Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 271

January 5, 2017: Ellis Island Studying: Quarantine

[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 how Ellis continued yet changed the long history of New York harbor quarantine stations.One of the most famous pop culture depictions of Ellis Island (although that’s certainly a long and evolving list, and while the film isn’t great overall, I would say that this sequence from Hitch is worth noting too) would have to be in The Godfather, Part 2 . As part of that film’s extended flashback sections, young Vito Corleone arrives at Ellis on a steamer from Sicily, only to find himself marked as suffering from a communicable disease and moved to a room in the island’s quarantine section. However we read the moment symbolically—and much of Vito’s Italian American story, as told in those flashback sequrences, is one of continual obstacles that help make him into the Godfather he would become, so this delay in arrival might well be analyzed as an early and formative example of that trend—it’s certainly accurate historically: one of the greatest fears embodied in the processes and procedures at Ellis Island was of European and global diseases and epidemics coming to the U.S., and the station made responding to such threats a central part of its mission throughout its history.To say that serving such a role was nothing new for a New York harbor island would be to seriously understate the case, however. As this excellent website documents at length, harbor islands had served as quarantine stations (or “plague houses”) since at least the 1750s, when Bedloe’s Island (the future site of the Statue of Liberty, after which it was renamed Liberty Island) became a quarantine spot (that last hyperlink dates its first use as a quarantine facility even earlier, in the 1730s). When Castle Garden immigration station opened in Lower Manhattan in the 1850s, it used two nearby harbor islands, Blackwell’s Island and Ward’s Island, as its quarantine spots. As those two hyperlinked histories illustrate, each such quarantine island had its own unique and multi-layered story and identity, one often connected to other “undesirable” New York City communities such as convicted criminals and those deemed insane. Yet in the 1870s, the city went another way, creating two new artificial harbor islands, Swinburne Island and Hoffman Island, that would be dedicated solely to use as quarantine spots and would remain in that role once Ellis Island immigration station opened in 1892.While Ellis did use those artificial islands for some of its quarantined arrivals, however, the immigration station also had quarantine quarters on site (it’s in one such room that young Vito Corleone waits out his own quarantine). That shift reflected the station’s more comprehensive embodiment of national immigration policies and narratives than any prior facility, as well as its gradual move toward more and more exclusionary roles (both trends about which I’ve written earlier in the week). Yet making the quarantine process a more explicit and interconnected part of the immigration station’s work has also had an unexpected result for historians: our ability to better trace those immigrants who did not survive their time in quarantine. This website, for example, matches relevant New York City death certificates from 1909 to 1911 with ship manifests and passenger details, identifying immigrant arrivals who seem to have passed away while in quarantine. That information not only tells us a great deal about individual immigrants and immigrant communities, as much of Ellis’ archives and records do, but also helps us better understand the histories and realities of the complex, dark, and vital quarantine process overall.Last IslandStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Ellis Island responses or contexts?

January 4, 2017: Ellis Island Studying: The Questions

[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 three examples of particularly complex and telling types of questions on the list of 29 that (as I wrote on Monday) were asked of immigrant arrivals to Ellis Island.1)      Communities: After the basic informational kinds of questions (although some, like “What is your race?,” weren’t quite as simple as they appear), the next group focused on the national and family communities from which arrivals came and which they might be joining here in the U.S. To my mind, one of the most seemingly straightforward questions from this group was also complex and telling: “Who paid for your passage?” Fears of the importation of forced laborers had driven immigration policy since at least California’s controversial 1862 Anti-Coolie Act, and this question could be linked to those concerns. Yet as I’ll highlight in item two, many turn of the 20thcentury anti-immigrant narratives focused on nefarious international groups such as “anarchists,” and the question likewise implied that such groups might be financing immigrants sympathetic to their cause. In any case, despite being located between two more factual questions (“What is your final destination in America?” and “How much money do you have with you?”), this one was at least far more loaded.2)      Threats: Some questions, like “Who paid for your passage?,” implicitly sought to determine if an immigrant might pose a danger to his or her new communities. Some, like the ridiculously overt two-parter “Are you a polygamist? Are you an anarchist?” (yes, those two comprised one of the 29 questions), did so very very explicitly; it’s difficult for me to imagine anyone knowing enough to be aware of those terms’ meanings answering this question in the affirmative. But to my mind the most complex and troubling of this type was another multi-parter: “Have you been in a prison, almshouse, or institution for the care of the insane?” Both convicted criminals (especially political prisoners) and the demonstrably “insane” had been excluded from immigrating since the first national immigration law, 1875’s Page Act, so those designations, while frustratingly slippery and malleable, weren’t new. But asking about those who had stayed in an almshouse—those who had experienced desperate poverty, that is—did represent an addition to these categories; or, to be exact, did link social class and status to crime and mental health in overt and even more frustratingly exclusionary ways.3)      Civics: If you made it through these other groups of questions, the last and largest group (comprising 11 of the 29 questions) focused on questions about American history and government: “Who was the first President of America?” [BEN: Not sure anyone has occupied that position, but I’m gonna go with either Simón Bolívar or Beyoncé], “What is the 4th of July?,” “Who signs bills into law?,” and so on. While some of these questions help us understand the natonal self-image Ellis Island sought to create (especially “Which President freed the slaves?”), I’m more interested in the existence and centrality of this category overall. It makes sense that for someone to become a U.S. citizen, he or she has to pass a test featuring such historical and civic topics; but that’s after more than a decade in the country, not upon first arrival to it. (Granted, the citizenship test is far more extensive than was Ellis’ civics portion, but the principle is the same.) Can and should we have expected that newcomers would know these details? I can see both sides of that debate, but in any case this group of questions clearly connects to broader turn of the 20thcentury narratives of the need to “Americanize” new immigrants as quickly and fully as possible.Next IslandStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Ellis Island responses or contexts?

