Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 268

February 8, 2017: History for Kids: Mike Mulligan and His America

[February 7thmarks the 150th birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder, one of America’s most famous writers and a cultural voice who provided entry points into American history for many many young readers (and then TV viewers). So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of texts and contexts of histories for kids, leading up to a crowd-sourced post on where and how you got your childhood history (or where your kids are getting it)!]How an American Studies approach can help us dig into the many layers of one of our most enduring children’s books.When you have two young AmericanStudiers like I do, you spend a lot of time reading children’s books. (Much less time now that they can and do read to themselves a great deal, and even have started reading to each other; but this post is purposefully and very relevantly nostalgic for my life of a few years ago!) Often the same books over and over again, in fact. While there are few things I would rather do, it’s nonetheless fair to say that an adult AmericanStudier’s mind occasionally wanders during the 234th reading of a particular book; hence my thoughts on The Cat in the Hatand single motherhood in this post, for example. One of the boys’ young childhood favorites, for its construction-vehicle-focus, for its beautiful illustrations, and for its pitch-perfect narrative voice and storytelling, was Virginia Lee Burton’s Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (1939). And luckily for the American Studier who got to read Mikeat least once a week for a good couple years, the book also reveals, reflects, and carries forward a number of complex and significant American narratives and histories.Burton’s book was written and published during the Great Depression, and it certainly engages with that central historical context in interesting if somewhat conflicted ways. The nation-building work on public/infrastructure projects that Mike and Mary Ann do in the opening pages echoes the Works Progress Administration’s and other New Deal-era efforts, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Hoover Dam, and makes a case for the importance of labor and work more broadly; yet in Burton’s book those projects are apparently quickly forgotten, and Mike and Mary Ann find themselves unemployed, their own depression (in every sense, as they cry together over a landfill of discarded steam shovels) the text’s real starting point. Similarly, when they journey to the small town of Poppersville to bid on its city hall project, they encounter some of the worst as well as the best of communal relationships during an economic downturn—the penny-pinching, dog-eat-dog mentality of councilman Henry B. Swap is what gets Mike and Mary Ann the job in the first place and motivates at least some of the intense interest in their efforts, even if the community members do seem eventually to bond together in support of those (successful) efforts.Those conflicted themes are not only relevant to the Depression, however—they also reflect a couple of distinct but interconnected dualities out of which much of American populism, at least since the late 19th century Populist movement and party, has arisen. For one, American populism has vacillated significantly between a nostalgic embrace of idealized, seemingly lost historical communities and identities and a progressive push for future change; Burton’s book, with both the villain’s role played by new technologies and Mike and Mary Ann’s Popperville endpoint, seems to side with nostalgia and the past, although I might argue that Mike and Mary Ann have helped moved Popperville a bit more fully into the future in the process. Even if they have, though, they have done so in an explicitly rural, or at least small-town, setting, a world which has likewise been in complicated and often conflicted relationship with the urban throughout the history of America populism. But Mike and Mary Ann’s early identities and works certainly resonate with the urban contexts of the labor movement, and perhaps their arc in the book suggests that the worlds of urban and rural America could no longer afford, in the depression or in the 20th century more broadly, to remain separate in perspective or reality.Next childish history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Kids’ histories you’d remember and share for the weekend post?

