Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 253

August 3, 2017: Troubled Children: Horror Films

[August 4thmarks the 125thanniversary of the day that Lizzie Borden may or may not have taken an axe and given her mother forty whacks and her father forty-one (more on that crucial ambiguity in Friday’s post). So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five histories or stories of deeply troubled children, leading up to a special weekend post on two children who are anything but!]On how three horror movies about demonic children reflect their respective eras.1)      Rosemary’s Baby (1968): Roman Polanski’s Hollywood debut, based on Ira Levin’s 1967 novel, is one of the most beloved horror films of all time, featuring a career-making performance from Mia Farrow and a number of iconic scares (particularly the infamous Satanic rape scene). But I think it’s also an incredibly complicated representation of late 1960s cultural fears, especially about the dangers posed to “ordinary people” (Farrow’s Rosemary and her husband, played by filmmaker John Cassevetes, are a purposefully average middle-class couple who encounter the horrors of 1960s New York) by the extremes of the counter-culture (in the form of the Satanic cult who plan to steal the titular baby for their nefarious aims). Obviously the fear that there could be something wrong with our children is a universal one that cuts across any particular time period, as the other films in this post will illustrate; but I think Rosemary’s story is still tellingly linked to the nation’s 60s divisions and concerns.2)      Children of the Corn (1984): Adapted from a 1976 Steven King short story, Fritz Kiersch’s 1984 film is far less beloved or critically acclaimed than Polanski’s classic, although it has still spawned seven sequels and one SyFy remake over the subsequent three decades. What really differentiates Children from Rosemary’s, though, is the difference between 1980s horror excess and the kinds of slow-burn scares that earlier iterations of the genre such as Rosemary’sand Psycho offered. Just check out the theatrical poster for Children—the blood-red background, the menacing scythe, the catchphrase “An adult nightmare.” While the murdering mob of Nebraska kids in Childrenare ostensibly regular children gone bad (sucked into an adult-killing cult by the frightening but charismatic child leaders Isaac and Malachai), the film plays much more like the slasher film that that poster intimates. Like most of the era’s slasher films, you can’t probe the cultural meanings very far without losing the thread—for example, the children supposedly began their murdering ways to ensure a bountiful harvest, but I defy any viewer to analyze Children as a commentary on the decade’s threats to the farming industry. This is an 80s horror film through and through.3)      The Good Son (1993): And then there’s the Macaulay Culkin serial killer kid flick. Based on a screenplay by acclaimed English novelist Ian McEwan, The Good Son has at least as impressive an artistic pedigree as Polanski’s film. But as that last hyperlinked story indicates, something happened between McEwan’s words and the resulting film, and that something was Kit Culkin, Macaulay’s dad and one of the most extreme stage parents in Hollywood history. Kit not only demanded that Macaulay star as the film’s psychopathic title character (as a trade-off for his making Home Alone 2), but also insisted that his daughter Quinn Culkin receive a role in the film as well, along with having a say in the director and production process. The resulting film, which pits Macaulay’s villainous Henry against his cousin Mark (played a young Elijah Wood), is quite awful, and not in the cheesy over-the-top way that Children of the Corn is; Culkin simply isn’t able to make Henry either truly menacing or believably three-dimensional, neither demonic nor disturbed. Of course Hollywood deal-making and compromises had been part of the film industry since its inception, but the fact that it was an overbearing father who was the true villain of The Good Son nonetheless links it to its 90s moment quite clearly. Last problem child(ren) tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories or stories you’d highlight?

