Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 26

December 18, 2024: Fall Semester Reflections: Senior Capstone

[I thinkwe could all use some reminders these days of the best of our communities andconversations. So for this year’s Fall Semester reflections series, I wanted toshare one moment from each of my classes that embodied those collective goals.I’d love to hear about your Falls in comments!]

This one’spretty straightforward, but man did we all need it. My English Studies Senior Capstonecourse met T/Th at 2pm this semester, so on Halloween it was the end of the schoolday for both me and most if not all of the students in there. I was in costume (duh),a few of the students were too, one of them brought some refreshments as partof their costume, and we sat around and had the refreshments and talked aboutwriting opportunities, job and career paths, grad school options, the Eric Carle Museum, and more. It was one ofmy favorite hours on campus in a long time, and a great reminder of why online education(which I do every semester, as I’ll write about tomorrow) will never be able tofully or successfully substitute for that in-person, in-class experience andcommunity.

Nextreflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whattayagot?

December 17, 2024: Fall Semester Reflections: First-Year Writing

[I thinkwe could all use some reminders these days of the best of our communities andconversations. So for this year’s Fall Semester reflections series, I wanted toshare one moment from each of my classes that embodied those collective goals.I’d love to hear about your Falls in comments!]

I haven’tsaid much if anything in this space yet about AI, although I will be doing sonext week as part of my Year in Review series. As I’m sure everyone readingthis knows, it has become a central focus in the world of higher ed, andperhaps especially for those of us teach writing. I’ve actually seen the mostuse of programs like ChatGPT in my online-only literature courses, where ofcourse all the work is already happening online and where it’s harder to buildthe kinds of communal respect that allows us to talk together about suchfraught topics. I did see a few instances in my First-Year Writing sections thisFall, but what I wanted to highlight here is another product of that mutualrespect: when I identified this AI-driven writing with the individual students,they were willing and able to recognize why this wasn’t a good call, to hear myperspective, and to work together with me to help develop their own ideas andwriting for these assignments instead. If our job is to teach—and yeah, it sureis—then that’s how we should be approaching AI too, as another moment forteaching and learning and growth.

Nextreflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whattayagot?

December 16, 2024: Fall Semester Reflections: 20C Af Am Lit

[I thinkwe could all use some reminders these days of the best of our communities andconversations. So for this year’s Fall Semester reflections series, I wanted toshare one moment from each of my classes that embodied those collective goals.I’d love to hear about your Falls in comments!]

I’m goingto start this series by breaking my own stated rules slightly, but I think you’llagree that this counts as an inspiring moment, if one that we had to pay offevery day thereafter. At the first class meeting of my 20th CenturyAfrican American Literature course, I made a request for the first and so faronly time in my career: I asked them to stay off of their phones as much aspossible (recognizing that life happens and it’s sometimes necessary) in thecourse of our semester and discussions. We were gonna be talking about some consistentlychallenging and often fraught and painful texts and topics, and I wanted us to bein it together as much as we could. I was so proud of how much we honored thatrequest, and how fully we did stay in our collective space and conversations,leading to some of my favorite discussions and days in any class in my 20 yearsat FSU. I won’t make this request too often, I don’t imagine, but I’ll knowthat I can if and when it feels right, and as with everything I know our FSUstudents will rise to the challenge.

Nextreflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whattaya got?

December 14-15, 2024: Hawaii in American Culture

[150 yearsago this week, Hawaii’s King Kalākaua arrivedin Washington, DC for an extended series of events, a defining part of amore than two-month statevisit to the US. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied that visit and otherHawaiian histories, leading up to this special post on cultural representationsof the islands.]

1)     JamesMichener’s Hawaii (1959): I wrote a bit about Michener’s first trulyepic historical novel in that post, and would stand by my two assertions there:that his works are more period fiction than true historical fiction (in mydefinitions of the true concepts); but that their multi-period focus allows forgroundbreaking and important depictions of his chosen communities nonetheless. Ihaven’t read Hawaiii in decades, but that’s my sense of this book too,making it a cultural representation well worth returning to nearly 70 yearslater.

2)     Blue Hawaii (1961): Ihaven’t seen the first of what would be three Elvis Presley films shot inHawaii in a five-year period (a list that also includes 1962’s Girls! Girls!Girls! and 1965’s Paradise, Hawaiian Style), and I very much doubtit is likewise worth returning to in late 2024. And I think that’s actually ananalytical point—from what I can tell, these films were much more of an excusefor the singer and friends to visit the islands than compelling stories thatneeded the Hawaiian setting. If so, that helped establish a trend which has unquestionablycontinued ever since (50First Dates, anyone?).