January 3, 2017: Ellis Island Studying: The Changing Facility

[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!]Three turning points in the immigration station’s space and role.1)      The Fire: The Ellis Island station had only been open for five years when an 1897 firedestroyed its wooden buildings entirely. For the next three years, immigrants came through The Battery’s Barge Office while a new, brick and limestone main building was constructed (at a stunning cost of $1.5 million); that building opened in 1900 and would continue to be the station’s principal facility (with continual expansions and additions) for its remaining half-century of service. I don’t want to read too much into what was in large part a practical change (and one that undoubtedly reflected advancements in architecture and construction), but at the same time it’s difficult to miss the symbolism of a more flimsy and fragile structure being replaced by a much more expensive and permanent one. Ellis Island, like the national narratives of immigration about which I wrote yesterday, was here to stay.2)      From Immigration to Detention: In this post on Angel Island, the West Coast immigration station that opened in San Francisco harbor in 1910, I argued that Angel (in contrast to Ellis) was always more of a prison than an immigration station. As of 1910 that was certainly true, but over the next few decades Ellis Island would itself shift toward detaining and excluding many more arrivals than had initially been the case. After the 1921 and 1924 Quota Acts, the first truly all-encompassing immigration laws, virtually every Ellis Island arrival had to be measured against the total number of documented arrivals from his or her nation, and many were held and/or deported as a result. During World War II, this detention function became one of Ellis Island’s primary roles (with serving as a military training facility the other), with nearly 7000 arrivals from Germany, Italy, and Japan (among other nations) detained as “alien enemies.” Our collective memories of Ellis tend, understandably, to focus on those who entered the U.S. through its facilities—but those who did not comprise a vital part of the story as well.3)      An Evolving Museum: Ellis Island completed its service as an immigration station in 1954, but of course neither the story nor the site ended there. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson’s Proclamation 3656 added the island to the Statue of Liberty National Monument, giving the National Park Service jurisdiction over the facilities. Those facilities were extensively renovated beginning in 1984, a process that culminated in the 1990 opening of both the Ellis Island Immigration Museum and the American Immigrant Wall of Honor. More recently, the Ellis Island Foundation’s Peopling of America Center has opened, a two-part exhibit that interestingly focuses on immigration to the United States both prior and subsequent to Ellis’ 1892-1954 service. By expanding the museum beyond the histories of Ellis itself, this exhibit reflects but also extends and amplifies the island’s status as an embodiment of American immigration overall, a status that seems certain to endure well into the 21stcentury.Next IslandStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Ellis Island responses or contexts?

