Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 251

August 26-27, 2017: #NoConfederateSyllabus

As a weekend follow-up to this week's series on famous Virginians, I wanted to highlight here the work that Matthew Teutsch and I (and many readers and commenters) have done to start #NoConfederateSyllabus, an accompaniment to the #NoConfederate movement and a resource to provide online, literary, multimedia, and scholarly source contexts for the debates over Confederate memory, race in America, and much more.

The document is meant to be entirely alive and evolving, so we'd still love any and all suggestions and ideas. It's hyperlinked at #NoConfederateSyllabus above. Thanks in advance!

Next series starts Monday,
Ben

August 25, 2017: Famous Virginians: S.R. Siddarth

[For this year’s installment of my annual VirginiaStudying series, I wanted to highlight a handful of the many famous Americans who have been born in the state. Add your Virginia highlights—people, places, or otherwise—for a crowd-sourced weekend post for (Virginia) lovers!][NB. This is a re-post of a piece from my 2013 Virginia series. But since the trends I’m analyzing here have only gotten more pronounced in the four years since, I thought it and its focal figure deserved a space in this year’s series as well.]On another way to look at a defining recent moment.In the final post in my 2011 VirginiaStudying series, I wrote about George Allen’s “macaca” moment as an exemplary one, not only in terms of that particular election but also as an illustration of changing trends in the state and nation overall. I wrote then that President Obama had won Virginia in the 2008 election, becoming the first Democratic candidate to do so in decades; he did so again in 2012, making clear that those political trends have continued. As with many other formerly solid “red states,” changing demographics and communities, among other shifts, have put Virginia in play—and as I wrote in that post, the “macaca” moment concisely highlighted both the political and the demographic trends (as well, of course, as the power of the intertubes to influence 21st century politics and society).If all those trends have helped define the last half-decade or so in American political and social life, however, an honest assessment compels me to add another and far more pessimistic complement, and also one evident in the “macaca” moment: that overt racial and ethnic bigotry has made a comeback over those same years. I’m not arguing that there’s any more such bigotry today than there was a decade ago, but I would say that the bigotry has come to the surface more easily and consistently in recent years; that the gradually increasing sense of shame which seemed to be associated with racism has, in many cases, apparently given way to a kind of warped pride, a perspective that the speaker will no longer let “political correctness” dictate his or her views. Nowhere in this clearer, to my mind, than in the responses to the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman trial—or even in the simple fact that so many American conservatives are overtly rooting for Zimmerman to be found not guilty (a position, I will admit, that seems inescapably tied to Martin’s race).S.R. Siddarth, the young man to whom Allen was referring, was the American-born son of Indian immigrants, and Allen’s “welcome to America” nonsense was thus quite distinct from anti-black racism such as that directed at Trayvon Martin. But having been on the receiving end of daily Tea Party emails for many years, I have to say that one of the most defining elements of those messages is a profound equivalence between a wide variety of ethnic “others”—President Obama, Muslims, the New Black Panther Party, illegal immigrants from (in most such narratives) Mexico, and, frankly, all those who seem by the color of their skin, their linguistic or religious heritage, their ancestry, their identity to occupy a space outside of what Allen called “the real Virginia.” The truth, of course, is that all such Americans have been a part of Virginia for (at least) decades, and are only coming to define its reality more fully as the 21stcentury evolves. But as they do, a substantial community of Americans seems increasingly comfortable calling them, well, “macaca.” And that’s a national problem, and one we had better start acknowledging and addressing. [2017 addendum: we didn’t, and now, well, we really really had better start doing so.]Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So one more time: what do you think? Other Virginians or Virginia connections you’d highlight?

