Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 265
March 16, 2017
March 16, 2017: Andrew Jackson’s America: Dueling Histories
[March 15thmarks the 250th anniversary of Andrew Jackson’s birth. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five sides to this controversial, influential figure and president, leading up to a special weekend post on Jackson and Trump!]On what two of Jackson’s many duels help us understand about both the activity and the man.By far the most famous single duel in American history—even before the smash hit musical that has made it famous to a whole new generation of Americans—would have to be the July 1804 tilt between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. But thanks to the confluence of both cultural and personal contexts, Andrew Jackson is likely just as famous as an individual participant in numerous duels (the number is uncertain but has been said to be as high as 103). For one thing, dueling was particularly prevalent on the frontier, and at the time of Jackson’s youthful experiences in Tennessee that state was very much on the new nation’s western frontier; although dueling was technically illegal in Tennessee, Jackson, himself a lawyer, fought most of his duels while living there (often crossing into Kentucky to do so). For another thing, while living in Nashville Jackson fell in love with Rachel Donelson Robards, a very unhappily married woman, and the two were married before (it turned out) she had received a divorce; this led to numerous accusations of adultery, many leveled at Jackson by legal or political opponents, and to which Jackson’s most consistent answer was a challenge to duel. And for a third, and simplest, thing, Andrew Jackson seems to have been a man prone to anger and violence, living in an era when codes of gentlemanly behavior gave him an acceptable outlet for those tendencies. All duels weren’t created equal, though, and two very distinct Jackson duels offer dueling images (I know, I know—don’t shoot me) of the activity. Jackson’s first recorded duel was in North Carolina on August 12th, 1788, against Waightstill Avery, a fellow attorney and prominent Revolutionary War veteran who had handily bested the much younger Jackson (he was only 21 at the time, to Avery’s 47) in a court battle. Chastened by the legal outmaneuvering, the hot-tempered Jackson challenged Avery to a duel on two consecutive days of the trial, and on the second Avery accepted. By the time the two men arrived at the dueling grounds later that evening, however, their passions had cooled sufficiently that they resolved the matter in an apparently honorable but entirely harmless way: firing their guns into the air. While I don’t know how many of Jackson’s 103 duels were similarly symbolic rather than life-threatening, it seems likely that this possibility played out a fair amount of the time—after all, whatever the era and its social codes and mores, few people actively seek death on a regular basis, and fewer still can consistently find willing compatriots in that pursuit. That Jackson and Avery apparently became and remained friendly after their symbolic duel only cements the idea that such displays of honor often existed as much to make a point as to end a life.Friendship was very much not the outcome of Jackson’s most famous single duel, however: a fatal contest with fellow attorney Charles Dickinson in May 1806. This time Jackson was the elder (39 to Dickinson’s 26), and Dickinson more the instigator: a series of family and financial skirmishes culminated in Dickinson insulting Jackson’s wife Rachel, a move that by this time was more or less guaranteed to result in a challenge to duel. Dickinson, well known as a crack shot (he had supposedly already killed 26 men in duels by this time), shot first and hit Jackson in the chest, narrowly missing his heart; but the hardy Jackson did not fall (leading to Dickinson’s famous cry, “My God! Have I missed him?”) and hit Dickinson, who died of his wounds later that night. Jackson would carry the bullet inside him for the rest of his life, certainly a reminder of the far more destructive and fatal possibilities of dueling. Indeed, while Dickinson is the only man whom we know Jackson killed in a duel, it’s fair to say that the practice served as a constant reminder of the presence of violence in both Jackson’s individual temperament and his society and era.Last JacksonStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Jackson histories or contexts you’d highlight?
