Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 365
December 24, 2013
December 24, 2013: AmericanStudies Wishes: Reform Now!
[Each of the last couple years, I’ve expressed some holiday-season wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves. I’ve still got plenty on my list, so this year I’ll share five more wishes. Add your own in comments, please! And happy holidays!]
On the change that needs to occur—not for political reasons, but for American ones.I’ve written before, pretty recently in fact, about the ways in which—despite my earnest desire to keep from connecting my Chinese Exclusion Act book to any one political argument in the present—a more accurate knowledge of the histories of American immigration and immigration law seems clearly to lead to particular positions on those contemporary policy debates. Or, at the very least, I would argue—and indeed do in the book’s most present-minded section, the Conclusion—that many of our most prominent immigration policies, today and for the last few decades, reflect a profound gap between those histories and our understandings of immigration in America. Chief among those (to my mind) misguided present policies are the federal government’s ongoing and even increasing deportation efforts and the equally amplified militarization of the southern border, both of which, whatever arguments might be made for them in the present, are strikingly out of step with the long arc of American immigration and legal history.Again, I don’t want to use this space to advocate for any one position—as I wrote in that above-linked post, it’s undeniably the case that for much of American history our borders and immigration policies have been entirely open, but of course that isn’t necessarily an argument for any present or future policies—so much as to insist that we need, collectively and socially as well as politically, to rethink both our narratives of immigration and our general approach to the issue. Far too often, not only in informal conversation and debate but at the highest levels of our government, from town halls and state legislatures to Congress and the Supreme Court, immigration policy is framed as a war, as a problem in desperate need of solving, as a broken system in a state of crisis—and while those latter definitions might make sense if we were talking about the millions of immigrant Americans forced to live in horrific and destructive poverty, with no possibility of changing or bettering their situation, we’re most definitely not doing so, unless we’re actively characterizing them as the enemy in the war, the problem that needs redress, the “illegals” who need deportation.So AmericanStudies Elves, my second wish this year is for immigration reform—not just of our policies, but also and even more fundamentally of our narratives and perspectives. If we start to recognize more accurately and with more complexity the longstanding histories of immigration and law and diversity, and if we start concurrently to think about what are the real current problems (as opposed to those created by the misunderstandings and inaccurate narratives and false perspectives on our history and community), we’ll be doing more than just setting the stage for policy reform. We’ll also be changing, for the better, the ways we talk about one of the most defining American communities and stories, now as well as throughout our past.Next wish tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this wish? Wishes you’d share?
On the change that needs to occur—not for political reasons, but for American ones.I’ve written before, pretty recently in fact, about the ways in which—despite my earnest desire to keep from connecting my Chinese Exclusion Act book to any one political argument in the present—a more accurate knowledge of the histories of American immigration and immigration law seems clearly to lead to particular positions on those contemporary policy debates. Or, at the very least, I would argue—and indeed do in the book’s most present-minded section, the Conclusion—that many of our most prominent immigration policies, today and for the last few decades, reflect a profound gap between those histories and our understandings of immigration in America. Chief among those (to my mind) misguided present policies are the federal government’s ongoing and even increasing deportation efforts and the equally amplified militarization of the southern border, both of which, whatever arguments might be made for them in the present, are strikingly out of step with the long arc of American immigration and legal history.Again, I don’t want to use this space to advocate for any one position—as I wrote in that above-linked post, it’s undeniably the case that for much of American history our borders and immigration policies have been entirely open, but of course that isn’t necessarily an argument for any present or future policies—so much as to insist that we need, collectively and socially as well as politically, to rethink both our narratives of immigration and our general approach to the issue. Far too often, not only in informal conversation and debate but at the highest levels of our government, from town halls and state legislatures to Congress and the Supreme Court, immigration policy is framed as a war, as a problem in desperate need of solving, as a broken system in a state of crisis—and while those latter definitions might make sense if we were talking about the millions of immigrant Americans forced to live in horrific and destructive poverty, with no possibility of changing or bettering their situation, we’re most definitely not doing so, unless we’re actively characterizing them as the enemy in the war, the problem that needs redress, the “illegals” who need deportation.So AmericanStudies Elves, my second wish this year is for immigration reform—not just of our policies, but also and even more fundamentally of our narratives and perspectives. If we start to recognize more accurately and with more complexity the longstanding histories of immigration and law and diversity, and if we start concurrently to think about what are the real current problems (as opposed to those created by the misunderstandings and inaccurate narratives and false perspectives on our history and community), we’ll be doing more than just setting the stage for policy reform. We’ll also be changing, for the better, the ways we talk about one of the most defining American communities and stories, now as well as throughout our past.Next wish tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this wish? Wishes you’d share?
December 23, 2013
December 23, 2013: AmericanStudies Wishes: A Site for the CEM
[Each of the last couple years, I’ve expressed some holiday-season wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves. I’ve still got plenty on my list, so this year I’ll share five more wishes. Add your own in comments, please! And happy holidays!]
