Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 300

January 25, 2016: Colonial Williamsburg: Propaganda and Magic

[As part of our annual Virginia trip last summer, the boys and I—and AmericanStudier madre—visited Colonial Williamsburg for the first time. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy some different histories and elements that are part of that complex and compelling historic site. Add your thoughts, on Williamsburg or other historic sites, in comments!]On the necessarily political but still magical sides to any living history site.
One of my favorite things when I was a kid was attending Civil War reenactments with my Dad. I didn’t get to many, probably half a dozen or so, but each time it was a truly magical experience, like entering directly into a historical world. Part of that effect was my status as a bona fide Civil War buff—I can’t count the number of hours I spent thumbing through the beautiful pages of Bruce Catton’s Illustrated History of the Civil War, most of them spent staring at the gorgeous painted recreations of key battle sites and maps—but a bigger part, I’d say, was the sense that these were people trying to make history come alive again, to inhabit it and help us do so as well, at least for a space. As I’ve gotten older, I haven’t moved away from that perspective—I think most reenactors love history and do have that as a central goal—so much as added a more uncomfortable but important second perspective: that in many cases, the overwhelmingly (if not entirely) white participants in the reenactments were also embodying a very specific post-Civil War narrative, one that sought to reunify white soldiers from both sides through emphases on their shared valor and heroism and, concurrently and crucially, deemphases on the war’s racial and social causes (the first bit of Birth of a Nation is a great example of that narrative).
That combination of genuine and impressive historical interest and more contemporary and unsettling purposes also, if much more subtly, drove the multi-decade creation of one of America’s most successful historical landmarks, Colonial Williamsburg. The historical recreation of this center of political and social life in both colonial-era and Revolutionary Virginia began in the 1920s and 1930s, and was, I believe, most definitely driven by a desire to connect Americans and tourists from all over the world more fully back to this crucial early American site and community; the project’s motto was and remains, “That the future may learn from the past,” and in many ways the site has done a great job bringing that past into the American present in very engaging and successful ways. Certainly for many decades the inclusion of African Americans, either as participants or as tourists, was painfully slight and segregated, but over the last few decades Colonial Williamsburg, like most such historical landmarks, has begun to do a much better job balancing its portrayals of the different communities and experiences that existed within its boundaries, and of the best and worst of late 1700s Virginia and America that it comprised.
Yet the most significant push to build up and expand Colonial Williamsburg took place not in the 20s and 30s, but in the 1960s and 70s, and in analyzing that moment the historical purpose must be balanced with a much more contemporary and political one. The driving force behind the renewed efforts was the Rockefeller family; the oil magnate John D. had been a central part of the 20s efforts, and so even in that era it would be possible to consider more political goals for the project, but the work of Winthrop Rockefeller and his family in this Cold War era was much more overtly politically motivated. Perhaps the Rockefellers chief interest in the decades after World War II was in highlighting and exporting America’s greatest identities, in communicating to the world (in direct opposition, to be sure, to the USSR’s international presence and images of itself) the ideal versions of our national past and stories and selves. They did so for example through public art exhibits and museums that traveled the world, highlighting some of the masters (among them Jackson Pollock and Norman Rockwell) working in America in these years. But they did so as well through historical endeavors like Williamsburg, and the recreations there of the ideals (and in the 1960s and 70s it was still very much the ideals on which Williamsburg focused) of the Revolution and Founding.W.E.B. Du Bois entitles the last chapter of his groundbreaking Black Reconstruction in America (1936) “The Propaganda of History”; he focuses there on the dominant (and almost entirely false) historical narrative of Reconstruction that had developed in the prior three decades or so, but his ideas could easily be extended to any moments in which historical narratives are wedded to contemporary political purposes. But just as such links can perhaps never be entirely absent, even in the most well-intentioned efforts, so too is the more genuine attempt to revivify and connect us to our history still a part of these endeavors. We can and need to try our best to recognize the political side, lest the propaganda blind us, but we can still feel that magic of history coming alive before us.Next Williamsburg post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

