Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 221

September 3, 2018: Fall 2018 Previews: Writing I

[This week I start my 14th year at Fitchburg State. For that momentous occasion, I decided to focus in this fall preview on one thing that has evolved for each class I’m teaching, and one that’s a bit more longstanding. Leading up to a special weekend update on my next book project!]On the value of stability, and the need for growth nonetheless.I taught two sections of First-Year Writing I in my initial (Fall 2005!) semester at Fitchburg State, and have taught at least one section of the course pretty much every year since. It’s quite difficult to remember much about my mindset or work as a teacher (or just about anything else about me) way back then, but in this case I’ve got a very clear memory aid: my Writing I syllabus, the overall structure of which has stayed fundamentally the same across those 14 years. I start with a unit on personal essays (reading examples and then writing and analyzing our own), move to one that uses short stories to write thesis-driven analytical essays, transition to a brief unit in which we practice the skill of close reading on songs of our choice, and then conclude with the most complex unit and genre, one in which we read and then write essays that combine the personal and the scholarly to deal with broad overaching questions and topics (a genre modeled by Adrienne Rich’s “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” and Richard Rodriguez’s “The Achievement of Desire: Personal Reflections on Learning ‘Basics’”). I know it might sound pedagogically problematic to use the same syllabus for a decade and a half, but I would argue that there are at least a couple significant, interconnected benefits to having done so. For one thing, as I’ve discussed elsewhere in this space, a class like Writing I is to my mind entirely focused on student skills and voices, on helping them practice and develop different sides to their present and future work as a college student (and beyond). I believe these units, readings, and paper genres work very well for those purposes, and as long as they do so I wouldn’t want to reinvent the wheel. Similarly, for a class to achieve such student-centered purposes, it seems to me that the professor has to be able to focus virtually all of his or her time on working closely with each and every student, rather than (for example) reading and engaging with a ton of new content or materials. Obviously if a particular reading—or an entire unit or genre, or the whole syllabus for that matter—no longer feels as if it works, it’s important for us to be able to recognize that and make a change; but again, as long as it continues to feel that way, this is one more argument for maintaining some fundamental stability in Writing I in order to maximize our success in achieving the course’s crucial collegiate objectives.Yet fundamental stability doesn’t preclude specific additions or changes within that course’s syllabus, of course, and indeed keeping the overarching structure the same can make it easier for a professor to make such focused tweaks. As I’ve also discussed here previously, finding ways to add digital and multi-media content and paper options has been one such tweak I’ve attempted in my last few Writing I courses, and I plan to continue doing so this fall. But for this semester’s section, I’ve also been thinking about ways to get the students writing more frequently without it feeling to them like busy work. My current plan is to do so on days when there’s a reading in front of us, and to try to find prompts for brief bits of in-class writing that will both help drive our discussions and connect to their ideas or work in progress for the upcoming paper. But as always, I’m very open to thoughts or suggestions, for likewise as always my continued evolution as a teacher depends at least as much on all those in my community as on my own fourteen years of experiences!Next preview tomorrow,BenPS. What do you all have going on this Fall?

