Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 240

January 18, 2018: MLK Day Figures: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

[To celebrate one of my favorite American holidays, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of inspiring African American leaders, starting with my annual post on more fully remembering King himself. And leading up to a special Guest Post from one of my favorite current scholars and writers!]On an author and reformer whose efforts and works spanned virtually every significant 19thcentury period, issue, and literary genre.Many of my nominees for the Hall of American Inspiration have been folks I have called Renaissance Americans, historical and cultural figures whose work, writing, interests, and influences spanned many different subjects and disciplines, communities and events. Such figures, to echo what I wrote about historical and literary inspirations in this post on Anna Julia Cooper, exemplify the deepest meaning of an interdisciplinary AmericanStudies approach, making clear that inspirational American identities do not adhere to specific categories or boundaries for where and how their influences are felt. And I don’t know that any American has crossed into more spheres of influence, nor done so by overcoming more significant obstacles, than Frances Ellen Watkins (Harper).Watkins (her maiden name) was born to free African American parents in Baltimore, but in 1825, a period when (as Frederick Douglass’s slave experiences of that city around the same time illustrate) the lives and prospects of free blacks were not often far removed from those of slaves. Yet before she had turned 30—while slavery was still the law of much of the land, including of course in Maryland—she had published multiple collections of poetry, including the very successful Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects(1854); had moved to Pennsylvania and was helping William Still run his portion of the Underground Railroad; and was traveling throughout the north delivering lectures on behalf of both abolitionism and women’s rights. Her 1860 marriage to Fenton Harper briefly removed her from such public efforts, and had she concluded her public careers at that time her life and works would already constitute an impressive and inspirational part of our histories and community.Fentor Harper tragically died only four years later, however, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (as she would remain known for the remainder of her life) returned to the public sphere, or really many spheres, with renewed passion and power. She not only continued to work for African American rights, during and after Reconstruction and the many other post-war challenges, but became as eloquent and important a voice for women’s rights and suffrage as any American. She contributed so many journalistic pieces on those and other issues that she came to be known as the mother of African American journalism. She released many more collections of poetry, creating in Sketches of Southern Life (1872)’s Aunt Chloe one of the era’s most compelling characters and voices. She also published multiple novels, including one of the most important Reconstruction novels in Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (1892). And throughout she dealt with her period and its far too often dark histories with the combination of realism and optimism reflected in Iola’s subtitle and best captured in her most famous lines of poetry (and one of the principal inspirations for my most recent book): “Yet the shadows bear the promise/Of a brighter coming day.”Last figure tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Figures or histories you’d highlight?

