhistory of Russian imperialism in the region; the pre-Civil War arguments overinternational expansion that led to the first consideration of buying Alaska,under the Buchanan Administration; and the very dividedReconstruction-era moment and Johnson Administration during which Seward finallygained approval for that purchase in 1867 (and received the funds in 1868), andwhich produced the very vocal andfamous critiques of the acquisition.

At leastas complex, and far more explicitly dark and tragic, is the history surroundingthe American “acquisition” of Hawai’i a few decades later. My January 25thMemory Day nominee, Charles Reed Bishop [NOTE: I’ve since changed thatnomination for these reasons], illustrates some of the powerful and inspiringsides to American connections to Hawai’i in the mid-19th century;yet at the same time, Bishop’sstruggles to hold onto his late wife’s ancestral lands (on which they hadstarted their school) in the face of pressures from subsequentsettlers and big business to acquire that land exemplify the kinds of forcesthat leddirectly to America’s annexation of Hawai’i. There are few historical figureswhose stories reflect more poorly on the US’s actions than QueenLiliuokalani (although she has plenty of competition, of course), and we can’tpossibly understand the place’s history or meaning outside of a much fullerinclusion of her in our national histories and narratives. Such an inclusionwouldn’t make it impossible to appreciate the state’s natural beauties, nor itsmost famous contribution to 21stcentury America—but it would force us to recognize at which price those beauties,and the resources they include, were bought, and what that reveals about late19th century American imperialisms.

IfHawai’i’s history is one of the nation’s most dramatic and tragic, the evolvingstory of Maine would seem to be one of the quietest and most diplomatic.Although the area had been part of the United States (and specifically ofMassachusetts) since theRevolution, and had gained its own statehood in 1820, it hadthroughout those years served as a flashpoint for continuing conflicts betweenthe US and England. Thoseconflicts turned into the so-called “Aroostook War” (or Pork and Beans War) of1839, a bloodless struggle over the state’s borders and resources thatwas resolved through diplomacy three years later with the Webster-AshburtonTreaty. Besides revealing how tense relations between the US and itsformer mother country remained throughout the first half of the 19thcentury, that Treaty also illustrates some of the many other issues to whichthat relationship connected—besides settling the Maine/New Brunswick border,the treaty also stipulated the creation of a joint American and British navalforce for the sole purpose of patrolling the African coast and “suppressing theSlave Trade,” enforcing laws thathad been on the books in both nations for decades but which clearlyremained an issue. Engaging with the history of Maine, then, allows us tobetter understand multiple complex and crucial, Early Republic internationalinfluences and relationships.

NextAlaskaStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Alaska contexts you’d share?

February 21, 2025: Places I Love and Hate: Salem

[For thisyear’s installment in my annual anti-favorites series, I wanted to complicatethings a bit, considering places from across my life with which I havelove/hate relationships. I’d love to hear your own complex (or simple!)anti-favorites, whether places or anything else, for the crowd-sourced weekendairing of grievances!]

I saidmost of what I’d want to say about why (during the 22 years I’ve lived andworked in Massachusetts since coming up here to finish my PhD dissertationlong-distance and staying for my job at Fitchburg State) I’ve come to both hateand love Salem inthis post on how the city remembers the Witch Trials. Here I’ll just addthis: while I think some of that strange balance is unique or at least specificto Salem, I think a great deal of it also reflects the worst and best of Americaas a whole, and certainly of our collective memories. So, as I put it in this Shepherdbook recommendation list, I love and am frustrated by Salem very much like Ilove and am frustrated by the US of A.

Crowd-sourcedpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. So onemore time: what do you think? Anti-favorites you’d share?

February 20, 2025: Places I Love and Hate: Philly

[For thisyear’s installment in my annual anti-favorites series, I wanted to complicatethings a bit, considering places from across my life with which I havelove/hate relationships. I’d love to hear your own complex (or simple!)anti-favorites, whether places or anything else, for the crowd-sourced weekendairing of grievances!]

Onfrustrating attitudes, fantastic academics, and a secret third thing.

I used tothink it was probably apocryphal, but apparently it’s entirely real: in the1970s, a billboardon the highway leading into Philly, sponsored by the civic group ActionPhiladelphia which was seeking to drum up tourism for the city, featuredthe slogan “Philadelphia Isn’t as Bad as Philadelphians Say It is.” Obviouslythat was a joke and thus a hyperbolic portrayal of local attitudes andnarratives, but like many jokes, this one was definitely also a reflection ofreality. I’ve never lived anywhere where the locals had a more consistently andcomprehensively negative self-image than did Philadelphia and Philadelphiansduring the few years I spent there (as a grad student at Temple University),and for a congenital optimist like myself, encountering that attitude toward myhome and our shared city on the regular was a pretty painful thing toexperience.

On theother hand, one of my very favorite people and certainly one of my favoritefellow academics is a local Philadelphian born and bred. I’ve featured JeffRenye quite a bit in this space, from multipleawesome GuestPosts to my own impassionedtribute to his awesomeness (since I made that plea, he has indeed gotten afull-time teaching gig, in the UPenn WritingProgram). I don’t think I’ve said it specifically or overtly on any ofthose prior occasions, but Jeff is profoundly interconnected with Philly, and Idon’t just mean because I met him in grad school there and he became a guide tomuch of the city for me (although that’s certainly the case)—I mean because Ithink the best of Philly and its ethos, of what the city stands for (comparedfor example to more smug and self-confident places like Boston and New York),is captured by Jeff and his work and identity alike.

