Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 289

June 1, 2016: Decoration Day Histories: Roger Pryor

[Following up Monday’s Memorial Day special, a series on some of the complex American histories connected to the holiday’s original identity as Decoration Day.]On the invitation and speech that mark two shifts in American attitudes.In May 1876, New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music invited Confederate veteran, lawyer, and Democratic politician Roger A. Pryor to deliver its annual Decoration Day address. As Pryor noted in his remarks, the invitation was most definitely an “overture of reconciliation,” one that I would pair with the choice (earlier that same month) of Confederate veteran and poet Sidney Lanier to write and deliver the opening Cantata at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Indeed, reunion and reconciliation were very much the themes of 1876, threads that culminated in the contested presidential election and the end of Federal Reconstruction that immediately followed it (and perhaps, although historians have different perspectives on this point, stemmed from that election’s controversial results). In any case, this was a year in which the overtures of reconciliation were consistently heard, and we could locate Pryor’s address among the rest.Yet the remarks that Pryor delivered in his Decoration Day speech could not be accurately described as reconciliatory—unless we shift the meaning to “trying to reconcile his Northern audiences with his Confederate perspective on the war, its causes and effects, and both regions.” Pryor was still waiting, he argued, for “an impartial history” to be told, one that more accurately depicted both “the cause of secession” and Civil War and the subsequent, “dismal period” of Reconstruction. While he could not by any measure be categorized as impartial, he nonetheless attempted to offer his own version of those histories and issues throughout the speech—one designed explicitly, I would argue, to convert his Northern audience to that version of both past and present. Indeed, as I argue at length in my first book, narratives of reunion and reconciliation were quickly supplanted in this period by ones of conversion, attempts—much of the time, as Reconstruction lawyer and novelist Albion Tourgée noted in an 1888 article, very successful attempts at that—to convert the North and the nation as a whole to this pro-Southern standpoint.In my book’s analysis I argued for a chronological shift: that reunion/reconciliation was a first national stage in this period, and conversion a second. But Pryor’s Decoration Day speech reflects how the two attitudes could go hand-in-hand: the Northern invitation to Pryor could reflect, as he noted, that attitude of reunion on the part of Northern leaders; and Pryor’s remarks and their effects (which we cannot know for certain in this individual case, but which were, as Tourgée noted, quite clear in the nation as a whole) could both comprise and contribute to the attitudes of conversion to the Southern perspective. And in any case, it’s important to add that both reconciliation and conversion differ dramatically from the original purpose of Decoration Day, as delineated so bluntly and powerfully by Frederick Douglass in his 1871 speech: remembrance, of the Northern soldiers who died in the war and of the cause for which they did so. By 1876, it seems clear, that purpose was shifting, toward a combination of amnesia and propaganda, of forgetting the war’s realities and remembering a propagandistic version of them created by voices like Pryor’s.Next Decoration Day history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

May 31, 2016: Decoration Day Histories: Douglass

[Following up Monday’s Memorial Day special, a series on some of the complex American histories connected to the holiday’s original identity as Decoration Day.]On one of the great American speeches, and why it’d be so important to add to our collective memories.In a long-ago guest post on Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Atlantic blog, Civil War historian Andy Hall highlighted Frederick Douglass’s amazing 1871 Decoration Day speech (full text available at that first link). Delivered at Virginia’s Arlington National Cemetery, then as now the single largest resting place of U.S. soldiers, Douglass’s short but incredibly (if not surprisingly) eloquent and pointed speech has to be ranked as one of the most impressive in American history. I’m going to end this first paragraph here so you can read the speech in full (again, it’s at the first link above), and I’ll see you in a few.Welcome back! If I were to close-read Douglass’s speech, I could find choices worth extended attention in every paragraph and every line. But I agree with Hall’s final point, that the start of Douglass’s concluding paragraph—“But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause. We must never forget that victory to the rebellion meant death to the republic”—is particularly noteworthy and striking. Granted, this was not yet the era that would come to be dominated by narratives of reunion and reconciliation between the regions, and then by ones of conversation to the Southern perspective (on all of which, see tomorrow’s post); an era in which Douglass’s ideas would be no less true, nor in which (I believe) he would have hesitated to share them, but in which a Decoration Day organizing committee might well have chosen not to invite a speaker who would articulate such a clear and convincing take on the causes and meanings of the Civil War. Yet even in 1871, to put that position so bluntly and powerfully at such an occasion would have been impressive for even a white speaker, much less an African American one.If we were to better remember Douglass’s Decoration Day speech, that would be one overt and important effect: to push back on so many of the narratives of the Civil War that have developed in the subsequent century and a half. One of the most frequent such narratives is that there was bravery and sacrifice on both sides, as if to produce a leveling effect on our perspective on the war—but as Douglass notes in the paragraph before that conclusion, recognizing individual bravery in combat is not at all the same as remembering a war: “The essence and significance of our devotions here today are not to be found in the fact that the men whose remains fill these graves were brave in battle.” I believe Douglass here can be connected to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and its own concluding notion of honoring the dead through completing “the unfinished work”: “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us.” That work and task remained unfinished and great long after the Civil War’s end, after all—and indeed remain so to this day in many ways. Just another reason to better remember Frederick Douglass’s Decoration Day speech.Next Decoration Day history tomorrow,BenIPS. What do you think?

