Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 270

January 16, 2017: The Real King

[In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, my annual post on how we can better remember King in all his complex and impressive depth. Kicking off a series on one of my favorite recent cultural works about the African American experience, Netflix’s Luke Cage!]On the limits to how we currently remember King, and how to get beyond them.
It probably puts me at significant risk of losing my AmericanStudies Card to say this—and you have no idea how hard it is to get a second one of those if you lose the first—but I think the “I Have a Dream” speech is kind of overrated. I’m sort of saying that for effect, since I don’t really mean that the speech itself isn’t as eloquent and powerful and pitch-perfect in every way as the narrative goes—it most definitely is, and while that’s true enough if you read the words, it becomes infinitely more true when you see video and thus hear audio of the speech and moment. But what is overrated, I think, is the weight that has been placed on the speech, the cultural work that it has been asked to do. Partly that has to do with contemporary politics, and especially with those voices who have tried to argue that King’s “content of their character” rather than “color of their skin” distinction means that he would oppose any and all forms of identity politics or affirmative action or the like; such readings tend to forget that King was speaking in that culminating section of the speech about what he dreams might happen “one day”—if, among other things, we give all racial groups the same treatment and opportunities—rather than what he thought was possible in America in the present.
But the more significant overemphasis on the speech, I would argue, has occurred in the process by which it (and not even all of it, so much as just those final images of “one day”) has been made to symbolize all of—or at least represent in miniature—King’s philosophies and ideas and arguments. There’s no question that the speech’s liberal univeralism, its embrace (if in that hoped-for way) of an equality that knows no racial identifications, was a central thread within King’s work; and, perhaps more tellingly, was the thread by which he could most clearly be defined in opposition to a more stridently and wholly Black Nationalist voice like Malcolm X’s. Yet the simple and crucial fact is that King’s rich and complex perspective and philosophy, as they existed throughout his life but especially as they developed over the decade and a half between his real emergence onto the national scene with the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and his assassination in 1968, contained a number of similarly central and crucial threads. There were for example his radical perspectives on class, wealth, and the focuses of government spending, a set of arguments which culminated in the last years of his life in both the “Poor People’s Campaign” and in increasingly vocal critiques of the military-industrial complex; and his strong belief not only in nonviolent resistance (as informed by figures as diverse as Thoreau and Gandhi) but also in pacifism in every sense, which likewise developed into his very public opposition to the Vietnam Year in his final years. While both of those perspectives were certainly not focused on one racial identity or community, neither were they broadly safe or moderate stances; indeed, they symbolized direct connections to some of the most radical social movements and philosophies of the era.
To my mind, though, the most significant undernarrated thread—and perhaps the most central one in King’s perspective period—has to be his absolutely clear belief in the need to oppose racial segregation and discrimination, of every kind, in every way, as soon and as thoroughly as possible. Again, the contrast to Malcolm has tended to make King out to be the more patient or cautious voice, but I defy anyone to read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”—the short piece that King wrote in April 1963 to a group of white Southern clergyman, while he was serving a brief jail sentence for his protest activities—and come away thinking that either patience or caution are in the top twenty adjectives that best describe the man and his beliefs. King would later expand the letter into a book, Why We Can’t Wait , the very title of which makes the urgency of his arguments more explicit still; but when it comes to raw passion and power, I don’t think any American text can top the “Letter” itself. Not raw in the sense of ineloquent—I tend to imagine that King’s first words, at the age of 1 or whenever, were probably more eloquent than any I’ll ever speak—but raw as in their absolute rejection, in the letter’s opening sentence, of his audience’s description of his protest activities as “unwise and untimely.” And raw as well in the razor sharp turn in tone in the two sentences that comprise one of the letter’s closing paragraphs: “If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.”I guess what it boils down to for me is this: to remember King for one section of “I Have a Dream” is like remembering Shakespeare for the “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy in Hamlet. Yeah, that’s a great bit, but what about the humor? The ghost? The political plotting and play within the play? The twenty-seven other great speeches? And then there’s, y’know, all those other pretty good, and very distinct, plays. And some poetry that wasn’t bad either. It’s about time we remembered the whole King, and thus got a bit closer to the real King and what he can really help us see about our national history, identity, and future. Luke Cageseries starts tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other thoughts on King you’d share?