August 24, 2017: Famous Virginians: George C. Scott

[For this year’s installment of my annual VirginiaStudying series, I wanted to highlight a handful of the many famous Americans who have been born in the state. Add your Virginia highlights—people, places, or otherwise—for a crowd-sourced weekend post for (Virginia) lovers!]On three defining military roles for the legendary actorand product of Wise, Virginia.1)      Buck Turgidson: Scott was 37 and already a well-known Shakespearean and Broadway actor when he was cast as General Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking satirical war film Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Kubrick would later reveal in interviews that the consummate professional Scott refused to play the role as campily as the director wanted, and that Kubrick lied to his actor and included rehearsal footage in the final film in order to achieve that campy effect. But to my mind, Scott was the perfect choice for this key role in his film’s social satire, as he could portray precisely the straight-laced seriousness with which this militaristic madman takes the steps that will lead to nuclear war. Some of the film is to my mind too over-the-top to work as satire, but Scott’s Turgidson is pitch-perfect and hugely frightening as a result.2)      George S. Patton: Scott’s career-defining performance as the World War II general was also pitch-perfect, and to this pacifist viewer also frightening—although I know at least as many viewers who have found it inspiring and honorable. In truth, the brilliance of Scott’s performance, and of Franklin Schaffner’s film (and Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund North’s screenplay) overall, is that its Patton is all of those things, often in the same scenes and sequences. Although Scott refused to accept his Academy Award for the performance as a result of his lifelong antipathy to such awards (he likewise refused a Best Supporting Actor nomination for The Hustler in 1962), the action was itself also pitch-perfectly in keeping with the enigmatic and iconoclastic character. If Kubrick’s film wears its anti-war heart very much on its sleeve, Patton is far harder to pin down, and Scott’s striking performances anchor both films.3)      Harlan Bache: Over the next few decades Scott would spend much of his time on the stage, as well as in supporting roles in films (and in portraying my favorite Ebeneezer Scrooge, in Richard Donner’s 1984 adaptation of A Christmas Carol). One of the more complex and compelling such supporting roles was as General Harlan Bache, the armed services lifer in charge of a military school for boys in Harold Becker’s film Taps (1981). Although the film focuses on a group of young cadets, played by such up-and-coming stars as Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, and Tom Cruise, it is Scott’s General Bache whose voice and perspective on both the school and the military serve as guideposts for those young men. While Bache is far more sane than Turgidson and far less violent than Patton, he is still rigidly tied to his and the school’s traditions in ways that contribute to the chaos and destruction that unfolds in the course of the film (when the cadets take over the school rather than allow it to close). Which is to say, this is one more enigmatic and multi-layered performance from this all-time great.Last Virginian tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginians or Virginia connections you’d highlight?

August 23, 2017: Famous Virginians: Ella Fitzgerald

[For this year’s installment of my annual VirginiaStudying series, I wanted to highlight a handful of the many famous Americans who have been born in the state. Add your Virginia highlights—people, places, or otherwise—for a crowd-sourced weekend post for (Virginia) lovers!]Three songs that help trace the hugely influential 20th century career and life of Newport News, Virginia’s First Lady of Song.1)      “A-Tisket, A-Tasket”(1938): Fitzgerald moved with her mother and stepfather to Yonkers, New York in the early 1920s, when she was just a young girl; but it was just over a decade later, when she moved in with an aunt in Harlem (perhaps to escape her stepfather’s abuses after her mother’s death, although this story remains uncertain), that her musical career really began. She became connected to the drummer and bandleader Chick Webb in early 1935, and would go on to record over 150 songs and several big hits with him and his orchestra over the next half-dozen years. Probably their biggest hit together was “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” a jazzy reimagining of the old children’s rhyme that featured Fitzgerald’s stunning vocals in a major way. When Webb passed away in 1939, the group was renamed Ella and Her Famous Orchestra, and Fitzgerald was truly on her way to superstardom. 2)      “Flying Home” (1945): Fitzgerald left the orchestra to go solo in 1942, and worked with a number of prominent artists and musicians over the next decade. Her work with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and his band led her to experiment with scat singing, a form that others such as Louis Armstrong had tried but with which Fitzgerald would eventually become almost synonymous. That style was never more apparent or groundbreaking than on “Flying Home,” Fitzgerald’s performance of a Vic Schoen arrangement that the New York Times later called “one of the most influential jazz records of the decade.” Fitzgerald was far, far more than just scat singing, of course; but her work with that form truly changed not only jazz but also American music and culture more broadly, and “Flying Home” is thus one of the 20thcentury’s single most significant recordings.3)      “All That Jazz” (1989): Fitzgerald would spend the next half century recording albums of both the great American songbook and the decades’ popular hits, touring the world, appearing in television and film projects, and otherwise living up to the First Lady of Song title. Any number of songs and moments could help trace her presence in and influence on the second half of the 20th century. But I’ll conclude here with the title track from her last studio album (also called All That Jazz), in which Fitzgerald returned to the 30s and 40s swing and jazz hits that had helped launch her career back in that Harlem Renaissance era. While great artists like Fitzgerald always evolve and change, there’s also a way in which they remain guardians and keepers of a certain tradition, and Fitzgerald was that for the jazz tradition from the 1930s right through her 1996 passing. Listening to these songs and her many, many others reminds us of that legacy and hers, and helps us keep them alive into the 21stcentury as well.Next Virginian tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginians or Virginia connections you’d highlight?

