Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 27

January 16, 2025: Spring Semester Previews: American Literature II

[AnotherSpring semester is upon us, and with it my annual Spring semester previews. Thistime I’ll focus on one skill I’m excited to be teaching as part of each ofthese courses. Please share what you’ve got going on this semester and year aswell!]

I’vewritten a lot in this space, especially in semesterpreviews and reflectionsseries, on my back and forth, both over the last few years and in differentspecific courses, on whether to continue using longer readings like novels orto focus entirely on shorter texts. My default has certainly shifted towardshorter works, not only for reasons of attention span/focus but also because suchworks are much more frequently available online for free (I try hard these daysnot to require students to purchase readings). But I try to approach eachcourse and case on its own terms, and to think about when and how it does makesense to use some longer works as well. This Spring I’ll be doing so in bothyesterday’s subject (Major American Authors) and in my American Lit II survey,we’re start for example with two weeks each on Huck Finn and TheMarrow of Tradition. Both of those late 19th century works arechallenging to read in 2025, and I don’t expect most of the students will getthrough all of them (and they’re able to do the work successfully even if theycan’t, to be clear). But I believe that they are well worth making the effortfor, and that the effort itself, the goal of staying focused on and engagedwith a longer text, is a skill worth continuing to practice despite all its2025 challenges.

Lastpreview post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What’son your radar?

January 15, 2025: Spring Semester Previews: Major American Authors of the 20C

[AnotherSpring semester is upon us, and with it my annual Spring semester previews. Thistime I’ll focus on one skill I’m excited to be teaching as part of each ofthese courses. Please share what you’ve got going on this semester and year aswell!]

This isone of the Literature courses I’ve taught the most times and over the longest period,as I believe I had a section in my first Spring at Fitchburg State (20 yearsago!). A lot has changed in what and how I teach it across those decades, butone thing that hasn’t is the second weekly post I have the students write foreach of our authors and texts: after a more analytical/standard first week’spost, the second one asks them to imitate the author’s style in order to think abit about some key aspects of how each of our authors writes (this second postis entirely ungraded so they don’t have to worry about whether they’re doing it“right”). That’s not an easy thing to do, especially when some of our authorshave particularly unique and challenging styles (I’m looking at you, TheodoreDreiser and Sylvia Plath). But I think it’s an incredibly rewarding one, notonly for what it can help us see and analyze, but also and especially because itrequires empathy, imagining ourselves into a different perspective and person.Not sure there could be a more important skill to hone in 2025.

Nextpreview post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What’son your radar?

January 14, 2025: Spring Semester Previews: First-Year Writing II

[AnotherSpring semester is upon us, and with it my annual Spring semester previews. Thistime I’ll focus on one skill I’m excited to be teaching as part of each ofthese courses. Please share what you’ve got going on this semester and year aswell!]

I’m notgonna lie, probably the hardest part of my Spring semester is going to be theweek we watch Fruitvale Station in my First-Year Writing IIclasses (as part of a unit where they write a comparative analysis of a couplefilms/TV shows/multimedia texts). I wish I felt we were in a better place as acountry than we were 15+ years ago when that film’s events took place, or adecade+ ago when the film itself was released. I wish it didn’t seem so clearto me that so many of my fellow Americans would watch that film and argue that Oscar Grantgot what was coming to him, or worse. But a central aspect of what we do in theclassroom is to try to engage with our toughest conversations, to developindividual voices and ideas, but also and perhaps especially as communities. Sothis hardest part of my semester might well be the most important part of thesemester as well.

Nextpreview post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What’son your radar?

January 13, 2025: Spring Semester Previews: Graduate Research Methods

[AnotherSpring semester is upon us, and with it my annual Spring semester previews. Thistime I’ll focus on one skill I’m excited to be teaching as part of each ofthese courses. Please share what you’ve got going on this semester and year aswell!]