May 30, 2016: Better Remembering Memorial Day

[This special post is the first of a series inspired by the history behind Memorial Day. Check out my similar 2012 and 2014 series for more!]
On what we don’t remember about Memorial Day, and why we should.
In a long-ago post on the Statue of Liberty, I made a case for remembering, and engaging much more fully, with what the Statue was originally intended, by its French abolitionist creator, to symbolize: the legacy of slavery and abolitionism in both America and France, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the memories of what he had done to advance that cause, and so on. I tried there, hopefully with some success, to leave ample room for what the Statue has come to mean, both for America as a whole and, more significantly still, for generation upon generation of immigrant arrivals to the nation. I think those meanings, especially when tied to Emma Lazarus’ poem and its radically democratic and inclusive vision of our national identity, are beautiful and important in their own right. But how much more profound and meaningful, if certainly more complicated, would they be if they were linked to our nation’s own troubled but also inspiring histories of slavery and abolitionism, of sectional strife and Civil War, of racial divisions and those who have worked for centuries to transcend and bridge them?
I would say almost exactly the same thing when it comes to the history of Memorial Day. For the last century or so, at least since the end of World War I, the holiday has meant something broadly national and communal, an opportunity to remember and celebrate those Americans who have given their lives as members of our armed forces. While I certainly feel that some of the narratives associated with that idea are as simplifying and mythologizing and meaningless as many others I’ve analyzed here—“they died for our freedom” chief among them; the world would be a vastly different, and almost certainly less free, place had the Axis powers won World War II (for example), but I have yet to hear any convincing case that the world would be even the slightest bit worse off were it not for the quarter of a million American troops who lives were wasted in the Vietnam War (for another)—those narratives are much more about politics and propaganda, and don’t change at all the absolutely real and tragic and profound meaning of service and loss for those who have done so and all those who know and love them. One of the most pitch-perfect statements of my position on such losses can be found in a song by (surprisingly) Bruce Springsteen; his “Gypsy Biker,” from Magic (2007), certainly includes a strident critique of the Bush Administration and Iraq War, as seen in lines like “To those who threw you away / You ain’t nothing but gone,” but mostly reflects a brother’s and family’s range of emotions and responses to the death of a young soldier in that war.
Yet as with the Statue, Memorial Day’s original meanings and narratives are significantly different from, and would add a great deal of complexity and power to, these contemporary images. The holiday was first known as Decoration Day, and was (at least per the thorough histories of it by scholars like David Blight) originated in 1865 by a group of freed slaves in Charleston, South Carolina; the slaves visited a cemetery for Union soldiers on May 1st of that year and decorated their graves, a quiet but very sincere tribute to what those soldiers have given and what it had meant to the lives of these freedmen and –women. The holiday quickly spread to many other communities, and just as quickly came to focus more on the less potentially divisive, or at least less complex as reminders of slavery and division and the ongoing controversies of Reconstruction and so on, perspectives of former soldiers—first fellow Union ones, but by the 1870s veterans from both sides. Yet former slaves continued to honor the holiday in their own way, as evidenced by a powerful scene from Constance Fenimore Woolson’s “Rodman the Keeper” (1880), in which the protagonist observes a group of ex-slaves leaving their decorations on the graves of the Union dead at the cemetery where he works. On the one hand, these ex-slave memorials are parallel to the family memories that now dominate Memorial Day, and serve as a beautiful reminder that the American family extends to blood relations of very different and perhaps even more genuine kinds. But on the other hand, the ex-slave memorials represent far more complex and in many ways (I believe) significant American stories and perspectives than a simple familial memory; these acts were a continuing acknowledgment both of some of our darkest moments and of the ways in which we had, at great but necessary cost, defeated them.Again, I’m not trying to suggest that any current aspects or celebrations of Memorial Day are anything other than genuine and powerful; having heard some eloquent words about what my Granddad’s experiences with his fellow soldiers had meant to him (he even commandeered an abandoned bunker and hand-wrote a history of the Company after the war!), I share those perspectives. But as with the Statue and with so many of our national histories, what we’ve forgotten is just as genuine and powerful, and a lot more telling about who we’ve been and thus who and where we are. The more we can remember those histories too, the more complex and meaningful our holidays, our celebrations, our memories, and our futures will be.Series continues tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