February 7, 2017: History for Kids: Little House on the Prairie

[February 7thmarks the 150th birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder, one of America’s most famous writers and a cultural voice who provided entry points into American history for many many young readers (and then TV viewers). So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of texts and contexts of histories for kids, leading up to a crowd-sourced post on where and how you got your childhood history (or where your kids are getting it)!]On a key difference between the TV show and the books, and why it matters.I watched a good bit of the TV adaptation of Little House on the Prairie (1974-1982, but I mostly watched it in subsequent reruns on TBS) growing up, but only one episode stands out in my memory: “Gambini the Great,” an episode early in the show’s 8th season (the penultimate season, and the final one featuring Michael Landon before the show changed its title to Little House: A New Beginning for the 9thand final season) in which the Wilder family’s adopted son Albert (Matthew Laborteaux) becomes enamored of the titular aging circus escape artist/daredevil. Albert’s father Charles Wilder (Landon) tries in vain to convince Albert that the openly and proudly non-religious Gambini (Jack Kruschen) is not someone to idolize or emulate, and is proven tragically yet righteously accurate when Gambini dies in a stunt gone wrong. As I remember it, the show and Charles (pretty much always the show’s voice of unquestioned authority) present this tragedy as, if not explicitly deserved due to Gambini’s lack of religious faith, at the very least a clear moral and spiritual lesson for Albert, and one that he takes to heart as he returns fully to the fold of the family’s religious beliefs.Albert was a character not present in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series of books (in which Little House on the Prairie was the third of eight published novels, with a ninth published posthumously), and thus represents one of many elements that were added, tweaked, or significantly changed in adapting the books into the show. But I would go further, and argue that the overt and pedantic religious themes and lessons exemplified by an episode like “Gambini the Great” were also far more central to the TV adaptation than the novels. That’s not to suggest that religion and spirituality weren’t elements of the novels and their portrayal of the Wilder family and its world, but I believe they were just that: elements, details of the family’s identity and community and experiences that could be paralleled by many other such elements and themes. Perhaps it’s the nature of episodic television (particular in its pre-serialized era) to need more of a moral, a sense of what an audience can and should take away from the hour-long, at least somewhat self-contained story they have just watched. Likely the show’s producers also learned quickly just how compelling and charismatic a voice they had in Michael Landon’s, and wanted to use him to convey such overt morals and messages. But in any case, I believe (and as always, correct me if you disagree!) that the show tended toward such overtly pedantic (and often, although certainly not exclusively, religious) moral lessons far more than did the novels.Although the word “pedantic” does tend to have negative connotations, I mean it more literally, in terms of trying to teach the audience a particular lesson; that is, I’m not trying to argue through using that word that the novels were necessarily better or more successful as works of art than the show because of this difference. At the same time, however, I do believe that the difference produces a significant effect, one not so much aesthetic as thematic, related in particular to how each text portrays history. To me, the novels seek to chronicle the pioneer/frontier experience for their focal family and community, describing a wide range of issues and concerns that were specific to that communal experience (if, of course, very different from the concurrent experiences of other Western communities, such as Native Americans, with whom Wilder engages to a degree but certainly far less, and at times more problematically, than would be ideal for a more accurate portrait of the American West). Whereas the TV show consistently seeks to make use of its historical setting to convey broader and more universal messages (about religion and morality, but also about family, relationships, communal obligations, and more). Which is to say, I would argue that, to use the terms I deployed in this post, while Wilder’s novels certainly qualify as historical fiction (as well as autobiographical fiction), the show seems more to be period fiction, with somewhat less to teach its young audiences about the history itself.Next childish history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Kids’ histories you’d remember and share for the weekend post?