August 22, 2017: Famous Virginians: Willa Cather

[For this year’s installment of my annual VirginiaStudying series, I wanted to highlight a handful of the many famous Americans who have been born in the state. Add your Virginia highlights—people, places, or otherwise—for a crowd-sourced weekend post for (Virginia) lovers!]On why it mattered when the famous author finally returned to Virginia.Willa Cather was born and spent her first nine years of life near Winchester, Virginia, but she is far better known for writing about two other American settings. The family moved to Nebraska in 1883 (when she was nine), and the books that launched her literary career a few decades later were her second through fourth published novels, the Nebraska trilogy of O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918). As far as I can tell she never lived for any length of time in the American Southwest, but she nonetheless wrote, in The Professor’s House (1925) and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), two of the most prominent and important novels in English about that complex and compelling region. While Cather wrote seven other novels (including One of Ours, a Pulitzer-winning storyof World War I), those five remain her most famous and frequently read, and so Cather has become closely and justifiably tied to the literary and communal histories of both the Nebraska plain and the Southwestern canyons.There are of course numerous reasons why an author might hesitate to write about her childhood home, but one factor in Cather’s unwillingness to write about Virginia for almost her entire career might have been a reticence—or even perhaps an inability—to write about African Americans. In My Ántonia, for example—a novel that deals with nuance and grace with the ethnic heritages and communities of a number of immigrant character and families—we find Blind d’Arnault, an African American (or rather mulatto) pianist whom Cather describes in baldly stereotypical and even animalistic terms. Yet in what would be her last published novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), Cather both returned finally to the setting of her childhood and linked that setting entirely to race: the body of the novel is set in antebellum Virginia and features the story of a mulatto enslaved woman (Nancy) who eventually escapes her jealous mistress (Sapphira) on the Underground Railroad to Canada; and the epilogue, set twenty-five years later in the postbellum South of Cather’s childhood, reveals the novel’s narrator to be a stand-in for Cather herself, who has (per the novel at least) heard stories of this slave and her escape throughout her young life.I don’t want to overstate the cultural importance of Cather’s 1940 historical novel. This was the same year, after all, that saw the publication of Richard Wright’s Native Son, a novel that illustrates how far beyond the plantation tradition (in which Cather’s novel at least partly, if certainly uneasily, sits) African American and American literature had gone by this time. Yet at the same time, 1940 America (or at least its popular culture) was dominated by the film adaptation of Gone with the Wind, just as the prior few years had been dominated by Margaret Mitchell’s novel. Mitchell famously wrote to another Southern novelist, Thomas W. Dixon, that she was “practically raised on” his trilogy of racist historical novels, and she very much continued that particular Southern tradition in Gone. So it seems to me to be no small thing that when Willa Cather finally wrote a novel about her native Southern state, in the same era so influenced by Mitchell’s story, she chose to create a Southern slaveowning female protagonist who is far less attractive (in every sense) than Scarlett O’Hara, and again whom a young female slave wins an important and heroic victory. Next Virginian tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginians or Virginia connections you’d highlight?

August 21, 2017: Famous Virginians: Arthur Ashe

[For this year’s installment of my annual VirginiaStudying series, I wanted to highlight a handful of the many famous Americans who have been born in the state. Add your Virginia highlights—people, places, or otherwise—for a crowd-sourced weekend post for (Virginia) lovers!]On three ways Virginia’s and the nation’s African American community contributed to the development of one of our greatest athletes.1)      Brookfield: After Ashe’s mother Mattie died of pre-eclampsia when he was just seven, he and his younger brother Johnnie were raised by their father Arthur Ashe Sr., a handyman and caretaker for Richmond’s Brookfield Park. Brookfield was the city’s largest African American park and playground, and featured four tennis courts where young Arthur started to demonstrate his natural talents. There Ron Charity, a student at the city’s historically black Virginia Union University and a Brookfield tennis instructor (and a future national champion himself), began to work with Arthur and helped him take his first steps into local tournaments. Racial segregation was a regional and national curse with legacies that echo into our own moment; but as so often, African Americans like Ashe and his family refused to allow such bigoted policies to stop them from following the arcs of their lives and identities.2)      Whirlwind Johnson: Charity didn’t just begin coaching the young Arthur; he also brought him to the attention of Robert Walter “Whirlwind” Johnson, the pioneering African American physician who was also Althea Gibson’s coach and the founder of the American Tennis Association’s Junior Development Program. Johnson ran a tennis summer camp at his home in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he invited rising junior stars (of all races, but with a particular emphasis on young African American players) to hone their skills. While Arthur had to attend the all-black Maggie Walker High School in Richmond, Johnson helped connect to a larger tennis community, as in 1958 when a 15 year old Arthurbecame the first African American to play in the Maryland boys’ championships. It was Arthur’s first integrated tournament, and an indication of the personal and professional steps (as well as pioneering national progress) he was able to achieve with the help of Johnson.3)      Richard Hudlin: Yet even for a player of Arthur’s unquestionable talent, many Virginia doors remained closed to a young African American in the late 1950s; he couldn’t use the city’s indoor courts, and wasn’t allowed to compete against white players in the city. So in 1960, Johnson connected Arthur to another tennis pioneer, Richard Hudlin. Hudlin had captained the University of Chicago’s tennis team in 1928 (despite being the only African American on the team throughout his time there), and had subsequently achieved one of the nation’s first athletic civil rights victories, winning a 1945 lawsuit against the St. Louis Muny Tennis Association that opened up that city’s public facilities and tournaments to all players. Arthur moved to St. Louis, attended Sumner High School for his senior year, and with Hudlin and Johnson’s help became the first African American player to compete in the national Interscholastic Tournament, helping Sumner win the title. The rest is history, but a history that, like these Virginia and African American origin points, should be far better known than it is.Next Virginian tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginians or Virginia connections you’d highlight?