Published on March 16, 2017 03:00
March 15, 2017
March 15, 2017: Andrew Jackson’s America: The Bank Battle
[March 15thmarks the 250th anniversary of Andrew Jackson’s birth. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five sides to this controversial, influential figure and president, leading up to a special weekend post on Jackson and Trump!]On three lesser-remembered moments in Jackson’s long, ultimately successful crusade against Nicholas Biddle and the Second Bank of the United States.1) James Madison and James Monroe: That the Second Bank existed at all was due to the efforts of the fourth president and his Secretary of State. Alexander Hamilton’s founding Bank of the United States had failed a recharter vote (by a single vote) in Congress in 1811, but the War of 1812 and concurrent high inflation rates made clear the benefits of having a stable national banking system. Yet the same opposition that had derailed the 1811 recharter remained, and an 1815 push to establish a Second Bank failed. Madison and (especially) Monroe remained committed to the idea, though—Monroe argued to his boss that “this is the great desideratum of our system”—and succeeded at gaining Congressional support for the Second Bank in 1816. It’s easy, and as I wrote in Monday’s post not inaccurate, to see the Jacksonian era as a radical shift from the founding period, but these Early Republic origins for the Second Bank remind us of how close together—not only chronologically, but in terms of many of the key figures and factors—the founding and Jackson’s era really were.2) The Veto and Louis McLane: Jackson’s opposition to the bank is most closely associated with his July 1832 veto of a Congressional reauthorization vote, a veto he accompanied with an extended message aimed to convince not only Congress but also the public of the reasons for his opposition. After that veto the bank become a central topic of the 1832 presidential election, with Jackson and his anti-bank message soundly defeating Congressman Henry Clay (an ardent bank supporter). But only a year earlier, during his 1831 reorganization of his administration and cabinet, Jackson appointed as Treasury Secretary Louis McLane, a friend of Nicholas Biddle’s and an advocate for restructuring rather than eliminating the bank. As late as December 1831, in his annual address to Congress, McLane was still arguing for the bank’s necessity and continued existence, making clear that Jackson’s administration was not yet fully determined to eliminate the bank. As is often the case, the arc of history makes it difficult to remember the contingencies of it, and how many different paths any particular moment might have taken—so it’s vital to remember McLane, and recognize that the bank battle could have played out very differently if he had kept the upper hand in Jacksonian finance policy.3) Henry Clay and Daniel Webster: There were many factors that contributed to the change in Jackson’s position from early December 1831 to July 1832, but high on the list would be the National Republican party’s December 16th nomination (at the first national political convention!) of Clay to be their presidential candidate. The Kentucky Senator was, along with his fellow National Republican Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, one of the bank’s chief national advocates, and the pair worked to make the bank the central issue of the 1832 campaign, introducing the recharter bill among many other steps. Which is to say, it’s easy to see Jackson as a towering influence over this period and all of its issues, but in this moment it seems more accurate that these two long-serving Senators—and the opposition party they were leading—were the driving forces behind pushing Jackson away from McLane’s compromise position and toward a more definitive stance against the bank. It would be four more years before the bank became a private corporation (in February 1836), but it was the 1832 election which truly decided its fate—and Clay and Webster were at least as central to that turning point as was the bank’s presidential adversary. Next JacksonStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Jackson histories or contexts you’d highlight?
Published on March 15, 2017 03:00
March 14, 2017
March 14, 2017: Andrew Jackson’s America: Indian Removal