I writeand think a lot about dualities, and more exactly about analyzing them ratherthan seeking to reduce them as is our natural human tendency. But I’ll admitthat there’s a particularly complicated one that I struggle with maintaining inmy own work: the duality of nuance and clarity, of trying to approach oursubjects as the multilayered things they are, while at the same time trying tostay what we have to say about them clearly and compellingly. I think finding away to do both of those at once is at the heart of what I do—as a thinker, as awriter, as a teacher, as a public citizen—and so I’m very excited to make itthe heart of my Graduate Research Methods syllabus as well. For example, we’llstart by reading both TheTurn of the Screw and the manifold contexts and lenses that inform howwe read it—and our goal will be to keep a sense of just how nuanced this textis, while still figuring out how to express our own takes on it with clarity. I’mexcited to work with our phenomenal grad students to practice those vitalskills!

Nextpreview post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What’son your radar?

January 11-12, 2025: The Great Society in 2025

[60 yearsago this month, PresidentLyndon B. Johnson—fresh off his successful re-electioncampaign—created his Great Society program, pushing Congress to help him (as heput it in his1964 speech acceptance the presidential nomination) “build a great society, aplace where the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’s labor.” Sothis week I’ve AmericanStudied a number of Great Society laws, leading up tothis post on what we still desperately need to learn from these histories.]

Honestly Ithink I said a good bit throughout this series about what we can, should, andmust learn from both individual Great Society laws and programs and the overarching,progressive emphases of this administration and moment. So I’m simply gonna addone follow-up thought here, courtesy of HonestAbe himself:

“Now weare engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation soconceived and dedicated, can long endure.”

Am Isaying we are currently engaged in a civil war? Not exactly, although I think ourmoment qualifies at least as one of profound civil conflict (that’s only likelyto deepen in the coming years). And in any case, I believe Lincoln’s more centralpoint was about the nation’s ideals being put to the test. I would argue, and Ihope have argued throughout this series in fact, that the Great Society bothexemplified and amplified many of those ideals. And I know that 2025 and beyondwill test the Great Society and our ideals alike in all kinds of ways. I’m outof the predicting business, but I know I’m proud to be in that fight with y’all.

Springsemester previews start tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 10, 2025: Great Society Laws: Immigration and America

[60 yearsago this month, PresidentLyndon B. Johnson—fresh off his successful re-electioncampaign—created his Great Society program, pushing Congress to help him (as heput it in his1964 speech acceptance the presidential nomination) “build a great society, aplace where the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’s labor.” Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy a number of Great Society laws, leading up to apost on what we still desperately need to learn from these histories.]

On one definitivelyinclusive thing the 1965 immigration law did, one more complicated effect, andthe bottom line.

I hopethis entire series has made clear just how broad and deep was the Great Society’scommitment to progressively and positively affecting American society. But Ihave to admit that it’s still a bit surprising to me, in the best possible way,to remember that making federal immigration policies more progressive and inclusiveended up on that list. As I’ve argued since at least mythird book, the period beginning in the 1920s was the first time inAmerican history when our foundational diversity was genuinely threatened bythe federal government, thanks largely to that decade’squota laws and the restrictiveimmigration policy they produced. So it was far from a given that even aprogressive administration would be able to challenge, much less reverse, thosefour-plus decades of policy and history—and yet Johnson’s Great Society programdid so, through the Immigrationand Nationality Act of 1965 (also known as the Hart-CellerAct), which did away with those nationality- and ethnicity-based quotas andmade immigration to the U.S. from much of the world far more possible onceagain.

The 1965law did so by instituting a number of other systems of preference through whichto categorize and admit immigrants. That’s an entirely understandable and evennecessary step, and moreover many of those new preferences made perfect sense,including an emphasis on familyconnections which directly challenged the ways in which immigration restrictionshad for nearly a century soughtto break up American families and through them communities. But at the sametime, I would point to another and far more problematic preference that wentback to the restrictive policies but was deepened by the 1965 law—the overtpreference for wealthy arrivals which has long been enshrined in the “MillionDollar Visa” policy. I’m not naïve enough not to understand the rationalebehind such a preference, and that particular policy does include an ostensiblerequirement that these wealthy arrivals create jobs for other Americans (althoughI would be pleasantly shocked if they were indeed required to do so). But atthe same time, my personal preference is still and will always be the sameone enshrined on the Statue ofLiberty’s pedestal—for “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearningto breathe free.”