August 18-20, 2017: Birthday Bests: 2016-2017

[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier turns the big 4-0. So this week I’ve shared posts of birthday favorites for each of the blog’s prior years, leading up to this new birthday best list for 2016-2017. You couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]Here they are, 40 favorite posts from the 2016-2017 year on the blog:1)      Virginia Places: Fairfax Court House: Learning more about things I thought I already knew has been one of the blog’s enduring pleasures, and that was most definitely the case with this post and series on Virginia sites.2)      Cultural Work: Miner Texts: Any post in which I get to analyze John Sayles and Steve Earle is bound to be fun, but Diane Gillam Fisher’s Kettle Bottom might be the richest text here.3)      MusicalStudying: Allegiance and Hamilton: Perhaps not surprisingly, Hamilton has been the subject of more posts than any other text in the past year. This was the first.4)      Rhode Island Histories: Beavertail Lighthouse: Learning about things I knew precisely nothing about has been another enduring blog pleasure. Case in point here.5)      Legends of the Fall: Young Adult Lit: Returning to middle school is always a risky proposition, but I loved the chance to revisit A Separate Peace and The Chocolate War.6)      AmericanStudying The Americans: “Illegals”: Writing about one of my favorite TV shows made for a great week of posts, and this kicked them off.7)      Birth Control in America: Esther at the Doctor: I’ve taught Sylvia Plath’s The Bell-Jar many times, but analyzing it through this week’s lens offered new insights on a key sequence.8)      Black Panther Posts: Guns and Breakfasts: One of my favorite post titles, and an attempt to address the multiple, contradictory sides of an important community.9)      American Killers: Bundy and Dahmer: Not sure I would have ever imagined I’d be writing about serial killers in made for TV movies, but we go where the blog takes us!10)   ElectionStudying the Media: Ah, that halcyon final pre-election weekend. Everything may have changed the following Tuesday, but I think this post is still relevant.11)   Jeff Renye on Stranger Things: The New Weird Made Old?: A Stranger Things series concluded with this great Guest Post, and a truly inspiring student conversation in comments!12)   Thanksgiving and Supporting an Inclusive American Community: This was the first post in which I dealt directly with the election’s aftermath, and also the first in which I began to move toward my fifth book project.13)   James MonroeStudying: Remembering Monroe: A series on the 5thPresident concluded with these reflections on whether and how to better remember Monroe.14)   Fall 2016 Reflections: Conversations with My Sons: Maybe my favorite single post from the six and two-thirds years of blogging.15)   Basketball’s Birthday: LeBron and Activism: My sons have just gotten into the NBA in the past year, and it was fun to take a closer look at this side of the league’s biggest star.16)   2016 in Review: The Cubs Win!: There were far more serious 2016 news stories, and I engaged with them in this end of year series as well. But c’mon, the Cubs won the Series!17)   21stCentury Ellis Islands: A 125th anniversary series concluded with three very distinct ways to connect the famous immigration station to our present moment.18)   Special Guest Post: Oana Godeanu-Kenworty on Thomas Haliburton and 19thCentury Populism: Readers, take note—nothing makes me happier than when I’m contacted by someone who wants to share a Guest Post, and I was very excited at the chance to share this one!19)   Luke Cage Studying: #BlackLivesMatter on TV: A series on another great contemporary TV show concluded with this multitextual analysis.20)   NASAStudying: Sputnik and von Braun: Another example of a post for which I learned a ton, and which fundamentally shifted my perspective on the week’s subject.21)   Women and Sports: Title IX: With the groundbreaking law under siege from Trump’s Department of Education, this post is more important than ever.22)   History for Kids: Kate Milford’s The Boneshaker: The best book I read in the past year might well be this Young Adult novel the boys and I read together.23)   AmericanStudier Hearts Justified: Appalachian Action: Man, I wrote a lot this year about TV shows I love. And I’m not the slightest bit sorry!24)   Crowd-sourced Non-Favorites: The annual series concludes, as always, with my favorite crowd-sourced post of the year, the airing of grievances! Not too late to share yours!25)   : On Arnaz’s 100th birthday, he helped us consider a different side to Cuban American histories.26)   AmericanStudies Events: Why We Teach at BOLLI: Expanding my adult learning opportunities has been one of the best parts of the last year. Here’s one prominent example!27)   Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump: Sometimes a planned series of my own intersects with where the public conversations are going. This was one of those times.28)   Televised Fools: Archer: I can’t say I was expecting to enjoy Archer as much as I have—but surprises are a good thing, in life and in blogging!29)   NeMLA Recaps: Forum on Immigration Executive Orders and Actions: This could be the most important thing NeMLA ever does—but it needs your help to get there!30)   Aviation Histories: Charles Lindbergh: For my own sake as much as anyone else’s, trying to dig past the controversies to recover the history behind the history.31)   Animating History: Earth Day Animations: I hadn’t thought about Captain Planet or FernGullyin a couple decades. It was fun to do so again!32)   Civil Disobedience: Muhammad Ali: Commemorating anniversaries has become an important part of this blog, and the 50th of Ali’s draft resistance was an important one for sure.33)   DisasterStudying: The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake: Did you know that William James experienced and wrote about the earthquake? Me neither!34)   The Scholars Strategy Network and Me: Online Writing: This was a really fun reflection to write—and then it got picked up by John Fea’s great blog, which is even more fun!35)   Star Wars Studying: Yoda, Luke, and Love: I loved the chance to share one of the boys’ and my favorite theories about one of our favorite galaxies.36)   Matthew Teutsch’s Guest Post: Five African American Books We Should All Read: Getting to feature one of my favorite scholarly bloggers and five wonderful books made for a great Guest Post.37)   The Pulitzers at 100: Angle of Repose: I’d been looking for a chance to write about Wallace Stegner’s moving novel for a while now. It was nice to finally do so!38)   Mysterious Beach Reads: Tana French: Ditto French’s amazing series of novels—which are Irish, but AmericanStudies is large and contains multitudes.39)   Representing the Revolution: Hamilton: I promised that the smash musical would return to this list, and return it did.40)   Troubled Children: Dennis the Menace: Gotta end with another one of those posts I never would have imagined writing—and that, as always, I enjoyed a great deal. Hope you’d say the same!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. You know what to do!