January 14-15, 2017: Spring 2017 Previews: Book Plans

[Next week, a new semester begins; so this week, I’ve previewed five classes and other aspects of that semester, this time through the lens of teaching and working in the age of Trump. Leading up to this special weekend post on book talks and projects!]Three projects on which I’ll be working as the spring and 2017 unfold:1)      Finding Book Talks: So far, I’ve had the chance to give two book talks for History and Hope in American Literature: Models of Critical Patriotism , and they were just as inspiring and generative as were all the book talks I gave for my prior project, The Chinese Exclusion Act. Because of that prior project’s more specific historical and cultural focus, it was somewhat easier to identify possible sites and spaces for book talks—but if anything, I believe that the broader themes to which this new book connects (not only of history, hope, and critical patriotism, but also of exclusion and inclusion) are even more salient and worth adding to our collective conversations. I’ve got one spring talk in the works at a public library and one at a historical society, and I’m open to lots more of those kinds of spaces, as well as any and all others (bookstores, reading groups, classes and educational institutions, historic sites, you name it!). So if you have any ideas, or want to pass this on to anyone who might be interested, I’ll be very grateful!2)      A Possible New Pivot Project: The Chinese Exclusion Act was published as part of Palgrave Macmillan’s Pivot series, which features shorter books aimed at digital distribution and reading (and with a very quick turnaround from inception to publication). I loved the experience, and am excited at the possibility of publishing a book in another Pivot series— Pivotal Studies in the Global American Literary Imagination , edited by Dan O’Hara and Donald Pease. My proposed book would offer a slightly different spin on “global,” considering three case studies in American figures and texts that present transcultural alternatives to white supremacist images of American history, identity, and community: William Apess’ “Eulogy on King Philip”; Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton’s The Squatter and the Don; and Sui Sin Far’s “Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian” and Yung Wing’s My Life in China and America(both 1909). This project has come about very suddenly and remains just a possibility, but I hope to have the chance to write about these vital figures and texts and in so doing be part of a wonderful series.3)      The Germ of an Idea: I’m still determined to write at some point Black History is American History , the project focused on Ida B. Wells, Charles Chesnutt, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Carter G. Woodson about which I’ve been thinking for a couple years. But in the aftermath of the election and much else from the last year, I’ve been thinking more and more about a project on the originating and ongoing duality of exclusionary and inclusive visions of America. To name one originating example, Christopher Columbus and Bartolomé de las Casas were on the same voyages, yet articulated and acted upon diametrically opposed visions of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in relation to the post-contact world. Or there’s this example, of the Japanese internment camps and the amazing American story and community that emerged from them. Or Quock Walker using the Declaration of Independence to argue successfully for his freedom from slavery, at the same moment that slavery was being written into the Constitution. In many ways, America has always been and remains a battle between these exclusionary and inclusive visions, and I’m starting to formulate a project that would explore this enduring and defining duality. I’d love your thoughts, on that idea as on any of this!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Projects or plans you’d highlight or share?

January 13, 2017: Spring 2017 Previews: NeMLA Conference

[Next week, a new semester begins; so this week, I’ll preview five classes and other aspects of that semester, this time through the lens of teaching and working in the age of Trump. Leading up to a special weekend post on book talks and plans!]On one thing I know we’ll talk about in Baltimore in March, and one I very much hope we will.I’ve been writing about the 2017 Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) conference in Baltimore since just after my 2016 conference in Hartford ended, and looking forward to it for even longer than that. The current NeMLA President, my friend Hilda Chacón; our NeMLA Executive Director, my friend Carine Mardorossian; the current 1st Vice President, my friend Maria DiFrancesco; and the whole NeMLA Board have helped put together an extremely impressive schedule (not yet released, but watch this space!) of panels, special sessions and events, and local opportunities, and as usual I’m very excited to attend the conference from start to finish (which I’ve really only done for NeMLA conferences for many years now, and which I’m genuinely excited to do—something, as any academic can tell you, that certainly isn’t always the case with conferences).Working with our collaborating colleagues and departments at Johns Hopkins University, and using her own scholarly and personal expertise and experiences as guides, Hilda has come up with a conference theme that couldn’t be more timely and vital: “Translingual and Transcultural Competence: Toward a Multilingual Future in the Global Era.” (She also invited me to contribute a short essay on that theme for an upcoming issue of NeMLA’s journal Modern Language Studies; again, watch this space!) I think it’s fair to say that both multilingualism and globalism are likely to be threatened concepts in Trump’s America (other than when it comes to, y’know, Russia), although indeed both have been under siege for some time from many American voices and communities (during the 2008 presidential campaign Mitt Romney critiqued Barack Obama for suggesting that Americans should learn multiple languages, noting, “Barack Obama looks to Europe for many of his ideas; John McCain wants America to stay America”). Talking about them at academic conferences won’t be nearly enough to resist and challenge those threats, of course—but talking can undoubtedly help us strategize about ways to support languages and multicultural and global initiatives, in education, politics, and society overall.Academics themselves are also likely to face new threats in the age of Trump, perhaps overall but certainly in two specific categories: those who work at public institutions (as I do); and, especially, those in contingent and adjunct faculty positions. During my time on the NeMLA Board, and culminating in the planning for my own 2016 conference, I’ve worked with NeMLA’s CAITY Caucus (and especially its former President Emily Lauer) to organize a number of sessions and conversations about, and ways to support, adjunct and contingent faculty members and related efforts and issues. I mean that the 2016 conference represented an individual culmination of those efforts of mine, but not at all that our collective conversations should or will end with those 2016 sessions. Quite the opposite, I think it’ll be vitally important for the 2017 conference—and indeed for every academic gathering in the age of Trump—to engage directly with the issues facing these most vulnerable of our colleagues and communities, and to talk together about both how we as an organization (and as individuals) can support them and how we can work to make clear to all Americans the need for such shared support and solidarity.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Spring plans you’d highlight or share?

