Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 332

January 13, 2015: Spring 2015 Previews: The Romantic Movement and Era

[With the start of a new semester comes all the new opportunities and possibilities provided by a fresh group of courses. In this week’s series I’ll highlight a few of those semester plans, among a couple other things on my Spring 2015 radar. I’d love to hear about your spring plans and goals in comments!]On two layers to a course I’ll be teaching for the first time, and how I hope they’ll work together.This spring I get to teach one of our department’s 4000 (Senior)-level literature seminars, The Romantic Movement in US Literature; I’ve taught many other 4000-level courses over the years, but haven’t had the chance to teach this one before. Per both the title and the catalog description, the course focuses on different strains of American Romanticism: from creative literature such as Hawthorne’s stories and Bryant’s poems to the writings and philosophies of the Transcendentalists, from the visual and musical arts to, yes, a great deal of Edgar Allan Poe. And I think I’ve created a syllabus that does justice to those Romantic goals, with our first five weeks featuring extended work with Poe and Hawthorne complemented by briefer engagements with Brockden Brown, Irving, Bryant, Melville, Cooper, Sedgwick, Emerson, and selections from The Dial.I’m far too much of an AmericanStudier to teach any particular movement or literature in a vacuum, however, and so I made an important change in my version of the course: retitling it The Romantic Era in U.S. Literature, and with that shift from “Movement” to “Era” giving myself the freedom to include a number of other authors and texts, genres and contexts, from across the first half of the 19thcentury. So in the second half of the course we’ll have a couple weeks focusing on Fanny Fern and many other journalists and non-fiction writers (such as William Apess and David Walker), a couple focusing on Harriet Jacobs and other autobiographers (slave and non-slave), and a couple on Elizabeth Stoddard and other mid-century literary innovators (such as Rebecca Harding Davis and Bret Harte). In their own ways all of these authors and genres could certainly be connected to Romanticism, but there’s no question that they also represent a far broader spectrum than that promised by the original course title and description.If I were asked to defend why I’ve changed that existing course into my version, I might boil my answer down to the specific example of Poe. Many of Poe’s works, including virtually all of his best-known stories and poems, don’t seem to have any specific connection to the American setting and world in which he was writing them; indeed, as I’ve written here before, the Gothic mansion of “The Fall of the House of Usher” (for example) seems far more likely a part of Europe than the United States. Certainly we can and should read and analyze such works on their own terms, and I hope my course will give us a chance to do just that. But on the other hand, every work and every author are influenced by and likewise influence the world around them in any number of ways, and we can understand neither an individual work nor a cultural and historical moment without engaging with those multi-layered and multi-directional relationships. Which is to say, I very much hope that students in this course will feel as if they have learned about both the Romantic Movement and the Romantic Era—and, most importantly, that they have learned about their interconnections.Next preview tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think? Spring plans you’d share?