Those twoparagraphs capture the duality of this place pretty well, I’d say. But I wouldadd this: one of my favorite places in Philly is a relatively unknown historicsite that’s drastically overshadowed by the more famous and to my mind lessinteresting ones located nearby. I really love the BenjaminFranklin Museum and would recommend it to any visitor to historic Philly—butnearly all such visitors, it seems to me, stay in the area of neighboring siteslike Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, which are certainly historic butmuch less interesting in their presentation and exhibits than the museum. Andthat sums it up too, perhaps—Philly has tons of great stuff, but you’ve got towork a bit harder to find it, and you’ve got to make it through theself-deprecating narratives to do so.

Nextlove/hate place tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Anti-favorites you’d share?

February 19, 2025: Places I Love and Hate: Harvard

[For thisyear’s installment in my annual anti-favorites series, I wanted to complicatethings a bit, considering places from across my life with which I havelove/hate relationships. I’d love to hear your own complex (or simple!)anti-favorites, whether places or anything else, for the crowd-sourced weekendairing of grievances!]

I’vededicated a number of prior posts to impressive individuals who contributedmeaningful moments to my undergraduate experience, including:

PeterGomes, the groundbreaking minister who sat down with us at lunch one day inthe freshman dining hall;

AlanHeimert, the most demanding teacher I ever had and (despite all our differencesin style and tone) one of my clearest inspirations for my own teaching;

And MarkRennella, my senior thesis advisor who became a lifelong friend.

I alwayssay that the people were my favorite part of my time at Harvard, and those area few of the many reasons why. But my least favorite part was the institution’ssnottiness about itsown legacies and self-importance, and I have to admit that as a publicuniversity professor who despairs at how many news stories focus on Harvard andits Ivy League peers as if they are the norm for (or even vaguely representativeof) higher education in America, my frustrations with those aspects of Hahvahd hasonly deepened over the quarter-century since my graduation.  

Nextlove/hate place tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Anti-favorites you’d share?

February 18, 2025: Places I Love and Hate: CHS

[For thisyear’s installment in my annual anti-favorites series, I wanted to complicatethings a bit, considering places from across my life with which I havelove/hate relationships. I’d love to hear your own complex (or simple!)anti-favorites, whether places or anything else, for the crowd-sourced weekendairing of grievances!]

Onprisons, pains, and promises in a public school.

In lieu offull paragraphs in today’s post, I’m gonna point you to prior posts where I’vethought about these layers of my public high school, Charlottesville High.First, there’s thisone on how much this first integrated high school in town seems to have beenmodeled on a prison.

Second,there’s thispost, on my own painful high school experiences with hazing.

But third,there’s thisone on just a handful of the many inspiring and important teachers I was fortunateenough to learn from in (as well as before and after) that public high school. Thereare certainly things I hated about high school (join the club, I know), andcertainly very challenging things about my school in particular. But there werealso powerful positive presences there, ones that have remained with me eversince.

Nextlove/hate place tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Anti-favorites you’d share?

February 17, 2025: Places I Love and Hate: Cville

[For thisyear’s installment in my annual anti-favorites series, I wanted to complicatethings a bit, considering places from across my life with which I havelove/hate relationships. I’d love to hear your own complex (or simple!)anti-favorites, whether places or anything else, for the crowd-sourced weekendairing of grievances!]

Fivepieces through which I’d chart my evolving, fraught feelings on my hometown.

1)     TalkingPoints Memo (2015): I’d certainly written about Charlottesville here on theblog before 2015, but it was with the violentarrest of UVa student Martese Johnson in that year (also the origin pointfor one of my favorite shortstories) that I really started to lean into public scholarly engagementswith race, community, and Cville, if in a pretty preliminary way at that time.

2)     HuffingtonPost (2016): The evolving debate over Charlottesville’s Confederate statueswas a driving force in my continued thoughts, as reflected in this HuffPostcolumn—also the first time I started to more directly link, in my writing atleast, the city’s histories of segregation and racism to those broaderquestions of collective memory.

3)     Segregated Cville(2017): This Activist History Review article remains one of my favoritepieces of my writing, not just about Cville but on any subject, and I’d ask youto check it out in full if you read any one of the hyperlinked pieces in thispost. It brought together those two earlier columns, but also and especially deepenedmy thinking about all the American histories and issues that Cville soprofoundly embodies.

4)     SaturdayEvening Post (2019): That’s one of a few Considering Historycolumns I’ve written about my hometown, but I’m focusing on it here because itwas the one in which I had the chance to write about the destruction of theVinegar Hill neighborhood, one of the most painful and telling stories fromCville and any American community.

5)     Hereon the Blog (2020): Over the last five years I’ve returned many times inthis space to Cville, with updates on both its unfolding stories and my ownevolving thoughts. That’s just one example, and of course since 2020 my perspectivehas likewise continued to shift. As I imagine it always will on my fraught,frustrating, foundational hometown.

Nextlove/hate place tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Anti-favorites you’d share?