[March 15thmarks the 250th anniversary of Andrew Jackson’s birth. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five sides to this controversial, influential figure and president, leading up to a special weekend post on Jackson and Trump!]On what’s unquestionably horrific about Jackson’s signature policy, and what might have been different.I’ve written a great deal in this space—perhaps as much as I have about any single historical event or issue—about the early 1830s federal policy of Indian Removal and its effects and contexts, and yet I haven’t focused much at all in those pieces on Andrew Jackson. There’s this post, on how we can expand beyond the story of the Trail of Tears to include the Cherokee Memorials in our histories of both that tribe and Removal more broadly. This one, on the Native American preacher, orator, and activist William Apess whose voice, writings, and acts of political and social resistance overtly and crucially resisted and challenged the rhetoric and narratives of Removal. Or this one, on Chief Justice John Marshall and the Supreme Court’s decisions in two crucial early 1830s cases that had arosen in direct response and challenge to the Removal policy. Given my belief—stated most succinctly in this Talking Points Memo piece—that we need to work to extend our understandings of American eras and history beyond the presidents whom we too often used as both shorthand for and focal points in our collective memories (something I myself did by using “Jacksonian democracy” throughout yesterday’s post), I would certainly argue in this particular case that our narratives of Indian Removal should include the Cherokee Memorials, Apess, and the Marshall Court at least as much as they do President Andrew Jackson.Yet while Jackson wasn’t the only contributor to the creation of a federal Removal policy—it was James Monroe’s Secretary of War (and future proto-Confederate) John Calhoun who first devised such a plan as early as 1818 and continued to argue for it throughout Monroe’s presidency (1817-25)—he was absolutely the most influential factor behind its development and enforcement. Calhoun’s plan had stalled by 1825, but when Jackson took office in 1829, two of his first presidential actions were to define all Native American tribes as one people under federal law (rather than as separate nations, as had been the default policy of his predecessors) and to instruct Congress to pass an Indian Removal Bill. When that controversial bill narrowly passed both chambers in early 1830, Jackson not only immediately signed it into law, but became its most vocal and impassioned advocate, most famously in refusing to heed the Supreme Court’s decision in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) and proceeding full force with the Removal policy. Whether Jackson actually uttered the words, “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it,” his subsequent and consistent actions certainly represented that position and attitude very fully. Indeed, I would argue that it’s impossible to read any documents or details related to Indian Removal and not come away feeling that the issue was a personal and emotional as well as cultural and political one to Jackson—that these efforts, that is, were not simply about aiding the states or white settlers, but also reflected a president hell-bent on removing as many native communities east of the Mississippi as he could.Psychoanalyzing historical figures is of course a fraught and inevitably limited exercise, but nonetheless it’s hard to imagine that Jackson’s formative years spent as first a notorious “Indian fighter” and then a military officer in a series of bloody wars against Southeastern Native American tribes didn’t play a role in developing that hateful passion. Yet even within that specific frame, a very different formative military conflict and community reveals how Jackson could have come away with a far more inclusive vision of American history and identity. During the 1814-15 Battle of New Orleans that culminated the War of 1812, Jackson was, along with the French privateer Jean Lafitte, the general in charge of the U.S. forces. Thanks in part to Lafitte’s presence, and in part to the very unique history and demographics of New Orleans and Louisiana, the U.S. forces in that battle were among the most diverse in our history: featuring not only Anglo soldiers but also French Creoles, free and formerly enslaved African Americans, Filipino fisherman from nearby Manila Village and other longstanding towns, and, yes, Choctaw Native Americans. Members of the same Choctaw tribe, that is, who fifteen years later (in September 1830) would become the first community removed under Jackson’s Removal policy. Might better remembering their contribution to his 1815 army and victory have changed Jackson’s position on that horrific subsequent action and result? Perhaps not, but at the very least we should make sure to remember the Choctaw for not only the worst of what was done to them but also those longstanding histories and stories that Jackson’s Indian Removal sought to destroy.Next JacksonStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Jackson histories or contexts you’d highlight?