January 12, 2015: Spring 2015 Previews: Chesnutt and the Ferguson Syllabus

[With the start of a new semester comes all the new opportunities and possibilities provided by a fresh group of courses. In this week’s series I’ll highlight a few of those semester plans, among a couple other things on my Spring 2015 radar. I’d love to hear about your spring plans and goals in comments!]On how I’m hoping a last-minute syllabus change can connect my classroom to the world beyond.Almost exactly a year ago, as part of last January’s spring preview series, I wrote about one of my more difficult pedagogical decisions to date: to replace my favorite American novel, Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition(1901), with Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) as a mainstay on my American Lit II syllabus (one of the courses I teach most frequently at FSU). All of the reasons I highlighted in that post remain in play, and in both that spring section of the survey and my Fall 2014 American Novel to 1950 course I have found that students do indeed connect very well to Chopin’s novel and all the complex and important questions and themes with which it presents us. So when I put in my book orders in October for this spring’s two sections of the survey, I kept Chopin on there and Chesnutt off—and then, just a few weeks before the semester’s end, I called the bookstore and switched those two texts.The reason for the change can be boiled down to one hashtagged phrase: #FergusonSyllabus. What began as that Twitter trend has grown into an evolving, extremely impressive public scholarly conversation about how readings and discussions in American literature, history, society, sociology, and identity (among other topics) can provide a broad and deep contextual framework for a better communal understanding of the Ferguson violence, protests, and all the related issues to which they connect. There have been lots and lots of great nominations for that shared syllabus, but I can’t think of a better book through which to connect students to conversations about race and history, the shadows and legacies of slavery and discrimination, segregation and lynching, law and ethics, family and generational relationships, violence and community, the worst and best of American history and identity, and much more than Chesnutt’s monumental novel.As I noted in last year’s post, in most (if not all) of my prior experiences teaching Chesnutt’s novel, the majority of my students haven’t been able to finish that dense and demanding work. But while that certainly presents a challenge, I would also argue that in this case it offers an opportunity: for me to frame for them in every way I can, from the use of other contextual materials (such as the lynching website Without Sanctuary) to analytical connections to our contemporary moment and its histories and stories, the significance and resonance of this book. I’ve written elsewhere about the balance of democracy and direction I have come to feel is necessary in a survey course, and in this case, that is, I believe that substantial direction from me will help make Chesnutt’s novel the rich vehicle for historical and contemporary connections it can and should be. I still and always will want to hear what the students think and have to say—but there are clear and good reasons why I made the change back to Marrow, and I plan to share them with the students throughout.Next preview tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think? Spring plans you’d share?

January 10-11, 2015: Rob Velella’s Guest Post

[Two years ago this week, I moved to my new home in Waltham, Massachusetts. Since then I’ve learned a lot more about the histories and stories of this great town, and shared a few of them this week. I’ve also reconnected with Rob Velella, who has lived here for years. Although Rob has just moved away, he’ll always be connected to Waltham for me, and so I wanted to wrap up the series by linking to this great Guest Post of his from a few years back!]http://americanstudier.blogspot.com/2011/06/june-11-2011-guest-post-5-rob-vellelas.html[Next series starts Monday,Ben
PS. What do you think?]

January 9, 2015: Waltham Histories: Wilson’s Diner

[Two years ago this week, I moved to my new home in Waltham, Massachusetts. Since then I’ve learned a lot more about the histories and stories of this great town, and wanted to share a few of them this week, leading up to a Guest Post from one of my favorite Walthamites!]On the layers to the ordinary history that surrounds us.In 1999, Wilson’s Diner, a small restaurant located on Main Street (Route 20) in Waltham, was added to the National Register of Historic Places. That date marked the 50thanniversary of the diner’s installation—not its construction, exactly, since the diner was built by the Worcester Lunch Car Company(only the 819th such diner built by WLCC) and delivered to its location in 1949. As such, its continued existence helps connect us to a unique moment in the history of American architecture and food service, as well as to the ways in which American communities were created and evolved in the post-war period, and I believe it richly deserves that National Register designation.I can’t speak to the diner’s original 1949 ownership, but having had a few meals there in the last couple years, I can certainly testify to how much its current owner’s identity connects to another complex, longstanding American history: the 20thcentury explosion and evolution of Greek diners. As with PS. What do you think? Any histories and stories from your hometowns you’d share?