January 17, 2018: MLK Day Figures: David Walker

[To celebrate one of my favorite American holidays, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of inspiring African American leaders, starting with my annual post on more fully remembering King himself. And leading up to a special Guest Post from one of my favorite current scholars and writers!]On one of the most aggressive, impassioned, and eloquent—if tragically short-lived—voices for social equality in our nation’s history.When it comes to social progress and change, as I wrote most explicitly in this post on the Civil Rights movement (and as certainly informed my thoughts in Monday’s MLK Day post), I think our national narratives tend to emphasize peaceful mechanisms like passive resistance (which is of course not, as I also argued in this Occupy Davis post, necessarily peaceful nor passive) more than they do aggressive protests or challenges to the established order or society. That’s a perfectly understandable perspective, since it allows us to recognize the need for change while likewise celebrating peace, love, and other importantly unifying ideas. But just as Martin Luther King pushed back on such perspectives by arguing for Why We Can’t Wait, and just as Frederick Douglass illustrated by challenging his audience directly in his seminal “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech, significant social change depends as well, if not indeed centrally, on aggressive voices and protests.When it comes to abolitionism, there is certainly no shortage of aggressive voices to include in our national narratives: Douglass himself, Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison, even (if also exemplifying the conflicts and violence that such aggression can produce) John Brown. But perhaps the most aggressive and angry, yet also eloquent and powerful, such abolitionist voice belongs to an almost entirely forgotten early 19th century American: David Walker. Walker’s life, and even more so his public prominence, were tragically short-lived—he burst onto the scene as one of Boston’s and the nation’s most vocal abolitionists in 1827/1828, published his seminal Walker’s Appeal (the full title is much much longer than that, and I insist you click the link to check it out!) in 1829, and died (probably of tuberculosis) at the age of 33 in 1830—which might explain in part his disappearance from our collective memories. But I would argue that Walker’s profoundly radical text and ideas likewise contributed to that elision—and are precisely why we should instead remember and engage with him today.The most overtly, and not at all unimportantly, radical aspect of Walker’s Appeal is its typography: as scholar Marcy Dinius has analyzed at length, Walker utilized capitalization, exclamation points, enlarged typefaces, bold and italics, and many other typographical elements to create a text that quite literally yells (screams, even) at its audiences. Yet those typographical extremes parallel the book’s many equally aggressive and challenging ideas and elements: Walker’s use of the Constitution as a frame, in order to force the nation’s hypocrisies to the fore throughout; his arguments for immediate and absolute emancipation by any and every means, including violent slave revolts; and, perhaps most strikingly for the era, his titular and continued address not to fellow abolitionists, nor to slaveholders, or even to white Americans at all, but “to the Colored Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America.” That address, like Walker’s book and voice overall, refuses to accept any of the conditions of slavery, including its forced illiteracy and powerlessness, making a case instead for the shared anger, challenge, passion, and eloquence of all African Americans.Next figure tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Figures or histories you’d highlight?

January 16, 2018: MLK Day Figures: Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker

[To celebrate one of my favorite American holidays, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of inspiring African American leaders, starting with my annual post on more fully remembering King himself. And leading up to a special Guest Post from one of my favorite current scholars and writers!]I apologize for linking to myself, but if I had to highlight one piece of writing from the last year that truly exemplifies my public scholarly goals and project, it would be my piece for the Washington Post’s Made by History blog on Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker. I don’t know of any American figures—from any community, in any time period, for any reason—whom we should more fully and collectively remember than Freeman and Walker, and so wanted to make sure to highlight them and my piece in this week’s series. So if you haven’t checked out that piece yet—once again, it’s at this hyperlink—I would greatly appreciate your doing so. And then come back and share your thoughts or responses here, please!Next figure tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Figures or histories you’d highlight?