January 23-24, 2016: 21st Century Civil Rights

[Each year for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I share a special post on better remembering the many layers of one of our most important and inspiring figures and voices. This week I followed it up with a series AmericanStudying some of King’s colleagues in the Civil Rights Movement. Leading up to this post on five contemporary Civil Rights issues and debates (along, of course, with the #BlackLivesMatter movement). Add your responses and ideas in comments, please!]1)      The Reparations Debate: Thanks in large part to Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of the central Civil Rights debates of our moment has to do with whether and how reparations should be paid to African Americans affected by centuries of oppression, discrimination, and violence. That debate returned to the front page this week with Coates’ critique of Bernie Sanders’ position on reparations and the conversations that followed. I fully expect this to remain one of the most heated 21stcentury conversations (and, in the interests of full disclosure, I’ll note that I’m entirely in favor of reparations as proposed by Coates and others).2)      #OscarsSoWhite: While I agree with those who have noted that diversity at the Oscars is nowhere near as widespread and significant an issue as one like reparations, there’s no doubt that cultural texts and representations can play a prominent role in how we think and talk about issues like race and identity. And so I fully support the efforts of Jada Pinkett Smith, Spike Lee, and others to raise awareness of the striking and troubling absence of nominees of color at this year’s Academy Awards—not least because Creed, Ryan Coogler , and Michael B. Jordan are as deserving of nominations as anyone could be.3)      Sexual Violence and Women of Color: One of the most astounding public scholarly pieces I read over the last few years was this We’re History piece on the role that sexual violence against African American women played in fomenting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Better remembering that forgotten history would not only address the frustrating absence of women from much of our collective memory of Civil Rights, but would also and just as importantly help us consider sexual violence against women of color as a contemporary Civil Rights issue as well. That’s a conversation we must start having.4)      Tucson’s Mexican American Studiers: Everything in that post, on the threats to Tucson’s Mexican American Studies program and the high school activists who responded so impressively to those threats, remains just as true and vital (if interestingly evolving) four years later. Indeed, I don’t know that any Civil Rights issue is more important than what we teach and learn, and who has a sayin deciding those questions. I sure hope that voices like those of Tucson’s students and educators remain high on that list.5)      Broadening our Cultural Horizons: Civil Rights battles don’t just happen in educational, political, and social arenas, of course. They also happen in our popular cultural texts, and in particular in whether and how those texts can more fully and better include and engage with diverse American communities and cultures. To that end, I would highlight Marcus Red Thunder, the Cheyenne man helping make Longmire so nuanced in its portrayal of Native Americans; and George Takei, whose Allegiance (whatever its shortcomings) is only one of his many efforts to expand our collective cultural engagements with Asian Americans. Thanks to figures like these two and many others, our 21stcentury Civil Rights histories will be as cultural as they are educational, political, and social.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other Civil Rights responses and issues you’d share?

January 22, 2016: King’s Colleagues: John Lewis

[Each year for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I share a special post on better remembering the many layers of one of our most important and inspiring figures and voices. This week I’ve followed it up with a series AmericanStudying some of King’s colleagues in the Civil Rights Movement. Add your thoughts on King, the movement, or any related histories and issues for a crowd-sourced civil rights post, please!]On three moments that together reflect the presence and role of a living legend.1)      The Bridge: As the film Selma (and the wonderful performance by young actor Stephan James) potently illustrates, young John Lewis, one of the leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, played an instrumental role in the voting rights protests and marches linked to that city and its Edmund Pettis Bridge. Lewis was of course far from the only young participant in those efforts, and he would be the first to remind us of the contributions of so many others; but what he perfectly provides (as, again, the film portayed) is a symbolic representation of all those young Civil Rights activists—their inspiration they took from more senior leaders, the impacts they themselves made on the movement, and, perhaps most significantly, the way they carried those efforts forward into the decades that followed.2)      The Attack: Lewis hasn’t just been a social and political activist for all those subsequent decades, however; he has also, mostly for good but occasionally in troubling ways, been used as a continued symbol of African American triumphs and struggles. Perhaps the clearest example of a troubling moment was on the day when the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare, as it’s generally known) was to be voted into law by Congress; as Congressman Lewis walked to the Capitol Building to cast his vote for the bill, he and other African American colleagues were (allegedly, but the incident was caught on tape and seems clear enough) verbally attacked by a number of Tea Party protesters and spit upon by one of them. While the attack was of course inextricably tied to the climate of extremism that the Tea Party and others had whipped up around the bill, I would argue that it’s just as clear that Lewis was individually targeted in direct relation to the racial identity he shares with President Obama; as, that is, a symbol for racist protesters threatened by these African American figures and leaders. That’s one of the most frustrating but undeniable aftermaths of the Civil Rights Movement, and one succinctly symbolized by this attack on Lewis. 3)      The Convention: Yet if Lewis (like all of us, and especially like all public figures) has been at times defined by others in ways outside of his control, he has also continued to tell his own story in unique and inspiring ways. Perhaps the most unique is March, a trilogy of graphic novels about his life and Civil Rights efforts that Lewis co-wrote with Andrew Aydin and illustrator Nate Powell; book one was published in August 2013, and book two in January 2015. In support of that latter publication and to help spread the word about the graphic novel to a new generation, Lewis attended the 2015 Comic Con, perhaps the most famous pop culture convention in the world. The image of Lewis surrounded by excited young fans, looking for all the world like an aging but still vibrant superhero (which, of course, he is), is one of my favorites of the last few years—and reflects just how much this Civil Rights legend still has to contribute to our communal conversations and identity.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So one more time: what do you think? Other Civil Rights figures, histories or responses you’d share?