On the unbuilt historic site that I’d love to help make happen.Hartford, Connecticut is already home to a couple of America’s most famous historic or cultural sites: the Mark Twain House and the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, both located in the city’s historic and picturesque Nook Farm neighborhood. Both houses are great, and I recommend a visit to both (which can and should be accomplished at the same time, as they’re next door to each other and speak to each other in interesting and important ways). But over the last year or so, as two of my ongoing scholarly interests have intersected—the 2016 Northeast MLA conference, for which I’ll be President and which will be held in Hartford; and the story of Yung Wing and his Chinese Educational Mission, which was housed in the city and about which I wrote a good deal in my recent book—I’ve come to feel that Hartford needs another historic and cultural site, and it needs it now.The complex, inspiring, and profoundly American stories of Yung and of his CEM students unfolded around the country and world, from the Chinese communities out of which they all came to the many New England towns where they studied, from Washington DC where Yung volunteered for the Union Army during the Civil War to San Francisco where the CEM baseball team played its final, triumphant but ironic game. But it was in Hartford where Yung settled with his wife, Avon (CT) woman Mary Kellogg, helped raise their two sons, Morrison and Bartlett, and (per his New York Times obituary) passed away in 1912; and it was in Hartford that Yung decided to construct the Educational Mission’s headquarters and that thus served as a central American home for the 120 CEM students during their near-decade in the US (between 1872 and 1880). Moreover, just as Twain’s and Stowe’s lives included and impacted many places and communities but have been focalized in their Hartford historic sites, so too do Yung and the Chinese Educational Mission need a particular place to be most fully remembered—and there’s no better American place to do so than Hartford.There’s just one problem—I have no idea how to get started advocating for the creation of a historic site; and it’s a particularly difficult and challenging time even for well-established and longstanding such sites, much less for not-yet-constructed or even –envisioned ones. Okay, maybe that’s more than just one problem. But it’s also where the AmericanStudies Elves come in. So Elves, I have, well, more than one wish: that I can find ways to connect to multiple communities who would have an interest and stake in helping make a CEM site happen (from fellow AmericanStudiers to the Chinese American community, the Connecticut Historical Society, and the Define American project, among many others); and that I can live to see Yung Wing and the Chinese Educational Mission remembered in a Hartford site that does justice to their amazing American stories.Next wish tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this wish? Wishes you’d share?
On the unbuilt historic site that I’d love to help make happen.Hartford, Connecticut is already home to a couple of America’s most famous historic or cultural sites: the Mark Twain House and the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, both located in the city’s historic and picturesque Nook Farm neighborhood. Both houses are great, and I recommend a visit to both (which can and should be accomplished at the same time, as they’re next door to each other and speak to each other in interesting and important ways). But over the last year or so, as two of my ongoing scholarly interests have intersected—the 2016 Northeast MLA conference, for which I’ll be President and which will be held in Hartford; and the story of Yung Wing and his Chinese Educational Mission, which was housed in the city and about which I wrote a good deal in my recent book—I’ve come to feel that Hartford needs another historic and cultural site, and it needs it now.The complex, inspiring, and profoundly American stories of Yung and of his CEM students unfolded around the country and world, from the Chinese communities out of which they all came to the many New England towns where they studied, from Washington DC where Yung volunteered for the Union Army during the Civil War to San Francisco where the CEM baseball team played its final, triumphant but ironic game. But it was in Hartford where Yung settled with his wife, Avon (CT) woman Mary Kellogg, helped raise their two sons, Morrison and Bartlett, and (per his New York Times obituary) passed away in 1912; and it was in Hartford that Yung decided to construct the Educational Mission’s headquarters and that thus served as a central American home for the 120 CEM students during their near-decade in the US (between 1872 and 1880). Moreover, just as Twain’s and Stowe’s lives included and impacted many places and communities but have been focalized in their Hartford historic sites, so too do Yung and the Chinese Educational Mission need a particular place to be most fully remembered—and there’s no better American place to do so than Hartford.There’s just one problem—I have no idea how to get started advocating for the creation of a historic site; and it’s a particularly difficult and challenging time even for well-established and longstanding such sites, much less for not-yet-constructed or even –envisioned ones. Okay, maybe that’s more than just one problem. But it’s also where the AmericanStudies Elves come in. So Elves, I have, well, more than one wish: that I can find ways to connect to multiple communities who would have an interest and stake in helping make a CEM site happen (from fellow AmericanStudiers to the Chinese American community, the Connecticut Historical Society, and the Define American project, among many others); and that I can live to see Yung Wing and the Chinese Educational Mission remembered in a Hartford site that does justice to their amazing American stories.Next wish tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this wish? Wishes you’d share?