September 1-2, 2018: August 2018 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]July 30: 17th Century Histories: Bacon’s Rebellion: On the rebellion’s anniversary, a 17th century series kicks off with myths and realities of the famous uprising!July 31: 17th Century Histories: Jamestown’s First Slaves: The series continues with what we’ve learned about this originating community, and the American lesson we can take from them.August 1: 17th Century Histories: The Massacre at Mystic: Three texts that together help us remember one of early America’s darkest moments, as the series rolls on.August 2: 17th Century Histories: New Amsterdam: Two ways the Dutch colonial city helps us rethink early american histories.August 3: 17th Century Histories: Brothers Among Nations: The series concludes with historian Cynthia van Zandt’s different and more inspiring vision of the arrival and contact era.August 4-5: Virginia Historic Sites: The first of two weekend posts, a link-tastic list of prior posts I’ve written on some of Virginia’s many wonderful sites.August 4-5: Kathleen Morrissey’s Guest Post: The Bubbles and Borders that Limit Our Immigration Debates: And secondly, my most recent Guest Post, featuring the great Kathleen Morrissey on a rhetorical topic of vital contemporary interest.August 6: Swimming Pool Studying: Gatsby’s Pool: A summer swimming series kicks off with the tragic dip that’s as difficult to pin down as the mysterious man who takes it.August 7: Swimming Pool Studying: Weissmuller and Phelps: The series continues with the two Olympians whose divergent stories reveal a great deal about their respective eras.August 8: Swimming Pool Studying: Cheever’s Swimmer: A pitch-perfect short story from one of the American masters of the form, as the series swims on.August 9: Swimming Pool Studying: Fry’s Spring: Four exemplary stages of one of Charlottesville, Virginia’s most enduring sites.August 10: Swimming Pool Studying: Canobie Lake Park: The series concludes (and expands a bit) with a few key stages in the history of a New England summer attraction.August 11-12: Segregated Cville: For the one-year anniversary of Charlottesville’s Unite the Right rally and its aftermaths, highlighting one of my favorite pieces of writing from the last year.August 13: Birthday Bests: 2010-2011: The birthday posts start with 34 favorite posts from the blog’s first year.August 14: Birthday Bests: 2011-2012: 35 favorite posts from year two!August 15: Birthday Bests: 2012-2013: 36 favorites from year three!August 16: Birthday Bests: 2013-2014: 37 favorites from year four!August 17: Birthday Bests: 2014-2015: 38 favorites from year five!August 18: Birthday Bests: 2015-2016: 39 favories from year six!August 19: Birthday Bests: 2016-2017: 40 favorites from year seven!August 20: Birthday Bests: 2017-2018: And in my newest bday post, 41 favorites from my 8th year of blogging! Here’s to many more in year nine!August 21: Contextualizing Cville: Dave Matthews: A post Cville vacation series starts with AmericanStudying a local and international music legend.August 22: Contextualizing Cville: Carpetbaggers and Confederates: The series continues with nostalgia, fear, and the divisions that threaten Cville and the nation.August 23: Contextualizing Cville: Mr. Jefferson’s University?: The instructive early struggles of an eduational pioneer, as the series rolls on.August 24: Contextualizing Cville: Iron Crown Enterprises: The series concludes with the rise, fall, and enduring legacy of a Cville gaming company.August 25-26: Contextualizing Cville: Cville a Year Later: For Cville’s 1-year anniversary, a few more reflections on where the city is a year later, and where we go from here.August 27: SpeechStudying: “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?”: A series on great American speeches starts with the stunning speech that challenges us just as much today as it did 150 years ago.August 28: SpeechStudying: King’s “Dream” Speech: On its 55thanniversary, the series continues with two rhetorical strategies that make this speech an all-time great.August 29: SpeechStudying: “Eulogy on King Philip”: Two models of critical patriotism in William Apess’s striking Early Republic speech, as the series rolls on.August 30: SpeechStudying: Garnet’s “Address”: The contextual and contemporary importance of a radical antislavery speech.August 31: SpeechStudying: Three Recent Speeches: The series concludes with recent and complementary speeches by Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