January 15, 2018: MLK Day Figures: The Real King

[To celebrate one of my favorite American holidays, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of inspiring African American leaders, starting with my annual post on more fully remembering King himself. And leading up to a special Guest Post from one of my favorite current scholars and writers!]On the limits to how we currently remember King, and how to get beyond them.
It probably puts me at significant risk of losing my AmericanStudies Card to say this—and you have no idea how hard it is to get a second one of those if you lose the first—but I think the “I Have a Dream” speech is kind of overrated. I’m sort of saying that for effect, since I don’t really mean that the speech itself isn’t as eloquent and powerful and pitch-perfect in every way as the narrative goes; it most definitely is, and while that’s true enough if you read the words, it becomes infinitely more true when you see video and thus hear audio of the speech and moment. But what is overrated, I think, is the weight that has been placed on the speech, the cultural work that it has been asked to do. Partly that has to do with contemporary politics, and especially with those voices who have tried to argue that King’s “content of their character” rather than “color of their skin” distinction means that he would oppose any and all forms of identity politics or affirmative action or the like; such readings tend to forget that King was speaking in that culminating section of the speech about what he dreams might happen “one day”—if, among other things, we give all racial groups the same treatment and opportunities—rather than what he thought was possible in America in the present.
But the more significant overemphasis on the speech, I would argue, has occurred in the process by which it (and not even all of it, so much as just those final images of “one day”) has been made to symbolize all of—or at least represent in miniature—King’s philosophies and ideas and arguments. There’s no question that the speech’s liberal univeralism, its embrace (if in that hoped-for way) of an equality that knows no racial identifications, was a central thread within King’s work; and, perhaps more tellingly, was the thread by which he could most clearly be defined in opposition to a more stridently and wholly Black Nationalist voice like Malcolm X’s. Yet the simple and crucial fact is that King’s rich and complex perspective and philosophy, as they existed throughout his life but especially as they developed over the decade and a half between his real emergence onto the national scene with the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and his assassination in 1968, contained a number of similarly central and crucial threads. There were for example his radical perspectives on class, wealth, and the focuses of government spending, a set of arguments which culminated in the last years of his life in both the “Poor People’s Campaign” and in increasingly vocal critiques of the military-industrial complex; and his strong belief not only in nonviolent resistance (as informed by figures as diverse as Thoreau and Gandhi) but also in pacifism in every sense, which likewise developed into his very public opposition to the Vietnam Year in his final years. While both of those perspectives were certainly not focused on one racial identity or community, neither were they broadly safe or moderate stances; indeed, they symbolized direct connections to some of the most radical social movements and philosophies of the era.
To my mind, though, the most significant undernarrated thread—and perhaps the most central one in King’s perspective period—has to be his absolutely clear belief in the need to oppose racial segregation and discrimination, of every kind, in every way, as soon and as thoroughly as possible. Again, the contrast to Malcolm has tended to make King out to be the more patient or cautious voice, but I defy anyone to read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”—the short piece that King wrote in April 1963 to a group of white Southern clergyman, while he was serving a brief jail sentence for his protest activities—and come away thinking that either patience or caution are in the top twenty adjectives that best describe the man and his beliefs. King would later expand the letter into a book, Why We Can’t Wait , the very title of which makes the urgency of his arguments more explicit still; but when it comes to raw passion and power, I don’t think any American text can top the “Letter” itself. Not raw in the sense of ineloquent—I tend to imagine that King’s first words, at the age of 1 or whenever, were probably more eloquent than any I’ll ever speak—but raw as in their absolute rejection, in the letter’s opening sentence, of his audience’s description of his protest activities as “unwise and untimely.” And raw as well in the razor sharp turn in tone in the two sentences that comprise one of the letter’s closing paragraphs: “If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.”I guess what it boils down to for me is this: to remember King for one section of “I Have a Dream” is like remembering Shakespeare for the “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy in Hamlet. Yeah, that’s a great bit, but what about the humor? The ghost? The political plotting and play within the play? The play’s twenty-seven other great speeches? And then there’s, y’know, all those other pretty good, and very distinct, plays. And some poetry that wasn’t bad either. It’s about time we remembered the whole King, and thus got a bit closer to the real King and what he can really help us see about our national history, identity, and future. Next figure tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Figures or histories you’d highlight?