January 12, 2017: Spring 2017 Previews: Adult Learning Class on Inspiring Contemporary Voices

[Next week, a new semester begins; so this week, I’ll preview five classes and other aspects of that semester, this time through the lens of teaching and working in the age of Trump. Leading up to a special weekend post on book talks and plans!]A request for suggestions and nominations for my newest ALFA course.The presidential election hadn’t happened yet when I proposed my Spring 2017 Adult Learning in the Fitchburg Area (ALFA) course, on Inspiring Contemporary Voices, but somehow I had a feeling that we would need to find and celebrate such inspiring voices in 2017. Much of the time in my work, as in my most recent book and my long-simmering idea for a Hall of American Inspiration, I look to the past, to literature and history, texts and figures, from across America’s many centuries of post-contact existence, for models of inspiration that we can apply in our present moment. But it’s just as important, any time but doubly so in dark times, to find and celebrate the inspiring figures and voices that are part of our own moment and society, to read and hear their words and learn about their identities and careers and consider what we might learn from these contemporaries.I’ve got lots of ideas for folks and texts I might feature in the course’s five meetings: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and her TED talks on perspectives and feminism; Ta-Nehisi Coates and his public scholarly journalism and personal narrative on race, history, and the challenges and possibilities of our own moment; Miyoko Hikiji and her memoirand political and social activism around the topic of gender, sex, and the military; and José Antonio Vargas and his journalism, documentary filmmaking, and web projects dedicated to issues of immigration, ethnicity, and defining America. Any and all of those four figures would give us lots to read, watch, talk about, contextualize, and learn from across our course’s five mid-March to April meetings to be sure.But that’s still a couple months away, and so even more than usual I’d really, really appreciate any and all suggestions for figures and/or texts that could help introduce us to inspiring contemporary voices. Obviously it’d be important that these folks have texts of some kind—written, multimedia, podcasts, you name it—so that we can have ways to access them collectively, but that’s really my only requirement. This is a class where I’d love the chance to be introduced myself to some new voices, as well as to introduce them to the ALFA students, and that’s gonna depend on getting suggestions and nominations from others. So you know what to do—add such suggestions and nominations in comments, or email me with them directly, if you would. Help me and us find inspiration when we need it most!Last preview tomorrow,BenPS. Suggestions or nominations for this course? Other spring plans you’d highlight or share?

