Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 345
August 13, 2014
August 13, 2014: Birthday Specials: 2011 Birthday Best
[For a week that begins with my Dad’s birthday and ends with mine, I’ll share a series of posts that engage with birthdays, both others’ and mine. Cel … ebrate AmericanStudier birthdays, come on!]
In honor of this AmericanStudier’s 34th birthday in 2011, here (from oldest to most recent) were 34 of my favorite posts from the blog’s first year:1) The Wilmington Massacre and The Marrow of Tradition: My first full post, but also my first stab at two of this blog’s central purposes: narrating largely forgotten histories; and recommending texts we should all read.
2) Pine Ridge, the American Indian Movement, and Apted’s Films: Ditto to those purposes, but also a post in which I interwove history, politics, identity, and different media in, I hope, a pretty exemplary American Studies way.
3) The Shaw Memorial: I’ll freely admit that my first handful of posts were also just dedicated to texts and figures and moments and histories that I love—but the Memorial, like Chesnutt’s novel and Thunderheart in those first two links, is also a deeply inspiring work of American art.
4) The Chinese Exclusion Act and the Most Amazing Baseball Game Ever: Probably my favorite post to date, maybe because it tells my favorite American story.
5) Ely Parker: The post in which I came up with my idea for Ben’s American Hall of Inspiration; I know many of my posts can be pretty depressing, but hopefully the Hall can be a way for me to keep coming back to Americans whose stories and legacies are anything but.
6) My Colleague Ian Williams’ Work with Incarcerated Americans: The first post where I made clear that we don’t need to look into our national history to find truly inspiring Americans and efforts.
7) Rush Limbaugh’s Thanksgiving Nonsense: My first request, and the first post to engage directly with the kinds of false American histories being advanced by the contemporary right.
8) The Pledge of Allegiance: Another central purpose for this blog is to complicate, and at times directly challenge and seek to change, some of our most accepted national and historical narratives. This is one of the most important such challenges.
9) Public Enemy, N.W.A., and Rap: If you’re going to be an AmericanStudier, you have to be willing to analyze even those media and genres on which you’re far from an expert, and hopefully find interesting and valuable things to say in the process.
10) Chinatown and the History of LA: At the same time, the best AmericanStudiers likewise have to be able to analyze their very favorite things (like this 1974 film, for me), and find ways to link them to broader American narratives and histories.
11) The Statue of Liberty: Our national narratives about Lady Liberty are at least as ingrained as those about the Pledge of Allegiance—and just about as inaccurate.
12) Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” and Parenting: Maybe the first post in which I really admitted my personal and intimate stakes in the topics I’m discussing here, and another of those texts everybody should read to boot.
13) Dorothea Dix and Mental Health Reform: When it comes to a number of the people on whom I’ve focused here, I didn’t know nearly enough myself at the start of my research—making the posts as valuable for me as I could hope them to be for any other reader. This is one of those.
14) Ben Franklin and Anti-Immigrant Sentiments: As with many dominant narratives, those Americans who argue most loudy in favor of limiting immigration usually do so in large part through false, or at best greatly oversimplified and partial, versions of our past.
15) Divorce in American History: Some of our narratives about the past and present seem so obvious as to be beyond dispute: such as the idea that divorce has become more common and more accepted in our contemporary society. Maybe, but as with every topic I’ve discussed here, the reality is a good bit more complicated.
16) My Mom’s Guest Post on Margaret Wise Brown: The first of the many great guest posts I’ve been fortunate enough to feature here; I won’t link to the others, as you can and should find them by clicking the “Guest Posts” category on the right. And please—whether I’ve asked you specifically or not—feel free to contribute your own guest post down the road!
17) JFK, Tucson, and the Rhetoric and Reality of Political Violence: The first post in which I deviated from my planned schedule to respond directly to a current event—something I’ve incorporated very fully into this blog in the months since.
18) Tribute Post to Professor Alan Heimert: I’d say the same about the tribute posts that I did for the guest posts—both that they exemplify how fortunate I’ve been (in this case in the many amazing people and influences I’ve known) and that you should read them all (at the “Tribute Posts” category on the right).
19) Martin Luther King: How do we remember the real, hugely complicated, and to my mind even more inspiring man, rather than the mythic ideal we’ve created of him? A pretty key AmericanStudies question, one worth asking of every truly inspiring American.
20) Angel Island and Sui Sin Far’s “In the Land of the Free”: Immigration has been, I believe, my first frequent theme here, perhaps because, as this post illustrates, it can connect us so fully to so many of the darkest, richest, most powerful and significant national places and events, texts and histories.
21) Dresden and Slaughterhouse Five: One of the events we Americans have worked most hard to forget, and one of the novels that most beautifully and compelling argues for the need to remember and retell every story.
22) Valentine’s Day Lessons: Maybe my least analytical post, and also one of my favorites. It ain’t all academic, y’know.
23) Tori Amos, Lara Logan, and Stories of Rape: One of the greatest songs I’ve ever heard helps me respond to one of the year’s most horrific stories.
24) Peter Gomes and Faith: A tribute to one of the most inspiring Americans I’ve ever met, and some thoughts on the particularly complicated and important American theme he embodies for me.
25) The Treaty of Tripoli and the Founders on Church and State: Sometimes our historical narratives are a lot more complicated than we think. And sometimes they’re just a lot simpler. Sorry, David Barton and Glenn Beck, but there’s literally no doubt of what the Founders felt about the separation of church and state the idea of America as a “Christian nation.”
26) Newt Gingrich, Definitions of America, and Why We’re Here: The first of many posts (such as all those included in the “Book Posts” category on the right) in which I bring the ideas at the heart of my second book into my responses to AmericanStudies narratives and myths.
27) Du Bois, Affirmative Action, and Obama: Donald Trump quickly and thoroughly revealed himself to be a racist jackass, but the core reasons for much of the opposition to affirmative action are both more widespread and more worth responding to than Trump’s buffoonery.
28) Illegal Immigrants, Our Current Deportation Policies, and Empathy: What does deportation really mean and entail, who is affected, and at what human cost?
29) Tribute to My Grandfather Art Railton: The saddest Railton event of the year leads me to reflect on the many inspiring qualities of my grandfather’s life, identity, and especially perspective.
30) My Clearest Immigration Post: Cutting through some of the complexities and stating things as plainly as possible, in response to Sarah Palin’s historical falsehoods. Repeated and renamed with even more force here.
31) Paul Revere, Longfellow, and Wikipedia: Another Sarah Palin-inspired post, this time on her revisions to the Paul Revere story and the question of what is “common knowledge” and what purposes it serves in our communal conversations.
32) “Us vs. them” narratives, Muslim Americans, and Illegal Immigrants: The first of a couple posts to consider these particularly frustrating and divisive national narratives. The second, which also followed up my Norwegian terrorism response (linked below), is here.
33) Abraham Cahan: The many impressive genres and writings of this turn of the century Jewish American, and why AmericanStudiers should work to push down boundaries between disciplines as much as possible.34) Terrorism, Norway, and Rhetoric: One of the latest and most important iterations of my using a current event to drive some American analyses—and likewise an illustration of just how fully interconnected international and American events and histories are.Next bday special tomorrow,BenPS. Anything you’d add (bday wishes or otherwise)?
In honor of this AmericanStudier’s 34th birthday in 2011, here (from oldest to most recent) were 34 of my favorite posts from the blog’s first year:1) The Wilmington Massacre and The Marrow of Tradition: My first full post, but also my first stab at two of this blog’s central purposes: narrating largely forgotten histories; and recommending texts we should all read.
2) Pine Ridge, the American Indian Movement, and Apted’s Films: Ditto to those purposes, but also a post in which I interwove history, politics, identity, and different media in, I hope, a pretty exemplary American Studies way.
3) The Shaw Memorial: I’ll freely admit that my first handful of posts were also just dedicated to texts and figures and moments and histories that I love—but the Memorial, like Chesnutt’s novel and Thunderheart in those first two links, is also a deeply inspiring work of American art.
4) The Chinese Exclusion Act and the Most Amazing Baseball Game Ever: Probably my favorite post to date, maybe because it tells my favorite American story.
5) Ely Parker: The post in which I came up with my idea for Ben’s American Hall of Inspiration; I know many of my posts can be pretty depressing, but hopefully the Hall can be a way for me to keep coming back to Americans whose stories and legacies are anything but.
6) My Colleague Ian Williams’ Work with Incarcerated Americans: The first post where I made clear that we don’t need to look into our national history to find truly inspiring Americans and efforts.
7) Rush Limbaugh’s Thanksgiving Nonsense: My first request, and the first post to engage directly with the kinds of false American histories being advanced by the contemporary right.
8) The Pledge of Allegiance: Another central purpose for this blog is to complicate, and at times directly challenge and seek to change, some of our most accepted national and historical narratives. This is one of the most important such challenges.
9) Public Enemy, N.W.A., and Rap: If you’re going to be an AmericanStudier, you have to be willing to analyze even those media and genres on which you’re far from an expert, and hopefully find interesting and valuable things to say in the process.
10) Chinatown and the History of LA: At the same time, the best AmericanStudiers likewise have to be able to analyze their very favorite things (like this 1974 film, for me), and find ways to link them to broader American narratives and histories.
11) The Statue of Liberty: Our national narratives about Lady Liberty are at least as ingrained as those about the Pledge of Allegiance—and just about as inaccurate.
12) Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” and Parenting: Maybe the first post in which I really admitted my personal and intimate stakes in the topics I’m discussing here, and another of those texts everybody should read to boot.
13) Dorothea Dix and Mental Health Reform: When it comes to a number of the people on whom I’ve focused here, I didn’t know nearly enough myself at the start of my research—making the posts as valuable for me as I could hope them to be for any other reader. This is one of those.
14) Ben Franklin and Anti-Immigrant Sentiments: As with many dominant narratives, those Americans who argue most loudy in favor of limiting immigration usually do so in large part through false, or at best greatly oversimplified and partial, versions of our past.
15) Divorce in American History: Some of our narratives about the past and present seem so obvious as to be beyond dispute: such as the idea that divorce has become more common and more accepted in our contemporary society. Maybe, but as with every topic I’ve discussed here, the reality is a good bit more complicated.
16) My Mom’s Guest Post on Margaret Wise Brown: The first of the many great guest posts I’ve been fortunate enough to feature here; I won’t link to the others, as you can and should find them by clicking the “Guest Posts” category on the right. And please—whether I’ve asked you specifically or not—feel free to contribute your own guest post down the road!
17) JFK, Tucson, and the Rhetoric and Reality of Political Violence: The first post in which I deviated from my planned schedule to respond directly to a current event—something I’ve incorporated very fully into this blog in the months since.
18) Tribute Post to Professor Alan Heimert: I’d say the same about the tribute posts that I did for the guest posts—both that they exemplify how fortunate I’ve been (in this case in the many amazing people and influences I’ve known) and that you should read them all (at the “Tribute Posts” category on the right).
19) Martin Luther King: How do we remember the real, hugely complicated, and to my mind even more inspiring man, rather than the mythic ideal we’ve created of him? A pretty key AmericanStudies question, one worth asking of every truly inspiring American.
20) Angel Island and Sui Sin Far’s “In the Land of the Free”: Immigration has been, I believe, my first frequent theme here, perhaps because, as this post illustrates, it can connect us so fully to so many of the darkest, richest, most powerful and significant national places and events, texts and histories.
21) Dresden and Slaughterhouse Five: One of the events we Americans have worked most hard to forget, and one of the novels that most beautifully and compelling argues for the need to remember and retell every story.
22) Valentine’s Day Lessons: Maybe my least analytical post, and also one of my favorites. It ain’t all academic, y’know.
23) Tori Amos, Lara Logan, and Stories of Rape: One of the greatest songs I’ve ever heard helps me respond to one of the year’s most horrific stories.
24) Peter Gomes and Faith: A tribute to one of the most inspiring Americans I’ve ever met, and some thoughts on the particularly complicated and important American theme he embodies for me.
25) The Treaty of Tripoli and the Founders on Church and State: Sometimes our historical narratives are a lot more complicated than we think. And sometimes they’re just a lot simpler. Sorry, David Barton and Glenn Beck, but there’s literally no doubt of what the Founders felt about the separation of church and state the idea of America as a “Christian nation.”
26) Newt Gingrich, Definitions of America, and Why We’re Here: The first of many posts (such as all those included in the “Book Posts” category on the right) in which I bring the ideas at the heart of my second book into my responses to AmericanStudies narratives and myths.
27) Du Bois, Affirmative Action, and Obama: Donald Trump quickly and thoroughly revealed himself to be a racist jackass, but the core reasons for much of the opposition to affirmative action are both more widespread and more worth responding to than Trump’s buffoonery.
28) Illegal Immigrants, Our Current Deportation Policies, and Empathy: What does deportation really mean and entail, who is affected, and at what human cost?
29) Tribute to My Grandfather Art Railton: The saddest Railton event of the year leads me to reflect on the many inspiring qualities of my grandfather’s life, identity, and especially perspective.
30) My Clearest Immigration Post: Cutting through some of the complexities and stating things as plainly as possible, in response to Sarah Palin’s historical falsehoods. Repeated and renamed with even more force here.
31) Paul Revere, Longfellow, and Wikipedia: Another Sarah Palin-inspired post, this time on her revisions to the Paul Revere story and the question of what is “common knowledge” and what purposes it serves in our communal conversations.
32) “Us vs. them” narratives, Muslim Americans, and Illegal Immigrants: The first of a couple posts to consider these particularly frustrating and divisive national narratives. The second, which also followed up my Norwegian terrorism response (linked below), is here.
33) Abraham Cahan: The many impressive genres and writings of this turn of the century Jewish American, and why AmericanStudiers should work to push down boundaries between disciplines as much as possible.34) Terrorism, Norway, and Rhetoric: One of the latest and most important iterations of my using a current event to drive some American analyses—and likewise an illustration of just how fully interconnected international and American events and histories are.Next bday special tomorrow,BenPS. Anything you’d add (bday wishes or otherwise)?
August 12, 2014
August 12, 2014: Birthday Specials: American Memory Days
[For a week that begins with my Dad’s birthday and ends with mine, I’ll share a series of posts that engage with birthdays, both others’ and mine. Cel … ebrate AmericanStudier birthdays, come on!]
The 2011 wish for the AmericanStudies Elves with which I inaugurated my calendar of American Memory Days.In the Roman Catholic community, almost every day is dedicated to a particular saint, allowing for each of these significant and inspiring figures and lives to be remembered in his or her turn. The saints’ lives mean and symbolize many different possible things, of course, and so I’m sure that each Catholic, each family, and each church have their particularly significant saints and days, as well as their unique and contextualized ways of remembering and celebrating. Yet the calendar of saints’ days nonetheless serves as a broadly communal connecting thread, a manner of linking all Catholics through this shared set of exemplary historical and cultural figures.I understand why we Americans only currently celebrate the birthdays of a few particularly influential presidentsand one very unique and impressive Civil Rights leader, and as I argued in both of those posts I think we can and should keep and build on the meanings of those holidays. But the truth, as I hope this blog has frequently demonstrated, is that there are many other inspiring Americans, and most of them are not as already-prominent in our national memories and narratives as the Washingtons, Lincolns, and Kings. And so, AS Elves, I propose that each day Americans memorialize and celebrate one inspiring fellow citizen who was born on that day—no possible such subject, of course, is a saint, and I don’t mean to imply that we should sanctify any of these complex historical figures or the issues and events to which they connect; but I do believe that we can and should focus on their best and most inspiring work and meanings, to remember not only the darker historical realities but how Americans have powerfully built upon and yet transcended them.The man I’d like to nominate for today, December 19th, is a particularly good example of what I mean, on two distinct levels. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) was born to freed slaves working as sharecroppers in Virginia, as Reconstruction ended and the era that came to be known as the nadir of African American life commenced; but his path took him forward to Harvard (where in 1912 he became one of the first African Americans to receive a Harvard PhD, in History) and back into our past (as he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and the Journal of Negro History , among many other efforts). And Woodson’s most lasting legacy directly models my goals here: he is known as the “Father of Black History Month,” as his multi-decade advocacy for an educational commemoration of African American histories led in 1926 to February’s Negro History Week (the direct precursor to our contemporary Black History Month). Next bday special tomorrow,BenPS. Anything you’d add (bday wishes or otherwise)?
The 2011 wish for the AmericanStudies Elves with which I inaugurated my calendar of American Memory Days.In the Roman Catholic community, almost every day is dedicated to a particular saint, allowing for each of these significant and inspiring figures and lives to be remembered in his or her turn. The saints’ lives mean and symbolize many different possible things, of course, and so I’m sure that each Catholic, each family, and each church have their particularly significant saints and days, as well as their unique and contextualized ways of remembering and celebrating. Yet the calendar of saints’ days nonetheless serves as a broadly communal connecting thread, a manner of linking all Catholics through this shared set of exemplary historical and cultural figures.I understand why we Americans only currently celebrate the birthdays of a few particularly influential presidentsand one very unique and impressive Civil Rights leader, and as I argued in both of those posts I think we can and should keep and build on the meanings of those holidays. But the truth, as I hope this blog has frequently demonstrated, is that there are many other inspiring Americans, and most of them are not as already-prominent in our national memories and narratives as the Washingtons, Lincolns, and Kings. And so, AS Elves, I propose that each day Americans memorialize and celebrate one inspiring fellow citizen who was born on that day—no possible such subject, of course, is a saint, and I don’t mean to imply that we should sanctify any of these complex historical figures or the issues and events to which they connect; but I do believe that we can and should focus on their best and most inspiring work and meanings, to remember not only the darker historical realities but how Americans have powerfully built upon and yet transcended them.The man I’d like to nominate for today, December 19th, is a particularly good example of what I mean, on two distinct levels. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) was born to freed slaves working as sharecroppers in Virginia, as Reconstruction ended and the era that came to be known as the nadir of African American life commenced; but his path took him forward to Harvard (where in 1912 he became one of the first African Americans to receive a Harvard PhD, in History) and back into our past (as he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and the Journal of Negro History , among many other efforts). And Woodson’s most lasting legacy directly models my goals here: he is known as the “Father of Black History Month,” as his multi-decade advocacy for an educational commemoration of African American histories led in 1926 to February’s Negro History Week (the direct precursor to our contemporary Black History Month). Next bday special tomorrow,BenPS. Anything you’d add (bday wishes or otherwise)?
August 11, 2014
August 11, 2014: Birthday Specials: Born This Day
[For a week that begins with my Dad’s birthday and ends with mine, I’ll share a series of posts that engage with birthdays, both others’ and mine. Cel … ebrate AmericanStudier birthdays, come on!]