The divisionbetween wealthier and less wealthy immigrants was on full display in the most recentpresidential election, as illustrated by Elon Musk (himself a self-confessedundocumented immigrant in his early days in the US) becoming one of ourmost vocal cheerleaders for the Trump campaign in general and its xenophobic narrativesin particular. But as telling and significant as such divisions and debatesare, I think they ultimately can be a bit of a distraction from the moredefining question: whether we see immigration as a key aspect of the GreatSociety, of the best vision and version of the United States; or whether we seeit as a threat to those things. The 1960s Great Society answered that questionpotently through its inclusion of the 1965 immigration law among its programsand policies; the next four years will test whether and how those of us whoagree can continue to fight for immigration’s and all immigrants’ place in ourgreat society.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 9, 2025: Great Society Laws: Medicare and Medicaid

[60 yearsago this month, PresidentLyndon B. Johnson—fresh off his successful re-electioncampaign—created his Great Society program, pushing Congress to help him (as heput it in his1964 speech acceptance the presidential nomination) “build a great society, aplace where the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’s labor.” Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy a number of Great Society laws, leading up to apost on what we still desperately need to learn from these histories.]

How theGreat Society reflected two distinct ways of thinking about health care, and whythe second in particular is still urgently needed.

One of thelife lessons we all learn—or rather we hope to live long enough to learn—is thataging ain’t for the faint of heart. I don’t know how long exactly a relativelyhealthy human body is designed (not in an Intelligent Design sense, to beclear, just in the biology and chemistry/nature and evolution sense) to live,but it seems clear to me that in the modern world our life expectancies well outpacethat plan, leading to all the potential (and likely, if not indeed inevitable)health and medical issues that come with aging. Before the creation of SocialSecurity in the 1930s, aging Americans were pretty much entirely on their ownwhen it came to such challenges; but that new program alone wasn’t quitesufficient to really deal with those health and medical realities, and so theGreat Society added a vital new element, the health insurance program forseniors knownas Medicare. As the son to a pair of older parents, I’ve seen first-handhow vital both Social Security and Medicare are to helping folks and familiesnavigate these inevitable challenges of aging, and I truly can’t imagine how anyonesurvived the arc of life in America without them (and it seems clear thatmany, many more folks did not, or at least did so with far more challengesstill).

Although Medicareis an entirely communal and indeed a socialist program (yeah, I invoked the AmericanBogeyman, but it’s the truth, folks), I would argue that it nonethelessreflects an individual approach to health care, or rather a resource designedto help individuals and families navigate their own health and medicalchallenges. Given the Great Society’s emphases on both a “War on Poverty” andsocial safety nets, it’s not surprising that in the same years—and indeed inthe same law, the Medicareand Medicaid Act (also known as the Social Security Amendments) of 1965—theadministration also created a more overtly community-focused health insurance program,Medicaid. Designed as a way toguarantee a baseline level of health insurance and thus health care for themost disadvantaged Americans, Medicaid quickly evolved to include a number ofrelated and even more overtly community-focused programs, including for examplethe Children’s Health InsuranceProgram (CHIP) that offers access to not just health insurance but also communityhealth programs for all American children and families.

Medicareand Medicaid are in many ways, as their names suggest, parallel and complementaryprograms. But I do believe that the latter is more community focused than theformer, and likewise and even more importantly represents a recognition thathealth insurance and health care are communal needs, that access to themprofoundly affects not only individuals but also and in many ways especially communitiesfor the better (and the absence of them does so for the worse). One of the mostfrustrating aspects of the last couple decades in American politics (an incrediblylong and competitive list to be sure) has been the collective unwillingness ofso many Americans to a) recognize that programs like Medicare and Medicaid arealready collective and governmental and, again, socialist; and b) extend that awarenessto a recognition that collective health insurance and policies, such as theidea of “Medicarefor All,” would represent a vital step forward in guaranteeing access tohealth insurance and care for all Americans. That’s one Great Society lesson wedesperately still need to learn.