3)     HawaiiFive-O (1968-1980): On the other hand, I don’t want to suggest that everycultural work set in Hawaii chooses that setting for such non-specific (or atleast non-artistic) reasons; some, like this groundbreaking and popular policeprocedural TV show, absolutely do connect to specific aspects of the islandsand their communities, cultures, and contexts. For example, two of the originalfour officers on whom the show focused were non-white, a striking percentage ina late 1960s program: Chin Ho Kelly, portrayed by Chinese American actor Kam FongChun (an 18-year veteran of the Honolulu Police Department); and Kono Kalakaua,portrayed by native Hawaiian actor . That’s the Hawaii Iknow, and I love that this popular show portrayed it as such.

4)     “Over the Rainbow/What a WonderfulWorld” (1990): If you’ve been to a wedding in the last three decades, you’veheard this ukelele-driven cover of two already-beautiful songs made even morebeautiful by native Hawaiian singer Israel “IZ”Ka’ano’i Kamakawiwo’ole. That beauty, combined with the very unique song ofIZ’s ukelele and voice alike, certainly explains the staying power of this combinatorycover song. But I really love its representation of a cross-cultural America,with two songs from Jewish American songwriting duos, the second made famous byan African American jazz trumpeter and singer, given new life and meaning by anative Hawaiian performer.

5)     Blue Crush (2002): Ican’t talk about cultural representations of Hawaii without getting surfing inthere somewhere, and of the surfing films I know, Blue Crush is one ofthe most overtly concerned with aspects of Hawaiian culture and community(including the presence of a romantic lead who is in town for the NFL Pro Bowl,which was hosted there for many years). On the other hand, its main characteris a very, very blond young woman (played by Kate Bosworth), and its moreethnic characters are relegated to supporting roles; that says more aboutHollywood in 2002 than it does about Hawaii, but it’s a reflection of thecontinued work we need to do in how we represent this hugely diverse place.

End of semesterseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Hawaiian histories or stories you’d highlight?

December 13, 2024: Hawaiian Histories: The Varsity Victory Volunteers

[150 yearsago this week, Hawaii’s King Kalākaua arrivedin Washington, DC for an extended series of events, a defining part of amore than two-month statevisit to the US. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that visit and otherHawaiian histories, leading up to a special post on cultural representations ofthe islands.]

On apost-Pearl Harbor group who embody the best of the war, Hawai’i, and America.

I learneda great deal while researching and writing my fifth book, We the People: The 500-Year Battle Over Who isAmerican (2019). I had a general sense of the exclusionary and inclusivehistories I wanted to highlight in each chapter, having talkedabout most of them in a number ofsettings over the lastcouple years; but in the course of working on each chapter I discovered newhistories related to those central threads, stories that surprised me yet alsoand especially exemplified my topics and themes. So it went with Chapter 7: EverythingJapanese Internment Got Wrong: I knew that I wanted to focus in that chapter onJapanese American World War II soldiers as a central, inclusive challenge tothe exclusionary histories and narratives of the internment policy and camps;but it was only when researching those respective World War II communitiesfurther that I learned about the amazing, inspiring, foundational story of the VarsityVictory Volunteers (VVV).

There werequite simply too many Japanese Americans in Hawai’i (and they were too integralto the community’s economy and society) for internment camps to be possible.But the island featured its own forms of World WarII anti-Japanese discrimination to be sure, and it was out of onesuch discriminatory moment that the VVV was born. The day of the Pearl Harborattacks, all of the island’s ROTC students were called up for active duty asthe newly constituted HawaiiTerritorial Guard (HTG). But when federal officials learnedthat Japanese American students were among those numbers, they dismissed thosestudents from service, deeming them 4C (“enemy aliens”) and thus ineligible toserve. Frustrated by this treatment, many of the students met with Hung Wai Ching, aChinese Hawaiian community leader who had become an ally to the group. On hisadvice they drafted a letter tothe territory’s military governor, Delos Emmons, whichread in part: “We joined the Guardvoluntarily with the hope that this was one way to serve our country in hertime of need. Needless to say, we were deeply disappointed when we were toldthat our services in the Guard were no longer needed. Hawaii is our home; the United States, ourcountry. We know but one loyalty and that is to the Stars and Stripes. We wishto do our part as loyal Americans in every way possible and we hereby offerourselves for whatever service you may see fit to use us.”