January 8, 2015: Waltham Histories: National Archives at Boston

[Two years ago this week, I moved to my new home in Waltham, Massachusetts. Since then I’ve learned a lot more about the histories and stories of this great town, and wanted to share a few of them this week, leading up to a Guest Post from one of my favorite Walthamites!]Three of the many compelling document collections held at Waltham’s National Archives.1)      The Mount Vernon’s records : In 1803, the Mount Vernon, a tall ship out of Salem, Massachusetts, undertook its first international voyage. This was the era known as the Great Age of Sail, and we can learn a great deal about that era and its histories through the specific details provided in the Mount Vernon’s records. For example, the ship’s “Return of Goods” documents not only the cargo that the ship carried away from Salem but from where that cargo had originated, offering an illuminating glimpse into the multiple stages of the period’s Triangle Trade.2)       Nathaniel Prentice Banks: The life story of Waltham’s own Nathaniel P. Banks reads like a primer on 19th century American history: an apprentice at a local cotton factory who studied law and became a state representative, marrying a fellow former factory employee along the way; then a Free Soiler who joined the new Republican Party and served as the state’s first Republican governor during the years leading up to the Civil War; then a Civil War General who gained some of the war’s most significant victories; and finally an activist Congressman in the tumultuous post-war decades. The Archives holds documents for every one of those stages, from a sketch of Banks’ childhood home to a letter from Grant to Lincoln relaying info about Banks’ role in the siege of Vicksburg.3)      America on the Homefront: Despite our many prominent histories and stories of World War II, I don’t know that we have much of a collective sense of the wartime experience of average Americans and their communities. The American on the Homefront exhibition, a collection of documents and materials assembled from the Archives’ records, does a wonderful job highlighting a number of such experiences: from the broadly familiar (women in the workforce) to the mostly unremembered (coastal patrols watching for German submarines). Just another example of how much we can learn from a site like the National Archives at Boston!Last history tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think? Any histories and stories from your hometowns you’d share?

January 7, 2015: Waltham Histories: Historic Homes

[Two years ago this week, I moved to my new home in Waltham, Massachusetts. Since then I’ve learned a lot more about the histories and stories of this great town, and wanted to share a few of them this week, leading up to a Guest Post from one of my favorite Walthamites!]On AmericanStudies connections for three of Waltham’s most historic houses.In my Waltham experience, Gore Place (or rather its spacious grounds) provided the spot on which the boys and I enjoyed our second visit to Circus Smirkus. But the estate of Massachusetts Governor Christopher Gore, built in 1806 as a summer home for Gore and his wife Rebecca and then turned into the couple’s permanent year-round home after 1816, has a lot to offer even when the circus isn’t in town. Known as the “Monticello of the North,” the estate’s house in particular is widely considered one of the most significant Federal Period mansions, and as a result of its architectural prominence has been designated a National Historic Landmark. I’ve wondered elsewhere in this space about whether preserving such historic homes is worth the effort and expense required—and of the many arguments in favor of such preservation, helping record our evolving architectural history, and thus the cultural and social elements to which it connects, is a particularly potent one.In my Waltham experience, the Lyman Estate has stood out for its amazing historic greenhouses—I happened to discover the estate and greenhouses on the course of a daily summertime walk, and have returned a few times since to explore and enjoy their exotic offerings. The country estate, known as “The Vale,” has likewise received National Historic Landmark status for its exemplary Federal Period house and grounds. But while Gore Place has remained relatively static since its early 19thcentury origins, the Lyman Estate has substantially evolved across the two and a quarter centuries since its construction, and each stage, and the Lymans to whom it connects, represents an interesting window into American history. For example, the most recent renovations were undertaken by Arthur Lyman Jr. and his wife Susan Cabot Lyman, as part of the late 19th and early 20th century’s architectural and artistic Colonial Revival movement. It’s easy, and not at all inaccurate, to think of that period as one of immense and constant change—but the revival movement illustrates a concurrent desire to return to the past, one to which the Lyman Estate can nicely connect us.In my Waltham experience, Stonehust, the Robert Treat Paine estate, has been just a sign and driveway along the back road I drive to my apartment complex. Which is, it turns out, a perfect illustration of how many amazing American histories and stories surround us at all times, easily overlooked but waiting to be discovered. For one thing, Stonehurst’s integrated design represents a unique and inspiring collaboration between two of the most talented and influential Americans of its era: architect Henry Hobson (H.H.) Richardson and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. And for another, the man who commissioned that collaborative effort, businessman and reformer Robert Treat Paine, represents an inspiring alternative to his Gilded Age moment generally and its robber barons specifically—Paine pursued a lifetime of social reform and philanthropic activism, not in the superficial “Gospel of Wealth” way but far more deeply and meaningfully. I look forward to learning a lot more about Paine and his life and work, and his historic house has provided the starting point for those researches.Next history tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think? Any histories and stories from your hometowns you’d share?