January 21, 2016: King’s Colleagues: Bayard Rustin

[Each year for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I share a special post on better remembering the many layers of one of our most important and inspiring figures and voices. This week I’ve followed it up with a series AmericanStudying some of King’s colleagues in the Civil Rights Movement. Add your thoughts on King, the movement, or any related histories and issues for a crowd-sourced civil rights post, please!]On the Civil Rights leader who illustrates the possibilities and challenges of intersectionality.I’ve written a good deal in this space about the concept of hybridity (often linking it to my own idea of cross-cultural transformation, but the two concepts are of course closely tied), and about the processes of creolizationthat have influenced so many American identities and communities. For a time hybridity was a central frame through which many scholars of identity developed their ideas, but in recent years it has been supplanted by a somewhat parallel yet also distinct concept: intersectionality. As I understand it, intersectionality refers not so much to hybrid combinations of identities and more to the ways in which different sides of an individual’s identity (her race/ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, religion, class, and so on) can both relate to one another and influence her perspective and actions (even when they seem tied to one particular category). My last two subjects here, Yuri Kochiyama and Coretta Scott King, certainly demonstrated the role intersectionality played in the Civil Rights Movement; and in an even more striking way, so did King’s colleague Bayard Rustin.Rustin’s major contributions to the movement itself represented one layer of intersectionality, as he consistently linked class, work, and labor union activism to his civil rights initiatives. A member of the Communist Party for many decades, he was, for one example, the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which prominently featured labor leader and socialist A. Philip Randolph; a few years later Rustin would himself co-found and direct the AFL-CIO’s A. Philip Randolph Institute, which focused on integrating unions and linking the labor movement to African American communities and issues. Yet it was in response to another layer to his own identity that Rustin pursued his most unique intersectional activism: a gay man, he both fought for gay rights (doing so most publicly in the 1980s, before his death in 1987) and worked behind the scenes to make the Civil Rights Movement and subsequent racial activist efforts more tolerant and accepting of gay and lesbian members and Americans. Along with writer James Baldwin, Rustin was likely the most prominent African American gay man of the 20th century; and while Baldwin consistently occupied an iconoclastic position outside of any communal movement, Rustin fought for the intersections of his sexual and racial activisms.Yet an accurate history of Rustin’s efforts has to include the fact that for many decades, and certainly throughout the era of the Civil Rights Movement, he lost that battle. That meant not only that he had to remain far quieter on the gay rights front than he likely preferred (again, not become a public spokesperson for the movement until the 80s), but also that he took on fewer public roles within the Civil Rights Movement as a result (it seems) of fears that he would be a controversial or even ineffective leader due to his sexuality (as well as his overt history with the Communist Party). None of that means that he could not be in his lifetime an activist for these multiple causes (he certainly was), nor that fighting for them at different times is necessarily a bad thing (no one, nor any movement, can fight for every issue at every moment). But it does remind us that intersectionality isn’t just about the role and influence of different sides to our identities—it’s also, and perhaps just as significantly, about the balances and choices we all have to make, as individuals and as communities. If Bayard Rustin helps us think about those challenges as well, that’d be just one more layer to his inspiring life and work.Last King colleague tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Civil Rights figures or responses you’d share?