May 28-29, 2016: May 2016 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]May 2: Classical Music Icons: Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring”: A classical music series kicks off with the composer and work that helped bring classical music to America, and vice versa.May 3: Classical Music Icons: The Gershwins: The series continues with the lesser-known careers and works of the other two Gershwin siblings.May 4: Classical Music Icons: Maria Callas: Two telling dualities embodied by one of America’s most famous opera singers, as the series rolls on.May 5: Classical Music Icons: Yo-Yo Ma: Three very American moments in the career of one of our most talented classical musicians.May 6: Classical Music Icons: Florence Foster Jenkins: The series concludes with what’s funny, and what’s more serious, about a famous failure.May 7-8: Mother’s Day Special Post: For the holiday, highlighting a short story that helps us remember and celebrate one of society’s toughest and most vital roles.May 9: Semester Reflections: Yung Wing in Am Lit I: A series of Spring 16 reflections kicks off with a long overdue first step in my American literature survey.May 10: Semester Reflections: Annie Baker in Capstone: The series continues with two distinct but complementary reasons to teach more drama in literature courses.May 11: Semester Reflections: A Writing Associate in Major American Authors: One expected and one surprising lesson provided by my student Writing Associate, as the series rolls on.May 12: Semester Reflections: Multimedia Texts in Ethnic American Lit: The value of adding two kinds of multimedia texts to a familiar and favorite course.May 13: Semester Reflections: Poetry in ALFA: The series concludes with three examples of poems that complemented the historical subjects in my latest Adult Learning course.May 14-15: Fall 2016 Questions: A special weekend post on three requests through which you can help with my Fall 16 course planning and development!May 16: AmericanStudying 60s Rock: The Beach Boys and Dylan: A series on the 50thanniversary of Pet Sounds and Blonde on Blonde kicks off with those two models for artistic innovation.May 17: AmericanStudying 60s Rock: “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”: The series continues with a troubling song and why those problems do and don’t matter.May 18: AmericanStudying 60s Rock: Jimi Hendrix’s Covers: What the legendary guitarist brought to three covers, as the series rocks on.May 19: AmericanStudying 60s Rock: Joan and Janis: Two alternate visions of 60s counter-culture, and what links them.May 20: AmericanStudying 60s Rock: Woodstock: The series concludes with three telling moments from across the four-day festival that culminated 60s rock.May 21-22: Crowd-sourced RockStudying: One of my most epic crowd-sourced posts yet, with rocking responses and even a mini-Guest Post from many fellow RockStudiers—add your own, please!May 23: New Scholarly Books: Heidi Kim’s Invisible Subjects: A series on new AmericanStudies scholarly books starts with a great addition to Asian and American Studies.May 24: New Scholarly Books: André Carrington’s Speculative Blackness: The series continues with a vital connection of race, science fiction, and cultural studies.May 25: New Scholarly Books: Teresa Thomas’ American Arabists in the Cold War Middle East: A colleague’s important new book and inspiring career arc, as the series rolls on.May 26: New Scholarly Books: Jacobs and King’s Fed Power: A public scholarly book with the potential to impact and alter the presidential campaign and beyond.May 27: New Scholarly Books: Finding Light between the Pages: The series concludes with three things to know about my own scholarly book-in-progress!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