January 2, 2017: Ellis Island Studying: Castle Garden

[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!]What didn’t change when Ellis replaced New York’s prior immigration station, and what did.It isn’t nearly as present in our collective memories as Ellis Island—for some of the reasons I’ll get to in my third paragraph, along with the simpler fact that it’s located further in our past, and moreover in an era with far fewer photographs and no newsreels—but New York City’s Castle Garden was the nation’s first official “immigration station.” Located in The Battery, the park and fortified area at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan, the facilities and grounds known as Castle Garden were leased to the New York State Commissioners of Emigration in 1855, and opened as an official arrival point for immigrants in that same year. (Ships carrying immigrants had been docking in the area since at least 1820, but in a more local and somewhat less catalogued way.) By the time Ellis Island opened in 1892, more than 11 million immigrants had come through Castle Garden, and the excellent CastleGarden.org website features a searchable database of ships and passengers from across those decades (again, prior to 1855 less information was consistently recorded about those arrivals).We might remember Ellis Island more fully than we do Castle Garden, but the truth, as I’ll come back to in the week’s final post on immigration myths, is that the process of arrival for those immigrants who began coming through Ellis in 1892 was very similar to what had been the case for Castle Garden arrivals. Since the only national immigration laws as of 1892 were those excluding Chinese arrivals, virtually all of whom came to the West Coast, the vast majority of Ellis arrivals were no more subject to legal categorization than had been Castle ones. Instead, the process was defined by two steps: principally, recording the arrivals’ names, countries of origin, and American destinations (information that had been gathered in at least partial form since 1820); and secondarily, assessing arrivals for such potential problems as communicable diseases and status as criminal fugitives. The questions and procedures for both the information gathering and the risk assessments had evolved throughout the decades at Castle Garden, and would likewise evolve at Ellis, culminating in the list of 29 questions about which I’ll write later in the week. But nonetheless those procedures represent much more of a continuity than a change between the Castle and Ellis stations.If many of the on-the-ground realities connected the two stations, however, the collective images of them were far different—and not only in our 21st century collective memories, but in Ellis’ own era as well. It’s fair to say that images of immigration had become more nationally prominent overall by 1892, thanks to a variety of factors: the 1886 opening of the Statue of Liberty, which of course would become closely associated with its island neighbor Ellis; the fears and debates that produced the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and all of its aftermaths; the ongoing, largest (by propotion of population) wave of immigration in the nation’s history; and more. But it’s also important to note that prior to the Exclusion Act, and the subsequent Supreme Court decisions which upheld Congress’s ability to pass such an immigration law, immigration had been considered and treated as far more of a local or regional question than a national one. So if Ellis didn’t necessarily do much that Castle Garden hadn’t done before it, it nonetheless entered into—and very fully and enduringly came to embody—a new moment in our images and narratives of immigration. All the more reason to spend a week AmericanStudying it, I’d say!Next IslandStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Ellis Island responses or contexts?

December 31, 2016-January 1, 2017: December 2016 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]December 5: Fall 2016 Reflections: Intro to Science Fiction and Fantasy: A fall wrap-up series starts with three lessons for 21st century America from three great sci fi stories.December 6: Fall 2016 Reflections: Honors Seminar on the Gilded Age: The series continues with what three under-read literary works can help us analyze in contemporary America.December 7: Fall 2016 Reflections: Senior Seminar on 21st Century America: Three takeaways from a class overtly focused on our current moment, as the series rolls on.December 8: Fall 2016 Reflections: First Book Talks: Two good questions that arose in my first opportunities to share History and Hope in American Literature.December 9: Fall 2016 Reflections: Conversations with My Sons: The series concludes with two places and ways I’m talking with the boys about 2016 America.December 10-11: Spring 2017 Preview: Looking ahead to four reasons why I’m excited for Spring 2017—I’d love to hear your fall reflections or spring plans in comments!December 12: Basketball’s Birthday: James Naismith: A series on the sport’s 125thbirthday starts with three interesting contexts for basketball’s inventor.December 13: Basketball’s Birthday: Chamberlain and Russell: The series continues with a clear distinction between two iconic greats, and why it’s not quite so clear.December 14: Basketball’s Birthday: Rudy, Hoosiers, and Race: The appeal of underdog stories and the social issues they have to leave out, as the series rolls on.December 15: Basketball’s Birthday: Magic Johnson: Genuine low and high points for the legendary Laker, and what they both exemplify.December 16: Basketball’s Birthday: LeBron and Activism: The series concludes with what’s crucial, and what’s complicated, about the superstar’s public activisms.December 17-18: Crowd-sourced BasketballStudying: One of my best crowd-sourced posts yet, as fellow BasketballStudiers share lots of great histories and stories. Add yours in comments!December 19: Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: Student Films: My annual wishing series starts with a wonderful student filmmaker and the vital role of student art.December 20: Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: EmergingUS:  The series continues with the latest important and inspiring initiative from a crucial 21st century voice.December 21: Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: Liberation’s List: A few 21stcentury levels to a charitable and crucial wish, as the series rolls on.December 22: Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: Colleagues: Highlighting the great work of a number of my Fitchburg State English Studies colleagues.December 23-25: Wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves: My Sons: The series concludes with three wishes for and from my best reasons for hope in 2017.December 26: 2016 in Review: That Damn Election: My annual year in review series starts with two ways to respond to an awful political moment.December 27: 2016 in Review: Standing Rock: The series continues with two contexts for an inspiring activist victory.December 28: 2016 in Review: Aleppo: What’s all too familiar about an unfolding genocide, and what might be different this time, as the series rolls on.December 29: 2016 in Review: The Cubs Win!: Personal and pop cultural contexts for one of the year’s most feel-good stories.December 30: 2016 in Review: Jarad Nelson on Feminism in Pop Music: The series concludes with the year’s final Guest Post, an FSU English Studies Major on pop culture and feminism.First series of the New Year starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know!