August 2, 2017: Troubled Children: Dennis the Menace

[August 4thmarks the 125thanniversary of the day that Lizzie Borden may or may not have taken an axe and given her mother forty whacks and her father forty-one (more on that crucial ambiguity in Friday’s post). So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five histories or stories of deeply troubled children, leading up to a special weekend post on two children who are anything but!]On three telling aspects of a longstanding, troublemaking presence on the funny pages.1)      Autobiographical origins: Cartoonist Hank Ketcham’s four year old son Dennis was such a youthful troublemaker that Hank’s wife Alice was known to exclaim, “Your son is a menace!” Shortly thereafter, on March 12th, 1951, Hank debuted a comic strip entitled Dennis the Menace, featuring the Mitchell family: father Henry/Hank, mother Alice, and son Dennis. I don’t mean to suggest that every comic strip is based on the life and identity of the cartoonist, necessarily—but I’m willing to bet that quite often, even when he or she changes certain elements, there’s at least an autobiographical core (ie, Dik Browne didn’t live in Viking times, but I’d be surprised if there isn’t a good deal of Hagar the Horriblein Dik nonetheless). In any case, Dennis’s mischievous exploits are portrayed with such precision and begrudging love that it’s no surprise to learn that there was a real-life kid behind the freckles and overalls.2)      Multicultural misstep: Every comic strip that’s around for decades must evolve over that time (although they don’t always—I’m looking at you, Garfield), and not all of those changes are going to work out, particularly when they engage with complex cultural issues in periods of social shifts. In the late 1960s, Ketham introduced Jackson, an African-American neighbor of Dennis’ drawn very overtly in the stereotypical (and by this time quite outdated) “pickaninny” style. I’m not sure I can any more concisely sum up the problems with this character, both in image and in how Ketcham used him for humor, than does this May, 1970 strip. There’s not really ever a good time to introduce such a racist character, but the late 1960s was a particularly bad time, and as might be expected protests erupted at newspaper offices in Detroit, Little Rock, and St. Louis, among others. Ketcham agreed to shelve Jackson, although the quotes of his in that last hyperlinked story indicate that he never quite understood why such a racist depiction wouldn’t be the best way to add a new culture into his strip’s world. 3)      Still serialized: Ketcham retired in 1994 and passed away in 2001, but Denniscontinues to this day: drawn by his former assistants Marcus Hamilton and Ron Ferdinand, and serialized in at least 1000 newspapers in nearly 50 countries. That the strip is still going strong 66 years after its debut certainly reflects the universal appeal of a mischievous but lovable young boy and of family and neighborhood life. But at the same time, I would argue that the longstanding presence of so many decades-old strips—my hometown paper, the Charlottesville (VA) Daily Progress, features a significant percentage of the same strips I grew up reading a few decades ago—reflects a genre that is somewhat slower to adapt than the culture and society around it. Am I suggesting that Dennis, Hagar, Dagwood and Blondie, Garfield, and their venerable peers aren’t always the most engaged with life in 2017 America? Yes, yes I am—and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing (timelessness isn’t necessarily less desirable than timeliness), it needs at least to be balanced by newer and more 21st century strips.Next problem child(ren) tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories or stories you’d highlight?