January 13-14, 2018: Gay Rights Histories: Fitchburg State’s Exhibition

[On January 9th, 1978 Harvey Milkwas inaugurated to a seat on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, making him one of America’s first openly gay elected officials. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied Milk and other historical moments and events in the early history of the Gay Rights Movement, leading up to this special post on an impressive visual exhibit on the movement at Fitchburg State University.]On two of the many reasons to love a striking visual exhibition.Throughout this academic year, Fitchburg State University is hosting a series of programs and events under the heading of Journey to Equality: The LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement . While many of them are talks or panels (by both FSU faculty members and invited speakers), each of which has added importantly to the conversation and community, to my mind the most singular and striking is an ongoing visual exhibition. Occupying the floor-to-ceiling windows of FSU’s Amelia V. Gallucci-Cirio Library, this series of posters, produced in conjunction with the ONE Archives Foundation, documents a number of key events, figures, and issues in the history of the LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement (including many of those on which my week’s series here has focused). The large and visually arresting posters (you can see examples of many at this hyperlink) do a wonderful job of both utilizing graphics to engage audiences and providing text to inform them, achieving a difficult but important balance of art and education, graphic design and history. The series has also evolved over the year, with new panels added every month to expand, complicate, and deepen the histories and stories being highlighted. The exhibition is a first at FSU, and makes use of a shared and central campus space in truly groundbreaking and provocative ways.That groundbreaking use of space is one of two inspiring things I especially wanted to emphasize in this post. As anyone who has spent time on a college campus over the last couple of decades knows, one of the most consistent campus activities has become construction: Hammond Hall, the building that houses FSU’s library, is a case in point, having undergone at least three major construction projects in my thirteen years at FSU. While I understand the goals of modernizing campuses and attracting students and the like, there’s no doubt that this emphasis on the physical appearance can be frustrating, at least when contrasted with the educational elements on which colleges (like society) seem far more reluctant to spend money or resources. Yet like many dualities, this one doesn’t have to be a dichotomy, as of course new and evolving spaces can also become integral parts of a college’s communal and educational identity. Utilizing the library’s windows (the result of one such recent FSU construction project) and its shared spaces (many of which are the result of another, the overall renovation of the library) for compelling and informative exhibitions like Journey to Equality is a perfect illustration of how the physical and the educational can and should go hand in hand. I hope that this can become a model for wedding literal construction to all the other forms of building and growth that take place on college campuses.While those campus and college areas for growth are communal, they also and perhaps most importantly involve individual students, the group who come to this space in order to pursue and strengthen their own continued evolution. I offered extra credit in my fall courses for students who engaged with the Journey to Equality exhibition and then shared a quick paragraph of response with me, and here want to highlight two examples of inspiring such responses. The most consistent were like that shared by one of my Honors students, a thoughtful and knowledgable young man who nonetheless had never learned or even heard of most of the subjects covered in the exhibition’s panels; his response linked LGBTQ histories and rights to those of the suffrage movement and anti-lynching activism (two of our class’s topics) in nuanced and important ways. Another of my students engaged with the exhibition in a much more personal and just as crucial manner: herself a member of the LGBTQ community, she wrote about how the exhibition’s histories and stories helped her to consider the communal legacies of which she’s a part, as well as striking individual figures whose stories felt both distinct from and yet parallel to her own identity and contexts. These forms of intellectual and psychological, analytical and emotional responses are key components to any successful educational experience, and it’s been deeply gratifying to see how this wonderful FSU exhibition can help our students take vital steps along their own lifelong journeys.MLK Day series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories or stories you’d highlight?