Emmonsaccepted the VVV’s offer, and in February 1942 they were constituted as a laborbattalion (attached to the 34th Combat Engineers) and assigned to SchofieldBarracks. Over the next year they would contribute both their labor andtheir presence to the community there, becoming such an integral part of itsoperations and society that when Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy visited inDecember 1942 (escorted by none other than Hung Wai Ching), he was struck bythe VVV in particular. Not at all coincidentally, in January 1943 the WarDepartment reversed its policy and allowed Japanese Americans to serve in thearmed forces; the VVV requested permission to disband so they could volunteer,and nearly all of the VVV members ended up in the 442ndRegimental Combat Team, the all-Japanese unit that would become the mostdecorated in American military history. I knew about the 442ndbefore I wrote the chapter and book, but I had never heard of the VVV—and Iknow of few stories that exemplify the best of American military, social, andcultural history more fully than does this post-Pearl Harbor, volunteerJapanese American student community.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Hawaiian histories or stories you’d highlight?

December 12, 2024: Hawaiian Histories: Pablo Manlapit

[150 yearsago this week, Hawaii’s King Kalākaua arrivedin Washington, DC for an extended series of events, a defining part of amore than two-month statevisit to the US. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that visit and otherHawaiian histories, leading up to a special post on cultural representations ofthe islands.]

First, acouple paragraphs on the Filipino American labor leader from my book We the People:

“Theconcentration of many of these early-twentieth-century Filipino arrivals inwestern U.S. communities of migrant labor led to new forms of inspiringcommunal organization and activism, ones that also produced corresponding newforms of exclusionary prejudice. The story of Pablo Manlapit and the firstFilipino Labor Union (FLU) is particularly striking on both those levels.Manlapit was eighteen when he immigrated from the Philippines to Hawaii in1909, one of the nearly 120,000 Filipinos to arrive in Hawaii between 1900 and1931; he worked for a few years on the Hamakua Mill Company’s sugarcaneplantations, experiencing first-hand some of the discriminations andbrutalities of that labor world. In 1912, he married a Hawaiian woman, AnnieKasby, and as they began a family he left the plantation world and beganstudying the law. By 1919, Manlapit had become a practicing labor lawyer, andhe used his knowledge and connections to found the Filipino LaborUnion onAugust 31, 1919; he was also elected the organization’s first president. TheFLU would organize major strikes on Hawaiian plantations in both 1920 and 1924,as well as complementary campaigns such as the 1922 FilipinoHigher Wage Movement; these efforts did lead to wage increases and other positive effects,but the 1924 strike also culminated in the infamous September 9 Hanapepe Massacre, when police attackedstrikers, killing nine and wounding many more.

 

Manlapitwas one of sixty Filipino activists arrested after the massacre; as a conditionof his parole he was deported to California in an effort to cripple Hawaiianlabor organizing, but Manlapit continued his efforts in California, and in 1932returned to Hawaii and renewed his activism there, hoping to involve Japanese,indigenous, and other local labor communities alongside Filipino laborers. In1935, Manlapit was permanently deported from Hawaii to the Philippines, endinghis labor movement career and tragically separating him from his family, buthis influence and legacy lived on, both in Hawaii and in California. In Hawaii,the Filipino American activist Antonio Fagel organized a new,similarly cross-ethnic union, the Vibora Luviminda; the groupstruck successfully for higher wages in 1937, and would become the inspirationfor an even more sizeable and enduring 1940s Hawaiian labor union begun byChinese American longshoreman Harry Kamoku and others. In California, a group ofFilipino American labor leaders would, in 1933 in the Salinas Valley, create asecond Filipino LaborUnion(also known as the

FLU),immediately organizing a lettuce pickers’ strike that received national mediaattention and significantly expanded the Depression-era conversation overFilipino and migrant laborers. In 1940, the American Federation of Laborchartered the Filipino-led Federal Agricultural Laborers Union, cementing thesedecades of activism into a formal and enduring labor organization.”

Justa quick addendum: there are many, many reasons to better remember AsianAmerican figures and histories like Manlapit and the FLU. But high on the listis the way in which those stories and histories complicate, challenge, andchange our broader narratives of topics like work, organized labor, and protestand social movements in America. Every one of those themes has been as diverseand multi-cultural as America itself, throughout our history just as much as inthe present moment; and every one has included Asian Americans in all sorts ofcompelling and crucial ways.

LastHawaiian history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Hawaiian histories or stories you’d highlight?