Last GreatSociety law tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 8, 2025: Great Society Laws: Economic Safety Nets

[60 yearsago this month, PresidentLyndon B. Johnson—fresh off his successful re-electioncampaign—created his Great Society program, pushing Congress to help him (as heput it in his1964 speech acceptance the presidential nomination) “build a great society, aplace where the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’s labor.” Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy a number of Great Society laws, leading up to apost on what we still desperately need to learn from these histories.]

On threedistinct and equally important ways that the Great Society created safety nets.

1)     Housing: In that section of Monday’s post onthe Civil Rights Act of 1968, I noted that part of that law (Title VIII) cameto be known as theFair Housing Act. That important set of policies and protections was mademuch more possible by a distinct federal law from a few years earlier: the Housing andUrban Development Act of 1965. Besides adding a number of programs andprotections to federal housing policy, this 1965 law also created a new Cabinetdepartment, the Departmentof Housing and Urban Development. Given the federal government’s centralrole in such longstanding discriminatory practices as redlining, it wasparticularly important that the Great Society make equal opportunity to and accessibilityof housing a significant focus, both to redress such specific histories and todo what it could to guarantee this vital resource for all Americans.

2)     Jobs: If housing is a great example of a safetynet resource, though, it’s also just a baseline on which more must be added tohelp move individuals out of poverty and toward prosperity. Exemplifying theGreat Society’s efforts towards those broader goals was the EconomicOpportunity Act of 1964, which as President Johnson arguedwas intended “to eliminate the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty inthis nation by opening to everyone the opportunity for education and training,the opportunity to work, and the opportunity to live in decency and dignity.” Andfor those critics who might worry about the dangers of federal governmentoverreach, it’s worth adding that this law pursued those shared goals primarilyby creating CommunityAction Agencies, local organizations that would help individuals, families,and communities in their areas in specific and targeted ways.

3)     Food Stamps: Whether or not an individual isable to find and keep a job or jobs, however, it’s important to add that fartoo often more of a safety net is needed to keep folks and families on theright side of the poverty line. Even before the Great Society, PresidentKennedy and Congress had recognized that fact and launched the Food Stamp Program (often known asthe Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) in 1962 to helpAmericans purchase food and related resources; but the Johnson administration expandedand cemented that program with the FoodStamp Act of 1964. Over the sixty years since, “food stamps” have becomealmost as frequent a target of misinformation and prejudice as “welfare,”and with just as little cause; as the Great Society’s contemporary activiststhe BlackPanthers knew well, if folks are hungry there’s very little that education,or jobs, or any other resource can truly offer them.

Next GreatSociety law tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 7, 2025: Great Society Laws: Education and the Arts

[60 yearsago this month, PresidentLyndon B. Johnson—fresh off his successful re-election campaign—created hisGreat Society program, pushing Congress to help him (as he put it inhis 1964 speech acceptance the presidential nomination) “build a greatsociety, a place where the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’slabor.” So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a number of Great Society laws, leadingup to a post on what we still desperately need to learn from these histories.]

On two specificsignificant laws, and one broader effect of the Great Society.

As the sonof a lifelong earlychildhood educator I am perhaps biased, but to my mind one of the mostunder-appreciated (and certainly one of the most transformative) of the GreatSociety laws would be the Elementaryand Secondary Education Act of 1965. Part of Johnson’s overarching conceptof a “Waron Poverty,” this hugely influential law represented a major reform of anddeepened federal commitment to public education in the United States overall,and disadvantaged students and families in particular. The Act’s dualemphases on guaranteeing equal access and shrinking achievement gaps compriseda radical new perspective on how the federal government should approach educationpolicy, one supported by significant and ongoing commitments of money and otherresources, and over the sixty years since those emphases have been complementedand extended by additions involving bilingual education and stronger protectionsagainst discrimination (toward students and teachers alike), among others.