December 30, 2016: 2016 in Review: Jarad Nelson on Feminism in Pop Music

[As usual, I’ve ended the year—even this most frustrating of years—by AmericanStudying a handful of major stories. This time featuring this special Friday Guest Post, excerpted with permission from one of the wonderful student papers in my Senior Seminar on 21st Century America!][Jarad Nelson is a Fitchburg State University English Studies major, focusing on Professional Writing; he’s one of our most talented writers and voices, and I’m very excited to see where his career and work take him next. This piece is excerpted from his Seminar Paper, “Feminism in Pop Music”—Jarad followed this up by analyzing two 2016 songs and videos, Daya’s “Sit Still, Look Pretty” and Alessia Cara’s “Scars to Your Beautiful.”]
I think feminism has always been on the boundaries of pop culture, at least in the twenty first century, but was either ignored or given a wrong interpretation of what it actually was. Too many celebrities have been asked about being a feminist but quickly shut down the idea. “No, I wouldn’t say feminist – that’s too strong. I think when people hear feminist it’s like ‘get out of my way, I don’t need anyone.’ I love that I have a man that’s a leader. I’m not a feminist in that sense” (Duca). This quote perfectly shows the misunderstanding people have of feminism in pop culture. It has a negative connotation that woman who are feminists are brash, and that they aren’t allowed to be involved with men in any sort of way. There’s also a sense of not seeing the problem, as you can see in this quote by Taylor Swift, “I don’t really think about things as guys versus girls. I never have. I was raised by parents who brought me up to think if you work as hard as guys, you can go far in life” (Duca). You just have to work harder. What’s interesting about this is the similarities it holds to people’s view on the poor, the majority of who are minorities. The view that they just don’t work hard enough, it’s their own fault for not having everything that the white man has. While this might be true for a small number of people, it’s definitely not true for all. After all there’s a reason affirmative action is a thing.
These are just a few examples of how feminism was misunderstood by pop culture artists, but they are important because they show how feminism is misunderstood, and explain why the misunderstanding is perpetual. When no one is correcting them on their mistakes, nothing changes. However, things have changed. Looking at pop culture around 2013 and 2014 there were many “phenomenons” that can be attributed to pop culture’s warmer embrace of feminism that wasn’t seen earlier in the twenty first century.
During this time, there are a number of events that happened that seemed to change the scope of how feminism was perceived and portrayed to mass audiences. I believe one of these events was the song “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke. There has never been a song, in my lifetime, that had sparked such a controversy as “Blurred Lines” did. Many interpreted the song to be about rape, and its video, with topless models being gawked at by Thicke, Pharell Williams, and T.I., did not help its case.
“Ok, now he was close/ Tried to domesticate you/ But you’re an animal/ Baby, it’s in your nature/ Just let me liberate you/ You don’t need no papers/ That man is not your maker…” (Robin Thicke). You don’t have to go far into Thicke’s lyrics before you find where people see the misogynistic qualities they blame the song for having. In this verse, he relates the subject of the song, a woman he’s seen out somewhere, to animal who need domestication. This is a problem because it suggests that men have power over women, and it’s their job to reign them in when they start to get crazy. From that, a line can be drawn to the belief that women have to settle down with a man and bear children. However, Thicke goes on to say “Just let me liberate you…” (Robin Thicke). Thicke doesn’t want “domesticate” her he wants her to be free from those constraints. This could be positive, but he wants to liberate her for sex. This is where the allusions to rape start to come in.
“I know you want it/ You’re a good girl/ Can’t let it get past me/ You’re far from plastic/ Talk about getting blasted/ I hate these blurred lines/ I know you want it…/ But you’re a good girl/ The way you grab me/ Must wanna get nasty…” (Robin Thicke). In the song, we are only given Thicke’s point of view, where he repeatedly tells listeners that he knows she wants it (sex). The problem with this, is that the women doesn’t get a voice in the matter and we are given very little context about what is going on in the situation. This could easily be the woman grabbing his arm as she passes by him in a club, or even a grocery store. He assumes that she is coming onto him, and that means she wants to have sex with him. Consent does not even occur to him, instead he reads her body language, which is incredibly subjective. He even seems to admit that body language is not precise, when he says “I hate these blurred lines” (Robin Thicke).