December 11, 2024: Hawaiian Histories: Annexation

[150 yearsago this week, Hawaii’s King Kalākaua arrivedin Washington, DC for an extended series of events, a defining part of amore than two-month statevisit to the US. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that visit and otherHawaiian histories, leading up to a special post on cultural representations ofthe islands.]

A quarter-centuryafter the United States welcomed King Kalākaua with such respect, the federalgovernment treated another Hawaiian monarch, one who had servedas Queen Regent during his subsequent 1881 world tour, with utterdisrespect. I’ve written at length about the violent overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and the subsequentannexation of Hawaii in two pieces, this one for We’re Historyand thisone for my Saturday Evening Post Considering History column. So in lieu of a full post today, I’llask you to check out those two interconnected and complementary pieces, and tohelp us better remember this pivotal and painful moment in Hawaiian andAmerican history.  

NextHawaiian history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Hawaiian histories or stories you’d highlight?

December 10, 2024: Hawaiian Histories: King Kalākaua’s Visit

[150 yearsago this week, Hawaii’s King Kalākaua arrivedin Washington, DC for an extended series of events, a defining part of amore than two-month statevisit to the US. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that visit and otherHawaiian histories, leading up to a special post on cultural representations ofthe islands.]

On threestriking moments in the state visit beyond thetime in DC (on which check out that piece and thisone, among much other coverage).

1)     San Francisco: A significant layer to my recently completed podcast wasthe story of San Francisco in the 1870s (and into the September 1881 moment inwhich the Celestials played their last game). This was the city with the nation’soldest and largest Chinatowncommunity, and also the city that became theviolent epicenter of the period’s anti-Chinese American movement; obviouslythose two facts are related, but they also reflect the true duality of acommunity that both embodied and challenged our foundational diversitythroughout this decade. Which makes it pretty interesting to think about King Kalākaua’scelebratory week in thecity in late November and early December 1874. To quote one tellingresponse, from theBlack newspaper Pacific Appeal, “there has either been a sudden abandonmentof colorphobia prejudice, or an extraordinary amount of toadyism to a crownhead by the San Francisco American people.”

2)     Transcontinental Train Trip: On December 5th,the King and his traveling party boarded a train for the weeklong journeyacross the continent to Washington. They would make extended stops along theway at such significant Western and Midwestern American communities as Cheyenne(in what was then Wyoming Territory), Omaha,and Chicago.But it’s the trip itself that interests me most here—this was just five yearsafter the completion of theTranscontinental Railroad (with the famous 1869 Golden Spike Ceremony), and thus stillquite early in the histories both of this way of traversing the nation and ofthe concept of a more genuinely interconnected nation and continent at all.Changes which contributed to the so-called “closingof the frontier,” and which likewise can be directly connected to the needfor further expansion which prompted, among countless other things, theannexation of Hawaii 25 years after the King’s visit (on which more in tomorrow’spost).   

3)     New Bedford: That was all still ahead in thenation’s Transpacific future in 1874; but toward the end of his time in the US,the King also visited a city that was absolutely essential to the nation’s Transatlanticpast. That city was NewBedford, Massachusetts, center of thewhaling industry for well more than a century and also profoundlyinterconnected with the histories of Americanslavery, among other defining origin points andcommunities. Among the many compelling details of the King’s visitto New Bedford on New Year’s Day, 1875, my favorite for all those reasonshas to be the epic dinner hosted by Mayor George Richmondand featuring 100 master mariners from the community (with each and every oneof whom the King shook hands at the dinner’s end). Ain’t that America?

NextHawaiian history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Hawaiian histories or stories you’d highlight?

December 9, 2024: Hawaiian Histories: Three Shifts

[150 yearsago this week, Hawaii’s King Kalākaua arrivedin Washington, DC for an extended series of events, a defining part of amore than two-month statevisit to the US. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that visit and otherHawaiian histories, leading up to a special post on cultural representations ofthe islands.]

On threemoments through which Hawaii’s history significantly shifted.

1)     1778-1779, Contacts: I was pretty tempted to orderthese three focal moments non-chronologically, as I really don’t want toreinforce the idea that contact with non-Hawaiians/Europeans was the mostsignificant part of Hawaiian history. But with a full recognition that anyindividual choices for a post like this will be partial and reductive, and ahope that you all understand where I’m coming from, I decided to stick with chronology.And there’s no doubt that Captain James Cook’s controversialseries of voyages to the islands in the late 1770s, the firstknown encounter between Europeans and Hawaiians, altered the histories ofboth this particular community and multiple nations (including Cook’s nativeGreat Britain but also the new United States). Not to mention the effects onCook, who was killedin February 1779 during a confrontation with Hawaiian leaders.