August 31, 2018: SpeechStudying: Three Recent Speeches

[On August 28th, 1963Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous speech to the March of Washington. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that and four other great American speeches!]On two speeches that seem to tell the story of our last decade, and one that offers a different view.1)      Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” (2008): I’ve written multiple times in this space about Obama’s 2008 Philadelphia speech on race, his own heritage, and the nation, a moment that not only quite likely saved his presidential campaign and reshaped the next eight years (and more) of American political and social life in the process, but also one that exemplifies Obama’s many connections to foundational and ongoing American histories and stories (which is why I made the speech part of the conclusion of my second book). But all those broader contexts can make it easy to overlook the incredible power of the speech itself, which in its sweeping imagery and metaphors, its use of repetition and cadence, and its movement from challenge and critique to optimism and hope (among other compelling elements and strategies) makes it a worthy successor indeed to King’s “Dream” speech. This is both a great American speech and a pitch-perfect encapsulation of Obama’s appeal and presence.2)      Donald Trump launches his 2016 campaign (2015): I don’t think I’ve written much at all about Trump’s infamous campaign launch, for two contrasting but equally frustrating reasons: because at the time it seemed like a ridiculous joke; and because it has turned out that the ridiculous joke is on us, in every sense. I couldn’t bring myself to watch Trump’s remarks again or even read a transcript now, so (perhaps fortunately for all of us) I can’t provide a close reading of their rhetorical strategies or audience appeals. But I’d still argue that Trump’s “speech” represents a polar opposite to Obama’s, and not just because it’s so incoherent and rambling that I feel compelled to put “speech” in scare quotes. Indeed, despite all those gaps and failings Trump’s remarks do have a consistent theme and purpose, and they’re one and the same: highlighting and amplifying national divisions, especially along racial and ethnic lines. I don’t think Trump’s remarks had a title (he’d probably just call them “Donald Trump,” natch), but “A More Perfect Disunion” would accurately sum up both them and much of what Trump has represented and argued for since.3)      Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” (2009): It’d be very difficult to think of a pair of speeches that capture the story of our last decade better than do Obama’s and Trump’s. But as the wonderful Nigerian American novelist, educator, and activist Adichie reminds us in her important and inspiring TED talk, having a single story about anything is always at best limited and at worst damaging and destructive. The highs of Obama and the lows of Trump are one part of our 21st century story to be sure, and these two speeches serve as metonymic reflections for those huge trends. But I don’t know that either focus quite allows room for Adichie—for her writing and career, for her voice and perspective, and for this 2009 speech in particular. Collectively listening to and learning from Adichie’s speech would help us in so many ways, including both a recognition of the power of oration itself and a desire to keep adding stories to our collective conversations. August Recap this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other speeches you’d highlight?

August 30, 2018: SpeechStudying: Garnet’s “Address”

[On August 28th, 1963Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous speech to the March of Washington. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that and four other great American speeches!]On the contextual and the contemporary importance of a striking speech.When I learned I would have the chance to teach 19th Century African American Literature (the first of our two-course Af Am survey sequence, and a class cross-listed between our English Studies and African American Studies programs) for the first time this past spring, I knew I would want to include a number of texts and voices on the syllabus that I have never before taught. Of course folks like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs and Charles Chesnutt and Ida B. Wells, favorites whom I’ve taught many times before, would occupy prominent places. But for my own experience and benefit, and even more for the goal of exposing the students to the widest range of texts and figures possible, I wanted to balance such existing favs with ones with which I’m far less familiar. Thanks to the great first volume of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature , I had no shortage of such authors and works to choose from, and included at least one text per week that I’ve never taught before. Today I wanted to focus on one such work, Henry Highland Garnet’s stirring and controversial 1843 speech “An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America.” Garnet (1815-1882), a former slave (he escaped from slavery in Maryland with his entire family when he was about 10 years old, moving to New York City) turned Presbyterian minister and Abolitionist activist, delivered his “Address” at the 1843 National Negro Convention in Buffalo. An aggressive and impassioned call for noncompliance and violent resistance—the final paragraph opens, “Let your motto be resistance! resistance!RESISTANCE!”—Garnet’s oration, which came to be known as the “Call for Rebellion” speech, drew forth condemnations from Douglass and other abolitionist leaders, although it also fell just one vote short of approval as an official resolution of the convention. And that duality—the speech’s controversy yet also its popularity—offers a vital illustration of the spectrum of perspectives, voices, arguments, and goals within the nascent Abolitionist movement, much less the broader social and cultural debates over and narratives of slavery and race in America. I can’t imagine a better course in which to engage with that breadth and depth of voices and ideas than a survey of 19th century African American literature, and I hope Garnet (among others, like David Walker) will help us engage with those themes and threads fully and successfully.My goal for the course was to focus on those historical topics and frames pretty consistently, but there’s no way that this course—like any in the age of Teaching under Trump, but also in specific and particularly salient ways—wouldn’t engage with 21st century American issues and conversations as well. For example I made sure to have a #BlackLivesMatterthread throughout the semester, to think about what our different authors and texts have to add to that concept and conversation. In the case of Garnet’s speech, even his titular address to a slave audience—as well as the speech’s opening clause, calling that audience his “Brethren and Fellow Citizens”—reflects a humanizing and individualizing perspective on each and every African American slave that wasn’t necessarily central to every Abolitionist argument (at least some of which focused on slavery as a system, on broader moral or economic questions, and so on). One of many interesting contemporary echoes that it’s vital to draw out of this speech and all of the course’s complex and crucial texts.Last speech tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other speeches you’d highlight?