Thicke also released a video with the song, and it only seemed to exemplify the point the general public was trying to make, that this song promotes rape culture. The video has Thicke, Pharrell Williams, and T.I. along with three other women. The only thing is then men are fully dressed, while the women run around in underwear, or completely naked, depending on the version you decide to watch. Diane Martel, the director of the video, has said that the video is meant to be “funny and subtly ridiculing” (Martel). While I do see this point, it doesn’t cover up the sense that the men are predators and that all six are not on a level playing field. The whole video is centered around the men chasing these women around and fawning over them. While the women spend the whole time looking at the camera, the men spend most of the time looking at the women. No amount of nakedness will take away from the men chasing women around and staring at them. The women in this video were also supposed to overpower the men, according to Martel, which is why they stare at the camera the whole time. This doesn’t work as well as Martel had hoped, and only feels like a way to hide that the men are in the position of power. Perhaps if the women were fully clothed like the men viewers would be able to see that these women are in control of the situation.
“Blurred Lines” was a song that garnered a lot of attention even before the video was released, and the shock value of the video helped make this song as popular as it was. While the song itself did nothing to promote feminism in pop music, the backlash it received from listeners is what really made a significant impact on feminism in pop music.
While Robin Thicke’s song got people talking about an important aspect of feminism, it wasn’t until a year later that feminism really came to the forefront of pop music in a positive way. Performed in front of an audience, as well as broadcasted to 8.3 million TV viewers, Beyoncé showed her audience what a feminist is and what a feminist can be. She was cool and attractive, but still has a man by her side and a child she loves. This goes directly against what we have grown up thinking a feminist is, and for probably the first time, a mass audience was educated on feminism. “We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings            in the way that boys are. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, ‘you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man.’ Feminist, a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes” (Adichie). This is a quote from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk on feminism, and was placed in Beyoncé’s performance while the words FEMINISM glowed brightly behind her. Beyoncé shows us that she has gone against what girls have been taught to do and lives up to Adichie’s words. She  
“seems to debunk every feminist stereotype you’ve ever heard. Beyoncé can’t be a man-hater – she’s got a man (right?). Her relationship – whatever you believe about the divorce rumors – has been elevated as a kind of model for egalitarian bliss: dual earners, adventurous sex life, supportive husband and an adorable child held up on stage by daddy while mommy worked. Beyoncé’s got the confidence of a superstar but the feminine touch of a mother. And, as a woman of color, she’s speaking to the masses – a powerful voice amid a movement that has a complicated history when it comes to inclusion” (Bennett).
Beyoncé was able to show the masses what a feminist can be, but this never would have happened without the platform she used to get her statement out there.
This performance was from the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards, and was over fifteen minutes long, not a timeslot every single performer at an awards show gets. The reason she received this performance time was because of an award she was given; The Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, a lifetime achievement award for music artists. This couldn’t have worked out any more perfectly for the statement she wanted to make. She’s getting recognized for her work since the beginning of her career, her ambition and successes are being celebrated in front of a mass audience. The pieces could not have fallen into place any more neatly than they did.  While she could make the same statement at every single one of her concerts, it wouldn’t have reached the amount of people that it had, even as one of the most influential artists in pop music.
While how she got her message out there is one of the biggest factors for the success of her statement, it’s not the only one responsible for its success. As Jessica Bennett said in her article quoted above, Beyoncé is “a woman of color, she’s speaking to the masses – a powerful voice amid a movement that has a complicated history when it comes to inclusion.” The problems faced by women of color and white women are the same, generally speaking. However, if a white woman were to do what Beyoncé had done, would it have changed the pop music landscape the same way. There’s not really any way to know, but I feel that it is unlikely. Beyoncé is able to connect to an entire audience in a way that a white woman wouldn’t be able to; she is black. That’s not to say that just because she is black she automatically has the attention of every black viewer in the audience, but they can relate to her in a way that they couldn’t relate to a white woman. She is a person of color, and she is showing how hard work and ambition pays off, even when all the odds are stacked against you culturally.
“Her performance captured the moment an academic movement was embraced by the mainstream” (Vincent). This isn’t to say that a mainstream pop artist has never brought up the themes that Beyoncé did in her performance, but she was able to catapult these themes to the forefront of pop culture in a positive way that no other artist has done before. This ultimately paved the way for artists to identify with feminism without receiving backlash for it. [December recap this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other 2016 stories you’d highlight?]