January 6, 2015: Waltham Histories: The Waverly Trail

[Two years ago this week, I moved to my new home in Waltham, Massachusetts. Since then I’ve learned a lot more about the histories and stories of this great town, and wanted to share a few of them this week, leading up to a Guest Post from one of my favorite Walthamites!]On three profoundly American moments found along a scenic path.The Waverly Trail, a beautiful and historic bit of forest and path that connects Waltham to neighboring Belmont, passes through the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR)’s Beaver Brook Reservation. As one of the markers along the trailnarrates, Beaver Brook was named by none other than John Winthrop, leader and first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company and coiner of the phrase “city on a hill” to describe the Puritan project in New England. Winthrop tends to be remembered in our anthologies and narratives for his sermons and philosophies, but like his Plimoth Plantation counterpart William Bradford he was also part of the first English explorations of the region, and helped define what the area would be and mean for this new community. And like his naming of a small river for the many beavers he and his expedition saw there, many of those initial definitions have endured into our current moment and world.Two hundred years later, two of the 19th century’s most influential American authors (in their very different respective genres) engaged with and wrote about the trail’snatural wonders. Poet and editor James Russell Lowell waxed lyrically about the area in “Beaver Brook,” a poem that acknowledges the necessary but limiting presence of mills along the water but concludes with a hope that “Surely the wiser time shall come/When this fine overplus of might/No longer sullen, slow, and dumb/Shall leap to music and to light.” And in an 1864 article in Lowell’s Atlantic Monthly, pioneering natural historian and Harvard Professor Louis Agassizdelineated the area’s deeper history, noting that “the Waverly Oaks, so well known to lovers of fine trees in our community, stand on an ancient moraine” (a rock formation left behind by receding glaciers). Taken together, these two texts and voices reflect the century’s enduring American fascinations with but evolving perspectives on nature, from a Romantic idealization of its beauties to a scientific study of its realities.Both of those perspectives came together a few decades later, when the desire to preserve the beautiful and significant Waverly Oaks led to the 1891 creation of both the world’s first land trust (known today as the Trustees of Reservations) and the first public park authority (the Metropolitan Park Commission, which evolved into today’s DCR). The plan was first proposed by prominent local landscape architect Charles Eliot, in his 1890 letter “The Waverly Oaks: A Plan for their Preservation for the People”; it received significant support from the Appalachian Mountain Club, a recently organized outdoors and conservation group; and it gained the vital imprimatur of none other than Frederick Law Olmsted, one of the nation’s and world’s foremost advocates for public parks and natural preservation. Like Olmsted’s City Beautiful movement and the era’s creation of the National Park System, this moment and plan were complex and informed by numerous factors and disciplines—but at their core, they all were designed to preserve and maintain the kinds of beauty, science, and history that can still be found along the Waverly Trail.Next history tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think? Any histories and stories from your hometowns you’d share?