August 29, 2018: SpeechStudying: “Eulogy on King Philip”

[On August 28th, 1963Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous speech to the March of Washington. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that and four other great American speeches!]On one speech that offers two complementary models of critical patriotism.Many of the ways I’d make the case for William Apess as an exemplary American critical patriot were summed up in this post. I don’t think it’s the slightest bit hyperbolic to describe Apess as the 19th century’s Martin Luther King Jr.—a fiery preacher of supreme oratorical and rhetorical talents who dedicated his life to pursuing civil and human rights for his people and for all his fellow citizens of the world, one whose life was tragically cut short but who achieved a great deal in that time and has left a lasting legacy down into our own. If Apess’ era had had the technology to record and broadcast his speeches, or even to publish his writings in more mass-market ways, I have no doubt that we’d listen to and read his voice and words alongside those of King (and yesterday’s subject Frederick Douglass) and our other most potent orators. And however and wherever we encounter them, we consistently find in Apess’ works models of bitingly critical yet still patriotic visions of our shared American society, community, identity, and history.In that prior post I focused on Apess’ 1833 essay/sermon “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man,” but I would argue that his critical patriotism is best illustrated by his January 1836 speech “Eulogy on King Philip.” Delivered at Boston’s Odeon lecture and concert hall, which had opened the year before and would go on to host speeches and readings by such luminaries as William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Edgar Allan Poe, Apess’ stunning speech uses his own life story and mixed-race heritage (as scholar Patricia Bizzell traces at length in this excellent piece) to argue for his alternative vision of American history, community, and identity. While much of the speech is as righteously angry about both past injustices and present oppressions as was “Looking-Glass,” the final lines, addressed overtly to his (likely entirely non-native) audience, reflect the optimistic core of Apess’ critical patriotism: “You and I have to rejoice that we have not to answer for our fathers’ crimes; neither shall we do right to charge them one to another. We can only regret it, and flee from it; and from henceforth, let peace and righteousness be written upon our hearts and hands forever, is the wish of a poor Indian.”While Apess thus ranges across a number of topics and themes in the course of his speech, its central focus is indeed King Philip (Metacomet), the 17th century Wampanoag chief and distant ancestor of Apess’ mother who was and remains best known in American collective memory for the 1670s war that came to bear his name. Yet from the start of his speech, Apess presents a stunning shift in those narratives, arguing that this supposed enemy of the English should be collectively remembered instead as a revolutionary hero: “so will every patriot, especially in this enlightened age, respect the rude yet all accomplished son of the forest, that died a martyr to his cause, though unsuccessful, yet as glorious as the American Revolution.” Arguing for that vision of Philip, in the same 1830s Boston that was cementing its collective narratives of the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution, was as bold a rhetorical move as Douglass’ July 4thspeech. Yet if we can see the Massachusetts Puritans and the Wampanoags as two founding American cultures (as I’ve argued multiple times in this space), there’s no reason why we can’t see Philip as a revolutionary, critical patriot, one whose tragic end shouldn’t overshadow his work toward a collective American community.Next speech tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other speeches you’d highlight?