February 6, 2017: History for Kids: American Girl Dolls

[February 7thmarks the 150th birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder, one of America’s most famous writers and a cultural voice who provided entry points into American history for many many young readers (and then TV viewers). So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of texts and contexts of histories for kids, leading up to a crowd-sourced post on where and how you got your childhood history (or where your kids are getting it)!]On the histories, stories, and effects of the American Girl dolls.There are lots of reasons why it’s crucial to include the study and analysis of material culture as a part of any American Studies approach, but perhaps the most obvious yet crucial is this: nothing impacts our lives and identities more consistently and fully than the stuff with which we interact. That’s certainly true for adults—he typed on his laptop, just after checking the time on his cell phone and just before getting in his car to drive home—but I would argue that it’s even more true for kids; after all, while kids learn about the world and about their specific society through a variety of means, nothing is more central to their day to day life than their playthings, the toys and games (and of course books, about which I’ve written a great deal in this space) with which they occupy so much time. And while there would be many different ways to analyze and AmericanStudy those childhood material culture artifacts—investigating how and where they’re made, for example, and considering what those details can reveal about world economies—this week my interest is in what kids, and all of us, might learn and have learned about American history and culture from such influences.In most cases, that learning is implicit, requires us to analyze what meanings kids and all of us can find in those playthings; but in the case of today’s subject, the American Girl line of dolls, learning about American history and society has been an explicit and core purpose since the product was first created (in 1986). Pleasant Company’s first three dolls, Samantha, Kirsten, and Molly, were each designed—in their appearance, their clothes and accessories, the back stories and books that came with them, and more—to capture aspects of a particular historical moment (1904, 1854, and 1944, respectively). In the decades since, while the line has branched out to include many contemporary dolls as well, it has likewise added in multiple other periods, as well as different ethnicities and communities: Marie-Grace and Cécile, an interracial pair of friends in antebellum New Orleans; Josefina Montoya, a Mexican American from the 1820s; Kaya, a Nez Perce Native American from the 18th century; and many others. Over these same decades, the small independent company has been purchased by Mattel, and I’m sure there are a whole range of other American Studies narratives to be found in the many changes that expansion have entailed (such as the creation of mega-stores, movies and TV shows, and other products) as well as in the complex relationship between these American Girls and Barbie, that parent company’s most famous (and also still evolving) line of dolls.Yet I think the most interesting and significant material culture analyses don’t focus, at least not solely, on those broader questions and narratives. After all, every individual American Girl doll might be created within those material, economic, social, and ideological worlds, but her destination is a good deal more specific and intimate: the hands of (most likely) another American girl, a young person who is of course influenced by those broader narratives (and many others) but who likewise brings her own evolving identity and perspective to the equation. And if we focus on that more intimate level of experience, a range of new analytical questions open up for us: in what ways does each girl find herself in an American Girl doll, and in what ways does she find something unfamiliar or different? Do the historical and cultural contexts matter to her play, or is the experience more about relatively timeless or universal themes (childhood, gender, family, and so on)? For girls who have more than one doll (or who play with friends who have their own dolls), does it change things to put the different identities and characters in conversation with each other, or is play in one 21st century moment defined more by its own period and contexts than by the dolls’? All questions for which I’d love to hear your thoughts, as always (and especially with that crowd-sourced post in mind)!Next childish history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Kids’ histories you’d remember and share for the weekend post?

February 4-5, 2017: Women and Sports Links

[Each year for the last few, I’ve used Super Bowl week as a platform for a series on sports in America. This week, I’ve AmericanStudied figures and moments related to women in sports, leading up to this weekend post sharing a handful of links to keep that conversation going!]Here’s an NPR interview with author and journalist Don Van Natta Jr.about his book Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias .Jeannie Suk Gersen writes for The New Yorker about another side of Title IX, the issue of transgender bathrooms.An hour-long conversation between rapper Common and Serena Williams for ESPN’s site on race and sports, The Undefeated.Dave Zirin writes on his Edge of Sports blog about the WNBA and the #BlackLivesMatter movement.And a ThinkProgress roundtable with female sportswriters about the issue of online harassment. Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other women and sports stories or histories you’d share?