On four Americans who share August 11th birthdays.On August 11th, 1833, Robert Ingersoll was born in upstate New York, the son of a prominent local Abolitionist preacher. Like many of the inspiring 19th century Americans about whom I’ve written here, Ingersoll certainly qualifies as a Renaissance American: a practicing lawyer for his whole adult life, Ingersoll also raised and commanded his own Union Army regiment (the 11thIllinois Volunteer Cavalry) which saw action at Shiloh, served as the Republican Attorney General of Illinois after the war, became one of the era’s most famous orators (his “Plumed Knight” speech, advocating for the 1876 presidential nomination of James Blaine, remains well-known today), and befriended Walt Whitman. But Ingersoll was perhaps best known, and is most inspiring to this AmericanStudier, as a vocal and eloquent defender of religious agnosticism (he came to be known as “The Great Agnostic”) in a period when such views (at least when made overt) usually spelled political disaster. As he often did, Whitman put Ingersoll’s inspiring qualities best (in an interview with journalist Horace Traubel): “He lives, embodies, the individuality I preach. I see in Bob the noblest specimen—American-flavored—pure out of the soil, spreading, giving, demanding light.”On August 11th, 1921, Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York (not far from Ingersoll’s birthplace of Dresden), the son of an Alabama A&M professor of agriculture (in an era when African American college professors were still pretty rare). Haley enlisted in the Coast Guard in 1939 and served not only throughout World War II but for the next twenty years, and only began writing professionally after his retirement at the end of the 1950s. That writing career can be divided into three distinct stages, with each both contributing significantly to our national narratives and in its own way controversial. He conducted the first interviews for Playboy in the early 1960s, and over the course of the decade interviewed such luminaries as Miles Davis (the first subject), Martin Luther King, Jr., and Muhammad Ali. A series of conversations with Malcolm X led to Haley’s first book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), which remains to this day both one of America’s most important texts and one of its most ambiguously authored ones (it was published after Malcolm’s assassination and has always been dogged by questions of how much was truly Malcolm’s voice and how much Haley’s authorly license). For the next decade Haley researched his family’s and American history, culminating in the publication of Roots (1976), which even before the groundbreaking TV miniseries represented one of the century’s most successful books. It too has been dogged by controversy, particularly about the authenticity and accuracy of Haley’s family details and discoveries; but even if the book’s stories were proven literally fictional, it would remain no less compelling and powerful as an autobiographical and historical novel of slavery and race in America.On August 11th, 1933, Jerry Falwell was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, the son of a local businessman and bootlegger (and agnostic!). Although he founded and began serving as pastor of Lynchburg’s Thomas Road Baptist Church at the age of 22, it was really in the 1970s that Falwell helped originate and greatly influenced three of the most significant religious, political, and cultural shifts of late 20th century America: gradually turning that local church into one of the nation’s first mega-churches; founding Liberty University (in 1971), perhaps the first Christian institution of higher learning to gain national prominence (and certainly one at the forefront of the rise in Christian education as part of a pushback against multiculturalism); and founding the Moral Majority (in 1979), one of the organizations that most fully contributed to the shift in evangelical and fundamentalist Christian Americans’ perspectives and goals toward explicit political activism and power. There’s no question that many of the most significant American political developments of the last three decades were heavily influenced by Falwell and his cohort, from the election of Ronald Reagan to the many-faceted campaign to destroy Bill Clinton, and certainly to the presidency and policies of George W. Bush. It’s fair to say that Falwell might be best known, however, for controversies of his own: his unsuccessful lawsuits against Hustler magazine and Larry Flynt,his “outing” of the “gay” Teletubby Tinky Winky, his horrific post-9/11 attempts to blame the tragedy on gay and other culturally liberal Americans. Given how divisive and heated the cultural wars have become, thanks in no small measure to Falwell’s own efforts, it would be perfectly appropriate if heated controversies did indeed constitute his truest legacy.On August 11th, 1948, Stephen Railton was born in Elgin, Illinois, the son of a World War II veteran and Popular Mechanics automotive journalist (about whom more hereand here) and an equally impressive college-educated homemaker. Like Ingersoll, Steve Railton can give a great lecture (as generations of University of Virginia students will attest); like Haley, he can research and write a great book (see hereand here); unlike Falwell, he’s a deeply accepting and progressive-in-the-best-sense thinker and person. And I wouldn’t be here, literally and in every other way, without him.Next bday special tomorrow,BenPS. Anything you’d add (bday wishes or otherwise)?
On four Americans who share August 11th birthdays.On August 11th, 1833, Robert Ingersoll was born in upstate New York, the son of a prominent local Abolitionist preacher. Like many of the inspiring 19th century Americans about whom I’ve written here, Ingersoll certainly qualifies as a Renaissance American: a practicing lawyer for his whole adult life, Ingersoll also raised and commanded his own Union Army regiment (the 11thIllinois Volunteer Cavalry) which saw action at Shiloh, served as the Republican Attorney General of Illinois after the war, became one of the era’s most famous orators (his “Plumed Knight” speech, advocating for the 1876 presidential nomination of James Blaine, remains well-known today), and befriended Walt Whitman. But Ingersoll was perhaps best known, and is most inspiring to this AmericanStudier, as a vocal and eloquent defender of religious agnosticism (he came to be known as “The Great Agnostic”) in a period when such views (at least when made overt) usually spelled political disaster. As he often did, Whitman put Ingersoll’s inspiring qualities best (in an interview with journalist Horace Traubel): “He lives, embodies, the individuality I preach. I see in Bob the noblest specimen—American-flavored—pure out of the soil, spreading, giving, demanding light.”On August 11th, 1921, Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York (not far from Ingersoll’s birthplace of Dresden), the son of an Alabama A&M professor of agriculture (in an era when African American college professors were still pretty rare). Haley enlisted in the Coast Guard in 1939 and served not only throughout World War II but for the next twenty years, and only began writing professionally after his retirement at the end of the 1950s. That writing career can be divided into three distinct stages, with each both contributing significantly to our national narratives and in its own way controversial. He conducted the first interviews for Playboy in the early 1960s, and over the course of the decade interviewed such luminaries as Miles Davis (the first subject), Martin Luther King, Jr., and Muhammad Ali. A series of conversations with Malcolm X led to Haley’s first book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), which remains to this day both one of America’s most important texts and one of its most ambiguously authored ones (it was published after Malcolm’s assassination and has always been dogged by questions of how much was truly Malcolm’s voice and how much Haley’s authorly license). For the next decade Haley researched his family’s and American history, culminating in the publication of Roots (1976), which even before the groundbreaking TV miniseries represented one of the century’s most successful books. It too has been dogged by controversy, particularly about the authenticity and accuracy of Haley’s family details and discoveries; but even if the book’s stories were proven literally fictional, it would remain no less compelling and powerful as an autobiographical and historical novel of slavery and race in America.On August 11th, 1933, Jerry Falwell was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, the son of a local businessman and bootlegger (and agnostic!). Although he founded and began serving as pastor of Lynchburg’s Thomas Road Baptist Church at the age of 22, it was really in the 1970s that Falwell helped originate and greatly influenced three of the most significant religious, political, and cultural shifts of late 20th century America: gradually turning that local church into one of the nation’s first mega-churches; founding Liberty University (in 1971), perhaps the first Christian institution of higher learning to gain national prominence (and certainly one at the forefront of the rise in Christian education as part of a pushback against multiculturalism); and founding the Moral Majority (in 1979), one of the organizations that most fully contributed to the shift in evangelical and fundamentalist Christian Americans’ perspectives and goals toward explicit political activism and power. There’s no question that many of the most significant American political developments of the last three decades were heavily influenced by Falwell and his cohort, from the election of Ronald Reagan to the many-faceted campaign to destroy Bill Clinton, and certainly to the presidency and policies of George W. Bush. It’s fair to say that Falwell might be best known, however, for controversies of his own: his unsuccessful lawsuits against Hustler magazine and Larry Flynt,his “outing” of the “gay” Teletubby Tinky Winky, his horrific post-9/11 attempts to blame the tragedy on gay and other culturally liberal Americans. Given how divisive and heated the cultural wars have become, thanks in no small measure to Falwell’s own efforts, it would be perfectly appropriate if heated controversies did indeed constitute his truest legacy.On August 11th, 1948, Stephen Railton was born in Elgin, Illinois, the son of a World War II veteran and Popular Mechanics automotive journalist (about whom more hereand here) and an equally impressive college-educated homemaker. Like Ingersoll, Steve Railton can give a great lecture (as generations of University of Virginia students will attest); like Haley, he can research and write a great book (see hereand here); unlike Falwell, he’s a deeply accepting and progressive-in-the-best-sense thinker and person. And I wouldn’t be here, literally and in every other way, without him.Next bday special tomorrow,BenPS. Anything you’d add (bday wishes or otherwise)?
August 9, 2014
August 9-10, 2014: Italian American Voices: Nancy Caronia’s Guest Post
[In about a week I’ll be taking my annual August pilgrimage with the boys to my home state of Virginia. So this week I’ve shared another annual Virginia-inspired series, this one focused on interesting voices from the state and leading up to this special Guest Post on lots of other important American voices!]