August 28, 2018: SpeechStudying: King’s “Dream” Speech

[On August 28th, 1963Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous speech to the March of Washington. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that and four other great American speeches!]On two rhetorical strategies that exemplify the power of one of our greatest speeches and orators.In my now-annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day post, I begin with the statement that King’s August 1963 “I have a dream” speech has been slightly overrated in our collective memories. I hope that the post quickly and thoroughly moves beyond that clickbait-y starting point to clarify what I’m really arguing, which includes not only an appeal for memories of King’s voice, activism, and legacies well beyond any one speech, but also and just as importantly an argument for better appreciating this one speech’s multiple sections and tones. That is, while the optimistic ending featuring the rightly famous “I have a dream” series of images is certainly worth our attention, that ending can’t be fully understood outside of the context of the speech’s far more pessimistic (or at least bitingly realistic) opening. There, King highlights the year’s centennial anniversary of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and then transitions, with the stunningly blunt sentence “But 100 years later the Negro still is not free,” into an extended reflection on the early 1960s “shameful condition” that has brought the Civil Rights marchers there to Washington.That overall structure and shift is one striking and successful element of King’s speech, and here I want to highlight two other hugely impressive rhetorical strategies he employs. One is the extended metaphor King develops just after that biting opening, a metaphor that begins with the sentences, “In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” King then takes the metaphor to two additional levels: a criticism that “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds’”; and an optimistic rejoinder that “we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.” I’m not sure most orators could have come up with this pitch-perfect metaphor at all, and I’m quite sure that very few others could have made such multi-layered and compelling use of it.The other rhetorical strategy I’ll highlight is already better known, thanks to the aforementioned “I have a dream” sequence: King’s consistent use of repetition throughout the speech. While of course those culminating repetitions are tremendously moving on their own terms, I’d say the strategy overall works best because, not coincidentally, of how often he repeats it throughout the speech. King follows the stunning phrase “the fierce urgency of now” by beginning four straight sentences with “Now is the time,” creating that sense of immediacy and urgency for his audience. Later, he begins a series of sentences in a row with two alternating phrases, “We cannot be satisfied” and “We can never be satisfied,” framing the moment’s unacceptable realities and building toward the section’s conclusion: “No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Through these and other repetitions and parallelisms, King fully draws his audience into the flow of his thoughts and perspective, making us into fellow travelers along the speech’s path from dark realities to hopeful dreams. One more way that, just to say it clearly one more time, the “I have a dream” speech is indeed fully deserving of its status as one of the greatest American orations.Next speech tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other speeches you’d highlight?

August 27, 2018: SpeechStudying: “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?”