February 3, 2017: Women and Sports: Ronda Rousey

[Each year for the last few, I’ve used Super Bowl week as a platform for a series on sports in America. This week, I’ll be AmericanStudying figures and moments related to women in sports, leading up to a weekend Guest Post on cheerleading in American society and culture!]On why I haven’t quite appreciated the MMA superstar, and how I’m trying to.I’ve written in this space before, as part of my annual (and upcoming!) non-favorites series, about why I can’t bring myself to watch or enjoy boxing (although I recognize its longstanding, vital importance to American history and culture). Well, everything I said in that post I would likewise say, and with even more force, for mixed martial arts (MMA), the newer sport that has (I would argue) both far less of the historical and cultural significance and far more of the violence than does the sweet science. I’m not suggesting that MMA should be banned in any way, nor would I dismiss it in the same way that Meryl Streep did in the one sour note in her otherwise pitch-perfect Golden Globes speechearlier this year (although I’m certainly no fan of Streep’s antagonist in that hyperlinked debate, Ultimate Fighting Championship [UFC] President Dana White, and wasn’t even before he spoke at Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention last July). Instead, I’m just expressing a strong personal antipathy toward MMA, a feeling that it taps into (as I likewise argued for boxing) some of the darker sides of our human psyches and desires. I’d do most anything for my sons, but if they asked me to watch (or even talk about) MMA with them, I think I’d have to say no.Given that overall antipathy toward the sport, it’s no surprise that I haven’t been able to share in the widespread appreciation for (and even I would argue adulation of) its most famous single athlete (and one of the most famous athletes in the world): Ronda Rousey. But my unhappiness with the accolades sent Rousey’s way hasn’t been limited simply to the fact that I don’t believe anyone who makes a living beating the living crap out of other people is necessarily an ideal candidate for a role model (which is how Rousey has often been described, especially for young girls, although to her credit she has resisted that label). Instead, I would add that (in my admittedly partial experience observing Rousey, at least in her public and professional personas) I have often found Rousey to represent some of the sides of sports and competition that I find most distasteful: self-confidence and –centeredness to the point of arrogance, blithe dismissal of and disrespect toward fellow competitors, even some of the same problems of aggression and domestic violence that I highlighted with Hope Solo in yesterday’s post. None of those elements take away from the groundbreaking successes she has achieved in her sport—indeed, at least some of them have likely been contributing factors to her dominance in that sport and the sports world overall—but they have led me to do my best to steer clear of any stories or coverage of Rousey over the years.Until this week, that is, when (in preparation for this series and post) I came upon an article on Rousey’s overt and impassioned opposition (in an Instagram post, which still feels weird for this AmericanStudier to write but is no different from the kinds of Twitter activism about which I’ve written in this space on multiple occasions) to Donald Trump’s immigration Executive Orders. Seeing that social and political activism of Rousey’s crystallized a question I had already begun to ask myself: couldn’t I level many of the same critiques of her public and professional persona that I raised above against another fighter in a sport I don’t enjoy, Muhammad Ali? Few if any athletes have been as purposefully and proudly arrogant, as dismissive of competitors, as was Ali in his prime—and few have backed up such attitudes more consistently than he did, although Rousey in her prime would have to be said to have come close. I’m not suggesting that Rousey has faced the same or even similar obstacles and attitudes as did Ali, nor that her activism measures up to his (at least not yet—the story is far from over). Yet in any case there’s no doubt that, despite the parallels in both their sports and their personas, I have found myself far more instinctively supportive of Ali and dissatisfied with Rousey. And I wouldn’t be doing justice to the topic of this week’s series if I didn’t at least consider whether gender has anything to do with that distinction, and thus whether I shouldn’t challenge myself to change my perspective as a result.Special Guest Post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other women and sports connections or analyses you’d share?