Published on March 14, 2017 03:00
March 13, 2017
March 13, 2017: Andrew Jackson’s America: Jacksonian Democracy
[March 15thmarks the 250th anniversary of Andrew Jackson’s birth. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five sides to this controversial, influential figure and president, leading up to a special weekend post on Jackson and Trump!]On what’s accurate about a central image of Jackson’s legacy, and what too often gets left out.It can be difficult to remember, given the similarly humble origins of subsequent presidents from Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield to Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, but upon his election to the presidency in 1828 Andrew Jackson represented a sea-change in presidential identity from all of his six predecessors. The first five of those had been Founding Fathers, members of the period’s most famous community of Americans and all prominent and successful men by any measure; the sixth, John Quincy Adams, was the son of one of those five. While Jackson had achieved substantial fame as a military leader over the decade and a half prior to his election, he was known at least as fully—and with just as much accuracy—for his humble beginnings. Born to a widowed single mother with two older sons (his father passed away three weeks before Andrew’s birth) in the Scots-Irish Appalachian community of Waxhaws, an area so isolated that the border between North and South Carolina had not yet been surveyed there (making the site of Jackson’s birth particularly uncertain to this day), Jackson lost his motherwhen he was only fourteen, one of many such tragedies and challenges that faced the young man in those formative years. Whatever Jackson did or didn’t do as president, the election of a man with such a background to the office certainly did signal a democratic alternative to the precedent his predecessors as president had begun to set.The longstanding phrase and concept of “Jacksonian democracy” didn’t just, and indeed didn’t much at all, apply to Jackson’s birthplace, family, and childhood, however. Instead, the phrase refers to an even more significant national sea-change, an emphasis on extending both the vote specifically and the very concept of who had a voice and place and role in American government and civic life to all European white men (still a narrow category, to be sure, on which more in a moment). The move toward universal white male suffrage had already begun by the time of Jackson’s election—and indeed contributed directly to that result, as well as the extremely close prior election of 1824—but Jackson certainly extended, deepened, and broadened those democratizing efforts. He did so most strikingly with a famous symbolic gesture toward the end of his second and final presidential term: featuring a giant block of cheese in the White House and hosting a reception where more than 10,000 visitors were allowed to enter and share in that bounty of dairy. But he also and more influentially pursued a number of policies that sought to deepen this extension of democracy to “the common man,” from his opposition to the national bank (on which more in a subsequent post) to his controversial creation of a “spoils system” to allow each presidential administration to replace government officials with new ones of their choosing (obviously problematic in many ways, but certainly a way to break any hold elite families or legacies might have had on government offices).So Jackson wasn’t just a symbolic representation of a more democratic side to the American political system, he was certainly also an advocate for it and its extension. Given that he was also a slaveowner (at his Nashville plantation The Hermitage he owned more than 100 slaves), it’s of course not surprising that he did not see that process of democratization as extending to African Americans (enslaved or free). Given that he had risen to prominence as an “Indian fighter” in a series of bloody Southeastern wars, it’s similarly unsurprising that Native Americans were not included in Jackson’s conception of the common man. But the fact that those discriminations and limitations within Jacksonian democracy are not surprising should not, in any way, lessen an emphasis on just how much they—and other parallel limitations, such as the absolute exclusion of women from this extension of suffrage and democracy—circumscribed whatever meaningful effects and successes these policies and philosophies achieved. That is, it’s tempting to simply set aside these discriminations and exclusions as part and parcel of the period, and to focus on Jacksonian democracy on what we might call its own terms. But of course, a term like “democracy” has been—coupled with other complementary ones like “freedom” and “liberty”—at the center of American self-images and theories of government from the framing on down to the present day. And since each of those terms can mean and have meant many different things in each era, it’s vital that we remember and analyze where and how those meanings were constructed, and what and who were and weren’t included in them in each and every case.Next JacksonStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Jackson histories or contexts you’d highlight?
Published on March 13, 2017 03:00
March 11, 2017
March 11-12, 2017: NeMLA 2017 Preview
[I’ve written a good bit already about the upcoming 48th annual NeMLA Convention (March 23-26 in Baltimore! Join us!). But since I last wrote about it, we’ve added one very important event, which I wanted to make sure to highlight—because whether you can be there or not, it’s something we all should be thinking and talking about!]The actions and events I’m writing about in this post are entirely collective, organized and driven by NeMLA Executive Director Carine Mardorossian, current President Hilda Chacón, and our entire Executive Board. So I want to start by quoting the two main sections from our recent NeMLA Statement on Executive Orders on Immigration:
"In consideration of those affected by the travel ban, NeMLA is taking the following steps: 1. Implementing a provisional policy for allowing those affected by the ban to present their papers in absentia. For reasons central to the discussion and exchange that are the hallmark of a lively NeMLA session, our policy is to not allow papers read in absentia. We will make an exception for those presenters impacted.
2. NeMLA Executive Board officers will introduce an open forum in which attendees can discuss, respond to, contextualize, and strategize about the recent Executive Orders on immigration. This special Roundtable Discussion, titled ‘NeMLA Forum on the Executive Orders on Immigration,’ will take place on Saturday, March 25, at 4:45 PM in Grand Ballroom VI.
We welcome your thoughts and contributions on these issues as we prepare for our 2017 Convention.”