Later in1965 (it was a very busy year for Great Society laws and programs!), a separateCongressional law created the National Endowmentfor the Arts (NEA), which became instantly and remains to this day the mostprominent federal arts organization. The NEA’s original mission statement linkedboth the organization and the arts themselves directly to education, in and outof classrooms: the NEA is “dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, bothnew and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providingleadership in arts education.” But at the same time, the NEA’s significant annual grant funding in particular isimportantly available to any and all artists and creators, individuals andcommunities, with no necessary connection to particular educationalinstitutions nor to educational goals (which of course are far from the only placeor role for the arts in society). These are complementary but far from directlyoverlapping 1965 laws, that is.

But I dowant to push further with my connection between these two laws in oneadditional and important way. I agree with the framing that the Education Actwas tied to the War on Poverty, as access to education is crucial to connectingall children, families, and communities to the opportunities that can help alleviatepoverty and lead to better futures. But to quote one of our most famousteacher characters, “medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noblepursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love,these are what we stay alive for.” I really love that the Great Societysupported the arts in education as well as the arts overall, and expressed clearlythrough such emphases and priorities that both arts education and the arts arepart of all lives and communities, rather than in any way more elective orelite. We would do well to extend that emphasis today.

Next GreatSociety law tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 6, 2025: Great Society Laws: Civil and Voting Rights

[60 yearsago this month, PresidentLyndon B. Johnson—fresh off his successful re-election campaign—created hisGreat Society program, pushing Congress to help him (as he put it inhis 1964 speech acceptance the presidential nomination) “build a greatsociety, a place where the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’slabor.” So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a number of Great Society laws, leadingup to a post on what we still desperately need to learn from these histories.]

On one smallerbut still important detail in each of three pivotal civil rights laws.

1)     TheCivil Rights Act of 1964: Among the many protections against discriminationand segregation in this groundbreaking law, I’d highlight Title VII’sprohibition against discrimination “based on sex.” There’s apparently a greatdeal of debate of whether that section, introduced as an amendment by thepowerful RepresentativeHoward W. Smith (D-VA), was intended sincerely or as an attempt to derailthe bill’s protections for African Americans. But while Smith was asegregationist, he was also a longtime sponsorof the Equal Rights Amendment, so it seems likely to me that he did hope toinclude these protections in the final law—and in any case, the amendmentpassed and was included in the Civil Rights Act.

2)     TheVoting Rights Act of 1965: The many General and Special Provisions includedin this landmark law could be the subject of an entire weeklong blog series intheir own right, especially since so many of them connect to overarchingAmerican histories and issues. Here I’ll highlight just one: Section 203c,which createda census-based formula to determine which jurisdictions are required toprovide election materials in multiple languages. Given the (stupid and racist)ways in which 21st century Americans have responded to things like “Pressing2 for Spanish,” I can only imagine how divisive this provision was in 1965—makingme even gladder that it’s there.

3)     TheCivil Rights Act of 1968: There’s a lot of goodness in this follow-up CivilRights Act, including not just the protections that came to be known as theFair Housing Act, but also the countless rights it helped grant to NativeAmerican communities through the “IndianBill of Rights.” But because everything in our history is complicated andmuch of it contradictory, I’ll highlight here the law’s Title X, the Anti-RiotAct, which made it a felony to “travel in interstate commerce with theintent to incite, promote, encourage, participate in, and carry on a riot.” AsI’ve written many times,“riot” is one of the most fraught terms in our political discourse—and when welearn that this act was signedinto law during the uprisings after the assassination of Martin Luther KingJr., we realize just how fraught this particular usage of the term was andremains.

Next GreatSociety law tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?