February 2, 2017: Women and Sports: Soccer Stories

[Each year for the last few, I’ve used Super Bowl week as a platform for a series on sports in America. This week, I’ll be AmericanStudying figures and moments related to women in sports, leading up to a weekend Guest Post on cheerleading in American society and culture!]Two individual and one collective way to AmericanStudy our recent crop of soccer superstars.1)      Megan Rapinoe: For complicated reasons related to narratives and images of masculinity and femininity, among many other things too extended and nuanced to delve into in a sentence or two, women’s sports have consistently featured openly gay athletes and connections to the LGBTQ community in a way that men’s sports have only recently (and still hesitantly) begun to. In relation to that longstanding and ongoing trend, the 2012 coming out of US Women’s Soccer star forward Megan Rapinoe was an important but representative event, one in a series of such pivotal LGBT women’s sports moments. But this past September, Rapinoe became part of the news for a different and more singular reason: she knelt during the national anthem before a match for her team the Seattle Reign, connecting to and honoring (as she did even more fully in her postgame comments) Colin Kaepernick’s ongoing #BlackLivesMatter protest. In many ways Rapinoe’s personal sexuality and her political solidarity with Kaepernick seem radically distinct, but I would argue the case differently: that, as Rapinoe herself noted in her comments, the two are connected through experiences of oppression and resistance, and through the complicated but crucial intersections of identity and sports.2)      Hope Solo: Solo is one of Rapinoe’s teammates on the Seattle Reign, as well as perhaps the most talented goalkeeper in women’s soccer history (she’s certainly in the conversation). But on the personal and identity side, Solo’s story is far darker and less inspiring than Rapinoe’s. There are, for example, her multiple arrests and ongoing charges for domestic violence, complicated family situations and dynamics that I won’t pretend to have all figured out but that certainly seem to have involved aggressive and hostile behavior from Solo toward numerous figures (not limited to those family members). And along those latter lines, there are Solo’s controversial and troubling comments after a 2016 Olympic match against Sweden, comments that led to a six-month suspension from the US Women’s National Team. I don’t want to suggest for a moment that the problems of either aggression in general or (especially) domestic violence in particular are parallel (much less identical) in women’s sports to what they are in men’s—but at the same time, Solo’s cases and story make clear that such problems are a significant part of the sports world on every level, and working to understand and address them for women as well as men can only help us engage with these social and political issues more fully as a result.3)      The Pay Gap: As important and inspiring as individual activisms like Rapinoe’s can be, I’m even more inspired by collective action, and this past March the US Women’s National Team took precisely such collective action in response to a substantial gap in what US Soccer pays its male and female athletes. Such gendered pay gaps have been part of our sports debates for many years, dating back at least to similar (and eventually effective) protestsraised by women’s tennis players over the prizes awarded by tournaments such as Wimbledon. But the US WNT players moved the needle on the debate significantly, not only by making it a more collective action (rather than those prior, more individual protests) but also and especially by filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for redress. Too often, we dismiss sports as purely entertainment or distraction—while in reality (as I hope all of my Sports posts here have illustrated) sports can not only mirror and extend, but even influence and change, broader conversations and issues in our society and culture. As we continue to debate the gendered wage gap in 2017 America, the USWNT have once again proven that vital role for sports.Last post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other women and sports connections or analyses you’d share?

February 1, 2017: Women and Sports: The Williams Sisters

[Each year for the last few, I’ve used Super Bowl week as a platform for a series on sports in America. This week, I’ll be AmericanStudying figures and moments related to women in sports, leading up to a weekend Guest Post on cheerleading in American society and culture!]On two factors that have entirely changed my perspective on the tennis superstars.I have to start this post with full disclosure: for many years, indeed most of their long and hugely successful careers in professional tennis, the Williams Sisters would have been most likely to show up in this space as part of my annual post-Valentine’s non-favorites series. There were quite a few things that rubbed me the wrong way about Venus and Serena Williams, but I would highlight two in particular. One is not at all on them: their father Richard Williams, who had always seemed (and still I will admit largely seems) to me to embody the worst kind of overbearing and self-centered tennis/sports parent. And the other was much more fully about them, and especially Serena, who (I long felt) could never lose a tennis match and credit her opponent in any way; she always seemed to be blaming herself and her play, suggesting that if she just played the way she could, it would be impossible for any opponent to give her a challenge. Given Serena’s unrivaled career success, that might well be an accurate assessment, but it still felt at best petty and at worst downright disrespectful to so consistently (as I saw it) talk about her opponents and matches in that way. So even a couple years, I would have viewed the upcoming (as of my writing this post) Australian Open final between Venus and Serena as the worst thing that could happen in a women’s tennis tournament.My perspective has entirely changed in the last couple years, however, and while I know that doesn’t and shouldn’t matter at all to the Williams Sisters, I do think that the two most central influences in shifting my point of view are interesting ones to AmericanStudy and are both relevant to this series on women in sports. The single most powerful influence has been the sections of Claudia Rankine’s poem Citizen (2015) dedicated both to narrating one particular controversial moment in Serena’s career and to portraying and analyzing perceptions of Serena’s identity (that New York Times Magazine piece by Rankine echoes and extends many of Citizen’s topics, if in a different genre of course) and her responses to them overall. Of course I had long recognized, when I took a step back from my personal feelings on Serena and the sisters, the crucial roles that both race and gender (in an intersectional combination) have always played in shaping our narratives of the Williams’. But it’s one thing to recognize something analytically, and another to feel it empathetically; and I have to admit that it was reading Rankine’s book that truly made it possible for me to emphathize with Serena (and Venus) and how such narratives and frames have affected (if in no way limited) them at each stage and moment. Perhaps I should have been able to do so without the book, but of course works of art can and do greatly amplify our capacity for empathy, and Rankine’s portrayal of Serena offered a wonderful case in point for me.The other main factor in shifting my perspective is a bit more complicated to write about, and a lot more 21st century. To put it simply, many of the scholars and figures whom I follow on Twitter—many of them women of color, but also certainly folks in every conceivable ethnic and identity category—are huge fans of Serena and Venus, and would often during and around tournaments Tweet about what the Williams Sisters meant to them. I’ll be the first to admit that Twitter often fails to live up to this ideal, but at its heart one of the things it best represents is a chance to listen to other people, to hear and learn from their voices and perspectives with an immediacy and (in its own digital way) intimacy that’s not possible (or at least not the same) in any other medium with which I’m familiar. I can’t pretend that the first few times I saw such pro-Williams Tweets, I wasn’t more annoyed than anything else; but fortunately I continued to see them, and starting listening to and learning from them. I’m not looking for a pat on the back for that, as again I was doing both what Twitter should allow us to do and, for that matter, what any human being should do in conversation with others. Instead, I want to highlight this effect as both a model of what a site and space like Twitter can do and mean, and as a particularly good example of how these 21st century communities can, again at their best, help open us up to perspectives and voices that it might be otherwise harder for us to truly hear and be shaped by. Thanks to such perspectives, as well as to Rankine’s wonderful poem, I now am nothing but excited for the Williams Sisters to have one more (or another—who knows how many more there might be?) Grand Slam tournament battle.Next post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other women and sports connections or analyses you’d share?