May 27, 2016: New Scholarly Books: Finding Light between the Pages

[With the semester done, this week I’ll be getting to work on the final revisions of my forthcoming fourth book. So I wanted to highlight briefly four new books in American Studies by colleagues and friends, leading up to this special post on my own manuscript in progress. I’d still love for you to share your own book recommendations!]Three things to know about my latest book manuscript, which is under contact with Rowman & Littlefield and for which I’m finalizing revisions as we speak:1)      A new title: For a long time, the book was gonna be titled Hard-Won Hope: How American Authors Find Light in Our Darkest Histories. That title still sums up my central argument, but working with my editor we’ve come up with a new title, Finding Light between the Pages. As with any change this one took me some time to wrap my head around, but I now really like it and feel that it captures both my optimism and the project’s perspective on literature’s vital cultural role really effectively. Can’t wait to see it on a cover!2)      A key idea: If hard-won hope offers one summative phrase for my book’s argument, critical patriotism provides another—and captures even more succinctly the specifically American stakes of finding such hard-won hope. I’m not the only public AmericanStudies scholar making the case for a more nuanced and critical form of American patriotism—check out this piece on ‘Merica Magazine by one of its co-founders, Ed Simon. I hope my book can exemplify, both in its focal texts and in and of itself, the possibilities and value of such critical American patriotism.3)      It was fun!: I began writing this book in 2012, and submitted the first version of it to a publisher in early 2014; it’s undergone many forms and revisions, submissions and rejections, next steps and dead ends, since, before finding this very happy home with Rowman. The main reason I’ve been so able and willing to stick with it through all that is that I’ve genuinely enjoyed the work—the chance to write about some of my favorite authors and works (from Chesnutt’s Marrow of Tradition to Bulosan’s America is in the Heart to McCarthy’s The Road, among many others), the opportunity to think big about some of what’s most important in both public scholarship and America as I would define them. Maybe it can’t always be fun, this work we do—but as the great books I’ve highlighted this week illustrate, and as I hope mine will demonstrate as well, fun and serious can certainly go hand in hand.Monthly recap this weekend,BenPS. So one more time: other books (new or not) you’d recommend?

May 26, 2016: New Scholarly Books: Jacobs and King’s Fed Power

[With the semester done, this week I’ll be getting to work on the final revisions of my forthcoming fourth book. More on that on Friday, but first, I wanted to highlight briefly four new books in American Studies by colleagues and friends. Check ‘em out and share your own book recommendations, please!]I reviewed Fed Power: How Finance Wins (2016), co-authored by my Scholars Strategy Network colleague Lawrence Jacobs and his collaborator Desmond King, for the Huffington Post earlier this year. I said what I wanted to say about the book there, so here I’ll just say that it’s a pitch-perfect example of AmericanStudies public scholarship—and if you know me at all, you know that’s about the highest praise I can give.More on my own next book tomorrow,BenPS. Other books (new or not) you’d recommend?

May 25, 2016: New Scholarly Books: Teresa Thomas’ American Arabists in the Cold War Middle East

[With the semester done, this week I’ll be getting to work on the final revisions of my forthcoming fourth book. More on that on Friday, but first, I wanted to highlight briefly four new books in American Studies by colleagues and friends. Check ‘em out and share your own book recommendations, please!]Teresa Fava Thomas is a colleague of mine at Fitchburg State University, where she’s a Professor of History focusing on Italian American histories, immigration and ethnicity, the Vietnam and Cold Wars, and many other topics. But she’s also undergone one of the most impressive mid-career transformations I’ve ever encountered, learning Arabic in order to become an expert on US-Middle East diplomacy and relationships and histories as well. That has resulted in her forthcoming second book, American Arabists in the Cold War Middle East: From Orientalism to Professionalism (2016). Thomas exemplifies scholarly evolution and growth, and her book promises to reflect those qualities and make vital contributions to our 21st century debates.Last new book tomorrow,BenPS. Other books (new or not) you’d recommend?

May 24, 2016: New Scholarly Books: André Carrington’s Speculative Blackness

[With the semester done, this week I’ll be getting to work on the final revisions of my forthcoming fourth book. More on that on Friday, but first, I wanted to highlight briefly four new books in American Studies by colleagues and friends. Check ‘em out and share your own book recommendations, please!]I met André Carrington three years ago while giving a book talk at Drexel University, where he’s an Assistant Professor of English. In the years since I’ve seen him become a vital scholarly voice across a number of interdisciplinary fields: African American Studies, Queer Studies, American Studies, Comics and Cultural Studies, and more. He pulls all those threads and more together in his first book, Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction (2016). Can’t imagine a more perfect summer read ahead of my next section of Introduction to Sci Fi and Fantasy this fall—but whatever you’re teaching and whatever your interests, I’m quite sure this book will have something to contribute to the conversation.Next new book tomorrow,BenPS. Other books (new or not) you’d recommend?