August 1, 2017: Troubled Children: The Turn of the Screw

[August 4thmarks the 125thanniversary of the day that Lizzie Borden may or may not have taken an axe and given her mother forty whacks and her father forty-one (more on that crucial ambiguity in Friday’s post). So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five histories or stories of deeply troubled children, leading up to a special weekend post on two children who are anything but!]On two cultural fears lurking beneath Henry James’s gripping ghost story.If you had told me back when my teaching career began that Henry James’s 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw would be one of the texts I would teach most frequently, I’d likely have reacted much like Mrs. Grose does when the Governess tells her about seeing the ghost of Peter Quint (inside Turn of the Screw joke, my bad—that means incredulously). But because Turn works so well as a foundation onto which to stack literary theories and critical frames, I’ve taught the ghost story/psychological thriller/potboiler/Victorian class study/metafictional masterpiece numerous times in both my undergraduate Approaches to English Studies and graduate Literary Theory: Practical Applications courses (as well as in my Major Author: Henry James course). It’s a fun and engaging book, with so many layers that I’m continually discovering new ones along with the students in each such class. But it’s also a horror story (whether the horror is supernatural or psychological, which depends on how you read it), and as I’ve argued in this space many times, horror stories almost always reveal shared cultural narratives and fears.In the case of Turn, many of those embedded cultural fears focus on the story’s two young children, Miles and Flora, and what might be (as the governess-narrator sees it, at least) corrupting their innocent minds and souls. The more obvious (of the two I’ll highlight in this post, anyway—nothing is truly straightforward in James’s tortured text) corrupting forces have to do with sex and sexuality. The ghosts who may or may not be haunting or possessing Miles and Flora are of two former servants: Peter Quint, a manservant of whose sexual perversions we hear repeatedly but vaguely; and Miss Jessel, a nanny who was apparently pregnant (perhaps by Quint, perhaps by the children’s uncle) at the time of her mysterious death (likely a suicide). A number of Victorian fears overlap in those details, from worries about working-class influences on upper-class children to mores about sexual freedom. But I would argue that by far the most damning fears at play here have to do specifically with homosexuality, and with the possibly that Quint has corrupted young Miles in that vein (Miles finally admits, if still vaguely, that he “said things” to male friends at school that he should not have said, leading to his expulsion). In an era when Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for homosexuality, it’s fair to say that James is not overstating the cultural panic over such “perversions.”There’s another 19thcentury cultural fear potentially buried within the stories of Miles and Flora, however. In the novella’s complex prologue/frame, we learn that the children had initially lived with their parents in the British colony of India; it was only after they were orphaned that they returned to England to live with their bachelor uncle. That’s the last we hear of India in any overt way in the text—neither Miles (10 years old) nor Flora (8) seems to have any memories of their childhood there, or at least none that they share with the governess. Which is, of course, an important distinction to make—the entire novella hinges on the question of what the children are hiding from the governess, and so it’s entirely fair to imagine that there might be secrets other than those of their prior servants that they do not divulge to her (and thus to us, since she’s our narrator and sole perspective). In any case, in an era when James’s home country of the United States was debating seriously the possibility of becoming an empire, and when his adopted country of Great Britain was considering whether and how its empire was worth sustaining, it’s at least important to note that James decides to include this imperial history within the children’s backstory, to make it a part of the heritage and identity of these two troubled young people.Next problem child(ren) tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories or stories you’d highlight?

July 31, 2017: Troubled Children: The Menéndez Brothers

[August 4thmarks the 125thanniversary of the day that Lizzie Borden may or may not have taken an axe and given her mother forty whacks and her father forty-one (more on that crucial ambiguity in Friday’s post). So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five histories or stories of deeply troubled children, leading up to a special weekend post on two children who are anything but!]On two layers to the sensational case beyond the televised trial.I’m not going to even try to argue that TV sensationalism wouldn’t be the main context for analyzing the 1993 murder trial of the Beverly Hills brothers Lyle and Erik Menéndez (accused of killing their parents José and Kitty). As Friday’s Lizzie Borden post will reflect, Americans have been obsessed with true crime stories and famous trials for centuries; but the Menéndez trial was the first to be televised in its entirety, airing on Court TV nearly two years before the OJ trial (which is sometimes erroneously described as the first televised trial). Indeed, the Menéndez trial’s TV broadcast was considered so influential that when the 1993 trial ended in a deadlocked jury and LA District Attorney Gil Garcetti decided to retry the case, the second trial’s judge, Judge Stanley Weisberg, refused to allow cameras in the courtroom. There’s no way to know for sure if that change helped produce the second trial’s guilty verdicts, but in any case it unquestionably reflects how much the TV angle became a central part of the story of this famous trial and these famously troubled children.As with any famous case or trial, however, there are other layers and contexts beyond the immediate ones of those legal proceedings. In the case of the Menéndez brothers, I believe that it would be interesting and potentially important (although I don’t want to put too much stress on either of this post’s latter two contexts) to think about them as second-generation immigrant Americans. Their father José had fled to the United States from Cuba in the late 1950s after Castro’s revolution; he was only sixteen years old, and so in many ways his own identity was likewise formed in the United States, but he nonetheless was a first-generation immigrant to the country. Like many of the post-Castro exiles, José was from a prominent and wealthy Cuban family; but while many of those families emigrated en masse, José came by himself, meaning that he did have to start his life over in the United States in the stereotypical immigrant manner. One of the prosecution’s central narratives in the brothers’ trial was that they had been spoiled, given everything they could ever want and more, by their parents; while the focus there was on defining them as sons of privilege, I think it’s equally possible to see that trend as influenced by their father’s own story, and by the American Dream (one often felt with particular clarity by immigrant Americans) of giving your children more than you had been able to have. If that national and cultural context might help explain the Menéndez brothers’ backgrounds, however, a very different one applies to their lives since their 1996 convictions and sentences to life in prison without parole. Both men have been married during the two decades since those sentences began: Lyle twice, first to pen pal Anna Eriksson in July 1996 and then (after they divorced in 2001) to magazine editor Rebecca Sneed in 2003; and Erik once, in June 1999 to Tammi Saccoman (who has since written the book They Said We’d Never Make It—My Life with Erik Menéndez [2005]). It’s easy to turn such prison relationships and marriages into comic fodder, but if we’re looking to understand and analyze them with more depth and nuance, I would suggest one of the most unique and compelling American books. I wrote at length in this post about Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song (1979), the nonfiction narrative of convicted serial killer Gary Gilmore written as he awaits his execution; as I noted there, Mailer focuses much of his book on Nicole Barrett, the girlfriend who stayed with Gilmore throughout his prison sentence and execution. Mailer goes well beyond any facile or reductive understanding of Nicole or her relationship with Gary, and if we’re looking to think seriously about the Menéndez brothers’ prison marriages, his book should be required reading.Next problem child(ren) tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories or stories you’d highlight?