January 31, 2017: Women and Sports: Title IX

[Each year for the last few, I’ve used Super Bowl week as a platform for a series on sports in America. This week, I’ll be AmericanStudying figures and moments related to women in sports, leading up to a weekend Guest Post on cheerleading in American society and culture!]On two reasons why it’s wrong to limit our understanding of Title IX to sports, and one way in which that focus can still be helpful and meaningful.1)      The Act and Its Histories: Title IX refers to a particularly significant section of the Education Amendments of 1972, a law co-authored by Indiana Senator Birch Bayh and Hawaiian Congressperson Patsy Mink (after whom the act was re-named in 2002). Bayh was one of a number of legislators who had been working for some time on the Equal Rights Amendment; due to the continued challenges they encountered in bringing that proposed law to a vote, these lawmakers turned to other means to advance gender equality on the federal level, including the Higher Education Act of 1965. Reflecting these sweeping civil rights goals, the language of Title IX was purposefully broad and (as much as possible) all-encompassing: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” While sports became and have remained a particularly clear and compelling case study for and application of the law, to define Title IX as in any way a sports-related Act is to elide precisely its status as an overt and important extension of 1960s civil rights and Great Society programs and successes.2)      A Vital 21st Century Battle: I don’t think it’s much of an overstatement to note that in 1972, sexual violence against women was hardly acknowledged as a communal or national issue at all, much less made a focus of federal lawmaking efforts. That has, of course, rightly and dramatically changed in the four and a half decades since Title IX, and in the last decade sexual violence on college campuses has become a new focus of Title IX applications. Some of the first of those applications have been linked to sports, as when two female students at the University of Colorado (in 2006) and one at Arizona State University (in 2008) used the law to successfully sue their universities for damages after being sexually assaulted by football players. But of course the pervasiveness of sexual assault and violence on college campuses is in no way limited to sports, and to see this evolving extension of Title IX to these issues as simply a sub-category of sports-related applications would be to minimize or circumscribe our understanding of sexual assault in both an inaccurate and unproductive way. To extend my point in item one above, sexual violence has become a new and central civil and equal rights issue for women (and all Americans), and the continued use of Title IX to fight that vital battle reflects the act’s civil rights origins and legacies on one more key level.3)      Why Sports Matter: So if we think about Title IX in any way as a law focused on athletics, we’re doing an injustice to both its histories and its ongoing meanings. At the same time, however, there’s no doubt that both collegiate and high school athletics became in the years after the act, and continue to be in 2017, a central site of Title IX efforts and applications. And I would argue that there are symbolic and social as well as historical reasons to remember and celebrate that connection of Title IX to sports. For one thing, as yesterday’s story of Babe Didrikson Zaharias illustrates, sports in American society have long been linked to gendered images and narratives, to stereotypes of masculinity and feminity, to ideas about what boys and girls respectively can and should do or pursue or care about. Yet the truth is that (all stats from this piece), if just 7% of all high school varsity athletes in 1971 were women, and if only 16,000 women competed in collegiate athletics in 1966, those statistics reflect social, educational, and funding limitations far more than they do gender identities or realities. How do I know that? Because by 2001, 41.5% of high school varsity athletes were women, as were 43% of college athletes (more than 150,000 in total) in that same year. Sports thus offer a potent site for both providing access for all Americans and revising limiting gender stereotypes in the process—and Title IX has played a vital role in achieving those practical and philosophical goals.Next post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other women and sports connections or analyses you’d share?