[Nancy Caronia is finishing her PhD on contemporary, transnational literatures at the University of Rhode Island, where she’s also a Lecturer in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric and the Assistant Director of the Writing Center. Her first book, which she discusses in this post, is due out next year. She’s very active in the American Studies, Native American Studies, and Italian American Studies communities. And she’s even publishedon Springsteen!]Whenever I tell anyone I’m of Irish and Italian ancestry, I usually qualify the Italian by stating, “actually, I’m Sicilian, not Italian.” Their reactions range from an eye-roll to wide-eyed wonderment. Some even venture to say, “so, you have Mafia in your family? I better not cross you. You might have me killed.” Others simply want to know how I make my sauce. Facts, of course, do not matter when thinking about Italian Americans and their contributions to the American Diaspora—Don Corleone, Tony Soprano, and a good red sauce (or gravy, all depending on from where your ancestors were located) win every time. Still, it’s important to recognize that Italian Americans contributions to the American landscape are more diverse and complicated than one-dimensional references to the Mafia and spaghetti sauce.In literature, Mario Puzo and Don DeLillo are familiar names, and American Studies courses will often include one or the other (although these courses will more likely include Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic version of Puzo’s The Godfather); however, there are many Italian American writers who are thriving and writing radical texts today. These IA writers deserve not only public attention, but also to be taught in American Studies classrooms alongside canonical and alternative canon texts. Since I’ve just finished co-editing with Edvige Giunta Personal Effects: Memoir, Teaching, and Culture in the Work of Louise DeSalvo (Fordham 2015), I’ve been thinking about and reading memoir. DeSalvo, who began her career as a Woolf scholar (she wrote Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work [1990]), turned towards memoir in the 1990s and inspired an entire generation of Italian American women writers with her groundbreaking work, Vertigo (1995), about growing up second generation Italian American in New Jersey. Since then she has written no less than seven books of memoir and essay, including Adultery (1997), Breathless (1999), and Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives (2000). This fall, she has two books being released: The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections on Time, Craft, and Creativity (St. Martin’s Griffin 2014), which was inspired by her blog “Writingalife,”and Casting Off (Bordighera Press 2014), a novel about two white ethnic women who engage in extramarital liaisons and don’t suffer for it. The Harvester Press in the UK published Casting Off in 1987, but it never found a publisher in the US—until now. Bordighera Press, dedicated to publishing Italian American and Italian literature since 1989, decided it was long past time that Casting Off was published in the US. I was asked to write the introduction for Casting Off and I’ve contextualized it alongside other novels written in the 1980s. It’s an important contribution to radical second wave feminist concerns about female sexuality and, as such, erases the male gaze.This past semester, I taught DeSalvo’s Writing as a Way of Healing alongside a diverse bunch of memoirs, including Annie Lanzilotto’s L is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir (2013) and Domenica Ruta’s With or Without You (2013). My creative non-fiction students unabashedly embraced these memoirs, and were thrilled when Lanzilotto, whose memoir was a finalist in this year’s Lambda Literary Awards, visited our class. (Read my review of her visit here.) These memoirs are not sentimental, romantic portrayals of food and family. The love in these memoirs often hurts, but the protagonists are strong women who emerge with more than a few scars and a lot of life experience. They are also terrific storytellers who create complicated tales of second and third generation immigrant life in the US.I’m looking forward to reading Criz Mazza’s Something Wrong with Her (Jaded Ibis 2014). It examines the origins of her anorgasmia and seems like it will be another searing and complex portrayal from her about contemporary life. Mazza has written or edited more than 17 books, and coined the term Chick Lit in 1995 with her co-editor Jeffrey DeShell for the volume Chick-Lit: Postfeminist Fiction (FC2 1995). The title was chosen sardonically, and in 2006 Mazza published “Who’s Laughing Now? A Short History of Chick Lit and the Perversion of a Genre” detailing how the phrase has gone from “point[ing] out [the] delusion” that “men write about what’s important; women write about what’s important to women” to the way in which, in its second incarnation, the term was “stripped” of all its “irony.”I could easily see any of these memoirs being taught in a survey course on class or being used in a gender and women’s section on female sexuality. Additionally, these memoirs would offer a nice contrast to memoirs like Nick Flynn’s The Ticking is the Bomb(I taught this with Lanzilotto and Ruta) or Richard Hoffman’s newest memoir Love & Fury (Beacon 2014), but I think both Lanzilotto’s and Ruta’s memoirs would be terrific on a syllabus that includes fiction like Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Penguin 2007), Dinaw Mengestu’s How to Read the Air (Penguin 2010), or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (Knopf 2013).I would feel remiss if I didn’t mention Diane di Prima, who turned 80 this week. She has a new book of poetry coming out with City Lights, The Poetry Deal . Buy it and support the most under-appreciated poet of the beat generation. When I first read this line from “Rant,” THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST THE IMAGINATION, I knew I was in the presence of greatness. She felt radical, she was a woman, and she was Italian American. Like DeSalvo, Italian American women writers have a lot for which to thank her.I’d like to quickly crowd source some important recent scholarly contributions to the fields of Italian American literature and culture. Anthony Julian Tamburri, the Dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute and one of the field’s foremost scholars and champions, has written Re-reading Italian Americana: Specificities and Generalities on Literature and Criticism (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 2014). The book addresses the contemporary state of Italian American literary studies, but also examines early twentieth century Italian American writers such as Pietro di Donato. Italoamericana: The Literature of the Great Migration, 1880 to 1943 , is now available in paperbook from Fordham University Press. First gathered and edited by Francesco Duarte, this new American Edition, edited by Robert Viscusi with translation edior Anthony Julian Tamburri and bibliographic editor James J. Perriconi, offers up a multi-genre volume of poetry, journalism, history, memoir, biography, and drama of writings by Italian immigrants, many who wrote in Italian. This volume offers a larger context for understanding how Italians made the transition to American life and what it meant to come to the United States.I think it is quite an achievement and contextualizes IA culture in a more expansive and inclusive manner. Co-editors Edvige Giunta and Joseph Sciorra have done an amazing job of gathering the academic essays, stories, poems, and visual art that make up Embroidered Stories: Interpreting Women’s Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora . The collection examines needlework through a transnational perspective. Editor Simone Cinotto compiled a diverse range of essays for Making Italian America: Consumer Culture and the Production of Ethnic Identities , released in April by Fordham. The focus is on immigrants and their children and how they’ve adapted to US culture through consumptive practices.The Calandra Institute resurrected the peer-reviewed journal Italian American Review three years ago and you can read all the book, film, and digital media reviews for free here.
If you are interested in knowing more about Italian American studies, there are two organizations and conferences that I would recommend. The Italian American Studies Association is an inclusive organization that regularly brings together scholars, writers, and artists. The seed for the DeSalvo book was sown at an IASA conference in New Haven when I casually turned to Edvige Giunta and said, “we need to do a panel next year on Louise DeSalvo.” She turned to me and said, “okay. Then we can do the book.” This year’s conference will be held in Toronto from October 17 – 19. The CFP is closed, but information about .The John D. Calandra Institute, located within New York’s CUNY, is one of the most important spaces for discussions about Italian Diaspora. Each year they have a lively conference that brings together scholars from many different disciplines. Next year’s conference will be held on April 24 and 25, 2015 and its theme, “Bambini, Ragazzi, Giovani: Children and Youth in Italy and the Italian Diaspora,” will bring scholars from around the globe. The CFP is up and abstracts are due September 12, 2014.[Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? American voices you’d highlight?]