January 12, 2018: Gay Rights Histories: 1970s Advances

[On January 9th, 1978 Harvey Milkwas inaugurated to a seat on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, making him one of America’s first openly gay elected officials. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Milk and other historical moments and events in the early history of the Gay Rights Movement, leading up to a weekend post on an impressive visual exhibit on the movement at Fitchburg State University.]On three 1973 moments that helped advance the movement in distinct but interconnected ways.1)      Lambda Legal’s lawsuit: In 1971, New York City lawyer William Thom attempted to incorporate a nonprofit known as Lambda Legal, an organization that would be dedicated to addressing the legal, political, and social needs of LGBTQ Americans and their allies. His application was denied on the grounds that the organization’s goals were “neither benevolent nor charitable,” but fortunately Thom and his allies did not back down. They appealed the decision, and in 1973 the New York Court of Appeals ruled in Lambda’s favor and the organization was officially incorporated as a nonprofit, beginning operations in October. Over the next four decades Lambda has provided vital legal and social services to LGBTQ Americans around the country, and has played a significant role in such landmark legal decisions as 2003’s Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court ruling (which invalidated all remaining anti-sodomy laws in the US). All of which stems from this crucial 1973 decision.2)      PFLAG’s origins: On March 26th, 1973, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) held its first official meeting, at Greenwich Village’s Metropolitan-Duane Methodist Church. PFLAG’s founder, Jeanne Manford, had over the prior year become the most prominent such parent, as the beating of her gay activist son Morty had prompted her to join him in his efforts and participate in the city’s 1972 Gay Pride march (holding a sign that famously read “Parents of Gays Unite in Support for Our Children”). From those personal and familial origin points sprang an organization that was initially similarly intimate—that March meeting had about 20 attendees, and for the next few years other such small groups began to emerge around the country—but that by 1982 had become substantive enough to be incorporated in California as a non-profit. PFLAG represented a significant advance in a number of ways, but I would especially emphasize the importance of an organization dedicated not to LGBTQ Americans themselves, but rather to their loved ones and social networks. This was another key step in recognizing the full social presence and participation of this American community.3)      APA Small Steps: As this week’s posts have consistently highlighted, however, civil rights advances can’t and shouldn’t be separated from concurrent questions of discrimination, prejudice, and oppression. I wrote on Wednesday about the American Psychiatric Association’s discriminatory 1953 definition of homosexuality as a “sociopathic personality disturbance,” a prominent, frustratingly “scientific” example of such anti-gay prejudice. Two decades later, the APA finally removed that classification in 1973; in 1975 the American Psychological Association agreed, publicly announcing that “homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgment, reliability or general social and vocational capabilities, and mental health professionals should take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness long associated with homosexual orientation.” These were small steps along the path toward inclusion, but they were steps nonetheless, and ones that complement the advances illustrated and gained by groups like Lambda and PFLAG.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories or stories you’d highlight?

January 6-7, 2018: Crowd-sourced Books for the New Year

[Whatever else 2018 brings for us all, I hope it brings lots more great writing and voices to read and engage with and learn from and share. To that end, this week I highlighted five recent or upcoming books that I’m excited to read. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the nominees of fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours in comments, please!]Andrew DaSilva writes, “For nonfiction, The Romanovs: 1613-1918 , by Simon Sebag Montefiore. I am looking forward to reading it, but I got like 4 other books I wanna plow through before I get to anything new such as this.”Nicole Sterbinsky shares, “I'm hoping to read Planet for Rent by Yoss very soon. It's a translated version of a Cuban science fiction novel. Judging from what the back of the book said it also has some satirical elements about life in Cuba under Castro. So, I'm very interested to see what the author has to say.”Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel is reading Lisa Brooks’ Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War .Derek McGrath writes, “In the immediate future, I need to read more # MyHeroAcademia to get weekly reviews going again. And I need to re-read some classic literature related to a particular animated show. (Ever wanted to see F. Scott Fitzgerald as an anime supervillain?)”Ellak Roach Tweets, “Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer reads like it could have been written yesterday, and I think is just as relevant now as it has ever been.” He adds, “Another book I just finished reading in my Political Theory class is How Propaganda Works by Jason Stanley. It’s a pretty brisk read, but I really enjoyed my time with it (covered the first 5 chapters or so in class, read the rest myself).”Dan Sheppard shares, “ Homesick for Another World by Otessa Moshfegh. A collection of short stories that are simultaneously mundane and jarring.”Since they were kind enough to Retweet my request for nominations for this post, I wanted to share the website of Is a Rose Press. And Jeff Renye, like so many of us, is just waiting for The Winds of Winter.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Books you’d add to the list?