Indeed we do. It’s hard to say with any certainty or clarity what an organization like NeMLA—or any academic, scholarly, or educational organization for that matter—can do in response to the broad issues in play here. Of course we can and should offer policy shifts such as the one detailed in item 1; but while I value the support and solidarity reflected in that change, I know that it will have (nor is it intended to have) any effect on the sweeping communal and national and international issues surrounding the travel ban. Again, I don’t know for sure what effect NeMLA could have at all—but I know that we must think and talk and work actively to consider that question, and so I’m very glad that we’re holding the open forum and that I’ll be there and be a part of it. I know I speak for all of us when I say that we’re open to any and all other ideas about things NeMLA can do or offer (feel free to mention them in comments or email me with them!). But whatever else it is or can be, this forum is a tangible reflection of our collective commitment to the truest sense of public scholarship, of engaging with these communal issues that affect us all.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Thoughts on this event and conversation? If you share them here I can bring them to the convention!
Published on March 11, 2017 03:00
March 10, 2017
March 10, 2017: AmericanStudies Events: Looking for More!
[Over the last few months, I’ve had the chance to take part in a number of interesting AmericanStudies conversations, each hosted by a unique and significant organization or space. So this week I wanted to follow up those events with some further thoughts and reflections, leading up to a weekend post looking ahead to the NeMLA Convention later this month!]I’m gonna keep this post pretty short and sweet, as it’s mainly a reiteration of the first and third points from this January post: I’m actively looking for opportunities to talk about both my most recent book, History and Hope in American Literature: Models of Critical Patriotism ; and my next one, which will focus on the duality of exclusion and inclusion about which I wrote in Tuesday’s post. I’m also still happy to talk about The Chinese Exclusion Act: What It Can Teach Us about America ; my series of 2013-2014 book talks on that project remain career and life highlights. I’d also also be very excited to find out about other adult learning courses or opportunities, such as the ones I highlighted in yesterday’s post. I’d also also also be thrilled at more chances to work with younger students, as I did in visiting my sons’ classes over the last few months. Bottom line: I’m open to any and all events and opportunities, chances to add my public scholarly thoughts to our conversations and communities, to learn from my fellow Americans, and to help us move forward toward the more perfect union for which so many of us are fighting harder than ever these days.NeMLA preview this weekend,BenPS. Opportunities, conversations, or events you’d share? I’d love to hear about them, thanks!
Published on March 10, 2017 03:00
March 9, 2017
March 9, 2017: AmericanStudies Events: Why We Teach at BOLLI
[Over the last few months, I’ve had the chance to take part in a number of interesting AmericanStudies conversations, each hosted by a unique and significant organization or space. So this week I wanted to follow up those events with some further thoughts and reflections, leading up to a weekend post looking ahead to the NeMLA Convention later this month!]On what’s unique about Brandeis’ adult learning program, and what I’ve already learned from it.As I hope every post about my courses in Fitchburg State’s Adult Learning in the Fitchburg Area (ALFA) program has reflected, I’ve been continually inspired by my work with those courses and students. That includes very practical effects, such as the fact that the topic for my third book emerged directly out of the first such ALFA course I had the chance to teach. But my courses have also offered more overarching professional and philosophical inspirations, on many levels that I would sum up in a two-fold way: as a reminder of the true value of public scholarly work, of sharing my understandings of American literature, history, and culture with others; and as a concurrent and just as crucial reminder of how much I can and do learn from my fellow Americans as part of those conversations. Bottom line, I have loved each and every ALFA course, and so have begun to seek out opportunities to teach in our adult learning programs as well. So far I’ve made connections with two: the Worcester Institute of Senior Education at Assumption College (WISE); and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institution at Brandeis University (BOLLI). Late last year, as part of those burgeoning connections, I had the chance to attend BOLLI’s holiday luncheon for its instructors, an event dedicated to conversations about why we teach (in an adult learning program as well as overall).What struck me most about BOLLI’s adult learning program was a fundamental distinction in how the program defines its courses and instructors: the courses are known as study groups, and the instructors as study group leaders (SGLs). These are far from just semantic differences: BOLLI sees the classes as communal investigations into a shared topic or question, with the SGL providing some core materials and starting points but with all the participants occupying equal roles in that process of investigation, reading, and discussion. As I learned from the SGL testimonies at the luncheon, in some cases that means that the SGL is presenting materials on which he or she is an expert—but, again, is doing so not to then lecture about them, but rather to participate in communal conversations about those materials. And in just as many cases, it seems, the SGL is taking this opportunity to explore a topic that is relatively (or even entirely) new to him or herself, and thus the course