January 20, 2016: King’s Colleagues: Coretta Scott King

[Each year for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I share a special post on better remembering the many layers of one of our most important and inspiring figures and voices. This week I’ve followed it up with a series AmericanStudying some of King’s colleagues in the Civil Rights Movement. Add your thoughts on King, the movement, or any related histories and issues for a crowd-sourced civil rights post, please!]On why and how we should better remember King’s partner, in life and in activism.In a January 1966 interview with New Lady magazine, Coretta Scott King argued that the stories of the Civil Rights Movement had far too often left out its female participants. “Not enough attention has been focused on the roles played by women in the struggle,” she noted. “By and large, men have formed the leadership in the civil rights struggle but women have been the backbone of the whole civil rights movement.” As I have written elsewhere in this space, even the one woman consistently present in our collective memories of Civil Rights, Rosa Parks, has been generally turned into nothing more than an exhausted working woman, rather than the longtime activist and leader she was. So I agree entirely with Coretta Scott King, believe that the problem hasn’t really been addressed in the half-century since her interview, and would argue that she herself represents a perfect opportunity for us to better engage with women in the Civil Rights Movement.For one thing, Scott King was there with her husband at every stage of his activism and leadership, complementing his efforts with her own. When she married King in 1953 she gave up a promising career in music performance and education (she was on a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music when the two met in early 1952), but in so doing also continued along an activist path that was well underway by that time: while at Ohio’s Antioch College she had joined both the college chapter of the NAACP and its Race Relations and Civil Liberties Committee, and had petitioned the administration to grant her a teaching placement in a local school despite a discriminatory denial. After their marriage, despite bearing and raising four children in eight years (from Yolanda in 1955 to Bernice in 1963, with Martin III and Dexter in between), Scott King worked alongside her husband in his evolving career, not only accompanying him to marches and protests in Montgomery and Selma but also doing her own consistent advocacy for Civil Rights legislation. For another and even more inspiring thing, after her husband’s 1968 assassination Scott King continued and expanded his efforts and legacy, all while raising their four children on her own. In the years immediately following the assassination, for example, she both published her memoirs, My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. (1969) and founded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, a pioneering institution for which she served as president and CEO for many years. Over the next few decades, so brought her activist perspective to bear on a number of other issues, from helping lead an anti-apartheid protest outside the South African embassy in 1985 to chairing a 1995 effort to register one million African American women voters ahead of the following year’s elections. Because of the tragic killings of King and Malcolm X, it can feel difficult to connect Civil Rights leaders to the events and issues of subsequent decades—but like another prominent female Civil Rights activist on whom I focused in yesterday’s post, Yuri Kochiyama, Coretta Scott King illustrates how fully the 50s and 60s efforts continued and expanded in the years beyond. Just one more reason to better remember her life and work!Next King colleague tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Civil Rights figures or responses you’d share?