January 1-5, 2018: New Books for the New Year

[Whatever else 2018 brings for us all, I hope it brings lots more great writing and voices to read and engage with and learn from and share. To that end, here are five recent or upcoming books that I’m excited to read—please share your own nominees or suggestions in comments for a crowd-sourced weekend reading list!]1)      Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy : Coates has been in the news quite a bit recently for (to me) a particularly frustrating reason: Cornel West’s attacks on him for focusing too narrowly on white supremacy as the fundamental American ill. But whatever one’s stance on that particular contest (and I’ll say that I’m thoroughly Team Coates and leave it at that), we cannot in any case lose sight of the vital role that Coates plays as one of our best public writers and scholars. His latest book on both the Obama presidency/era and the transition into the Trump one extends and deepens that role, and I’m excited to delve into more fully in the new year.2)      AtticaLocke, Bluebird, Bluebird : The post hyperlinked under her name reflects how long and how fully I’ve enjoyed Locke’s mystery novels, which (as Matthew Teutsch has argued) consistently link race, community, and history to genre conventions in unique and deeply compelling ways. Her newest novel, which has already been picked up as a potential FX series, is #1 on my list of fiction I need to read as soon as possible in 2018. 3)      JesmynWard, Sing, Unburied, Sing : Ditto what I said above about Locke when it comes to Ward’s books, both her fiction (as referenced in the post hyperlinked under her name) and her family and cultural memoir. With SingWard has returned to fiction, and by all accounts written another great American novel, one both located in longstanding traditions such as the road novel and passionately engaged with our contemporary moment and society. What else is there to say?4)      Francisco Cantu, The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border : I know significantly less about the last two (both forthcoming in early 2018) books I’ll highlight here (and again would love to hear about more new or upcoming titles in comments!), and won’t pretend otherwise. What makes this book so interesting to me is that it’s written by a former Border Patrol agent but seems willing and able to consider with nuance and empathy the circumstances and identities of those individuals, families, and communities seeking to cross the US-Mexico border in both documented and undocumented ways. We need voices and texts like that much, much more than we need big, beautiful walls.5)      Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: We also need great writing about writing—about how to do it, the overt subject of novelist Chee’s collection of essays; but also and especially about why we do it, about the individual and collective stakes of writing and reading and books and literature. I look forward to seeing how Chee presents those broader topics alongside his more specific literary and writing subjects.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. You know what to do!

December 30-31, 2017: December 2017 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]December 4: Reconstruction Figures: Alexander Crummell and Frederick Douglass: A Reconstruction series starts with an impromptu but telling debate between two titans.December 5: Reconstruction Figures: The Fisk Jubilee Singers: The series continues with two vital legacies of a cultural and historical artistic project.December 6: Reconstruction Figures: Albion Tourgée: Two distinct but interconnected ways to remember a seminal 19th century figure, as the series rolls on.December 7: Reconstruction Figures: Andrew Johnson: Three telling stages in the life and career of one of our worst presidents.December 8: Reconstruction Figures: Yung Wing?: Whether and how to remember the pioneering Chinese American educator as a Reconstruction figure.December 9-10: Reconstruction Figures: P.B.S. Pinchback: The series concludes with three stages in the unique life of the first African American governor, on the 145thanniversary of his taking office.December 11: Fall 2017 Reflections: America in the Gilded Age: A fall semester recap series on Teaching under Trump starts with the limits and possibilities of unspoken contexts in a historical course.December 12: Fall 2017 Reflections: Mark Twain Seminar: The series continues with reading and thinking about a long-past author as a contemporary commentator.December 13: Fall 2017 Reflections: First-year Writing I: How a culminating writing assignment can help us engage with the world around us, as the series rolls on.December 14: Fall 2017 Reflections: Adult Learning Classes: Three benefits for life in Trump’s America from my semester’s three adult learning classes.December 15: Fall 2017 Reflections: Intro to Speech: The series concludes with not intervening in political discussions, and whether I should have.December 16-17: Spring 2018 Previews: Looking ahead to three Spring semester courses and one big writing project—share your spring plans in comments, please!December 18: Longmire Lessons: Gab and Mandy: A series on the recently concluded, truly wonderful Longmire starts with the distinct lessons offered by two young Native American characters.December 19: Longmire Lessons: Malachi and Matthias: The series continues with one character who generally reinforced cultural stereotypes, and one who wonderfully revised them.December 20: Longmire Lessons: Cowboy Bill: A mysterious character who embodied first Western mythos and then realities, as the series streams on.December 21: Longmire Lessons: Hector and Henry: An iconic but mythic Native American character, and a flesh-and-blood one who took a different path.December 22: Longmire Lessons: Walt and Cady: The series concludes with a couple final takeaways from the wonderful story of the multi-generational Longmire family.December 23-24: An AmericanStudies Wish: My shortest but sweetest blog post yet!December 25: Reviewing Resistance: Empathy: A reviewing the year in resistance series starts with the continued and vital need for empathy.December 26: Reviewing Resistance: Late-night Comedy: The series continues with three distinct and interesting ways late-night hosts have challenged Trump.December 27: Reviewing Resistance: Judges: One of the worst parts of Trump’s first year and an ironic but crucial counterpoint, as the series rolls on.December 28: Reviewing Resistance: Twitter: Three Twitter accounts that exemplify three forms of social media resistance.December 29: Reviewing Resistance: Fitchburg State University: The series concludes with three inspiring conversations taking place on my own campus.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