[Nancy Caronia is finishing her PhD on contemporary, transnational literatures at the University of Rhode Island, where she’s also a Lecturer in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric and the Assistant Director of the Writing Center. Her first book, which she discusses in this post, is due out next year. She’s very active in the American Studies, Native American Studies, and Italian American Studies communities. And she’s even publishedon Springsteen!]Whenever I tell anyone I’m of Irish and Italian ancestry, I usually qualify the Italian by stating, “actually, I’m Sicilian, not Italian.” Their reactions range from an eye-roll to wide-eyed wonderment. Some even venture to say, “so, you have Mafia in your family? I better not cross you. You might have me killed.” Others simply want to know how I make my sauce. Facts, of course, do not matter when thinking about Italian Americans and their contributions to the American Diaspora—Don Corleone, Tony Soprano, and a good red sauce (or gravy, all depending on from where your ancestors were located) win every time. Still, it’s important to recognize that Italian Americans contributions to the American landscape are more diverse and complicated than one-dimensional references to the Mafia and spaghetti sauce.In literature, Mario Puzo and Don DeLillo are familiar names, and American Studies courses will often include one or the other (although these courses will more likely include Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic version of Puzo’s The Godfather); however, there are many Italian American writers who are thriving and writing radical texts today. These IA writers deserve not only public attention, but also to be taught in American Studies classrooms alongside canonical and alternative canon texts. Since I’ve just finished co-editing with Edvige Giunta Personal Effects: Memoir, Teaching, and Culture in the Work of Louise DeSalvo (Fordham 2015), I’ve been thinking about and reading memoir. DeSalvo, who began her career as a Woolf scholar (she wrote Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work [1990]), turned towards memoir in the 1990s and inspired an entire generation of Italian American women writers with her groundbreaking work, Vertigo (1995), about growing up second generation Italian American in New Jersey. Since then she has written no less than seven books of memoir and essay, including Adultery (1997), Breathless (1999), and Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives (2000). This fall, she has two books being released: The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections on Time, Craft, and Creativity (St. Martin’s Griffin 2014), which was inspired by her blog “Writingalife,”and Casting Off (Bordighera Press 2014), a novel about two white ethnic women who engage in extramarital liaisons and don’t suffer for it. The Harvester Press in the UK published Casting Off in 1987, but it never found a publisher in the US—until now. Bordighera Press, dedicated to publishing Italian American and Italian literature since 1989, decided it was long past time that Casting Off was published in the US. I was asked to write the introduction for Casting Off and I’ve contextualized it alongside other novels written in the 1980s. It’s an important contribution to radical second wave feminist concerns about female sexuality and, as such, erases the male gaze.This past semester, I taught DeSalvo’s Writing as a Way of Healing alongside a diverse bunch of memoirs, including Annie Lanzilotto’s L is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir (2013) and Domenica Ruta’s With or Without You (2013). My creative non-fiction students unabashedly embraced these memoirs, and were thrilled when Lanzilotto, whose memoir was a finalist in this year’s Lambda Literary Awards, visited our class. (Read my review of her visit here.) These memoirs are not sentimental, romantic portrayals of food and family. The love in these memoirs often hurts, but the protagonists are strong women who emerge with more than a few scars and a lot of life experience. They are also terrific storytellers who create complicated tales of second and third generation immigrant life in the US.I’m looking forward to reading Criz Mazza’s Something Wrong with Her (Jaded Ibis 2014). It examines the origins of her anorgasmia and seems like it will be another searing and complex portrayal from her about contemporary life. Mazza has written or edited more than 17 books, and coined the term Chick Lit in 1995 with her co-editor Jeffrey DeShell for the volume Chick-Lit: Postfeminist Fiction (FC2 1995). The title was chosen sardonically, and in 2006 Mazza published “Who’s Laughing Now? A Short History of Chick Lit and the Perversion of a Genre” detailing how the phrase has gone from “point[ing] out [the] delusion” that “men write about what’s important; women write about what’s important to women” to the way in which, in its second incarnation, the term was “stripped” of all its “irony.”I could easily see any of these memoirs being taught in a survey course on class or being used in a gender and women’s section on female sexuality. Additionally, these memoirs would offer a nice contrast to memoirs like Nick Flynn’s The Ticking is the Bomb(I taught this with Lanzilotto and Ruta) or Richard Hoffman’s newest memoir Love & Fury (Beacon 2014), but I think both Lanzilotto’s and Ruta’s memoirs would be terrific on a syllabus that includes fiction like Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Penguin 2007), Dinaw Mengestu’s How to Read the Air (Penguin 2010), or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (Knopf 2013).I would feel remiss if I didn’t mention Diane di Prima, who turned 80 this week. She has a new book of poetry coming out with City Lights, The Poetry Deal . Buy it and support the most under-appreciated poet of the beat generation. When I first read this line from “Rant,” THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST THE IMAGINATION, I knew I was in the presence of greatness. She felt radical, she was a woman, and she was Italian American. Like DeSalvo, Italian American women writers have a lot for which to thank her.I’d like to quickly crowd source some important recent scholarly contributions to the fields of Italian American literature and culture. Anthony Julian Tamburri, the Dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute and one of the field’s foremost scholars and champions, has written Re-reading Italian Americana: Specificities and Generalities on Literature and Criticism (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 2014). The book addresses the contemporary state of Italian American literary studies, but also examines early twentieth century Italian American writers such as Pietro di Donato. Italoamericana: The Literature of the Great Migration, 1880 to 1943 , is now available in paperbook from Fordham University Press. First gathered and edited by Francesco Duarte, this new American Edition, edited by Robert Viscusi with translation edior Anthony Julian Tamburri and bibliographic editor James J. Perriconi, offers up a multi-genre volume of poetry, journalism, history, memoir, biography, and drama of writings by Italian immigrants, many who wrote in Italian. This volume offers a larger context for understanding how Italians made the transition to American life and what it meant to come to the United States.I think it is quite an achievement and contextualizes IA culture in a more expansive and inclusive manner. Co-editors Edvige Giunta and Joseph Sciorra have done an amazing job of gathering the academic essays, stories, poems, and visual art that make up Embroidered Stories: Interpreting Women’s Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora . The collection examines needlework through a transnational perspective. Editor Simone Cinotto compiled a diverse range of essays for Making Italian America: Consumer Culture and the Production of Ethnic Identities , released in April by Fordham. The focus is on immigrants and their children and how they’ve adapted to US culture through consumptive practices.The Calandra Institute resurrected the peer-reviewed journal Italian American Review three years ago and you can read all the book, film, and digital media reviews for free here.
If you are interested in knowing more about Italian American studies, there are two organizations and conferences that I would recommend. The Italian American Studies Association is an inclusive organization that regularly brings together scholars, writers, and artists. The seed for the DeSalvo book was sown at an IASA conference in New Haven when I casually turned to Edvige Giunta and said, “we need to do a panel next year on Louise DeSalvo.” She turned to me and said, “okay. Then we can do the book.” This year’s conference will be held in Toronto from October 17 – 19. The CFP is closed, but information about .The John D. Calandra Institute, located within New York’s CUNY, is one of the most important spaces for discussions about Italian Diaspora. Each year they have a lively conference that brings together scholars from many different disciplines. Next year’s conference will be held on April 24 and 25, 2015 and its theme, “Bambini, Ragazzi, Giovani: Children and Youth in Italy and the Italian Diaspora,” will bring scholars from around the globe. The CFP is up and abstracts are due September 12, 2014.[Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? American voices you’d highlight?]
August 8, 2014
August 8, 2014: Virginia Voices: V.C. Andrews
[In about a week I’ll be taking my annual August pilgrimage with the boys to my home state of Virginia. So here’s another annual Virginia-inspired series, this one focused on interesting voices from the state and leading up to my next Guest Post!]
On popularity, branding, and when an author becomes a product.Much of what I wrote in this early 2013 series on popular fiction would apply to V.C. Andrews (1923-1986), the lifelong resident of Portsmouth, Virginia who became late in her life one of the most popular American novelistsof the last quarter of the 20th century. Andrews’ debut novel, Flowers in the Attic (1979), quickly became a bestseller and has remained a mega-hit ever since; she would publish a novel a year for the remainder of her life, each a bestseller in its own right. Andrews’ books and themes combined the Gothic mysteries of an Edgar Allan Poe with the tangled, incestuous family secrets and histories of a William Faulkner, but in an intensely readable style that was all her own. “I think I tell a whopping good story,” she once notedin an interview, “And I don’t drift away from it a great deal into descriptive material.”Andrews died of breast cancer in 1986, and yet has published more than 60 booksin the quarter century since. These aren’t mostly posthumously released books by Andrews, however (she was prolific in her brief time as a novelist, but not that prolific), but rather ghost-written works; the Andrews estate hired horror novelist Andrew Neiderman to complete the manuscripts that were unfinished at the time of her death, and Neiderman has gone on to publish more than 50 additional novels, all under the name and in the style of “V.C. Andrews.” Indeed, the Andrews estate apparently never intended to release Neiderman’s name or identity, and he was only identified by outside investigations; as far as the official narrative goes, all of the books have still been written by “V.C. Andrews.” Andrews’ books aren’t the only popular series for whom this kind of posthumous branding has occurred—see the Hardy Boysand Nancy Drew empires, among others—but given the very brief 7-year period in which she published her own books, it’s a particularly striking case.It’s fair to say that all truly popular authors become brands at a certain point, not only in our own era (Tom Clancy, Dan Brown) but in earlier periods as well (Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain). But it’s also fair to say that there’s something different about the case of an author who published eight books while she was alive and has “published” more than seven times as many since her death. Those eight books unquestionably established Andrews’ popularity, as well as the style and stories that drew readers in and kept them coming back, and I’m not trying to downplay her work or role. But more than twenty-five years after her death, with no end in sight to the books and series that bear her name, “V.C. Andrews” has become far more of a commercial product, a business, than an author. Which, the cynic in me might say, makes this Virginia voice perhaps the most telling of all those I’ve traced this week.Guest Post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Voices from your home you’d highlight?
On popularity, branding, and when an author becomes a product.Much of what I wrote in this early 2013 series on popular fiction would apply to V.C. Andrews (1923-1986), the lifelong resident of Portsmouth, Virginia who became late in her life one of the most popular American novelistsof the last quarter of the 20th century. Andrews’ debut novel, Flowers in the Attic (1979), quickly became a bestseller and has remained a mega-hit ever since; she would publish a novel a year for the remainder of her life, each a bestseller in its own right. Andrews’ books and themes combined the Gothic mysteries of an Edgar Allan Poe with the tangled, incestuous family secrets and histories of a William Faulkner, but in an intensely readable style that was all her own. “I think I tell a whopping good story,” she once notedin an interview, “And I don’t drift away from it a great deal into descriptive material.”Andrews died of breast cancer in 1986, and yet has published more than 60 booksin the quarter century since. These aren’t mostly posthumously released books by Andrews, however (she was prolific in her brief time as a novelist, but not that prolific), but rather ghost-written works; the Andrews estate hired horror novelist Andrew Neiderman to complete the manuscripts that were unfinished at the time of her death, and Neiderman has gone on to publish more than 50 additional novels, all under the name and in the style of “V.C. Andrews.” Indeed, the Andrews estate apparently never intended to release Neiderman’s name or identity, and he was only identified by outside investigations; as far as the official narrative goes, all of the books have still been written by “V.C. Andrews.” Andrews’ books aren’t the only popular series for whom this kind of posthumous branding has occurred—see the Hardy Boysand Nancy Drew empires, among others—but given the very brief 7-year period in which she published her own books, it’s a particularly striking case.It’s fair to say that all truly popular authors become brands at a certain point, not only in our own era (Tom Clancy, Dan Brown) but in earlier periods as well (Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain). But it’s also fair to say that there’s something different about the case of an author who published eight books while she was alive and has “published” more than seven times as many since her death. Those eight books unquestionably established Andrews’ popularity, as well as the style and stories that drew readers in and kept them coming back, and I’m not trying to downplay her work or role. But more than twenty-five years after her death, with no end in sight to the books and series that bear her name, “V.C. Andrews” has become far more of a commercial product, a business, than an author. Which, the cynic in me might say, makes this Virginia voice perhaps the most telling of all those I’ve traced this week.Guest Post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Voices from your home you’d highlight?