December 29, 2016: 2016 in Review: The Cubs Win!

[As usual, I’ll end the year—even this most frustrating of years—by AmericanStudying a handful of major stories. This time featuring a special Friday Guest Post from one of the wonderful student papers in my Senior Seminar on 21st Century America! Please add your year in review responses, thoughts, and airing of grievances in comments.]On two contexts for one of the year’s true feel-good stories.Since my first three year in review posts had focused on pretty weighty topics, I wanted for this fourth and final post of mine (before tomorrow’s Guest Post) to engage with a more pleasurable story: the Chicago Cubs breaking their 108 year streak and winning the 2016 World Series. I’m not suggesting that sports aren’t significant—hopefully the many posts and series linked under this blog’s Sports category make clear how much I see sports as a vital part of our culture and society, past and present. Neither would I argue that sports simply offer escapism, a way to forget about the kinds of topics on which my first three posts have focused—not only because we can’t and shouldn’t forget those contemporary topics, but also because sports themselves often feature, and indeed help us better engage with, precisely such cultural and social issues. But at the same time, part of being an AmericanStudier—part of being an academic at all—is not allowing our analytical lenses to obscure the pleasures we can take from the worlds around us; and there’s nothing like being a father to two sports-obsessed sons to remind me of just how pleasurable (and, yes, painful) the world of sports can be.My sons are more into football and soccer than baseball, but the broader spectrum of baseball fans, and questions of what the sport means to them, nonetheless offers one interesting and important lens through which to analyze the Cubs victory. On a personal level, I have a number of friends who are Cubs fans, none more so than ; Lito’s one of those 21st century friends whom I met through a friend on Facebook and haven’t had the chance to meet in person, but he’s a friend nevertheless, and watching the ups and downs of the 2016 postseason through his eyes became one of the more charged and moving experiences of my year. On a public level, I was just as moved watching legendary comedian and actor Bill Murray process and respond to the Cubs’ Game 7 and Series victory—it’s easy (and likely inevitable) to feel far removed from such uber-famous figures, but Murray’s emotional momentsremind us of how much such experiences and emotions are shared across any and all distinctions or boundaries. If the goal of life is to find, experience, and keep emotional connections to the people and world around us, both the most inspiring and the most challenging varieties, then there are few if any elements that provide those connections more consistently and potently than sports (artistic and cultural works, of course, being another).Speaking of artistic and cultural works, a predicted Cubs World Series victory plays a role in a number of pop culture texts. The most famous is likely Back to the Future Part II, which predicted a 2015 Cubs victory at the same time as, as many have noted, the social and political ascendance of the very Donald Trump-like Biff. But the TV show Parks and Rec nailed its prediction even more exactly, setting one of its culminating 2015 season’s flash-forwardsin a spring of 2017 where “obviously everyone [in Chicago is] in a great mood right now because of the Cubs winning the Series.” These pop culture references were often used for either shock value about future changes (as in Marty McFly’s disbelief) or humor about the victory’s unlikeliness in reality (as in this moment from The Simpsons). But I believe the Parks and Rec moment works in a different way, one that certainly riffs off of that unlikeliness but that focuses instead on what a Cubs victory would mean for the community that experiences it (a choice that makes sense in a show that was all about communal identities, politics, and relationships). In each and every case, these references reflect what sports means in our culture, how culture engages with those meanings, and how a Chicago Cubs World Series victory could and did resonate across multiple layers of our 2016 landscape.Special Guest Post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other 2016 stories you’d highlight?