January 5, 2015: Waltham Histories: The Watch City

[Two years ago this week, I moved to my new home in Waltham, Massachusetts. Since then I’ve learned a lot more about the histories and stories of this great town, and wanted to share a few of them this week, leading up to a Guest Post from one of my favorite Walthamites!]On three stages of American history captured by phrases from Waltham’s past and present.The earliest iterations of the Industrial Revolution in America are often associated with Lowell, Massachusetts and its mills (and mill girls)—but in the parlance of the era the name Lowell was linked to Waltham through the concept of the Waltham-Lowell System of production. The Lowell in that phrase wasn’t yet the city but rather Newburyport businessman Francis Cabot Lowell, who with a group of fellow investors opened the nation’s first vertically integrated cotton production firm, the Boston Manufacturing Company, on the banks of the Charles River in Waltham in 1814. Besides vertical integration (controlling every step and aspect of the production process at one site), the company also pioneered mass production and a number of other elements of the labor process (including housing, feeding, and educating the factory’s entirely female workers in company boarding houses) that would become the standard throughout the industrial Northeast.The Charles River didn’t provide quite enough power to sustain that mass production, and after Lowell’s death in 1817 his partners moved the factory to the banks of the Merrimack River in East Chelmsford, a town that would become incorporated as Lowell in 1826 and in the famous history of which the BMC’s mills would play a vital role. But Waltham remained an industrial center throughout the 19thcentury and well into the 20th, and no industry and company better exemplified that identity than the Waltham Watch Company. WWC opened its first factory in 1851, quickly thereafter became the first company to produce watches on an assembly line, and literally served as the industry’s gold standard for many decades, winning the gold medal for its 1872 model at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Although Waltham Watch Company closed its doors in 1957, having produced nearly 40 million watches and clocks in that century of work, its legacy endures in the nickname of “The Watch City,” a representation of how closely linked these industrial histories and their settings remain.Those industrial histories gave more than just nicknames to their cities, however—they also contributed a striking demographic effect, bringing consistent streams of immigrant arrivals to these communities and continually changing their ethnic makeup in the process. Waltham is perhaps especially associated with Italian American arrivals and communities, as illustrated by the 1992 dedication of a monument to Christopher Columbus as part of the city’s town common. But every census (since ethnicity/nationality began to be recorded in the late 19th century) has revealed new additions to the city’s diversity and evolving community, from sizeable Eastern and Southern European influxes at the turn of the twentieth century through the growing Hispanic populations at the turn of the 21st (on the 2010 census, nearly 14% of the city’s population self-identified as “Hispanic or Latino”). Indeed, one of the city’s new nicknames is “Little Kampala,” due to a surge in arrivals from Uganda that began in the era of Idi Amin’s violent leadership and has continued to this day. If Watch City captured a crucial element of Waltham’s past, Little Kampala nicely illustrates its present—and the two phrases are as interconnected as past and present always are.Next history tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think? Any histories and stories from your hometowns you’d share?

January 3-4, 2015: December 2014 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]December 1: American Winters: Valley Forge: A series on wintry American events kicks off with how the desperate Revolutionary winter reminds us of two crucial historical realities.December 2: American Winters: The Trail of Tears: The series continues with how we remember the winter tragedy, and how our memories can also move beyond it.December 3: American Winters: The Blizzard of 78: Two AmericanStudies contexts for the catastrophic storm, as the series rolls on.December 4: American Winters: Miracle on Ice: On the symbolic role of sports in society, and how history and story are shaped together.December 5: American Winters: The Killing of John Lennon: The series concludes with how the December shootings helps us think about celebrity and senselessness.December 6-7: Remembering Pearl Harbor: A Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day special post on the crucial challenge of how we remember our most infamous days.December 8: Cold Culture: Frozen: A series on winter in American culture opens with stereotypes reified and defied in the recent blockbluster animated film.December 9: Cold Culture: Affliction and A Simple Plan: The series continues with two films that provocatively link winter and snow to the American Dream.December 10: Cold Culture: The Iceman Cometh: A cold and compelling portrait of American pipe-dreams, and where it falls short, as the series rolls on.December 11: Cold Culture: Winter’s Bone: On the gritty realism, and something more, in the recent indie film.December 12: Cold Culture: Ice Ice Baby: The series concludes with two under-appreciated AmericanStudies stages to Vanilla Ice’s career.December 13-14: Andrea Grenadier’s Guest Post on Charles Ives: In my next Guest Post, the great Andrea Grenadier considers one of our most talented and demanding composers.December 15: Semester Recaps: The American Novel: A series reflecting on the Fall 2014 semester kicks off with fictional endings, happy, sad, and perfect.December 16: Semester Recaps: Approaches to English Studies: The series continues with two exemplary moments of applied literary theory.December 17: Semester Recaps: Senior Capstone: Why teaching this course helps me answer the question of what students can do with an English degree, as the series rolls on.December 18: Semester Recaps: Intro to Speech: Three things I learned in teaching my first section of Intro to Speech for an extended campus program.December 19: Semester Recaps: Three Other Reflections: The series concludes with takeaways from three other parts of my busy fall.December 20-21: Spring 2015 Preview: Five things I’m anticipating for Spring 2015—add your anticipations in comments, please!December 22: AmericanWishing: Lee’s “The Gift”: A series on texts I wish all Americans could read kicks off with a wonderful poem about family.December 23: AmericanWishing: Melville’s “Paradise”: The series continues with the early 19th century short story that still illuminates contemporary inequities.December 24: AmericanWishing: Chesnutt’s “Wife”: Chesnutt’s short story, Charles Dickens, and holiday introspection, as the series rolls on.December 25: AmericanWishing: Dorothy Day’s Writings: Why Day is the perfect author to read on Christmas Day.December 26: AmericanWishing: My Colleagues and Students: The series concludes by highlighting six colleagues and students whose writings we should all read as well.December 27-28: A Birthday Wish: A special Birthday Wish for the evolving writing career of the Mother of This AmericanStudier.December 29: End of Year Stories: Fraternity Rapes: A series AmericanStudying some of our biggest recent events starts with the controversial story of rape at the University of Virginia.December 30: End of Year Stories: Bill Cosby: The series continues with two ways to AmericanStudy the dark story of a celebrity’s alleged crimes.December 31: End of Year Stories: The Immigration Debate: Two pieces of mine that have contributed to an unfolding debate, as the series rolls on.January 1: End of Year Stories: Ferguson: Two reasons why the ongoing conflicts and protests are nothing new—and one important reason why they are.January 2: End of Year Stories: Native Americans and the Keystone Pipeline: The series concludes with one of my favorite recent moments, and the inspiring story behind it.Next series starts Monday,Ben
PS. Topics you’d like to see in this space in the new year? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know!