August 7, 2014
August 7, 2014: Virginia Voices: Tom Wolfe
[In about a week I’ll be taking my annual August pilgrimage with the boys to my home state of Virginia. So here’s another annual Virginia-inspired series, this one focused on interesting voices from the state and leading up to my next Guest Post!]
On the author who redefined what novels could be, and then turned instead to more conventional ones.In a post from almost exactly three years ago, I called Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History (1968) “one of the great works of 20th century American literature.” I stand by that statement and post, but it’d be important to add that many of the stylistic and formal techniques and innovations that make Mailer’s book so interesting came directly out of an existing literary movement, New Journalism. This blending of conventional journalism and experimental storytelling, third-person reporting and autobiography, non-fiction and fiction had been pioneered a few years earlier by Tom Wolfe (1931- ), the Yale American Studies PhD turned journalist whose first collection, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965) was one of the decade’s most influential works.In Kandy, as well as the subsequent The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) and Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970), Wolfe contributed (as certainly did Mailer and others, including Truman Capote with In Cold Blood [1965]) to a radical redefinition of the novel and American literature more generally. Sometimes called “non-fiction novels,” a term that is purposefully contradictory and slippery, such works generally foreground their factuality while utilizing narrative and stylistic techniques that are typically found in works of fiction. They seek to inform their audiences about very real and usually contemporary social and cultural topics, yet at the same time challenge readers to decide what is fact and what is fiction, and indeed to question what kind of book they have in their hands. While most of the genre’s influential individual works have faded in prominence (other than Capote’s, probably because of the true crime appeal), its overall impact on late 20thcentury American writing can’t be overstated.Yet interestingly, Wolfe’s own later writings have significantly moved away from the genre. Starting with his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987), Wolfe has published almost exclusively more conventional works of fiction: A Man in Full (1998), I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004), and Back to Blood (2012). By conventional I don’t mean traditional, as these books are full of the kinds of narrative and stylistic experimentation associated with postmodern fiction. But they’re nonetheless all clearly novels, not nonfiction novels or New Journalism or the like. So has the genre run its course, having achieved its impacts, and is no longer as necessary? Is Wolfe simply becoming more conservative in his literary as well as political perspectives late in life? Does a current writer like Dave Eggers qualify as a new form of nonfiction novelist? All possibilities—and in any case, Tom Wolfe is a Virginia voice who has unquestionably left his mark on our literature and culture.Last voice of mine tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Voices from your home you’d highlight?
On the author who redefined what novels could be, and then turned instead to more conventional ones.In a post from almost exactly three years ago, I called Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History (1968) “one of the great works of 20th century American literature.” I stand by that statement and post, but it’d be important to add that many of the stylistic and formal techniques and innovations that make Mailer’s book so interesting came directly out of an existing literary movement, New Journalism. This blending of conventional journalism and experimental storytelling, third-person reporting and autobiography, non-fiction and fiction had been pioneered a few years earlier by Tom Wolfe (1931- ), the Yale American Studies PhD turned journalist whose first collection, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965) was one of the decade’s most influential works.In Kandy, as well as the subsequent The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) and Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970), Wolfe contributed (as certainly did Mailer and others, including Truman Capote with In Cold Blood [1965]) to a radical redefinition of the novel and American literature more generally. Sometimes called “non-fiction novels,” a term that is purposefully contradictory and slippery, such works generally foreground their factuality while utilizing narrative and stylistic techniques that are typically found in works of fiction. They seek to inform their audiences about very real and usually contemporary social and cultural topics, yet at the same time challenge readers to decide what is fact and what is fiction, and indeed to question what kind of book they have in their hands. While most of the genre’s influential individual works have faded in prominence (other than Capote’s, probably because of the true crime appeal), its overall impact on late 20thcentury American writing can’t be overstated.Yet interestingly, Wolfe’s own later writings have significantly moved away from the genre. Starting with his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987), Wolfe has published almost exclusively more conventional works of fiction: A Man in Full (1998), I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004), and Back to Blood (2012). By conventional I don’t mean traditional, as these books are full of the kinds of narrative and stylistic experimentation associated with postmodern fiction. But they’re nonetheless all clearly novels, not nonfiction novels or New Journalism or the like. So has the genre run its course, having achieved its impacts, and is no longer as necessary? Is Wolfe simply becoming more conservative in his literary as well as political perspectives late in life? Does a current writer like Dave Eggers qualify as a new form of nonfiction novelist? All possibilities—and in any case, Tom Wolfe is a Virginia voice who has unquestionably left his mark on our literature and culture.Last voice of mine tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Voices from your home you’d highlight?
August 6, 2014
August 6, 2014: Virginia Voices: William McGuffey
[In about a week I’ll be taking my annual August pilgrimage with the boys to my home state of Virginia. So here’s another annual Virginia-inspired series, this one focused on interesting voices from the state and leading up to my next Guest Post!]
On the minister and academic who impacted education as much as any single American.Okay, this one is kind of cheating—all four of the week’s other Virginia voices were born in the state; whereas William McGuffey (1800-1873) was born in Pennsylvania, spent much of his life there and in Ohio (where he served as a minister, teacher, faculty member, and college president at numerous institutions), and lived for only his last 28 years in Charlottesville (where he was a professor of moral philosophy at UVa). But McGuffey is buried in the official University of Virginia burial ground, has at least one prominent Charlottesville building named for him, and was thus a presence in my childhood without my knowing a single thing about him. Now that I’ve learned a few such things, I’m determined to share them with you, rules of the week’s series be damned (a word choice upon which the intensely religious McGuffey would frown).McGuffey is best known for his McGuffey Readers, the series of textbooks he produced from the 1830s (when he was commissioned by the Cincinnati publisher Truman and Smith) through the end of his life (and that were carried on after his deathby other family members such as his brother Alexander). And when I say best known, I mean best known—by most estimates the Readers sold more than 150 million copies in the century or so after their initial appearance, making them a bestseller to rival only texts like the Bible. That comparison is entirely apt, as McGuffey’s principal occupation as a minister and religious philosopher meant that he produced Readers which were openly and consistently focused on educating young Christians, and on defining a national identity that was explicitly linked to that spiritual one. As such, the McGuffey Readers are partly of continuing interest for the glimpse they provide into a period when public education and religion were deeply intertwined, and when indeed the Second Great Awakening had recently spread such religious influences across America in new and potent ways.Yet if in this religious content and tone the McGuffey Readers reflected aspects of their period, in other important ways they pushed American education far beyond where it was when they appeared. That’s true in part due to specific aspects of their content, such as the inclusion of numerous poetic and prose passages from literature (classical and contemporary), which helped make literary reading and analysis an important part of education in America. But it’s even more true, I would argue, of the Readers’ fundamental premise: that all American students deserved and needed a rigorous introduction to reading and many related topics (spelling, writing, elocution, ethics and philosophy, and more), one available relatively inexpensively and in an easily accessed and shared form. A prominent scholarly book on early 19th century religion defined it as the era of “The Democratization of American Christianity,” and I would say the same of the McGuffey Readers’ impact on education: they democratized it. Hard to imagine a more potent or more American effect than that.Next voice tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Voices from your home you’d highlight?
On the minister and academic who impacted education as much as any single American.Okay, this one is kind of cheating—all four of the week’s other Virginia voices were born in the state; whereas William McGuffey (1800-1873) was born in Pennsylvania, spent much of his life there and in Ohio (where he served as a minister, teacher, faculty member, and college president at numerous institutions), and lived for only his last 28 years in Charlottesville (where he was a professor of moral philosophy at UVa). But McGuffey is buried in the official University of Virginia burial ground, has at least one prominent Charlottesville building named for him, and was thus a presence in my childhood without my knowing a single thing about him. Now that I’ve learned a few such things, I’m determined to share them with you, rules of the week’s series be damned (a word choice upon which the intensely religious McGuffey would frown).McGuffey is best known for his McGuffey Readers, the series of textbooks he produced from the 1830s (when he was commissioned by the Cincinnati publisher Truman and Smith) through the end of his life (and that were carried on after his deathby other family members such as his brother Alexander). And when I say best known, I mean best known—by most estimates the Readers sold more than 150 million copies in the century or so after their initial appearance, making them a bestseller to rival only texts like the Bible. That comparison is entirely apt, as McGuffey’s principal occupation as a minister and religious philosopher meant that he produced Readers which were openly and consistently focused on educating young Christians, and on defining a national identity that was explicitly linked to that spiritual one. As such, the McGuffey Readers are partly of continuing interest for the glimpse they provide into a period when public education and religion were deeply intertwined, and when indeed the Second Great Awakening had recently spread such religious influences across America in new and potent ways.Yet if in this religious content and tone the McGuffey Readers reflected aspects of their period, in other important ways they pushed American education far beyond where it was when they appeared. That’s true in part due to specific aspects of their content, such as the inclusion of numerous poetic and prose passages from literature (classical and contemporary), which helped make literary reading and analysis an important part of education in America. But it’s even more true, I would argue, of the Readers’ fundamental premise: that all American students deserved and needed a rigorous introduction to reading and many related topics (spelling, writing, elocution, ethics and philosophy, and more), one available relatively inexpensively and in an easily accessed and shared form. A prominent scholarly book on early 19th century religion defined it as the era of “The Democratization of American Christianity,” and I would say the same of the McGuffey Readers’ impact on education: they democratized it. Hard to imagine a more potent or more American effect than that.Next voice tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Voices from your home you’d highlight?