December 28, 2016: 2016 in Review: Aleppo

[As usual, I’ll end the year—even this most frustrating of years—by AmericanStudying a handful of major stories. This time featuring a special Friday Guest Post from one of the wonderful student papers in my Senior Seminar on 21st Century America! Please add your year in review responses, thoughts, and airing of grievances in comments.]On what’s all too familiar about an unfolding 2016 genocide, and what might be different.Syria has dominated the news in America for more than a year, as evidenced by my inclusion of a post on Syrian refugees on this exact date in last year’s series. But while the nation’s civil war and its international effects (and the question of whether and how the US should intervene) have thus been a multi-part story for a long while, the last few months, and in particular the last couple weeks, have seen a horrific new focus (at least in news reporting here in the United States) for that story: the multiple battles and humanitarian crises, and now the overt unfolding genocide, taking place in the city of Aleppo. While I’m far from an expert, it seems clear to me that President Bashir al-Assad’s forces, aided and abetted by Vladimir Putin’s Russia, have turned what might once have been a military campaign into a direct and brutal assault on the city and its civilians; while international diplomats and lawyers might quibble over the legal definition of a genocide (and I know those aren’t just quibbles, as they influence when international organizations can intervene), as a historian I’m more than willing to apply the term to a situation where it seems all too clearly and horrifically to fit.Starting at least with the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917, the story of US international relations across much of the 20th and into the 21st century could be rightfully described as a series of failures to help prevent or even minimize such genocides. From turning away Jewish refugees in the early years of the Holocaust (and of course not entering the war at all until we were bombed by Japan in late 1941) right on through to Rwanda and Darfurin the 1990s and early 2000s, the US time and again has at best turned a blind eye to (and at worst actively ignored or even countenanced) these and other historic humanitarian crises. Even in the case of the Bosnian genocide, which might seem to offer a counterexample, the US and its NATO allies only intervened with airstrikes against Slobodan Milosevic’s forces in 1995, nearly three years after the ethnic cleansings had begun; by that time the city of Srebrenica, for example, had been the site of a particularly horrific massacre, one with clear echoes in the situation in Aleppo today. It’s all too possible that, as was the case for so many of these historic horrors, we here in the United States won’t fully grapple with Aleppo and Syrian genocide until the histories are written, the memorials are built, the apologies are offered years down the road.But it’s also possible that things will be different this time, and if they are, I will have to credit social media as a key new factor. I’m thinking in particular about Bana al-Abed, the 7 year-old Syrian girl and Aleppo resident whose Twitter account (maintained by her mother but featuring Bana’s own voice in the Tweets, apparently) became an international sensation and drew attention not only to her personal situation, but to the city and genocide more broadly as well. My very talented cousin John Scott-Railton has written and worked extensively on the possibilities of the internet and social media in international crises such as the internet shutdowns during the Arab Spring and, indeed, in Syria. While Bana’s case might seem singular or at least rare, similar to that of Malala Yousafzai in offering a unique and compelling story and identity that can capture international attention, I believe John’s work tells a different story, one in which social media and digital voices have become a vital tool for threatened and besieged communities around the world. It’s far from certain what will happen next for Aleppo, Syrian, the United States, and the world—but perhaps social media and digital voices and stories like Bana’s can help us respond to this unfolding genocide more promptly and productively than we’ve been able to in these historic instances.Next 2016 review tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other 2016 stories you’d highlight?