July 29-30, 2017: July 2017 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]July 3: Representing the Revolution: The Patriot: A July 4th series kicks off with the monstrous issue at the heart of Mel Gibson’s blockbuster film.July 4: Representing the Revolution: The Adams Letters: The series continues with myths and realities of the Revolution contained in John and Abigail Adams’ correspondence.July 5: Representing the Revolution: 1776 and Burr: Two complementary but contrasting efforts to humanize the founders, as the series rolls on.July 6: Representing the Revolution: YA Novels: Three groundbreaking historical novels that reflect the evolution of young adult literature.July 7: Representing the Revolution: TV Shows: And three television programs that likewise reflect that medium’s evolution.July 8-9: Representing the Revolution: Hamilton: The series concludes with one critique and one celebration of the smash musical.July 10: Thoreau’s Bicentennial: Civil Disobedience: For Thoreau’s 200th, a series kicks off with three lesser-known facts about his protest essay.July 11: Thoreau’s Bicentennial: Cape Cod: The series continues with two reasons to read Thoreau’s often overlooked travel book.July 12: Thoreau’s Bicentennial: Walden: Two new frames for Thoreau’s most famous project, as the birthday series rolls on.July 13: Thoreau’s Bicentennial: A Walk to Wachusett: A simple and a more complex pleasure of Thoreau’s first published essay.July 14: Thoreau’s Bicentennial: Friendships: What three of Thoreau’s social relationships can tell us about the man and the era.July 15-16: Thoreau’s Bicentennial: Commemorating Henry: The series concludes with three distinct but interconnected ways to commemorate the birthday boy.July 17: Historical Fictions: An Overview: A historical fiction series kicks off with period fiction, historical fiction, and where Gore Vidal’s America Chronicles fit in.July 18: Historical Fictions: Kindred: The series continues with my first book highlight, Octavia Butler’s sci fi historical novel.July 19: Historical Fictions: Cloudsplitter: Russell Banks’ epic story of John Brown, as the historical fiction highlights roll on.July 20: Historical Fictions: James Michener: The continued pleasures of one of the genre’s most popular authors.July 21: Historical Fictions: Five More Novels: For my final post in the series, briefly highlighting five more wonderful historical novels.July 22-23: Crowd-sourced Historical Fiction: The series concludes with one of my fullest crowd-sourced posts ever—add your historical novel nominees to this wonderful list!July 24: Talks and Events: Facing History and Ourselves: A series on recent talks starts with two benefits of my connection to a great educational organization.July 25: Talks and Events: The Gardner Museum: The series continues with two reasons to visit and celebrate an exemplary local museum.July 26: Talks and Events: The Stowe Prize: Two takeaways from Bryan Stevenson’s remarks in Hartford, as the series rolls on.July 27: Talks and Events: The Harlem Renaissance for BOLLI: Two discoveries I made in preparing for a talk for Brandeis University’s adult learning program.July 28: Talks and Events: Meeting the Scholars Strategy Network: The series concludes with three ways you can join the SSN Boston Chapter!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know!