2)     1795, Kingdom: I don’t know nearly enoughabout the island’s histories to be able to say for sure whether this second shiftwas in any direct way related to that first one, but it seems likely that there’ssome causality between the two events, that these encounters with outsiderspushed Hawaiian leaders to establish a more formal and forceful rule. There hadof course been prominent native Hawaiian community leaders for centuries by thistime, but it was in 1795 that the leaderwho came to be known as King Kamehameha I founded the House of Kamehameha, aroyal dynasty that would reign over the islands for the next century. As anyonewith a general knowledge of human history and/or human nature would expect, hedidn’t unify the islands under his rule without multiple, extended conflicts,though—including a particularly significant, subsequent shift…

3)     1819, Conflicts over Kapu: Across much ofthose prior centuries of leadership, Hawaii had been a theocracy, governed by aset of religious and social rules knownas kanawai. More exactly, these rules outlawed various practices, known as kapu,a list of forbidden customs that included women eating alongside men. But in 1819,again likely influenced by the prior half-century of contacts and changes, King Kamehameha IIpublicly dined with two royal women, including his mother Queen Keopuolani.The controversial moment ignited an extendedcivil conflict that ended with both a reinforcement of the dynasty’s ruleand with a newfound sense of Hawaiian modernity—one that would directly connectto the royal outreach which inspired this week’s series and about which I’llwrite tomorrow.

NextHawaiian history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Hawaiian histories or stories you’d highlight?

December 7-8, 2024: McCarthy’s America: 21st Century Echoes

[70years ago this week, the Senate voted to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy, akey final step in the downfall of that domineering and divisive demagogue. So inthis series I’ve AmericanStudied a few layers to McCarthy’s America, leading upto this weekend post on his and the moment’s modern echoes.]

[NB. I’mdrafting this post before the election, so y’know, as with every other damnthing in 2024, its meanings will likely vary wildly depending on how that goes.]

Onthroughlines, overt and overarching, and what we must learn from them.

I haven’thad a chance to see the new film The Apprentice(2024), and I’m not sure I will ever do so; spending an extra couple hours inthe company of DonaldTrump and Roy Cohn isn’t high on my to-do list. But I certainly believethere’s significant value in trying to highlight, in any way and through anymedium, that defining figure and relationship in Trump’s life. Long before hewas involved in politics in any real way, Trump seems to have learneda great deal from Cohn, who was (as I argued in Thursday’s post) one of themost hypocritical as well as one of the most vile and destructive figures in 20thcentury American history. Trump has dominated the last decade of our politicaland national life in ways that are strikingly similar to McCarthy’s influence inthe late 1940s and early 1950s [again, I’m drafting this before the election,so I don’t know how much he will dominate the next few years, but no matterwhat I’m frustratingly sure we are not close to through with him], and rightthere at the center of both moments is the odious Roy Cohn.

The more onelearns about Joe McCarthy, though, the more it’s he who parallels Trump in somany ways. McCarthy liedabout everything all the time, including if not especially hisown past and identity and actions. He attacked almost everyone else,defining them as enemies of both himself and the entire United States, in waysthat can only be read as projections of his own blatant desire to undermine theAmerican experiment. And when he was called out on those and so many otherhorrors, he made himself the victim (such as in the “lynch party” response tothe censure resolution that I highlighted in Friday’s post), because ultimatelyall of it was about his own fragile ego. (And oh yeah, he defendedfreaking Nazis too.) I’m not sure we can find anywhere in American historytwo littler men than Joseph McCarthy and Donald Trump, and that littleness is,ironically but unquestionably, at the heart of the outsized influence that thetwo men exercised on their respective moments.

InDecember 1954, McCarthy was finally and thoroughly rebuked by his colleagues (includingmany of his fellow Republicans), a culminating fall from grace that apparentlyserved to pushhim out of the public eye (and likely contributed to his death fromcomplications of alcoholism less than three years later, in May1957). To say it one more time, this time not in brackets but in the main proseof this post: I’m drafting this prior to the 2024 election, and so I can onlyhope—and sweet sassy molassy do I hope—that those results will serve as a similarand even more truly communal and national rebuke of Donald Trump and his MAGAmovement. But whatever has happened by the time this post airs, there’s nodoubt that we will need to continue pushing back, in every way and every moment,on another figure who has embodied the very worst of our histories, of ouridentity, of our impulses.

Next seriesstarts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?