[On August 28th, 1963Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous speech to the March of Washington. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that and four other great American speeches!]On the stunning speech that challenges us as much today as it did 150 years ago.I’ve written many times, in this space and elsewhere, about the inspiring history of Elizabeth Freeman, Quock Walker, and their Revolutionary-era peers and allies. Freeman, Walker, their fellow Massachusetts slaves, and the abolitionist activists with whom they worked used the language and ideas of the Declaration of Independence and 1780 Massachusetts Constitution in support of their anti-slavery petitions and court cases, and in so doing contributed significantly to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts. I’m hard-pressed to think of a more inspiring application of our national ideals, or of a more compelling example of my argument (made in the second hyperlinked piece above) that black history is American history. Yet at the same time, it would be disingenuous in the extreme for me to claim that Freeman’s and Walker’s cases were representative ones, either in their era or at any time in the two and a half centuries of American slavery; nor I would I want to use Freeman’s and Walker’s successful legal actions as evidence that the Declaration’s “All men are created equal” sentiment did not in a slaveholding nation include a central strain of hypocrisy.If I ever need reminding of that foundational American hypocrisy, I can turn to one of our most fiery texts: Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass’s speech is long and multi-layered, and I don’t want to reduce its historical and social visions to any one moment; but I would argue that it builds with particular power to this passage, one of the most trenchant in American oration and writing: “Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?” The subsequent second half of the speech sustains that perspective and passion, impugning every element of a nation still entirely defined by slavery and its effects. Despite having begun his speech by noting his “quailing sensation,” his feeling of appearing before the august gathering “shrinkingly,” Douglass thus builds instead to one of the most full-throated, confident critiques of American hypocrisy and failure ever articulated.As an avowed and thoroughgoing optimist, it’s far easier for me to grapple with Freeman’s and Walker’s use of the Declaration and the 4th of July than with Douglass’s—which, of course, makes it that much more important for me to include Douglass in my purview, and which is why I wanted to begin this week’s series with Douglass’s speech. There’s a reason, after all, why the most famous American slave is undoubtedly Harriet Tubman—we like our histories overtly inspiring, and if we’re going to remember slavery at all, why not do so through the lens of someone who resisted it so successfully? Yet while Tubman, like Walker, is certainly worth remembering, the overarching truth of slavery in America is captured far better by Douglass’s speech and its forceful attention to our national hypocrises and flaws. And despite the ridiculous attacks over the last few years on “too negative” histories or “apologizing for America,” there’s no way we can understand our nation or move forward collectively without a fuller engagement wth precisely the lens provided by Douglass and his stunning speech.Next speech tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other speeches you’d highlight?

August 25-26, 2018: Cville A Year Later

[Last week my sons and I returned to my hometown of Charlottesville, pretty much exactly a year after the white supremacist/neo-nazi rallies there last August (which took place on the day we arrived in town last summer, because apparently that’s just life as an AmericanStudier these days). So this week I wanted to AmericanStudy a few contexts for this exemplary American city’s unfolding histories, leading up to this special weekend post reflecting on where we are in August 2018.]On two distinct spaces where Charlottesville seeks to remember, and one hope moving forward.Just over a year after the chaotic and violent rally in (if not to my mind truly focused on) Cville’s Lee Park, the statue of Robert E. Lee (and a neighboring one of Stonewall Jackson near the town courthouse) remains where it has stood for about a century. The city has changed the park’s name to Emancipation Park, a largely symbolic (and perhaps relatively unknown, at least outside of Cville itself) gesture but certainly a change nonetheless. For a time, the Lee and Jackson statues were covered by tarps; protesters kept removing the tarps under cover of darkness, however, and eventually a judge ruled that the tarps could not stay on indefinitely (since their stated purpose was “mourning,” which he ruled has an expiration date) and so they have been taken away. Now the statues are surrounded by metal fences that both keep visitors or vandals from getting too close and change the view from simply that of a marble memorial to a Confederate officer to something more overtly fraught and contested. In all those and other ways, Lee Park’s construction of public memory has continued to evolve over the last year, although I don’t know whether the park, Charlottesville, or we all are any closer to a truly meaningful reckoning with the questions and histories at play there.On the other side of Charlottesville’s historic Downtown Mall is a very different and much more inspiring public memorial. In the worst moment of the August 12 violence, 32 year old paralegal and social justice activist Heather Heyer was killed when white supremacist James Fields Jr. drove his car into a crowd of protesters (at least 19 others were injured by this act of domestic terrorism). Just over four months later, the where Heyer was killed Heather Heyer Way, and in the months since the space has become an impromptu but very moving memorial to Heyer. The brick walls on both side of the street are covered with chalk messages, many paying direct tribute to Heyer (or expressing condolences to her family) but many others advancing broader thoughts and ideas that echo and extend the ideals for which Heyer fought and was still fighting when she was killed. I don’t doubt that the site has seen incidents of vandalism or hate speech, but on the two separate occasions when I visited (in May and August, respectively) I’ve encountered only those more commemorative and celebratory kinds of statements. While of course the very existence of the Heather Heyer memorial reflects fraught, tragic, and horrific histories and realities, the space itself offers some of the best of what both public memory and collective voices can offer. So where does Cville go from here? It’s far too simple to say that we can or should just follow the lead of or focus solely on the Heather Heyer memorial, for many reasons including the fact that Lee Park (whatever we now call it) continues to exist and demands our engagement as well. No amount of chalk messages, however thoughtful, can suffice for that historical, cultural, and contemporary dialogue. But at the same time, I’d say that the Heyer memorial is a pretty compelling example of critical patriotism and critical optimism—building off of a dark history, demanding that we remember it, but also using that place of public memory as a space to argue for the best of what we’ve been and are and can be. I’m not going to pretend that there’s any use of Lee Park that would satisfy the types who came to Cville last August to spread their hate and violence, nor for that matter do I have any interest in appeasing (or even talking with) that group of white supremacist neo-nazi assholes. But for the more thoughtful and sane of us (a group that the critical optimist in me still believes outnumbers the assholes, although I have my moments these days…), I can see great value in using such historical spaces in precisely that way—commenting on the prior histories, to make sure we acknowledge and engage with their presence and effects; but adding layers of collective voice and inspiration, to make sure we recognize that we are not bound by the worst of our past. If that can be one legacy of August 12th, it would be a potent and crucial one.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think?