January 19, 2016: King’s Colleagues: Yuri Kochiyama

[Each year for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I share a special post on better remembering the many layers of one of our most important and inspiring figures and voices. This week I’ve followed it up with a series AmericanStudying some of King’s colleagues in the Civil Rights Movement. Add your thoughts on King, the movement, or any related histories and issues for a crowd-sourced civil rights post, please!]
On the inspiring life that pushed way past racial binaries and categorizations.
Scholars and activists associated with a number of ethnic American communities and identities—Asian, Hispanic, Native, and others—have long critiqued our national tendency to treat race as a binary, to focus solely (or at least centrally) on the (already complex and unstable) categories of black and white. The same could be said of our dominant narratives of the Civil Rights Movement, which similarly focus largely (if not exclusively) on those racial categories, and too often ignore or minimize the era’s concurrent movements for Chicano, Asian, and American Indian equality, among others. What’s more, even if we recognize those multiple communities and movements, it’s far too easy to treat them as separate and distinct, rather than to engage with the ways, issues, and moments through which they intersect, intertwine, and become inseparable parts of the time period and of American communities and histories more broadly.
One American whose amazing life and work force us to push beyond those concepts is Yuri Kochiyama. Kochiyama’s life certainly highlighted the evolving histories of Asian American identity, community, and civil rights, from her childhood years in a Japanese internment camp through her role as a mentor for young Asian American activists in the 1960s and 70s and up to her central role in advocating for the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which awarded $20,000 to each internment survivor. But Kochiyama’s activism (which continued into the 21stcentury and was still very much ongoing at the time of her passing in 2014 ) crossed well beyond one race, culture, or community: in 1977, for example, she joined a group of Puerto Rican activists in their takeover of the Statue of Liberty in support of Puerto Rican independence; and, most famously and compellingly, in the early 1960s she became friends with Malcolm X (with whom she shared a birthday), joined his Organization of Afro-American Unity, and was present at his Febraury 1965 assassination, holding his body in her arms as he died.Given that (as yesterday’s MLK Day post delineated) we don’t remember even the most prominent Civil Rights Movement histories nearly as fully or with as much complexity as we should, it might seem crazy to argue that we should also be trying to push our narratives past the central focal points of that movement. But the truth, as I see it, is that those two efforts—remembering the movement more accurately, and pushing beyond it—go hand in hand. As Yuri Kochiyama illustrates, better remembering a single Japanese American life means also better remembering the dark histories of the internment camps, the burgeoning Asian rights movement, forgotten Puerto Rican activists, and Malcolm X’s evolving and tragically unfinished final years and work, among many other things. Similarly, the Civil Rights Movement, while hugely significant and inspiring on its own terms, also connects to numerous other American histories and stories, communities and identities, tragedies and activisms. I say we go ahead and remember it all!Next King colleague tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Civil Rights figures or responses you’d share?

January 18, 2016: The Real King

[Each year for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I share this special post on better remembering the many layers of one of our most important and inspiring figures and voices. This week I’ll follow it with a series AmericanStudying some of King’s colleagues in the Civil Rights Movement. Add your thoughts on King, the movement, or any related histories and issues for a crowd-sourced civil rights post, please!]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 War 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. First King colleague tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Civil Rights responses you’d share?

January 16-17, 2016: NeMLA 2016 Preview

[Next week brings a new semester, the last of my 11th year at Fitchburg State University. So this week has brought a series of spring 2016 preview posts, this time focused on the texts we’ll be reading in my spring courses. Leading up to this special weekend post previewing March’s 2016 Northeast MLA Convention!]I’ve written a lot in this space about the upcoming Northeast MLA (NeMLA) Convention, which will finally begin two months from Sunday. The Winter Newsletter, featuring my President’s Letter and tons of info about the convention, is online here.If you’re in the Hartford area, in New England or New York or Pennsylvania, or otherwise close enough to consider joining us in Hartford from March 17-20, I sure hope you’ll do so—the auditor registration rate is pretty reasonable, and if that doesn’t work please email me directly and we’ll see if we can figure out a way to get you to the convention. And even if you’re not able to join us, I think the convention’s big themes—public scholarship and the future of the humanities, education and community, issues of academic labor—are important enough that you can and should feel free to add your voice through Twitter (we’re @northeastMLA and the convention hashtag will be #NeMLA2016), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Northeast-Modern-Language-Association-NeMLA-776430012416295/?fref=ts), or right here in comments!There’s a lot more I could add (again) about the convention, from Thursday’s visit to Hartford schools and opening night reading by Monique Truong through Friday’s presidential sessions (including one Stephen Railton discussing public humanities digital projects!) and keynote address by Jelani Cobbthrough Saturday’s presidential sessions (including one Jeffrey Renye discussing issues of adjunct faculty and academic labor) through Sunday’s reading by Native American novelist Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel. And that’d still just be scratching the surface of what we’ve worked so hard toward for a couple years now and what will make the Hartford Convention so memorable. So I’ll just say it one more time—join us if you can, and share your voice and join the community in any case!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Questions or ideas for NeMLA 2016? I’d love to hear ‘em!