January 11, 2017: Spring 2017 Previews: The American Novel to 1950

[Next week, a new semester begins; so this week, I’ll preview five classes and other aspects of that semester, this time through the lens of teaching and working in the age of Trump. Leading up to a special weekend post on book talks and plans!]On three contemporary topics that six classic American novels help us analyze.1)      Immigration and Empathy: For the first time in my many sections of this course, I’m stretching the definition of “novel” a bit to include Sui Sin Far’s short story cycle Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912). Besides being a wonderful book, Mrs. Spring Fragrance also offers our most in-depth literary responses to the Chinese Exclusion Act, giving extended voice to the effects of exclusionary attitudes and policies. But in its own way, Willa Cather’s lyrical proto-Modernist frontier novel My Ántonia (1918) offers just as intimate a depiction of immigrant identities and communities, as narrator Jim Burden shares his outsider but ever-more emphathetic perspective on the title character and her immigrant American family, peers, and world. Taken together, these two books can help us engage with one of the American communities most likely to be affected by Trump’s policies and administration.2)      Community and Identity: Our second and third novels, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899), are linked by more than just shared Southern settings (Twain’s novel along the Mississippi River, and Chopin’s at the river’s Louisiana endpoints). Both also focus, through the perspectives of their protagonists (Twain through Huck’s first-person narration and Chopin through a limited omniscient narrative focus on Edna Pontellier), on how those individual characters are influenced by and respond to broader social and cultural forces in their respective communities. They do so in relationship to different central themes (race and prejudice in Twain, gender and sex in Chopin), and their protagonists come to famously different concluding moments. But nonetheless, both characters struggle with questions facing all Americans in 2017: whether and how to resist and challenge the dominant forces in our society, and whether its possible to create individual and communal identities outside of those powerful trends.3)      Perspectives and the Past: Our first and last novels, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables(1851) and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury(1929), are as different from each other as their respective historical and cultural moments. But one clear distinction, between their forms of narration, actually helps both novels portray a shared theme: how our perspectives shape our sense of the past. The storytelling narrator of Hawthorne’s historical romance moves between official histories, “fireside legends,” and the perspectives of different characters and generations, all to engage with how a historical event like the Salem Witch Trials echoes into subsequent moments and communities. The stream of consciousness sections that comprise most of Faulkner’s Modernist masterpiece help him create one of literature’s most intimate portrayals of individual perspectives, and those perspectives consistently focus on the continued presence and influence of the personal, familial, and regional pasts. As I’ve argued already in this space, no lens is more important to understanding 2017 America than whether and how to remember our collective histories, and in their hugely distinct ways both of these classic novels offer valuable visions of those questions.Next preview tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Spring plans you’d highlight or share?

January 10, 2017: Spring 2017 Previews: First-year Writing II

[Next week, a new semester begins; so this week, I’ll preview five classes and other aspects of that semester, this time through the lens of teaching and working in the age of Trump. Leading up to a special weekend post on book talks and plans!]On the challenge of controversial content in a skills-focused writing course.As I wrote about in this article for Teaching American Literature, I’ve always tried to practice a student-centered pedagogy, one where my central emphasis is more on helping develop student voices and skills rather than on any particular readings or content. While (as that article indicates) I’ve adjusted the balance between skills and content somewhat in my literature survey courses and upper-level literature seminars over the years, I haven’t done so much at all in my first-year writing courses (Fitchburg State has a two-part sequence, Writing I and Writing II). After all, these are courses that every incoming student at Fitchburg State is required to take in or around his or her first year, and that thus have the vital role of introducing not only a number of different types and forms of writing, but also related academic skills such as critical reading and thinking, individual and group communication, research and information literacy, and more. While of course I use particular texts and content in these courses, I see and treat those readings and topics explicitly as a means to help move students closer to the courses’ particular academic ends.That perspective is going to be challenged a bit this spring, however. I’ll be teaching for the second time my Writing II syllabus on Analyzing 21st Century Identities, and in a class that kicks off only a few days before the presidential inauguration, I’m not sure whether or how we’ll be able to avoid discussing all things Trump as part of that topic. When I taught my English Studies Senior Seminar on Analyzing 21st Century America this past fall, of course we talked about the election and related topics; but that was a class that included a through-line of #BlackLivesMatter readings and units on such topics as climate change and immigration (among many others), so political connections and discussions were a planned part of the class dynamic in any case. Whereas, again, my choices of readings and content for the Writing II course are designed more to introduce assignments and lenses (such as personal narratives of digital identities or contextual analyses of multimedia texts) that can help the students develop different writing and academic skills, rather than ones that lend themselves organically to political topics and debates. Yet how can we talk day in and day out about 2017 American identities and texts without engaging those political questions?I don’t know that we can, and I’m certainly not going to stop any discussion that moves from our readings and topics to those political questions (although I’ll try to make sure that we remain analytical and evidence-based as we do so). Indeed, I think there could be great value in thinking about (for example) how the themes and lenses provided by our first unit, on advertising and marketing, might help us analyze politics and society in the age of Trump. And the last, most open-ended unit, where students research and write an interdisciplinary multi-textual analysis of a topic of their choice, will undoubtedly produce some political topics. But that’s precisely my goal, and the way to keep my student-centered emphasis despite such inevitable content connections: allowing student ideas and voices to lead to our political conversations (or not, if they don’t), rather than foregrounding those issues myself. Despite nonsensical fears about professors “brainwashing” or “indoctrinating” students, our goal is always to help them make those kinds of connections themselves, to see how they can apply critical reading and thinking to (when appropriate, as it certainly will be in this course) contemporary and political topics and debates. So if this Writing II class will present a new teaching challenge along those lines, it’s one to which I’ll be happy to respond.Next preview tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Spring plans you’d highlight or share?