becomes an even more fully communal investigation into that subject. Regardless of which end of that spectrum a particular course occupies, what I heard clearly and consistently from each and every SGL at the luncheon was that the courses and conversations are intended to be genuinely educational, profoundly perspective-changing, for every participant, SGLs and students alike.I haven’t had a chance to teach a BOLLI course yet; because of when I made the initial connection, this coming fall will be my first opportunity, and of course I’ll keep you posted. But just attending that luncheon, learning more about the program’s emphasis and perspective, and hearing the testimonies of those past and present SGLs, I was struck with particular force by a different side of an idea I’ve long espoused: that public scholarship and teaching are two sides of the same coin (I wrote as much in the intro to my Chinese Exclusion Act book, a project again based directly on an ALFA experience). I still believe that, indeed feel it is more true than ever in our current moment; but what ALFA has consistently taught me, and what this BOLLI event and emphasis did even more overtly, is that we public scholars—we teachers—need to see ourselves as participants in these conversations, ones with as much to learn from them as we have to bring to them (which is, to be clear, a great deal). To note that truly multi-directional and transactional nature of both teaching and public scholarship is not, I don’t believe, in any way to abandon our role, but it is to reframe it: to see ourselves as helping get conversations going, of bringing materials and questions to those discussions, and of thus facilitating truly communal and civic engagements with our topics and themes. Lofty ambitions to be sure, but ones well worth aiming for, as BOLLI has both reminded and modeled for me.Last reflection tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this conversation? Conversations or events you’d share?
Published on March 09, 2017 03:00
March 8, 2017
March 8, 2017: AmericanStudies Events: Twain as Public Intellectual at the Twain House
[Over the last few months, I’ve had the chance to take part in a number of interesting AmericanStudies conversations, each hosted by a unique and significant organization or space. So this week I wanted to follow up those events with some further thoughts and reflections, leading up to a weekend post looking ahead to the NeMLA Convention later this month!]On three inspiring layers to one of my favorite talks of my career to date.First, rather than repeat everything I wrote in it, I’ll direct you to check out if you would this Facebook post I shared the morning after my March 2nd talk. To quote the beautiful Counting Crows song “A Long December,” “I can't remember all the times I’ve tried to tell myself/To hold on to these moments as they pass.” Well, last Thursday, from its beginning in my son’s classroom to its ending at the Twain House, is one of the moments I am absolutely going to hold onto.Second, I need to say a bit more about the Mark Twain House & Museum itself. I had the chance to work with the Twain House at length for last spring’s NeMLA conference, as we featured a wonderful day of public scholarly sessions (culminating in Jelani Cobb’s keynote address, an amazing moment I tried very hard not to think too much about as I spoke from the same stage on Thursday) at the house. Both then and now, I was struck by the incredible dedication, passion, and talent of the museum’s staff, most especially in my experiences with the wonderful Director of Education Dr. James Golden but really in every staff member I’ve had the chance to meet. You might think that a site consistently named one of the top ten historic houses in the world would be amply supported and funded, but in truth the non-profit Twain House gets more than 50% of its operating budget from ticket sales, meaning that this unique and vital American space (and a true model for how a historic site and museum should feel and work) very much needs our continued investment. Before writing this post I donated to the house, and I very much encourage you to do the same—and of course to visit if you’re ever in Hartford! Again, the chance to give a talk in the Mark Twain House and Museum was and I’m sure will remain a career highlight for me.Third, one particular takeaway I’d highlight from my attempt to trace a thread of public intellectual engagement across a few stages (local color sketches and humor, autobiographical pieces, and humorous and satirical novels) of Twain’s long and multi-part career (culminating in his most overtly public intellectual pieces, the published “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” and unpublished “United States of Lyncherdom,” both from 1901). Too often in America, it seems to me, we think of public intellectual activity as something separate from creative writing, or popular culture, or mainstream society; as the province of an elite community commenting on those and other aspects of America from a sort of distance and remove. That might be one strain of public intellectual work, but I don’t believe it’s the only nor the main version: instead, I’d say that our best and most inspiring public intellectuals have consistently been in the trenches of society and culture, wedding their civic engagement to popular art and culture in complex and at times contradictory but also accessible and important ways. That’s the case for Jack London as public intellectual that Cecelia Tichi made in her recent book, and it’s the case for Twain as public intellectual I tried to make last week. Reframing Twain in this way doesn’t just mean adding a new layer to our memories of a legendary icon, then—it would mean changing our ideas of public intellectual activity, in I hope both democratic and still very relevant ways.Next reflection tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this conversation? Conversations or events you’d share?