January 15, 2016: Spring 2016 Previews: A New ALFA Course and a Request

[Next week brings a new semester, the last of my 11th year at Fitchburg State University. So this week brings a series of spring 2016 preview posts, this time focused on the texts we’ll be reading in my spring courses. I’d love to hear about your spring syllabi, and other spring plans, in comments!]I’ll be teaching another section of our graduate program’s Intro to Literary Theory course this spring, but as that hyperlink indicates I’ve blogged about that one before and remain comfortable with its readings. On the other hand, I’ll be teaching another new Adult Learning in the Fitchburg Area (ALFA) course as well, and as with the fall’s contemporary short story course this is one for which I’m still developing the readings. So I’d love your input!I like to alternate more literary ALFA courses with more historical/AmericanStudies ones, so it’s time for the latter. This time I’m planning to focus for the course’s five weeks on under-remembered histories and stories behind periods and events we generally remember well; so, for example, we have many collective memories of the American Revolution, but for that week I’ll ask us to read and analyze figures like Quock Walker and Annis Stockton, to consider both what they can help us see about the Revolution and what other histories and issues they add to the conversation.I know I want that week on the Revolution, and one on the Civil War (probably focusing on Chinese American Civil War soldiers, although I’m open to suggestions!). But honestly, the course’s other three weeks remain open—I’m thinking one pre-Revolution and two post-Civil War, but those are just starting points, and ones for which I haven’t narrowed down the list of possible figures and histories either. The course starts on Friday, January 29th, so I’ll need to make my decisions pretty quickly—but again, I’d love to hear any suggestions or ideas of yours as I do so! Help make my Spring 2016 semester that much more fresh and meaningful, please!Special NeMLA preview this weekend,BenPS. What are you teaching/reading this spring? Other spring plans you’d share?

January 14, 2016: Spring 2016 Previews: American Literature I

[Next week brings a new semester, the last of my 11th year at Fitchburg State University. So this week brings a series of spring 2016 preview posts, this time focused on the texts we’ll be reading in my spring courses. I’d love to hear about your spring syllabi, and other spring plans, in comments!]Unlike the other courses about which I’ve written this week, in my American Lit I class we don’t have any long readings—each day we focus on at least one new author and text, and usually at least a couple. There’s just too much literature, history, and culture to cover in the hundreds of years of American history pre-1865 for me to feel that we can spend multiple days on a single author or text (despite the many very challenging and worthy ones across that period). So today I’ll highlight instead the four units across which this course moves, and two examples of authors (one expected and one more surprising) with whom we engage in each:1)      Exploration/Arrival/Contact: Christopher Columbus is one of the couple most famous figures whom we read in Am Lit I, but I’m willing to bet that most students haven’t had a chance to read either his first voyage letter to Luis de Santangel or his fourth voyage one to Ferdinand and Isabella. Those two letters are striking enough on their own terms, but they become even more interesting when paired with excerpts from Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative. I make sure to include Native American voices (among many other communities and cultures) in this opening unit as well, but Columbus and Cabeza de Vaca alone are more than enough to shake up any preconceptions we might have about the era.2)      The Revolution: You can’t teach a unit on the literature of the Revolutionary era and not read Tom Paine—and luckily (and saliently), Paine’s writing and voice in both Common Sense and The Crisis are so unique and compelling that they reward our attention. His persuasive arguments become even more interesting when we pair them with the persuasive, revolutionary arguments deployed by Annis Stockton and Judith Sargent Murray in service of the fledgling women’s movement. These and other writers and texts help us understand the many layers of this period’s revolutionary trends.3)      The Early Republic: If there’s a more fun American short story than Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” I haven’t found it; and from its found footage preface and historical opening to its supernatural and political twists, the story is also full of complex elements that tell us a great deal about America in its post-Revolution infancy. At the other end of the genre spectrum is William Apess’s blunt, impassioned, and unforgettable essay “An Indian’s Looking Glass for the White Man,” a work every American should read. American literature and society were both changing in striking and significant ways in the Early Republic, as these and other works amply illustrate.4)      The American Renaissance: Every semester, when we get to our final unit, I worry that students will find Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Nature”simply unreadable; and yet every semester I find instead that the Transcendental origin point speaks to at least a couple students who hadn’t been excited by any prior readings. On the other hand, I never worry for a second that our selected columns by Fanny Fern will make for anything other than enjoyable reading; but Fern is also the kind of writer who reveals new depths every time I teach and read her, so I’m just as excited to return to her as I am to share her with a new class. All fun ways to wrap up what will be my 11th year teaching at least one section of Am Lit I!Last spring preview tomorrow,BenPS. What are you teaching/reading this spring? Other spring plans you’d share?