August 5, 2014
August 5, 2014: Virginia Voices: Thomas Nelson Page
[In about a week I’ll be taking my annual August pilgrimage with the boys to my home state of Virginia. So here’s another annual Virginia-inspired series, this one focused on interesting voices from the state and leading up to my next Guest Post!]
On the once-popular author it’d be okay not to read, and why maybe we still should.As is no doubt obvious to any reader of this blog, and as I’ve even overtly written in this space, I think there’s no reason, in our 21stcentury digital moment, why we shouldn’t try to read and remember as much as possible in our collective American consciousness. I know from personal experience that discussions of the canon still matter when it comes to choosing what we teach and what we leave out of our unfortunately time-limited syllabi—but I’m talking here about what we try to get into our public conversations, what we all read and engage with as a national community. Seen in that light, and again in an era where so much of our literature and culture is available in part or even in full digitally, I’d say almost without exception the more we include, the better.Having said all that, you’ll understand that it’s not easy for me to say that it might not be necessary or even a good thing for us to read and remember Thomas Nelson Page(1853-1922). Page was very popular in his late 19th and early 20thcentury moment as one of the chief proponents of the plantation tradition, the nostalgic embrace of the slave south (and accompanying rejection of the Civil War and everything that had followed it) that became a dominant national perspective by the turn of the century. In fact, Page created the single story, “Marse Chan”from his first collection In Ole Virginia (1887), that sums up that perspective better than any other, in the moment when the ex-slave Sam says, speaking of his life as a slave to the story’s Northern narrator, “Dem wuz good ole times, marster—de bes’ Sam ever see! Dey wuz, in fac’!” It was bad (and damaging) enough that such a-historical, propagandistic tripe was hugely popular in its own moment—why on earth should we continue to read it in ours?Again, I don’t know that we should—it might well be sufficient to read descriptions of Page’s work like this one, and spend our time and energy on less objectionable texts. But on the other hand, if I were to make the case for reading Page I would do it in two distinct but equally valid ways. For one thing, the only way to truly understand why and how such works became popular (and even dominant) in our culture is to read them; since every moment certainly has its troubling or objectionable popular works, that’s a particularly important thing to investigate. And for another thing, I can’t be a hypocrite—I’ve long advocated in this space for Walt Whitman’s idea of “filtering things from yourself,” engaging with texts and facts, stories and histories, as fully as possible so you can figure out your own take on them. Clearly I have a strong take of my own on Page, and I would argue for it in any conversation about him and his works—but I don’t know that anybody should get to decide who we do and don’t read in any absolute sense, and I know for sure that I don’t want to play that role. So read this Virginia voice—but prepare to hold your nose as you do.Next voice tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Voices from your home you’d highlight?
On the once-popular author it’d be okay not to read, and why maybe we still should.As is no doubt obvious to any reader of this blog, and as I’ve even overtly written in this space, I think there’s no reason, in our 21stcentury digital moment, why we shouldn’t try to read and remember as much as possible in our collective American consciousness. I know from personal experience that discussions of the canon still matter when it comes to choosing what we teach and what we leave out of our unfortunately time-limited syllabi—but I’m talking here about what we try to get into our public conversations, what we all read and engage with as a national community. Seen in that light, and again in an era where so much of our literature and culture is available in part or even in full digitally, I’d say almost without exception the more we include, the better.Having said all that, you’ll understand that it’s not easy for me to say that it might not be necessary or even a good thing for us to read and remember Thomas Nelson Page(1853-1922). Page was very popular in his late 19th and early 20thcentury moment as one of the chief proponents of the plantation tradition, the nostalgic embrace of the slave south (and accompanying rejection of the Civil War and everything that had followed it) that became a dominant national perspective by the turn of the century. In fact, Page created the single story, “Marse Chan”from his first collection In Ole Virginia (1887), that sums up that perspective better than any other, in the moment when the ex-slave Sam says, speaking of his life as a slave to the story’s Northern narrator, “Dem wuz good ole times, marster—de bes’ Sam ever see! Dey wuz, in fac’!” It was bad (and damaging) enough that such a-historical, propagandistic tripe was hugely popular in its own moment—why on earth should we continue to read it in ours?Again, I don’t know that we should—it might well be sufficient to read descriptions of Page’s work like this one, and spend our time and energy on less objectionable texts. But on the other hand, if I were to make the case for reading Page I would do it in two distinct but equally valid ways. For one thing, the only way to truly understand why and how such works became popular (and even dominant) in our culture is to read them; since every moment certainly has its troubling or objectionable popular works, that’s a particularly important thing to investigate. And for another thing, I can’t be a hypocrite—I’ve long advocated in this space for Walt Whitman’s idea of “filtering things from yourself,” engaging with texts and facts, stories and histories, as fully as possible so you can figure out your own take on them. Clearly I have a strong take of my own on Page, and I would argue for it in any conversation about him and his works—but I don’t know that anybody should get to decide who we do and don’t read in any absolute sense, and I know for sure that I don’t want to play that role. So read this Virginia voice—but prepare to hold your nose as you do.Next voice tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Voices from your home you’d highlight?
August 4, 2014
August 4, 2014: Virginia Voices: William Byrd II
[In about a week I’ll be taking my annual August pilgrimage with the boys to my home state of Virginia. So here’s another annual Virginia-inspired series, this one focused on interesting voices from the state and leading up to my next Guest Post on a particularly talented such voice!]
On two particularly compelling reasons to study a frustrating, foundational Virginian.As Edmund Morgan so elegantly traced, Virginia was the origin point for more than just the Declaration of Independence and four out of the first five presidents—it was also, and not at all coincidentally, the origin point for the foundational (and, as Morgan notes, apparently quite necessary) American contradictions: between slavery and freedom. As a result, it’s difficult to find any significant Virginians from the state’s first few centuries of existence who did not actively participate in the slave system, and that’s certainly true of William Byrd II (1674-1744), the planter and author who founded the city of Richmond and contributed significantly to the state’s colonial identity. Unfortunately, as his private diaries reveal, Byrd was not just a slave-owner but a particularly cruel and violent one; while a connection to slavery was perhaps inevitable in the era (and something Byrd was born into), his attitude and actions were nonetheless his own and are deeply troubling.We can’t remember or study Byrd without including, in a prominent role, that troubling element—and to be honest I don’t think Byrd himself would want us to. One of the two things that make Byrd a particularly compelling voice is precisely his blunt honesty, throughout his diaries, about his own flaws and contradictions. It’s not just that Byrd writes about sleeping with the wives of friends, molesting servant girls, binge-eating when he knows it’s bad for him, treating his first wife very poorly, and so on—it’s that he makes such details one of his two primary focal points, with fervent expressions of repentance and religious feeling as the counter-balancing second focus. While many diarists could be read as writing for an audience and/or posterity in one way or another, Byrd utilized a secret code in his diaries, suggesting that he was indeed writing for his own psychological and emotional benefit. What exactly that benefit might be is a question I’ll leave for the psychoanalysts—but for students of American identity and history (and international ones, as Byrd also spent time in England), Byrd’s honesty offers an amazing glimpse into his life and world.The second reason to read Byrd is similarly grounded in a compelling contradiction, but in this case a more public and published one. In 1728, Byrd spent time surveying and mapping the contested border between Virginia and North Carolina, a process he turned into the complex, witty, and unique book The History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina . The book’s combination of geography, history, sociology, and autobiography would be compelling enough in its own right—but the ever contradictory and verbose Byrd also wrote a second concurrent text, The Secret History , in which he fictionalized the process of mapping the border, the various figures who took part and whom he met along the way, and many other elements of this foundational moment. Taken together, these two books are more than just a unique record of colonial Virginia and America—they’re one of our most striking and significant literary texts, and another reason to read this Virginia voice.Next voice tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Voices from your home you’d highlight?