August 17, 2017: Birthday Bests: 2015-2016

Here they are, 39 favorite posts from the 2015-2016 year on the blog:1)      Cape Cod Stories: The Changing Cape: One of my favorite things about blogging remains the chance to explore in depth topics about which I thought I knew a lot already—Cape Cod certainly qualifies, and this whole series was a wonderful reminder of how much I have to learn.2)      AmericanStudying 9/11: The Siege: I can’t imagine a work of art, in any genre, that more Americans should see and engage with in 2016 than Ed Zwick’s prescient 1998 film.3)      Given Days: The Great Molasses Flood: I never expected a Dennis Lehane novel would give me a week’s worth of topics, but The Given Day did, and this largely forgotten historical moment stands out.4)      September Texts: See You in September: Little inside blog-baseball here: sometimes I create a series and then see what might fill it. The results are always surprising, and I hope as interesting to read as they are to search and write!5)      AMST in 2015: The chance to share great AmericanStudies voices and sites is always welcome, and these three are just as worth your time in 2016!6)      Before the Revolution: Crispus Attucks: Think you know all about Mr. Attucks, first casualty of the Revolution? Well, so did I until I researched and wrote this post.7)      Siobhan Senier’s Guest Post on Dawnland Voices: Voices is one of the most important American anthologies ever published, and it was an honor to share these thoughts by its editor.8)      21stCentury Villains: Wilson Fisk: If I couldn’t write about an American character and performance as rich as Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk, why maintain this blog??9)      American Inventors: Eli Whitney’s Effects: But at the same time, the cotton gin is just as crucial to a blog called AmericanStudies as is a streaming Netflix superhero show!10)   SHA Follow Ups: Little Rock and Race: My first visit to Little Rock, for the Southern Historical Association conference, was just as inspiring as you would expect.11)   Cultural Thanks-givings: Longmire: Am I sharing this post only because I got into a Twitter conversation with Lou Diamond Phillips thanks to it? No, but that doesn’t hurt!12)   AmendmentStudying: On Not Taking the 13th Amendment for Granted: It’s not easy to really think through all the paths American history could have taken, and why each moment is so complex and central. But it’s important that we try, as I did in this post.13)   Circles of Friends: The Darker Side of Friends: It’s also not easy to critique works of art that give us pleasure, but just as important that we do so.14)   Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: Ida B. Wells’ Crossroads: There’s a reason this moment will be at the heart of my next book—there are few more inspiring ones in our history.15)   AmericanStudying 2015: Trump: Hard to remember the way we felt about candidate Trump back in late December—but even more crucial to AmericanStudy his unprecedented and historically horrific campaign now, of course.16)   DisneyStudying: Tom Sawyer Island: If you guessed that my first trip to Disney World would yield some rich AmericanStudies topics, well, you guessed right!17)   21stCentury Civil Rights: An MLK Day series concluded with some of the many current fronts in the ongoing battle for civil rights and equality for all.18)   Colonial Williamsburg: The Governor’s Palace Maze: There’s nothing quite like researching and writing a blog post about a favorite childhood place.19)   Football Debates: Missouri Activism Update: Our 24-hour news cycle culture moves way too quickly past stories on which we should linger—and the Missouri football