January 30, 2017: Women and Sports: Babe Didrikson Zaharias

[Each year for the last few, I’ve used Super Bowl week as a platform for a series on sports in America. This week, I’ll be AmericanStudying figures and moments related to women in sports, leading up to a weekend Guest Post on cheerleading in American society and culture!]On two ways to connect and parallel the pioneering athlete to legendary men, and one key way not to.1)      Multi-Sport Achievements and Fame: I’ve always thought of Jim Thorpe as the 20th century’s most talented athlete, what with his stunning and groundbreaking successes in Olympic track and field, football, and baseball, among other sports. But in researching this post, I realized that Didrikson Zaharias has a serious case for the same title: I had long known about her unparalleled successes as a professional golfer, but she also won two track and field gold medals (and one silver medal) at the 1932 Summer Olympics and was an All-American in basketball, again among many other athletic accomplishments. Although sports lend themselves particularly well to lists and rankings and debates about who was the best, the truth is that both Thorpe and Didrikson Zaharias should be remembered as truly exceptional and influential athletes, figures whose early to mid 20th century, runaway crossover successes in both amateur and professional sports helped pave the way for the sports world to become the national and global phenomenon that it remains to this day. 2)      Larger-than-life Persona: Born Mildred Ella Didrikson, Didrikson Zaharias would later claim that she gained the nickname “Babe” when she hit five home runs in a youth baseball game. That might or might not be true (her Norwegian immigrant mother supposedly called her “Bebe” throughout her life), but even the uncertainty helps illustrate Didrikson Zaharias’ embrace of a larger-than-life persona that echoes that of her potential namesake Babe Ruth. For example, she long claimed to have been born in 1914 (rather than her actual 1911 birth year), perhaps to exaggerate her youthful accomplishments yet further. And she complemented the athletic successes I detailed above with a lifelong series of forays into the worlds of celebrity and popular culture: singing and playing harmonica on several pop songs for Mercury Records; performing on the vaudeville circuit; trying her hand as a pocket billiards player, as in a famous multi-day match against billiards champion Ruth McGinnis; and marrying professional wrestler George Zaharias, the “Crying Greek from Cripple Creek.” Like Babe Ruth, Didrikson Zaharias’ athletic accomplishments would have been more than enough to cement her fame and legacy; but like Ruth, she clearly wanted all that culture and life had to offer.3)      Shattering Stereotypes: Jim Thorpe and Babe Ruth are two of the greatest American athletes of all time, and linking any other athlete to them is (I hope and would argue) a sign of respect. Yet at the same time, I did so at least somewhat ironically, to help engage with the particular, unquestionably gendered limits which Didrikson Zaharias continually encountered and yet challenged and destroyed. (Certainly a Native American athlete like Thorpe faced his own barriers and challenges, of course.) The most overt such limits, many of which called into question Didrikson Zaharias’ gender itself, are nicely encapsulated by this quote, from sportswriter Joe Williams in the New York World-Telegram: “It would be much better if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up and waited for the phone to ring.” In the last few years of her life, Didrikson Zaharias developed a close, quite possibly romantic relationship with fellow golfer Betty Dodd, a relationship neither would describe as romantic due to the limits of their early 1950s society. Yet at the same time, in those final years Didrikson Zaharias shattered all limits one final time: diagnosed with colon cancer in 1953, she continued to golf professionally until her 1956 death, winning multiple tournaments including the last two she entered. A towering and inspiring sports legend to the last.Next post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other women and sports connections or analyses you’d share?