May 23, 2016: New Scholarly Books: Heidi Kim’s Invisible Subjects

[With the semester done, this week I’ll be getting to work on the final revisions of my forthcoming fourth book. More on that on Friday, but first, I wanted to highlight briefly four new books in American Studies by colleagues and friends. Check ‘em out and share your own book recommendations, please!]I’ve known Heidi Kim since we were undergrads, and have had the chance to see her move very fully into her career as a prolific and talented scholar and teacher of Asian American Studies, American Studies, and American literature and culture. She’s now followed up her work editing the vital Taken from the Paradise Isle: The Hoshida Family Story (2015) with her first monograph, Invisible Subjects: Asian America in Postwar Literature (2016). I’ve seen this project develop over many stages and shifts, and to say that I’m excited to read and learn from the final product would be to understate the case. The next step in a very promising scholarly career!Next new book tomorrow,BenPS. Other books (new or not) you’d recommend?

May 21-22, 2016: Crowd-sourced 60s RockStudying

[May 16thmarked the 50thanniversary of the releases of Pet Soundsand Blonde on Blonde, two iconic 1960s rock albums. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied those artists and other 60s rock icons and songs. This way cool crowd-sourced post is drawn from the responses of fellow RockStudiers—share your own in comments, man (used in a gender-neutral way)!]On Twitter, Kendra Leonard asks a vital question for the whole series: “Do ppl in American Studies programs working on music get musicological training, historical or theoretical or ethno?” And in terms of additional topics, she adds, “I'd love to know more about non-Southern US roots rock, especially women creators.”Following up Monday’s post, Jeff Renye notes that La Salle University has a special collection of Bob Dylan material. Jeff also shares the acclaimed documentary 20 Feet from Stardom , and highlights The Doors, who “certainly added a darker voice to the mid/late-60s west coast sounds of, for instance, Haight-Ashbury.”“On February 9th, 1964, The Beatles debuted their music on The Ed Sullivan Showfor a record 73 million viewers and introduced themselves to America, changing the course of history along the way. American culture had already been big in their lives, they frequently cited American artists when asked who their favorites were, and now they were ready to shape the culture themselves with their catchy lyrics, superb instrument playing, and charming looks. This day didn’t come without some trepidation going in. The four of them, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, insisted on having a number one record over here before they would cross the pond. That record was ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ and it started a chain of hit singles for the Fab Four. They would tour all across both America and the world from this point on until their last scheduled live performance in 1966 at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, California. 
While the group was together the four lived in England so they had easy access to Abbey Road Studios, but after their split in the late 60’s/early 70’s America became more a permeant fixture in their lives. Paul McCartney married American photographer Linda Eastman in March 1969 and after her passing in April 1998, he eventually married another American, Nancy Shevell, in 2011. John Lennon and his wife, avant garde artist Yoko Ono, moved to New York City in August 1971 and Lennon soon felt more at home there than he ever did in London. He lived in various apartment in the city before finally settling on The Dakota until he was murdered in December 1980. Ringo Starr married American actress Barbara Bach and currently frequently divides his time between living in London and California. George Harrison had less of a life associated with America after the break-up, his only connection was his older sister who still resides in Benton, Illinois to this day, and instead expanded his interests in Indian culture. Americans and American culture were forever shaped by The Beatles’ music. They were the first group to play at various baseball stadiums, now a staple for a lot of tour stops. They stole the hearts of a generation who fell for their good looks and talent, often causing high amounts of shrieking and running into the streets for a chance to see their favorite member. Their music broke dozens of chart records and continues to be introduced to new generations, through parents playing their records, video games being developed based on the band, and their catalogue getting reissued first on CD, then on vinyl again, followed by digital copies, as released on iTunes. Numerous contemporary artists cite The Beatles as one of their musical influences. Without The Beatles and their touch on American culture, a lot of history would be altered.”Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to these thoughts or other RockStudyings you’d share?