January 9, 2017: Special Guest Post: Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy on Thomas Haliburton and 19th Century Populism

[One of my favorite things about blogging for these 6+ years has been all the connections it has helped me make to fellow AmericanStudiers and public scholars, near and far. As a case in point, this weekend Keith Grant of the wonderful early Canadian history blog Borealia contacted me about cross-posting a great new post by Dr. Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, on the Nova Scotian judge and writer Thomas Chandler Haliburton and American populism in the 19th century. I'll be sharing the first half of Dr. Godeanu-Kenworthy's post, and then directing you to the link where you can read the rest! Enjoy!]

"The Mighty Waters of Democracy”: Thomas Chandler Haliburton on American Populism



On Nov 8 2016 reality-show star and billionaire Donald Trump won by a landslide the presidency of the US. Despite the still-ongoing collective head-scratching over the exact causes of the victory, nobody contests that the unlikely candidate rode an unprecedented wave of populism and nationalism whose long-term consequences remain to be seen. Trump’s anti-trade rhetoric in particular has been met with unease in Canada, whose post-NAFTA economic fortunes are profoundly enmeshed with those of the US. Until the December 19th Electoral College vote, online debates continued around the question whether the electors will go back to the role assigned to them by the Founders of the American constitution and independently assess the suitability of the candidate, or merely validate the popular vote in their states as in the past. Indeed, despite James Madison’s trust in the power of constitutional checks and balances (like the Electoral College), in recent history rarely has an elector failed to vote for the candidate winning his or her state’s popular votes.
Canadian concerns over American populism and its impact on existing institutions are not new.  In 1836, the conservative Nova Scotian judge and writer Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796-1865) published The Clockmaker, a volume of satirical sketches that rapidly became a surprising global success.The US was the only direct experience of republicanism most early Canadians would have had. Yet the American federation with its endless squabbles over state rights and its mobs was more a cautionary tale of republican centrifugal forces gnawing at the fabric of society, than an inspiring one. Haliburton did not object to American republicanism per se, but to the spirit which infused it. To him, the seeds of a profound mistrust towards any authority external to ‘the people’ were already present in the American Revolution, despite the hierarchical view of society that the Federalists subsequently promoted; Jacksonian populism and anti-elitism had merely taken things one step further. Its all-pervasive leveling ethos had degenerated into a tyranny of the majority and was endangering freedom itself. One of the characters in The Clockmaker laments the loss of the ideals of the Revolution: “Where now is our beautiful republic bequeathed to us by Washington and the sages and heroes of the revolution? Overwhelmed and destroyed by the mighty waters of democracy.” [To read the rest of Dr. Godeanu-Kenworthy's post, head over to Borealia, please!
Next Spring preview post tomorrow,Ben]
 