Published on March 08, 2017 03:00
March 7, 2017
March 7, 2017: AmericanStudies Events: Exclusion and Inclusion at the Monadnock Inn
[Over the last few months, I’ve had the chance to take part in a number of interesting AmericanStudies conversations, each hosted by a unique and significant organization or space. So this week I wanted to follow up those events with some further thoughts and reflections, leading up to a weekend post looking ahead to the NeMLA Convention later this month!]On how an inspiring communal conversation helped me kick-start my next book.Thanks to a connection from Gail Hoar, one of the curriculum and events coordinators for the Adult Learning in the Fitchburg Area (ALFA) program (and a very talented artist and craftsperson), I had the chance last week to speak to a group of friends and lifelong learners who meet monthly in New Hampshire (this time around at the beautiful Monadnock Inn in Jaffrey). All the things I’ve said about what make the ALFA classes and students so inspiring apply to this group too, but with perhaps even more force, since this is an entirely voluntary gathering, a group of individuals who are determined to carve out space and time in their full and busy lives for collective conversations about historical and cultural and social topics, for lifelong learning in the most genuine and communal senses. I learned as much from chatting with them prior to my talk, and certainly from the questions and conversation after my talk, as I could possibly have brought to them; as I hope my posts on book talks have always made clear, those kinds of events are consistently rejuvenative for me, but again this community and thus this book talk were especially noteworthy in that regard.And this was a book talk, but not in the same way I’ve usually meant that phrase: following up on a newly published book of mine to share its arguments and stories with audiences. In this case, I’m at precisely the opposite stage of the process, at the very beginning of formulating an idea for what I hope will be my next book project: Exclusion & Inclusion: A Foundational American Duality. Indeed, my talk with the New Hampshire group was the first time I’ve presented on this idea and this project in a focused and extended way; the “exclusion and inclusion” frame certainly follows on threads that have been part of both my books and my online writing for years, but nonetheless I had not had an opportunity to articulate and begin to engage with it as a central argument in its own right prior to last week’s talk. And of course presenting an idea in a talk requires steps and skills that are quite distinct from any form of writing about that idea: creating a structure that can move an audience through different elements and examples of the central idea; figuring out how to frame and define the argument with both sufficient nuance and yet sufficient clarity; thinking about the balance of overarching arguments and specific details, of (we might say) histories and stories; leaving room for response and further conversation while still communicating my own take and perspective.Hopefully I was able to pull all of that off in this talk, although of course that’s not really for me to say. What I can say is that by the end of the evening I was entirely sure that this would indeed be my next book project (something I was still debating in this very space in mid-January). For one thing, this frame will allow me to write about some of my very favorite American figures and moments: Quock Walker using the Revolution’s ideas and ideals to argue for both his own freedom and the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts; William Apess defining King Philip as a Revolutionary American leader; interned Japanese Americans volunteering to serve in World War II; and many more. But for another, even more crucial thing, the responses of these deeply informed audience members echoed and extended my sense of just how salient this exclusion and inclusion duality is in our current moment, indeed just how fully it can help us understand the worst and best of what’s happening in 2017 America. To be honest, I can’t imagine a project that could wed the historical and the contemporary sides to my public scholarly goals and passions more fully, and, thanks in no small measure to this wonderful group and inspiring evening, I can’t wait to get started!Next reflection tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this conversation? Conversations or events you’d share?