August 24, 2018: Contextualizing Cville: Iron Crown Enterprises

[Last week my sons and I returned to my hometown of Charlottesville, pretty much exactly a year after the white supremacist/neo-nazi rallies there last August (which took place on the day we arrived in town last summer, because apparently that’s just life as an AmericanStudier these days). So this week I wanted to AmericanStudy a few contexts for this exemplary American city’s unfolding histories, leading up to a special weekend post reflecting on where we are in August 2018.]On the rise, fall, and enduring legacy of an innovative gaming company.I wrote a bit in this post on role-playing games about Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE), the Charlottesville-based gaming company whose Middle-earth Role Playing (MERP) system played a significant and wonderful role in my childhood. First developed as a Dungeons & Dragons campaign in the late 1970s by a group of University of Virginia students, MERP (known initially as Rolemaster before the company signed an exclusive worldwide license with Tolkien Enterprises in 1982) became a flagship product for ICE, which the students incorporated in 1980 not long after their graduations. As Stranger Things reflects , the ‘80s were a heyday for roleplaying, and ICE was at the forefront of the trend, developing multiple gaming systems (including two sci fi counterparts to Rolemaster known as Spacemaster and Cyberspace), creating numerous supplements and adventures for those games, and branching out into board games (including a favorite of mine that my sons and I have brought back into the mix, Riddle of the Ring) and solo gaming books as well. ICE was most everywhere in gaming culture in the late 80s and early 90s, making them a standout presence in Charlottesville’s business scene of the era as well.By 1997 the company was experiencing severe financial difficulties, however, and in October 2000 it filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which cost them the Tolkien Enterprises license. The Wikipedia pageidentifies a number of factors in that precipitous decline, and I can’t claim any insider knowledge (or really any knowledge at all) beyond what I’ve read in such histories. But I have to admit a strong inclination to agree with this sentiment (also from Wikipedia): “There has been some debate over whether Tolkien Enterprises forced ICE into bankruptcy in order to get the gaming license in anticipation of the upcoming new movie franchise.” Peter Jackson and company had begun planning the Lord of the Rings films in earnest around 1997, and began filming in 1999 ahead of the 2001 release of the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring. If ICE had still possessed the worldwide gaming license as of 2001, it’s fair to say that the company (as long as it could have produced enough product to meet the new demand) would have exploded into international prominence. Perhaps the timing of the difficulties and bankruptcy is just an extremely frustrating coincidence, but perhaps it reflects some of the least attractive sides to the business, gaming, and artistic worlds. At the very least, it’s important to note that ICE did wonderful justice to Tolkien’s legacy during an era when it was far less visible, and deserved the chance to do so once Tolkien became Hollywood royalty.Unfortunately ICE didn’t get that chance, and after 2001 ceased to exist as an independent company; the company has changed hands and names a few times since and is currently part of Guild Companion Publications. But I would nonetheless stress a couple vital and enduring elements to ICE’s legacy, beyond its meaning in my own young life (although that too, and again I have tried to pass that meaning on to my sons in various ways as well). For one thing, ICE’s dozens of supplemental books about Middle-earth are among the most beautifully crafted gaming products I’ve ever encountered, and by themselves more than make the case that games are a form of art and culture just as much as they are play. And for another, I think ICE’s history comprises the ideal small business success story, one that acknowledges prior and necessary influences (without both Dungeons & Dragons and public higher education there’d be no ICE to be sure) but that at the same time reflects the genuine vision and passion of a group of committed individuals who turned their particular talents and collective interests into a viable and highly successful business. I’m glad to have had the chance to connect with it, and I know Charlottesville is much better for having hosted ICE.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think?