team’s inspiring activism is one such story to be sure.20)   TeacherTributes: Student Teachers: Every post in this week of teacher tributes was special to me—but this list of things I've learned from my FSU students stands out.21)   AmericanStudying Non-favorites: “Africa” and Graceland: Paul Simon fans didn’t appreciate this one so much, and I got some reasoned and convincing pushback—but I still would call Simon’s album dangerously close to cultural appropriation.22)   Rap Readings: Macklemore, J. Cole, and #BlackLivesMatter: This was a seriously fun series to think about and write, and these are songs and artists well worth your time.23)   Montreal Memories: Anglais and French: I took a lot away from my first trip to Montreal, but perhaps most striking was the multi-lingual model the city offers us in the US.24)   Puerto Rican Posts: The Statehood Debate: We’ve recently seen another troubling moment in this evolving and too-often-overlooked American history.25)   NeMLA Recaps: Many Thanks: I loved everything about my NeMLA conference in Hartford, and about writing this recap series. But I have to highlight here one more time my overwhelming gratitude for all those who made it happen and supported it.26)   19thCentury Humor: Melville’s Chimney: This deeply weird short story had stuck with me for decades, and AmericanStudying it offered some much-needed analytical therapy.27)   Remembering Reconstruction: The Civil Rights Act of 1866: The battle for whether and how we should remember Reconstruction during its sesquicentennial will likely continue for a good long while—and I fully expect to keep adding my voice to that debate.28)   American Outlaws: Bonnie and Clyde: One of those posts where I started in a totally different place from where the research and histories took me.29)   21stCentury Patriots: Deepa Iyer: Highlighting contemporary critical patriots was a lot of fun, and I’d emphasize in particular this increasingly vital new book.30)   Classical Music Icons: Florence Foster Jenkins: Before you see the Meryl Streep movie, read the Ben Railton post!31)   Semester Reflections: A Writing Associate in Major Authors: The opportunity to share inspiring favorite FSU students is always a blog highlight.32)   AmericanStudying 60s Rock: Jimi Hendrix’s Covers: From Florence Foster Jenkins to Jimi Hendrix—the six degrees of AmericanStudier!33)   New Scholarly Books: Finding Light between the Pages: You should read all the wonderful books in this series—but for my birthday week, I’ll share this one on my own forthcoming project!34)   The 1876 Election and 2016: If you need any more reason to see this election as a crucial one, history offers us a compelling such argument.35)   Crowd-sourced Beach Reads: Crowd-sourced posts are always great, but the beach reads series brings out a particularly wide and deep group of voices and nominees.36)   ApologyStudying: Lessons from Canada: It can be tough to let current events impact the blog when I’m trying to write and schedule them in advance—but it’s always worthwhile, and this post and series are great illustrations of that.37)   SummerStudying: Irony and “Summertime Sadness”: Cleanth Brooks, Emily Dickinson, T.S Eliot, and Lana Del Rey—ain’t that AmericanStudies!38)   Gone with the Wind Turns 80: Revisiting Rhett Butler: I enjoyed the chance to revisit the subject of my first article, and to see where my ideas have shifted and where they’ve endured.39)   Modeling Critical Patriotism: Frederick Douglass’ July 4th Speech: No better place to end this list than with a figure and text that offer pitch-perfect exemplification of all that I’m trying to do, here and everywhere.New Birthday Bests post tomorrow,BenPS. You know what to do!