Published on March 07, 2017 03:00
March 6, 2017
March 6, 2017: AmericanStudies Events: The American Dream at Leominster Library
[Over the last few months, I’ve had the chance to take part in a number of interesting AmericanStudies conversations, each hosted by a unique and significant organization or space. So this week I wanted to follow up those events with some further thoughts and reflections, leading up to a weekend post looking ahead to the NeMLA Convention later this month!]On what I tried to bring to a vital conversation, and what I took away from it.In mid-February, I had the chance to moderate a panel discussion co-sponsored by the Leominster (MA) Public Library (particularly Special Services Librarian Ann Finch) and the Fitchburg State University Community Read program (a program directed by my colleague and friend Joe Moser). Our Community Read book for the 2016-17 year has been Robert Putnam’s Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (leading up to an April event where Putnam himself will visit campus and speak on these themes), and the subject of this panel discussion—building on a high school essay contest that the library had sponsored—was a pair of interconnected and crucial questions: What is the American Dream? And, is it achievable for all Americans (the original question’s wording was “still achievable,” but I asked them to consider also whether it ever had been)? The panel featured four voices across four distinct generations and sets of experiences, from the winner of the high school essay contest up to a retired teacher (and frequent student in my Adult Learning courses!), as well as a recent college graduate (now working as a school committee member in the area) and a man who had fled genocide and oppression in Africa, become an asylee in the U.S., and recently graduated with his law degree.Besides providing some framing questions and getting the great discussion going (and then staying out of the way), my job was to offer a few brief introductory comments on the histories and images of the Dream. As with so much I’m thinking about these days, I connected those questions to the duality between more inclusive and more exclusionary narratives of American identity and community. So, for example, I noted that the phrase “the American Dream” was first used in historian James Truslow Adams’ The Epic of America(1931), a book published at the heart of the Great Depression and thus in a period where Adams’ vision of opportunity and equality for all seemed far removed from reality for many Americans and communities. I noted one origin point for the Dream’s images of mobility, opportunity, and success, Ben Franklin’s Autobiography—and added that both the Boston from which Franklin ran away as a teenager and the Philadelphia in which he made his fortune and fame were, as were all of the colonies in that early 18th century moment (and through the Revolution), slave societies. Fifty years later, Andrew Jackson came to exemplify a new addition to the Dream’s images, the “self-made man”—yet Jackson also embodied attitudes and policies that entirely excluded Native Americans from American narratives or identity. Remembering the American Dream, that is, means remembering both some of our most cherished and shared ideals and some of our darkest, most contrasting histories and realities.So that’s a bit of what I tried to add to this complex and crucial conversation. While unfortunately I had to leave before the ensuing discussion concluded (parenting duties called), I was nonetheless deeply impressed with the nuanced and thoughtful voices and contributions of all four panelists, as well as many audience members. They certainly engaged with some of our darkest current realities, from the rising and deepening economic inequalities that are a central subject of Putnam’s book to the anti-refugee and –immigrant policies that seek overtly to deny the American Dream—to deny America itself—to communities who in many ways embody our history. They also continued to advocate for the possibility of the Dream and what it can still mean, most especially through inspiring individuals both personal (such as the high school contest winner’s father, himself an African immigrant) and public (such as Barack Obama). But (to my mind) most inspiringly still, the panelists and the audience and discussion all modeled a willingness to think critically and actively about these national narratives and ideals, to consider both their limits and their value, and to work together to better articulate such ideas and to actively pursue questions of both how they affect our own lives and how we can respond to and strengthen them in our communities. In a terrifying moment such as this one, civic dialogue might seem entirely insufficient—but while it’s not the only mode of resistance and activism, it remains a vital and hopeful one, and I felt that throughout this excellent event.Next reflection tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this conversation? Conversations or events you’d share?
Published on March 06, 2017 03:00
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