January 9, 2017: Spring 2017 Previews: American Lit I

[Next week, a new semester begins; so this week, I’ll preview five classes and other aspects of that semester, this time through the lens of teaching and working in the age of Trump. Leading up to a special weekend post on book talks and plans!]On reading and applying Christopher Columbus in the age of Trump.I’ve written about Columbus in a number of posts here, including a preview of this same course in last January’s Spring semester series. As I mentioned in that preview post, in American Literature I we read two famous Columbus letters for the same class discussion: the 1492 one written to Spanish court figure and Columbus financial backer Luis de Santangel, from the height of the first voyage’s success; and the 1502 one written to the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, from the depths of the fourth voyage’s failures. Two letters aren’t enough to give a full picture of the man and his identity and perspective, of course; such is the decision I made when I created an American Lit I syllabus that includes at least one and often two new authors for each day, giving us a wide breadth of coverage but no in-depth focus on any particular author or text. But these two letters nonetheless capture two significant moments and how Columbus responded to and framed each, and in so doing they offer two important lenses through which to understand our new president-elect.The Santangel letter doesn’t include the word/phrase “bigly/big league” (not sure how it could, really, not in 1492 and doubly not in the original Spanish), but it might as well. Columbus’ writing and perspective in that moment of triumph are consistently exaggerated, including fake news (he reports on nightingales singing in the new world trees, when the birds are not to be found in the Americas), a hugely egotistical over-use of the pronoun “I” (when he’s mostly if not entirely describing actions taken by his men and crew), and a thoroughgoing dismissal of all those native peoples who are clearly outside of the imagined new world community he’s envisioning (“They explored for three days, and found countless small communities and people, without number, but nothing of importance”). But we don’t need to read past the first clause of the letter’s first sentence to see everything we need to know: “Sir, as I know you will be rejoiced at the glorious success that our Lord has given me in my voyage.” That’s only 100 characters, so it’d easily fit into an example of Trump’s favorite method for communicating his true perspective, a Tweet. I think we could append a “Bigly!” to the end of the clause and not lose any of the passage’s spirit.Ten years later, we see in the Ferdinand and Isabella letter Columbus’ writing and perspective when he perceives himself the victim of numerous forces conspiring against him. There’s no doubt that a lot had gone wrong for Columbus in his latter new world voyages, from shipwreck to imprisonment, demotions to betrayals. Yet over the same decade, choices and actions of Columbus’—most notably the enslavement and destruction of countless native peoples—had left the Americas themselves in far worse shape than when he had encountered them. Yet although Columbus begins the letter by writing, “Of Española, Paria, and the other lands, I never think without weeping,” it soon becomes crystal clear that those tears are due to his own situation, not that of the lands. “I came to serve at the age of twenty-eight years,” he writes, “and now I have not a hair on my body that is not gray and my body is infirm, and whatever remained to me from those years of service has been spent and taken away from me and sold, and from my brothers, down to my very coat, without my being heard or seen, to my great dishonor.” A perspective this self-centered and simplistic is problematic when things go well, but it’s downright disastrous when they go badly—a lesson from Columbus’ two letters that we would do well to heed as we move into 2017.Next preview tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Spring plans you’d highlight or share?

January 7-8, 2017: 21st Century Ellis Islands

[On January 1, 1892, Ellis Island immigration station opened in New York Harbor. Nearly 500,000 immigrants came through the station in its first year, and the rest is history. Very complex history, though, and so this week for Ellis’s 125thanniversary I’ve analyzed five contexts for the station and the immigration stories to which it connects. Leading up to this special weekend post on sites of 21st century immigration!]Three contemporary sites that could be described as 21st century Ellis Islands.1)      That Damn Wall: If, as I argued in yesterday’s post, Ellis Island had stages and sides that have to be contextualized through the history of exclusionary visions of American identity and community, Donald Trump’s proposed “big beautiful wall” on the border with Mexico is something much simpler still: one giant embodiment of exclusion. I don’t expect that such a wall will ever be built in actuality, but regardless it’s hard to imagine a more potent symbolic representation of immigration narratives and policies that seek to define us as much by whom we keep out as whom we let in. Although we don’t like to admit it, our immigration laws have been connected to such questions for as long as we’ve had immigration laws (indeed, I argue in my third book that our immigration laws developed at all in order to create such discriminatory hierarchies), and so was Ellis Island in all too many ways.2)      Monticello (on July 4th): It was far more difficult for me to think of one site that could rival Ellis as a 21stcentury representation of an inclusive vision of America defined by the shared experiences of immigration. As I wrote earlier in the week, not all early 20thcentury immigrants came through Ellis by any means—but certainly many did, many tens of millions in fact. Whereas these days, immigrants arrive at every airport, every port, every border crossing, in so many spaces and ways. Yet there are still some experiences shared by many of those immigrant Americans, and the citizenship process is one such inclusive and inspiring (if also expensive and frustrating and often still too exclusionary) experience. Every July 4th, a group of immigrant Americans gather at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello to become American citizens, one of many such ceremonies around the United States but a particularly evocative and symbolic one given the setting. So that’s one nominee for a moment and space that embody the best of what Ellis Island likewise comprised.3)      Define American: I’ve written before about José Antonio Vargas’ wonderful site, and won’t repeat those points here. Instead, I’ll just say that if there were to be a 21st century Ellis Island, it would make all the sense in the world for it to be a digital rather than physical site. As I’ve argued all week, Ellis was never just or even mainly the actual place, important as those facilities were for so many individuals and families and communities. It was also and especially the images and narratives, the ideas of immigration and America, the best and worst visions of our national community. The kinds of conversations and debates that now happen most consistently in online settings, ones with just as much at stake and the potential to affect our society just as fully as did the lines and questions and opportunities and quarantines of Ellis Island. Vargas and his site model the best of those 21st century spaces and communities, and since I’m an optimism—yes, even now—I’ll end this series there.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think?