August 16, 2017: Birthday Bests: 2014-2015

[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier turns the big 4-0. So this week I’ll be sharing posts of birthday favorites for each of the blog’s prior years, leading up to a new birthday best list for 2016-2017. You couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]In honor of my 38th birthday, 38 favorite posts from 2014-2015 on the blog!1)      August 18: Films for the Dog Days: Dog Day Afternoon: A part of a sweltering summer series, I analyzed the gritty crime drama that’s sneakily subversive.2)      September 5: Fall Forward: A New Teaching Challenge: My Fall 2014 semester included a brand new course on a brand new (to me) topic, and that was a very good thing.3)      September 11: More Cville Stories: Fry’s Spring: Four exemplary stages to the Virginia hotspot where I spent many a summer’s day.4)      September 15: Country Music and Society: Gender and Identity: On Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and gender-bending in one of our most traditional cultural genres.5)      September 23: Women and War: Rosie the Riveter: Two ways to complicate and enrich our collective memories of an enduring American icon.6)      October 8: AmericanStudying Appalachia: Murfree’s Mountains: An AppalachianStudying series gave me a chance to write about one of our most complex and talented authors.7)      October 25-26: De Lange Follow Ups: My Fellow Tweeters: My whole experience as a Social Media Fellow at the De Lange Conference was amazing, and I’d love for you to check out the weeklong series of follow ups. But I can’t not focus on my amazing fellow Fellows!8)      October 29: AmericanSpooking: The Birds and Psycho: For my annual Halloween series, I considered defamiliarization, horror, and prejudice.9)      November 7: Exemplary Elections: 1994: My election week series ended with this highly influential recent election—and with this Lawyers, Guns, and Money post discussing and greatly amplifying my own thoughts.10)   November 14: Veterans Days: Miyoko Hikiji: The veteran and book that help broaden and enrich our concept of American veterans—and now she’s running for the Iowa State Senate!11)   November 28: 21st Century Thanks: E-Colleagues: A Thanksgiving series concludes with five colleagues I haven’t had the chance to meet in person, yet!12)   December 3: AmericanWinters: The Blizzard of 78: Two AmericanStudies contexts for an epic winter storm (which little did I know in December we’d end up surpassing in terms of total Boston snowfall in one winter!).13)   December 13-14: Andrea Grenadier’s Guest Post on Charles Ives: Another great year for Guest Posts, including this gem from Andrea on a difficult and important composer.14)   December 24: AmericanWishing: Chesnutt’s “Wife”: Charles Dickens, one of my favorite American short stories, and holiday introspection were on my wish list this year.15)   December 31: End of Year Stories: The Immigration Debate: Two online pieces of mine that have contributed to an ongoing political and American debate.16)   January 6: Waltham Histories: The Waverly Trail: Three profoundly American moments in the history of a beautiful natural wonder.17)   January 20: MLK Stories: Selma: What’s important and inspiring, and what’s a bit more problematic, about the wonderful recent film.18)   January 26: AmericanStudying Sports Movies: Bad News Bears and Boys: A Super Bowl series starts with our obsession with lovable losers.19)   February 2: American Conspiracy Theories: Roswell: Historical and cultural contexts for one of our craziest American conspiracy theories.20)   February 20: American Studying Non-Favorites: Low Five: Five historical figures with whom I have a bone—or a whole skeleton—to pick!21)   February 26: Western Mass. Histories: The Bridge of Flowers: Three evocative stages of a unique Massachusetts landmark.22)   March 2: Forgotten Wars: The Second Barbary War: The anniversary of a forgotten Early Republic conflict inspired this post and series on wars we should better remember.23)   March 14-15: All That Crowd-sourced Jazz: Crowd-sourcing at its finest, with fellow AmericanStudiers adding wonderful nominations to my week’s series on jazz.24)   March 24: American Epidemics: The Measles: An all-too-timely post, on three stages in the history of a frustratingly persistent disease.25)   April 2: April Fools: Minstrel Shows: What we do with comic art that’s just not funny any more.26)   April 6: Baseball Lives: Hank Greenberg: Why we should remember one of our greatest Jewish American athletes—and an inspiring icon.27)   April 18-19: Crowd-sourced Reading List: Another great crowd-sourced post, this one on nominations for an AmericanStudies reading list.28)   April 27: Communist Culture: “The Palace-Burner”: What one of my favorite American poems can teach us about difference, empathy, and identity.29)   May 11: Semester Conclusions: I Can’t Breathe: Remembering one of my most radical classroom moments, and why it wasn’t.30)   May 19: BlockbusterStudying II: Ghostbusters: Science, the supernatural, and Weird Tales in one of our funnier and more original summer blockbusters.31)   May 26: Decoration Day Histories: Frederick Douglass: As part of a series on Memorial Day’s origins, I highlighted Douglass’s amazing 1871 Decoration Day speech.32)   June 2: Mount Auburn Connections: Blanche Linden: Three inspiring sides to a hugely influential AmericanStudier, scholar, and teacher.33)   June 12: North Carolina Stories: Moral Mondays: Two historical parallels for the crucial contemporary protests and activism.34)   June 19: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: A Tragic, Compelling Life: Why we should get serious at the beach, and the perfect book to help us do so.35)   June 26: Gordon Parks and America: Portrait Photos and the Past: A series inspired by a wonderful (and ongoing) MFA exhibit concludes with some thoughts on what portraits can’t teach us about the past, and what they can.36)   July 1: The 4th in Focus: Fireworks: The history, symbolism, and limitations of an American holiday tradition.37)   July 11-12: Samuel Southworth’s Guest Post: In Honor of the 150thAnniversary of the US Secret Service: In my most recent Guest Post, Sam considers the organization’s history, role, and importance, with a fascinating foonote in comments to boot.38)   July 20: Billboard #1s: “I’ll Never Smile Again”: A series on Billboard hits starts with what’s hugely different about 1940’s #1 hit, and what’s not so different at all.New list this weekend,BenPS. You know what to do!