December 27, 2016: 2016 in Review: Standing Rock

[As usual, I’ll end the year—even this most frustrating of years—by AmericanStudying a handful of major stories. This time featuring a special Friday Guest Post from one of the wonderful student papers in my Senior Seminar on 21st Century America! Please add your year in review responses, thoughts, and airing of grievances in comments.]On two vital contexts for the year’s most impressive activist victory.If the presidential election was 2016’s most frustrating political and social event, the protests at North Dakota’s Standing Rock reservation were its most successful. The Obama administration’s decision to order the Army Corps of Engineers to find a new route for the Dakota Access Pipeline, one that doesn’t transgress on sacred Sioux land, might well be in jeopardy from the incoming Trump administration, not least because both Trump and his Energy secretary nominee Rick Perry apparently are connected to (or at least have at one time owned stock in) the pipeline’s parent company. But if that uncertainty means the fight will continue, that shouldn’t and doesn’t take away from the very successful fight that the Standing Rock protesters—including the largest gathering of Native Americans in more than a century, and many supporters who joined them in their efforts—already waged and won. In the face of nothing less than police brutality, including hoses being turned on them amid freezing conditions (among other violent assaults), these water protectors modeled the best of American activism.The Standing Rock protests aren’t just a 2016 triumph, however—they also reflect, and can help us better remember, important and inspiring American histories. I wrote about one series of such histories, those of Native American activisms across the centuries post-contact, in this Huffington Post piece. I had the chance in that piece to highlight many of my favorite Native American activist texts and figures, from William Apess and the Cherokee Memorials to Sarah Winnemucca and Standing Bear. Standing Bear’s 1879 trial is particularly relevant to Standing Rock, as his activist voice and legal efforts secured a vital response and recognition from the federal government. But I would also highlight Apess’s amazing and brave “Eulogy on King Philip” (1836), a speech he delivered at Boston’s Odeon Theater and which he opens by arguing that the Wampanoag leader should be compared to George Washington, and that he “died a martyr to his cause, though unsuccessful, yet as glorious as the American Revolution.” If we could truly hear Apess there, truly see a native leader like Philip (Metacomet) as another kind of national founding father, we’d be a long way toward avoiding future Standing Rocks.At Standing Rock, as in all these historical moments, native activists and leaders led the fight for their rights and sovereignty. But in each case, they were supported and aided by impressive non-native allies, from William Lloyd Garrison (who helped Apess and Mashpee achieve their 1834 legal victory) to Lewis H. Hopkins(the Bureau of Indian Affairs reformer who married Sarah Winnemucca and accompanied her on the Eastern lecture tour that helped sway public opinion and federal authority to the Paiute’s cause). The Standing Rock protests featured a number of prominent non-native allies as well, from celebrities like Shailene Woodley to political figures like Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein. But I would single out the group of military veterans who journeyed to Standing Rock to protect the water protectors, not only because of their courage in doing so but also and especially because it produced this truly stunning apology and moment. That ceremony, like many aspects of the Standing Rock protests, doesn’t only represent a model for American community and activism moving forward—it also echoes and extends, and can thus help us remember, these most inclusive and shared American histories.Next 2016 review tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other 2016 stories you’d highlight?

December 26, 2016: 2016 in Review: That Damn Election

[As usual, I’ll end the year—even this most frustrating of years—by AmericanStudying a handful of major stories. This time featuring a special Friday Guest Post from one of the wonderful student papers in my Senior Seminar on 21st Century America! Please add your year in review responses, thoughts, and airing of grievances in comments.]On two ways to respond to a still unbelievably awful political moment.I’m writing this post on December 19th, the day that members of the Electoral College vote all over the country to formally confirm Donald Trump as the next President of the United States. I’m sure I’m not alone in having spent the six weeks after the election in a vague and admittedly nonsensical state of both denial and optimism, believing somehow that we wouldn’t really get to this point. But we’re here, and while the results aren’t official as of the moment I write these words [serious inside baseball stuff in this paragraph and I apologize, but it feels relevant to the immediacy of this particular post’s topics and moment], I don’t think any faithless electors or emoluments clause aficionados are going to stop or even delay the inevitable. Hell, I don’t even think Joe Biden will do the cool thing he could do in early January to confirm Merrick Garland as a Supreme Court Justice, although that one seems to be eminently fair and reasonable (and not just because it’s quite possible Trump will nominate Judge Judy or Judge Reinhold, although also yes).So we’re entering the Trump era, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how to respond to that new political and national reality, in my public scholarly work as in every other way. I would say that my first three post-election Huffington Post pieces—on Reconstruction/reconciliation, Japanese internment, and the Wilmington coup and massacre—offer clear examples of one main response I’m determined to pursue. In each case, I’ve tried to engage with under-remembered American histories not only to contextualize present situations and debates, but also and most importantly to express both fears about where we might be headed and goals for how we just might learn from the past and move in a different direction instead. I don’t believe that the present is simply an echo or repetition of the past, but rather that many of the issues, narratives, and perspectives that have contributed to our histories remain very much present and in play. And public AmericanStudies scholars are in a particularly good place to help us remember, engage with, and again learn from those histories as we move into a future that is both uncertain and up to us to help determine.So that’s one thing I can and plan to do in the election’s aftermath and over the next four (or more, although on that note I remain in that combination of denial and optimism!) years. But I believe there’s another important way to respond, and I’ll put it more briefly for obvious reasons: to listen to all those fellow Americans for whom Trump poses a far greater threat. From Syrian refugees to the LGBT community, Mexican Americans to the young Americans affected by DACA, incarcerated Americans to workers in minimum wage jobs, there are countless American communities who will likely bear the brunt of Trump’s policies and effects. I’m not going to pretend like I know or can even imagine what that will mean—but I can and do promise to listen to all these fellow Americans, and then to do everything I can to support them in these battles. There are few, if any, more significant efforts we can all undertake in 2017.Next 2016 review tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other 2016 stories you’d highlight?