January 28-29, 2017: January 2017 Recap

[A Recap of the first month of 2017 in AmericanStudying.]January 2: Ellis Island Studying: Castle Garden: An Ellis anniversary series starts with what didn’t change from New York’s prior immigration station, and what did.January 3: Ellis Island Studying: The Changing Facility: The series continues with three historic turning points in the immigration station’s space and role.January 4: Ellis Island Studying: The Questions: Three particularly complex and telling types of questions from the list of 29 asked of Ellis arrivals, as the series rolls on.January 5: Ellis Island Studying: Quarantine: How Ellis Island continued yet changed the long history of New York harbor quarantine stations.January 6: Ellis Island Studying: Myths and Realities: The series concludes with why it’s vitally important to remember Ellis, and the less and more productive ways to do so.January 7-8: 21st Century Ellis Islands: A special weekend post on three contemporary sites that (in very different ways) could be described as 21stCentury Ellis Islands.January 9: Spring 2017 Previews: American Lit I: A spring semester preview series kicks off with reading and applying Christopher Columbus in the age of Trump.January 9: Special Guest Post: Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy on Thomas Haliburton and 19thCentury Populism: A special addition to the blog, in which I cross-post a wonderful piece by Dr. Godeanu-Kenworthy from the great early Canadian history blog Borealia.January 10: Spring 2017 Previews: First-year Writing II: The spring previews series continues with the challenge of controversial content in a skills-focused writing course.January 11: Spring 2017 Previews: The American Novel to 1950: Three contemporary topics that six classic novels help us analyze, as the series rolls on.January 12: Spring 2017 Previews: Adult Learning Class on Inspiring Contemporary Voices: A request for suggestions and nominations for my next adult learning course!January 13: Spring 2017 Previews: NeMLA Conference: One conversation we’ll definitely have at March’s Northeast MLA conference in Baltimore, and one I very much hope we do.January 14-15: Spring 2017 Previews: Book Plans: The series concludes with three projects on which I’ll be working as the spring and 2017 unfold—would love to hear about yours, or other spring plans, in comments!January 16: The Real King: My annual MLK Day post, on the limits to how we currently remember King, and how to get beyond them.January 17: Luke Cage Studying: Pop and Luke: A series on the wonderful Netflix superhero show starts with my favorite character, superhero tropes, and the barbershop.January 18: Luke Cage Studying: Mariah and History: The series continues with the great Alfre Woodard’s Mariah and the complexities and ambiguities of Harlem history on the show.January 19: Luke Cage Studying: Taking the Rap: Two compelling layers to the most overt musical reference in a show full of them, as the series rolls on.January 20: Luke Cage Studying: #BlackLivesMatter on TV: The series concludes with where Luke differs from two recent TV engagements with the movement, and why that matters.January 21-22: A Tale of Three Inaugurations: A special post in which I try to respond to the most frightening inauguration of my lifetime the only way I know how.January 23: NASAStudying: Sputnik and von Braun: A series on the 50thanniversary of the Apollo I tragedy starts with the wartime origins of the US space program.January 24: NASAStudying: NASA’s Origins: The series continues with three moments and figures that contributed to the space agency’s starting points.January 25: NASAStudying: Kennedy’s Speech: The Cold War limits and yet compelling possibilities of the famous “moon shot” speech, as the series rolls on.January 26: NASAStudying: John Glenn and Hidden Figures: The astronaut, the hugely popular film, and the value and limits of additive revisionist histories.January 27: NASAStudying: Apollo I: The series concludes with two lessons from Apollo I on the 50th anniversary of its tragic fire.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know!