On two particularly compelling reasons to study a frustrating, foundational Virginian.As Edmund Morgan so elegantly traced, Virginia was the origin point for more than just the Declaration of Independence and four out of the first five presidents—it was also, and not at all coincidentally, the origin point for the foundational (and, as Morgan notes, apparently quite necessary) American contradictions: between slavery and freedom. As a result, it’s difficult to find any significant Virginians from the state’s first few centuries of existence who did not actively participate in the slave system, and that’s certainly true of William Byrd II (1674-1744), the planter and author who founded the city of Richmond and contributed significantly to the state’s colonial identity. Unfortunately, as his private diaries reveal, Byrd was not just a slave-owner but a particularly cruel and violent one; while a connection to slavery was perhaps inevitable in the era (and something Byrd was born into), his attitude and actions were nonetheless his own and are deeply troubling.We can’t remember or study Byrd without including, in a prominent role, that troubling element—and to be honest I don’t think Byrd himself would want us to. One of the two things that make Byrd a particularly compelling voice is precisely his blunt honesty, throughout his diaries, about his own flaws and contradictions. It’s not just that Byrd writes about sleeping with the wives of friends, molesting servant girls, binge-eating when he knows it’s bad for him, treating his first wife very poorly, and so on—it’s that he makes such details one of his two primary focal points, with fervent expressions of repentance and religious feeling as the counter-balancing second focus. While many diarists could be read as writing for an audience and/or posterity in one way or another, Byrd utilized a secret code in his diaries, suggesting that he was indeed writing for his own psychological and emotional benefit. What exactly that benefit might be is a question I’ll leave for the psychoanalysts—but for students of American identity and history (and international ones, as Byrd also spent time in England), Byrd’s honesty offers an amazing glimpse into his life and world.The second reason to read Byrd is similarly grounded in a compelling contradiction, but in this case a more public and published one. In 1728, Byrd spent time surveying and mapping the contested border between Virginia and North Carolina, a process he turned into the complex, witty, and unique book The History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina . The book’s combination of geography, history, sociology, and autobiography would be compelling enough in its own right—but the ever contradictory and verbose Byrd also wrote a second concurrent text, The Secret History , in which he fictionalized the process of mapping the border, the various figures who took part and whom he met along the way, and many other elements of this foundational moment. Taken together, these two books are more than just a unique record of colonial Virginia and America—they’re one of our most striking and significant literary texts, and another reason to read this Virginia voice.Next voice tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Voices from your home you’d highlight?
August 2, 2014
August 2-3, 2014: July 2014 Recap
[A recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]
June 30: American Mythbusters: The Pledge of Allegiance: A July 4thseries on busting national myths starts with things we get wrong about the Pledge.July 1: American Mythbusters: The Statue of Liberty: The series continues with what’s right, and what’s wrong, with how we remember Lady Liberty.July 2: American Mythbusters: Pocahontas: Some of the complex histories and truths behind one of our most mythologized historical figures, as the series continues.July 3: American Mythbusters: Rosa Parks: The good, better, and best ways to remember an iconic, mythic woman and moment.July 4: American Mythbusters: George Washington: The series concludes with three of the most common myths about the Father of Our Country.July 5-6: American Mythbusters: 4th of July Special: But wait, the series is extended with a special holiday post on the letters that reveal the myths and truths of our national birthday.
July 7: ALA Follow Ups: Contemporary Literature and Culture: A series following up May’s ALA conference starts with the three great speakers on the panel I chaired.July 8: ALA Follow Ups: Rebecca Harding Davis: The series continues with a panel that considered some of the complexities of one of our under-read 19thcentury authors.July 9: ALA Follow Ups: Teaching Asian American Literature: Some of my takeaways from a great roundtable discussion, as the series rolls on.July 10: ALA Follow Ups: Alfred Bendixen: A tribute to the scholar without whom the ALA wouldn’t exist, and the importance of his work.July 11: ALA Follow Ups: The ALA and the FRC: The series concludes with the jokes, ideals, and realities of an uneasy coincidental juxtaposition.July 12-13: Crowd-sourcing the ALA: Fellow AmericanStudiers weigh in with their own ALA follow ups and responses—add yours in comments, please!July 14: American Beaches: Revere Beach: A summertime series starts with three telling stages of one of our most emblematic beaches.July 15: American Beaches: The Inkwell: The series continues with a few ways to AmericanStudy a unique and iconic beach.July 16: American Beaches: Gidget and The Beach Boys: What we can make of a striking early 1960s fad, as the series rolls on.July 17: American Beaches: On the Beach: On the under-appreciated classic film that couldn’t compete with historic threats.July 18: American Beaches: Baywatch: The series concludes with the superficial and silly series that still reveals American narratives and myths.July 19-20: American Beaches: Jamie Hirami’s Guest Post: My latest Guest Post, from a talented young scholar studying another of our famous beaches.July 21: American Autobiographers: John Woolman: A series on autographical writings and voices starts with the 18th century chronicler of inspiring wanderings.July 22: American Autobiographers: Olaudah Equiano: The series continues with the controversial personal narrative that should be required reading whatever its genre.July 23: American Autobiographers: William Apess: One of the recovered 19thcentury voices we’re very lucky to be able to hear, as the series rolls on.July 24: American Autobiographers: Nat Love: On the unique and larger-than-life autobiography that helps us analyze longstanding national myths.July 25: American Autobiographers: Carlos Bulosan: The series concludes with the 20th century autobiographical novel guaranteed to pull your heartstrings.July 26-27: Crowd-sourced Autobiographers: My latest crowd-sourced post, with fellow AmericanStudiers highlighting autobiographical works—share your thoughts in comments!July 28: Uncles and Aunts: Uncle Remus: A series inspired by my sister’s birthday opens with the folktale uncle who is propaganda and yet something more.July 29: Uncles and Aunts: Aunt Jemima: The series continues with the worst and best of a caricatured commercial character.July 30: Uncles and Aunts: Uncle Buck: The film character who helps us analyze narratives of lovable but troubled funny men, as the series rolls on.July 31: Uncles and Aunts: Binx’s Aunt Emily: On a fictional character who embodies but also challenges a sexist stereotype.August 1: Uncles and Aunts: Uncle Elephant: The series concludes with the children’s book that’s as sad and as joyous as life itself.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics or themes you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know, please!
June 30: American Mythbusters: The Pledge of Allegiance: A July 4thseries on busting national myths starts with things we get wrong about the Pledge.July 1: American Mythbusters: The Statue of Liberty: The series continues with what’s right, and what’s wrong, with how we remember Lady Liberty.July 2: American Mythbusters: Pocahontas: Some of the complex histories and truths behind one of our most mythologized historical figures, as the series continues.July 3: American Mythbusters: Rosa Parks: The good, better, and best ways to remember an iconic, mythic woman and moment.July 4: American Mythbusters: George Washington: The series concludes with three of the most common myths about the Father of Our Country.July 5-6: American Mythbusters: 4th of July Special: But wait, the series is extended with a special holiday post on the letters that reveal the myths and truths of our national birthday.
July 7: ALA Follow Ups: Contemporary Literature and Culture: A series following up May’s ALA conference starts with the three great speakers on the panel I chaired.July 8: ALA Follow Ups: Rebecca Harding Davis: The series continues with a panel that considered some of the complexities of one of our under-read 19thcentury authors.July 9: ALA Follow Ups: Teaching Asian American Literature: Some of my takeaways from a great roundtable discussion, as the series rolls on.July 10: ALA Follow Ups: Alfred Bendixen: A tribute to the scholar without whom the ALA wouldn’t exist, and the importance of his work.July 11: ALA Follow Ups: The ALA and the FRC: The series concludes with the jokes, ideals, and realities of an uneasy coincidental juxtaposition.July 12-13: Crowd-sourcing the ALA: Fellow AmericanStudiers weigh in with their own ALA follow ups and responses—add yours in comments, please!July 14: American Beaches: Revere Beach: A summertime series starts with three telling stages of one of our most emblematic beaches.July 15: American Beaches: The Inkwell: The series continues with a few ways to AmericanStudy a unique and iconic beach.July 16: American Beaches: Gidget and The Beach Boys: What we can make of a striking early 1960s fad, as the series rolls on.July 17: American Beaches: On the Beach: On the under-appreciated classic film that couldn’t compete with historic threats.July 18: American Beaches: Baywatch: The series concludes with the superficial and silly series that still reveals American narratives and myths.July 19-20: American Beaches: Jamie Hirami’s Guest Post: My latest Guest Post, from a talented young scholar studying another of our famous beaches.July 21: American Autobiographers: John Woolman: A series on autographical writings and voices starts with the 18th century chronicler of inspiring wanderings.July 22: American Autobiographers: Olaudah Equiano: The series continues with the controversial personal narrative that should be required reading whatever its genre.July 23: American Autobiographers: William Apess: One of the recovered 19thcentury voices we’re very lucky to be able to hear, as the series rolls on.July 24: American Autobiographers: Nat Love: On the unique and larger-than-life autobiography that helps us analyze longstanding national myths.July 25: American Autobiographers: Carlos Bulosan: The series concludes with the 20th century autobiographical novel guaranteed to pull your heartstrings.July 26-27: Crowd-sourced Autobiographers: My latest crowd-sourced post, with fellow AmericanStudiers highlighting autobiographical works—share your thoughts in comments!July 28: Uncles and Aunts: Uncle Remus: A series inspired by my sister’s birthday opens with the folktale uncle who is propaganda and yet something more.July 29: Uncles and Aunts: Aunt Jemima: The series continues with the worst and best of a caricatured commercial character.July 30: Uncles and Aunts: Uncle Buck: The film character who helps us analyze narratives of lovable but troubled funny men, as the series rolls on.July 31: Uncles and Aunts: Binx’s Aunt Emily: On a fictional character who embodies but also challenges a sexist stereotype.August 1: Uncles and Aunts: Uncle Elephant: The series concludes with the children’s book that’s as sad and as joyous as life itself.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics or themes you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know, please!
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