July 28, 2017: Talks and Events: The Scholars Strategy Network’s Boston Chapter

[On Tuesday July 25th, I’ll be talking to the Central Massachusetts Genealogical Society on the topic of “Remembering the Salem Witch Trials: The Limits and Possibilities of Public History.” So this week I wanted to highlight five recent talks and events I’ve given or been part of—please share your own experiences in comments!]Earlier this month, thanks to the great work of SSN Organizing Fellow Lyra DeCastro and Policy Intern Talissa Lahaliyed, the SSN Boston Chapter held its first event since I took over as Chapter leader, a social gathering at the awesome Scholars Bistro. Here are three things I highlighted in my follow up email to the Chapter, with all of which I could also use your help (especially if you’re in the Boston or New England areas, but for the second and third you can really be anywhere!):1)      NCSL event: Our next SSN Boston gathering will connect to an important local and national event, the National Conference of State Legislatures’ (NCSL) annual Legislative Summit. The Summit will be held this year at the Boston State House from August 6-9, and on August 7th SSN will host a get-together there (or nearby—exact details forthcoming soon, and I’ll update this space as soon as I have them) for scholars and researchers, state legislators (both local and national), journalists, and other interested folks. If you’re interested in attending this important event, please let me know and we’ll make sure you can join us!2)      Organizational connections: NCSL is one example of one of my two main goals for SSN Boston—linking us to as many organizations as possible. For example, we’re also pursuing ways to link our members and work to both the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy (MIRA) Coalition and Facing History and Ourselves (FHAO). Those are both Boston-area organizations, which makes sense in terms of shared events and efforts; but honestly I’m just as open to links with organizations located anywhere and everywhere. So if you have ideas for organizations or efforts to which SSN might connect, whether you have your own connections to these groups or just know of them, I’d really love to hear those ideas. Thanks in advance!3)      Recruiting: For this one, I’ll plagiarize directly from my email to all SSN Boston members, as I can’t say it any more clearly than I did there: “I just wanted to reiterate how much recruiting new SSN participants is a central goal for the Boston Chapter. From every discipline, every field, every side of scholarship and research and activism (not just higher ed, but education overall, journalism, activist organizations, you name it)—honestly, everybody and anybody for whom SSN's work is a good fit are very welcome to join us. So I'd love to deputize you all, Young Guns style (more or less…), to go out and get us as many new recruits as possible, to attend SSN events, become part of our community of contacts, and be in solidarity as we do this work.” What he said!July Recap this weekend,BenPS. Events or experiences you’d highlight? I’d love to hear about them!