January 6, 2017: Ellis Island Studying: Myths and Realities

[On January 1, 1892, Ellis Island immigration station opened in New York Harbor. Nearly 500,000 immigrants came through the station in its first year, and the rest is history. Very complex history, though, and so for Ellis’s 125th anniversary I’ll analyze five contexts for the station and the immigration stories to which it connects. Leading up to a special weekend post on 21st century immigration!]On why it’s vitally important to remember Ellis, and the less and more productive ways to do so.According to the National Park Service, an estimated 40% of all 21st century Americans can trace their heritage to at least one immigrant who made his or her way into the United States through the Ellis Island immigration station (including this AmericanStudier, all four of whose maternal great-grandparents came through Ellis before settling in the Boston area). There are very few formative historical experiences which are shared by so many American families, and that connection makes Ellis Island one of our more meaningful communal spaces. Yet as I’ve argued all week, since its opening 125 years ago up through the recent launches of the Peopling of America exhibits Ellis Island has also embodied the immigrant experience more broadly, and thus can and has become a significant part of our collective images and memories even for (for example) those many immigrants and immigrant communities who have come to the United States since the station closed in 1954. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to remember those multiple periods and histories, but there’s no doubt that collective memories do depend on shared communal focal points ( lieux de memoire , as French historian Pierre Nora has named such sites), and Ellis Island is and should be such a lieux de memoire.It’s not enough just to remember something, though—how we remember is just as important. Far too much of the time, our collective memories of Ellis Island are linked to phrases like “My ancestors came here legally” and “My ancestors waited in line and followed the rules.” I’ve written a good deal about why the first phrase is almost always inaccurate, so here will focus on the second. It’s true that Ellis Island had lines and rules, and that arrivals whose ships came to Ellis waited in and followed them. But any implication that those arrivals chose to do so is false and nonsensical—immigrants came where their methods of transportation took them, and then whatever happened at each site happened; there were no border patrols on either the Mexican or Canadian borders when Ellis opened, for example, so immigrants who came across them just came across. Furthermore, if anyone critiques 21st century undocumented immigrants by using one of these phrases, feel free to ask them if they’d be willing for all contemporary immigrants to simply answer 29 questions, prove they don’t have a communicable disease, and then enter the United States; that’s all that “standing in line and following the rules” meant at Ellis Island for its first few decades (things did change with the discriminatory 1920s Quota Acts, although immigrants still had no choices to make after that). Each of those histories is complicated and needs further analysis, but the bottom line is that if collective memories of Ellis use the site to attack current immigrant communities, they’re almost certainly doing so under false pretenses. So if Ellis Island isn’t about remembering exemplary past immigrants in contrast to “illegal” contemporary ones, what narratives could we emphasize instead in those shared memories? A simpler answer, and certainly one I’d agree with, would be to find ways to include each of this week’s topics: the continuities and changes from Castle Garden to Ellis; the different stages and roles of the Ellis Island facilities; the national narratives and images highlighted by the list of 29 questions; the longstanding and evolving histories of quarantine. But I know that collective memories can’t necessarily start with four different complex topics at their heart, and I would say that Ellis Island can be boiled down further to one central duality (about which I’ve been thinking a good bit in the post-election period): exclusionary and inclusive images of American identity. Ellis was the site of post-Quota Act and World War II detention centers, and for all immigrant arrivals of a series of questions designed to define those individuals and identities that should be excluded from our national community, among other exclusionary histories linked to the site. Yet at the same time, Ellis embodies—particularly in its first few (pre-Quota Acts) decades of operation, and even more clearly in the museums and memorials now located on the site—a set of shared experiences that connect nearly all Americans into an inclusive vision of how our nation has been constructed. Indeed, I can think of few sites that encapsulate both sides of the exclusion/inclusion duality better than Ellis Island.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other Ellis Island responses or contexts?