January 2, 2015: End of Year Stories: Native Americans and the Keystone Pipeline

[While I don’t consistently cover current events in this space, I do try when I can to connect the histories, stories, and issues on which I focus to our contemporary moment. But sometimes it’s important to flip that script, and to contextualize some of those contemporary connections. So this week, I’ll do that with five ongoing American stories. I’d love to hear your thoughts, on them and on any other current stories!]On one of my favorite recent moments, and the inspiring story behind it.Most of my end of year stories in this week’s series have been pretty dark and depressing, I know. I can’t say that doesn’t feel accurate to the state of the nation and world as 2014 turns into 2015; but I can say that it’s definitely not accurate to my perspective and voice. I’m the guy whose forthcoming book is entitled Hard-Won Hope and whose subsequent project will be a book and website called the Hall of American Inspiration, for crying out loud; I pride myself on being able to find reasons for optimism even when the darkness seems darkest. So it seemed important for me to end this series with a moment and note of such optimism, and luckily late November featured a national event that exemplified for me some of the best of what American has been and can be.The event itself wasn’t particularly striking, if an unexpectedly positive political result: just enough Senate Democrats voted against the proposed Keystone Pipeline to keep it from passing the Senate. President Obama would almost certainly have vetoed that bill in any case, but nonetheless, again, an unexpected bit of good news (for those of us who oppose the Pipeline) in a depressing political season. But what I’m really focusing on here is a moment in the immediate aftermath of that vote: Greg Graycloud, a Lakota Native American from South Dakota, began chanting in celebration of the bill’s failure. The chanting was alternately described in most news coverage as “singing,” “heckling,” or “protest”; but it was really something much more ceremonial and spiritual than that, a moment of formal, communal celebration on behalf of all the Native peoples who have been working for years and continue to work (both in Canada and in the U.S.) in opposition to the Keystone Pipeline.The political victory was likely short-lived: the reconfigured Senate will likely pass a Keystone bill in January, and I’m not at all sure that President Obama will veto it (or even that there won’t be enough votes in the Senate to override a veto in any case). As my FSU colleague Ben Lieberman consistently reminds me, the ongoing climate change news is thoroughly dispiriting in any case, and won’t be reversed even if Keystone is permanently defeated. But I’m an AmericanStudier, and one especially interested in our national narratives and images, in our collective memories and identities and community. And in that role and those perspectives I find tremendous power and inspiration in Greg Graycloud’s chant, in the activism it represented, and in the determination of Native American communities to continue to fight for the lands and communities of which they are as much an integral part as any of us (if not, indeed, more so). Let’s make sure to remember all those things as 2015 gets under way, okay?December Recap this weekend,Ben
PS. What do you think? Other current events you’d highlight?