July 27, 2017: Talks and Events: The Harlem Renaissance for BOLLI

[On Tuesday July 25th, I’ll be talking to the Central Massachusetts Genealogical Society on the topic of “Remembering the Salem Witch Trials: The Limits and Possibilities of Public History.” So this week I wanted to highlight five recent talks and events I’ve given or been part of—please share your own experiences in comments!]On two unexpected connections I made in a talk for prospective adult learners.I’ve written a great deal in this space about my very happy, nearly a decade old link to the Adult Learning in the Fitchburg Area (ALFA) program, and in this post I highlighted my new but evolving connection to BOLLI, the Brandeis University Lifelong Learning program. I’ll be leading my first BOLLI study group (pairing historical ethnic writers with contemporary writers, with novels by Charles Chesnutt and David Bradley as the centerpiece) this fall, but earlier this month had the chance to give a lecture on three icons of the Harlem Renaissance as part of a BOLLI recruitment event. The program has been developing closer ties to the Waltham community, and this event offered a brunch and information session for more than eighty Waltham seniors and prospective BOLLI members. The program director invited me to give the event’s keynote lecture, and I decided to talk about W.E.B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, and what we can learn from some of their pivotal moments and texts for our own moment and culture.While of course I had a strong initial sense of much of what I wanted to highlight and discuss in that talk, I tried as always to remain open to things I might find or ideas I might come to in the process of planning and writing the lecture. For example, I knew I wanted Du Bois’s responses to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 to be my focal moment for him, but in the process of researching that section really read in full his 1930 address to the Searles High School (Great Barrington, MA) alumni gathering for the first time. Du Bois had grown up in Great Barrington, and was very fond of its Housatonic River, which by this time was nearly abandoned and dangerously polluted. Du Bois used the 1930 address to make the case for cleaning up and reclaiming the river, but also—as the speech’s stunning last few paragraphs exemplify—to make a broader case about the role and importance of rivers in American communities. I don’t think we can read his last sentence—“And so I have ventured to call the attention of the graduates of the Searles High school this bit of philosophy of living in this valley, urging that we should rescue the Housatonic and clean it as we have never in all the years thought before of cleaning it, and seek to restore its ancient beauty; making it the center of a town, of a valley, and perhaps—who knows?—of a new measure of civilized life”—and not think about what he and his peers were hoping to accomplish in the Harlem Renaissance, and what we desperately need in 2017 America as well.Du Bois’s speech was also deeply concerned with another topic to which I tried to connect my BOLLI lecture: the sometimes tenuous, almost always fraught, and always always vital links between a place and its histories. Thinking of my audience of Walthamites, I decided to start the talk by highlighting my own evolving understanding of my hometown (for the last 4.5 years), using in particular an interesting sign that greets drivers as they enter the city on a few different main roads: “Welcome to Waltham: America’s History is Our History.” I think there’s a lot of truth to that, as the posts in this January 2015 series sought to highlight. But the sign isn’t the city’s history itself, of course—it’s a representation of, a reflection on, perhaps most exactly an argument about, that history, and thus tells us as much about the present as it does about the past. The same could be said about the Harlem Renaissance’s engagements with African American, African, and American history, of course—and, for that matter, about my lecture’s engagements with all those questions. I won’t pretend that I provided answers to any of those complex issues in the talk, but it was fun to think in these ways about the city that I, these audience members, and BOLLI share. Last event recap tomorrow,BenPS. Events or experiences you’d highlight? I’d love to hear about them!

July 26, 2017: Talks and Events: The Stowe Prize

[On Tuesday July 25th, I’ll be talking to the Central Massachusetts Genealogical Society on the topic of “Remembering the Salem Witch Trials: The Limits and Possibilities of Public History.” So this week I wanted to highlight five recent talks and events I’ve given or been part of—please share your own experiences in comments!]On two of the many inspirations I took from Bryan Stevenson’s Hartford remarks.In early June, I had the great good fortune to attend the 2017 Stowe Prize gala and dinner, where the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center’s semiannual Prize for Writing for Social Justice was presented to Bryan Stevenson for his book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption . (I’m not sure there could be a more pitch-perfect trifecta of writers, public scholars, and activists than the last three Stowe Prize recipients: Stevenson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Michelle Alexander.) The entire event was one of the most inspiring evenings I’ve ever spent, from the location (in a tent erected between the Stowe Center and the Mark Twain House, in Hartford’s historic Nook Farm area) to every single person with whom I had the chance to chat (such as Emily Waniewski, formerly a Stowe Center staff member who is now the Programming Director for Hartford Performs; or Katherine Kane, the Stowe Center’s tireless Executive Director). But most inspiring of all were Stevenson’s remarks, first in an interview session and then at the dinner itself, and I wanted to highlight here two standout ideas from his comments.Stevenson spoke at length about two of the topics that are nearest and dearest to my heart: how much Americans do not remember our histories, particularly our darkest ones; and the vital need to counter that trend, collectively and comprehensively. Those two threads are the central subjects of my latest book, about which I had the chance to chat briefly with Stevenson at a reception prior to dinner. But Stevenson engaged more overtly with a side to these topics I hadn’t considered as fully: the accusation that focusing on such dark histories means “blaming” certain Americans for the horrors and oppressions of our past. His answer to that charge was the most clear and powerful I’ve ever heard: he argued that the goal here is not to blame anyone, but rather to liberate everyone. That is, we’re all limited by both these histories and (especially) our inability to remember and grapple with them; and thus if we can truly do those latter things, we will all be freed to move forward into a more unified and hopeful future as a result. I’ve certainly tried to argue for that optimistic, forward-looking goal of these historical engagements, but Stevenson’s emphasis on liberation was a new frame for me, and a hugely compelling and inspiring one. I look forward to incorporating it into my own future!If that idea of Stevenson’s represented a new angle on a topic I’ve long considered, the other one I want to highlight here was more genuinely new to me. Stevenson was asked in the Q&A portion about whether he supports reparations for African Americans; he said that he does, but his argument for how that controversial idea could be enacted was one I hadn’t quite heard made in this way before. I won’t be able to do full justice to his ideas here, but the short version (which I hope I’m getting right) is that he supports a community building form of reparations, one that would apportion money to cities and communities (such as our host Hartford) and use it to build and strengthen civic resources such as the public schools, housing and neighborhoods, health care and social services, and so on. I grappled in this post with the idea of communal reparations in the form of educational and commemorative projects (which in that case had fallen frustratingly short of the promised support), and in this one with whether and how such ideas might be applied to African American reparations. But I’ll admit that I hadn’t really considered this other option for communal reparations, one that likewise goes beyond payments to individuals but considers a different and more immediate way of supporting and funding community initiatives. As with everything Stevenson said at this wonderful event, this idea gives me a lot to think about, and hope for.Next event recap tomorrow,BenPS. Events or experiences you’d highlight? I’d love to hear about them!