December 29, 2017: Reviewing Resistance: Fitchburg State University

[Whether we like it or not—and it likely goes without saying that I don’t—2017 has been defined by Donald Trump. So for this year in review series, I wanted to AmericanStudy five forms of resistance to all things Trump. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the year, Trumptastic or otherwise, in comments!]On three inspiring conversations taking place on my campus and the challenges they offer Trump et al.1)      Feminist Conversations: Started by a group of wonderfully engaged and passionate undergrads, including Blynne Driscoll and Seferine Baez, FemCon has been an inspiring new presence on campus for a couple years now. But I would argue that the club took its activism to another level when it brought 30 students and two faculty members to January’s post-inauguration Women’s March on Washington. Feminism is of course in no way limited to the political realm, and over the last couple semesters the group has continued to sponsor and host conversations about a wide range of social and cultural topics. But at the same time, there’s a reason (well, a million reasons) why women have been such a dominant presence in the resistance to Trump, starting well before that amazing march and continuing throughout the subsequent year. And on the FSU campus, FemCon has pioneered and led those efforts, and I’m quite sure will continue to do so in 2018 and beyond.2)      Inclusive Dialogues: Like FemCon, the FSU Center for Diversity and Inclusiveness long pre-dates and transcends the Trump administration. Similarly, the Center’s Inclusive Dialogues events series, created by the Center’s wonderful Director Jamie Cochran, is in no way limited to overtly political topics. But having had the chance to moderate and participate in one such Inclusive Dialogue this past semester, on the topic of “Free Speech on Our Campus,” I would argue that they nonetheless represent an exemplary form of resistance to all that Trump is and embodies. They don’t do so through any particular political perspective, but rather through modeling a multi-vocal, informed, nuanced, democratic, well-read, and truly inclusive conversation and space. If that sounds like it describes the ideal college campus overall, well, that’s the point and the goal, and the Inclusive Dialogues, like the Center for Diversity and Inclusiveness itself, are helping FSU move closer toward becoming that more perfect university. 3)      Climate Change: The ideal college campus also includes lots of innovative and important research and scholarship, of course, and FSU has featured plenty of such work in the past year. Here I want to highlight a vital new book co-authored by two of my colleages, Benjamin Lieberman and Elizabeth Gordon. Ben (a historian) and Liz (an earth scientist) created and have team-taught the interdisciplinary, cross-listed course “Climate Change and Human History” for many years, and this fall published a co-authored book on the subject, Climate Change in Human History: Prehistory to the Present . As that subtitle suggests, the book is interested in histories and questions far more long-standing and far-reaching than those limited to the Age of Trump; but at the same time, I don’t know that there’s any subject more important to our moment than climate change (and I know Ben would say definitively that there is not). Am I suggesting that researching, writing, and sharing historical and scientific analyses and syntheses represents another form of resistance to Trump? You’re damn right I am, and I’m proud to have Ben and Liz as colleagues in that fight.December Recap this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other 2017 stories you’d highlight?