August 23, 2018: Contextualizing Cville: Mr. Jefferson’s University?

[Last week my sons and I returned to my hometown of Charlottesville, pretty much exactly a year after the white supremacist/neo-nazi rallies there last August (which took place on the day we arrived in town last summer, because apparently that’s just life as an AmericanStudier these days). So this week I wanted to AmericanStudy a few contexts for this exemplary American city’s unfolding histories, leading up to a special weekend post reflecting on where we are in August 2018.]On the instructive early struggles of an educational pioneer.I’ve been pretty hard in this space on Cville’s favorite son and the namesake of my childhood street (among 2,832 other things in town), Thomas Jefferson, and I stand by those analytical critiques. But TJ also did a lot of great things in his long and influential life, and I agree with his tombstone’s argument that the founding of the University of Virginia was among his most impressive achievements. While the narrative that UVa was the nation’s first state university is an inaccurate one, it was something even more significant: America’s first non-sectarian university, one created and designed with no denominational affiliation or sponsorship. Whether that made it entirely secular is a matter for debate, but absent such affiliation (and with, for example, no requirement for chapel attendance for its students), the university represented a significant shift in American higher education in any case.As is often the case when such norms are challenged, Jefferson’s university faced pushback and critique from religious leaders and other adversaries (such as its in-state rival and Jefferson’s alma mater, the overtly Anglican William and Mary College) in its early years. But as journalists Rex Bowman and Carlos Santos document in their book Rot, Riot, and Rebellion: Mr. Jefferson’s Struggle to Save the University That Changed America (2013), the far more extreme early struggles were those presented by the students themselves, a group of (mostly) spoiled plantation aristocrats who spent more time partying and dueling than studying, who (as that linked review quotes) “randomly [shot] as passersby” and “whip[ped] professors,” and a masked one of whom even murdered the popular law professor John A.G. Davis in 1840. Jefferson did (spoiler alert!) help the university change course, as did others including some of the students (who designed the famous Honor Code after the Davis killing), but in its early years UVa was seemingly as far from Jefferson’s ideal “academical village” as it could be.Fun stories to be sure (although slightly chilling ones for any professor to read!), but do they have a broader significance, beyond simply (if importantly) revising our perspective on this one university? I would argue that they do, on at least two levels. For one thing, anyone who finds him or herself critiquing 21stcentury college students for their excessive partying or lack of focus on their studies or the like should probably stop and realize a) college students have always been thus and b) things were far worse in certain places and moments than they are now! And for another, it’s worth considering one reason why UVa students could and did get away with these crazy and violent behaviors for so long with few if any reprisals: their privileged status, class, gender, and race. Mike Brown, the African American teenager famously killed by a police offer in Ferguson, Missouri, in the summer of 2014, was about to start his college career as well—and whatever Brown did or did not do on the day of his death, it’s fair to say that it wasn’t nearly as bad as much of what went on in the early days of Mr. Jefferson’s University.Last Cville contexts tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?