July 25, 2017: Talks and Events: The Gardner Museum

[On Tuesday July 25th, I’ll be talking to the Central Massachusetts Genealogical Society on the topic of “Remembering the Salem Witch Trials: The Limits and Possibilities of Public History.” So this week I wanted to highlight five recent talks and events I’ve given or been part of—please share your own experiences in comments!]On two reasons to visit—and celebrate—a wonderful local museum.On June 1st, I had the chance to talk about “Exclusion and Inclusion in American History and Culture” at the Gardner Museum in Gardner, Massachusetts. (Not to be confused with Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.) My talk was pretty similar to the one I gave on the same topics in February at the Monadnock Inn (although it has continued to evolve as I’ve moved into work on the book manuscript, of course), and so I would say many of the same things about the talk that I did in that hyperlinked post. As always, audience questions and thoughts helped me continue to develop and push my ideas, one reason why every talk I’ve ever given has been at least as meaningful for me as (I hope) it has been for the audience. But another reason is that with every talk I’ve ever given I have had the chance to connect with and learn about a new setting and space, and this time was no exception: I had never been inside the Gardner Musem before, and learned a lot about what makes this local museum an exemplary historical site.I would contend that every town in America has local histories that are both worth exploring in their own right and have a great deal to tell us about American history more broadly; perhaps I’m biased, having lived most of my life in either Virginia or Massachusetts (the two states that most consistently fight for the title of “The Birthplace of America”), but I would bet that the same could be said of towns in any and every state. While local libraries and historical societies can certainly help us remember those histories, no institutions or organizations are better able to do so than local museums, and the Gardner Museum is a great case in point. Gardner is known as the “Chair City of the World” due to its extensive history of furniture manufacturing, and the museum does a wonderful job representing and engaging with the many histories and contexts for that defining attribute. But local museums should also challenge and extend our sense of a town and community, and the Gardner Museum does that on a number of levels, from a small but compelling Civil War collection to a fascinating new exhibit on the many different immigrant communities that have arrived in and helped constitute the town over the centuries. I’ve taught just down the road from Gardner for a dozen years, but I learned far more about the community in my brief time in the museum than I had in all those years at Fitchburg State.Even the best museums can’t afford to stay static or complacent in our 21stcentury moment, however. Having had the chance to talk at length with Gardner Museum Coordinator (and talented artist) Marion Knoll before and after my lecture, I can attest that she and the museum are working hard to evolve in technological, digital, and interactive ways. The museum has recently added a compelling UniGuide audio tour to its collections, offering visitors a chance to experience and engage with all of the museum’s items and exhibits, and the histories and stories behind them, far more fully. Marion is also in the process of securing a couple of iPads for the museum, which would both allow all visitors to utilize the audio tour (even if they don’t have smartphones) and will make the addition of other digital and multimedia resources and options possible as well. Balancing the digital and virtual with the material and personal is never easy for any institution, but Marion and the Gardner Museum are working to do so thoughtfully, one more reason to celebrate and support this great museum.Next event recap tomorrow,BenPS. Events or experiences you’d highlight? I’d love to hear about them!