August 15, 2017: Birthday Bests: 2013-2014

Thirty-seven favorites from the 2013-2014 year on the blog!1)      August 23: Still Studying: Known Unknowns: A series on things I’m still learning concludes with a post on three recent takeaways from that 21stcentury resource, Twitter.2)      August 30: Fall Forward: Three Years: In honor of the blog’s upcoming third anniversary, three of my favorite memories from those first three years.3)      September 13: Newport Stories: To Preserve or Not to Preserve: A series on stories and histories surrounding The Breakers wonders whether and how we should preserve such historic homes.4)      September 17: Gloucester Stories: The Sense of the Past: As part of a series on the Massachusetts fishing town, why it’s so important to better remember that community.5)      September 25: Justice Is Not Color Blind: Duke: The most complex post in my series on race and justice in America, on expectations, realities, and the role of public scholars.6)      October 14: John Sayles’ America: Secaucus and the 60s: A series AmericanStudying my favorite filmmaker starts with the movie that echoes but also challenges our narratives of a turbulent decade.7)      October 21: Book Talk Thoughts: MOCA: With my year of book talks underway, a post on the inspiringly pitch-perfect New York museum that helped inaugurate those talks.8)      October 28: Symbolic Scares: The Wendigo: A Halloween series starts with the supernatural legend that offers cultural and cross-cultural commentaries.9)      November 7: Berkshire Stories: The Housatonic: Three complex and compelling sides to a New England river, part of a series on histories from this beautiful Western Mass. Region.10)   November 12: Veteran’s Week: Band of Brothers: As part of a Veteran’s Day series, nostalgia and nuance in one of our best recent depictions of war.11)   November 19: Times Like These: 1935: The debates over Social Security and how they do and don’t echo our own divided moment.12)   November 29: Giving Thanks: Future AmericanStudiers: A Thanksgiving series concludes with an inspiring moment where past and future were in conversation.13)   December 20: Representing Slavery: 12 Years a Slave: A series on cultural images of slavery concludes with two takes on the wonderful recent film, my own…14)   December 21-22: Representing Slavery: Joe Moser’s Guest Post: And that of my friend and colleague (and Irish film expert) Joe Moser!15)   December 24: AmericanStudies Wishes: Reform Now!: My annual series of wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves included this post on the very American reasons why we need immigration reform.16)   January 4-5: Ani DiFranco and Slavery: A special addition to a year-in-review series, on a couple historical contexts for a very current controversy.17)   January 23: Civil Rights Histories: George Wallace: Why we shouldn’t judge a lifetime by its worst moments, but why we do have to focus on them nonetheless.18)   January 27: Football Focalizes: Concussions and Hypocrisy: A Super Bowl series opens with the gap between what we know and what we do, in football as in history.19)   February 7: House Histories: Our Own Broad Daylight: A series on the House of the Seven Gables concludes with a post on the literary and communal presences of the past.20)   February 11: I Love Du Bois to His Daughter: My Valentine’s Day series included this tribute to an amazing letter from my American idol to his teenage daughter.21)   February 17: YA Lit: Little House on the Prairie: What we can and can’t learn about history from young adult lit kicks off a chapter-book-inspired series.22)   March 8-9: Crowd-sourced Non-Favorites: One of my most epic crowd-sourced posts ever rounded out a series on American things that don’t quite do it for us.23)   March 21: Cville Stories: 21st Century Tensions: Nostalgia, fear, and the current divisions that threaten communities like Charlottesville and America.24)   March 27: Caribbean Connections: Bob Marley: On whether it’s entirely possible for an artist to cross cultural borders, and why the crossing matters in any case.25)   April 2: Baseball Stories: Field of Dreams and The Brothers K: My Opening Day series included this post on divisive decades and histories, and whether baseball can bring us together.26)   April 16: Animated History: The Princess and the Frog: On race, representation, and seeing ourselves and our histories on screen.27)   April 28: Reading New England Women: Catharine Maria Sedgwick: A series on 19thcentury New England women kicks off with a funny, telling story that was way ahead of its time.28)   May 7: NeMLA Follow Ups: Roundtable on Contingent Faculty: Three meaningful ways we can move forward with a crucial issue.29)   May 12: Spring 2014 Recaps: 21st Century Writing: A semester recap series starts with three wonderful student papers from my Writing II course.30)   May 22: AmericanStudying Harvard Movies: Love Story: On the enduring appeal of fantasies, romantic and communal, and what it means to share them with future generations.31)   June 14-15: War Stories: Board Games: A D-Day series concludes with a special post on three board games from which I learned a good deal about histories of war.32)   June 17: AmericanStudying Summer Jams: Summertime Blues: The summer song that gave multi-layered voice to the experience of youth.33)   June 24: AmericanStudier Camp: Hello Muddah: As part of a summer camp series, the novelty song with an extended, very American afterlife.34)   July 14: American Beaches: Revere Beach: A beach series kicks off with three telling stages of one of our most historic beaches.35)   July 22: American Autobiographers: Olaudah Equiano: The controversial personal narrative that should be required reading whatever its genre.36)   August 1: Uncles and Aunts: Uncle Elephant: A series inspired by my sister’s birthday concludes with the children’s book that’s as sad and as joyous as life itself.37)   August 5: Virginia Voices: Thomas Nelson Page: For my latest return to VA, I highlighted interesting Virginia authors, including the question of whether and why we should read this once-popular writer at all.Next list tomorrow,BenPS. You know what to do!