July 24, 2017: Talks and Events: Facing History and Ourselves

[On Tuesday July 25th, I’ll be talking to the Central Massachusetts Genealogical Society on the topic of “Remembering the Salem Witch Trials: The Limits and Possibilities of Public History.” So this week I wanted to highlight five recent talks and events I’ve given or been part of—please share your own experiences in comments!]On two unexpected results of connecting to a wonderful organization.Earlier this spring, I had the chance to record a podcast for Facing History and Ourselves (FHAO), as part of their new series “What Makes Democracy Work?” FHAO’s global home office is in Brookline, Massachusetts, making them very much part of my local community; but the organization’s lesson plans, resources, and workshops for teachers and educators have achieved nationwide (and even worldwide) recognition and effects (leading FHAO to open ten global offices), making them a truly influential part of our 21stcentury conversations about history, education, and civic engagement. FHAO is perhaps best known for their truly groundbreaking and crucial work with Holocaust histories and education—it’s my understanding that History and Social Studies educators (especially at the middle school level, but really at every level) have long struggled with how to teach that vital but incredibly dark and complex moment, and that FHAO’s resources and support have fundamentally shifted those conversations for the better. But their American history materials and resources are just as important and inspiring, and I found two unexpected results of connecting my work to theirs (a connection that will continue at one of their courses this summer).For one thing, the connection helped (well, forced, but in a helpful way) me to think about the histories and stories I was highlighting in entirely new ways. I have been writing and thinking about Quock Walker for many years, usually in this space, but for whatever reason had not connected him at any length to Elizabeth “Bett” Freeman, his fellow Massachusetts slave and the other who (like Walker) used the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution and America’s Revolutionary ideals to argue successfully for freedom and push Massachusetts toward the abolition of slavery. The time requirements for the FHAO podcast—as well as just my own recognition that the one story I had tended to focus on was linked to other stories, and I needed to do my due diligence and investigate and analyze them more cohesively—provided precisely the incentive I needed to think more about Freeman and her story, and then to build an analysis that considered both the two stories individually and (especially) how I wanted to connect them to an argument about these figures making the law and our democracy work for them. Now that connection between Walker and Freeman forms a central part of a chapter of my book in progress, Exclusion & Inclusion: The Battle to Define America. AmericanStudier synchronities for the win!The other result of my connection to FHAO that I want to highlight is much more preliminary, but also more broadly relevant. In many of their different units and resources, FHAO uses the concepts of bystanders and upstanders—of those who stand by while events like the Holocaust or bullying or other oppressions take place, versus those who stand up and say or do something (with saying just as key as doing, in this frame) about the oppression. While I didn’t bring those terms into my FHAO podcast, it’s fair to say that they could apply—that figures like Theodore Sedgwick, the young Massachusetts lawyer who took on Freeman’s case, or Seth and John Caldwell, the brothers who employed the runaway Walker on their farm and helped him fight his court cases, could be described as upstanders to slavery and its oppressions. But the area to which I’ve really begun connecting those terms since my FHAO link is my own evolving interest in public scholarly writing and work. That is, we’re in the midst of a historical moment that far too fully echoes both some of the worst in history and actions like bullying, and like many of us I’ve been thinking a lot about what I can do with the time that has been given me. While of course public scholarly writing is far from the only possible (nor necessarily the most productive) such response, I believe it can be seen as a form of upstanding, and as such an important intervention in these dark times.Next event recap tomorrow,BenPS. Events or experiences you’d highlight? I’d love to hear about them!

PPS. My FHAO podcast also inspired me to write about Freeman and Walker for the Washington Post's wonderful new Made by History blog!