December 21, 2013
December 21-22, 2013: Representing Slavery: Joe Moser’s Guest Post on 12 Years a Slave
[A couple weeks ago I finally had the chance to see the amazing film
12 Years a Slave
, one of the greatest American cultural representations of slavery. In this week’s series I’ve AmericanStudied some other cultural representations, leading up to two posts on 12 Years—one from me yesterday, and this special guest post!]
[I’ve written recently about my English Studies colleague Joe Moser. Joe wrote two great paragraphs toward the end of his book on director Steve McQueen’s two earlier films, and I asked his permission to quote those paragraphs here. And then he’s following them with two brand new paragraphs giving part of his take on 12 Years! Add your thoughts on the film in comments, please!][Quoting Joe’s book:] “Productively complicating this artistic landscape further is another phenomenal Irish film from 2008, Hunger. This is the work of Steve McQueen (b. 1969), also a Londoner, who is the son of West Indian immigrants. A renowned photographer and fine artist, McQueen transitioned to cinema to craft his visceral interpretation of the IRA hunger strikes at the Maze Prison in 1981. An astounding, revelatory debut, Hunger is by equal turns horrifying and breathtaking, as well as restrained and careful in its attention to the humanity of pro-British guards and IRA prisoners alike.McQueen followed up Hunger with a second collaboration with the versatile and enigmatic Michael Fassbender, the Irish-German actor who portrayed hunger striker Bobby Sands with harrowing depth and conviction. Their 2011 film Shame is another meditation on human degradation—one that reveals, through its portrait of sex addiction, the angst and excesses of modern Western masculinity with unflinching, clinical precision and insight. Fassbender’s Irish-American protagonist, Brandon, spends much of the film plundering New York City for increasingly lurid erotic stimulation, leading him to the brink of psychological breakdown and alienating him from his only close human connection, his fragile sister, whom Brandon abandons in her time of direst need. McQueen’s film leaves viewers in a Beckettian state of penultimacy, wondering if someone as damaged and self-destructive as Brandon, so far gone down the road of addiction, can ever lead a remotely normal, healthy life again. The movie is a devastating critique of the half-truths, self-deceptions and outright lies upon which patriarchal masculinity relies to maintain its ascendancy.”[Joe’s new paragraphs:] “McQueen’s third feature film, 12 Years a Slave(2013), is at once his most accessible and challenging film. Whereas Hunger’s portrayal of Bobby Sands is ripe for misinterpretation in some key respects, 12 Years offers few comforting illusions of masculine moral agency for viewers. The earlier film has been attacked by some critics and admired by others as a valedictory portrayal of an ambiguous historical figure (Bobby Sands); those who ignore McQueen’s sympathetic portrayal of the IRA prisoners’ adversary, the conflicted Long Kesh guard played by Stuart Graham, will fundamentally misunderstand the film. On the other hand, from its opening scene, 12 Years a Slave confronts viewers with the essential psychological horror of slavery: the systematic destruction of any individual will to resist and the coopting of humane men and women into acts of brutality and subjugation. McQueen amplifies the terror of Solomon Northup’s ordeal by rendering familiar scenes and tropes of American literature and film atrociously unfamiliar and pregnant with dread, including pivotal riverboat voyages, noble defenses of vulnerable women, benevolent authority figures confronting abusive underlings, and ingenious escape plans and attempts. Viewers able to endure the succession of visceral shocks wrought by the film’s first hour, however, will likely settle into a slightly more conventional latter half, as Solomon and his female counterpart, Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o), contend with their mercurial, tormented, vicious master, Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender, once again). This is no fault of the film, and the imbalanced battle of wills between Epps and his chattel Solomon and Patsey builds to a shattering but admirably restrained climax.If McQueen has erred in his handling of this breakthrough film, it is only in his marketing efforts. While promoting 12 Years a Slave to the brilliant satirist and tongue-in-cheek Southern apologist Stephen Colbert on cable television, McQueen touts his film as “a true story about an American hero.” With all due respect—tremendous respect—I emphatically disagree. The director’s greatest artistic coup with this work is the manner in which he assiduously pares away any notion of heroism and shows an oppressive system for precisely what it is: an authoritarian affront to human dignity and a concerted effort to turn its victims into degraded mirror images of its perpetrators. Fittingly, then, the film’s most intense moment of liberation parallels a demoralizing concession and betrayal from the opening act. In this sense, one of the most notable outlying critical opinions of 12 Years, that of Slant Magazine’s Ed Gonzalez , gets the film exactly right (in his two-star review): “Solomon almost appears deaf to the world. This is because the film practically treats him as passive observer to a litany of horrors that exist primarily for our own learning.” I completely agree that Solomon is frequently characterized by passivity, but regrettably, Gonzalez fails to appreciate McQueen’s scrupulous intelligence and artistic (as well as educational) purpose in holding his protagonist, and vicariously, his viewers, in that agonizing condition for the duration. Even the lone white abolitionist depicted in the movie—a carpenter (Brad Pitt) working briefly on Epps’ plantation—finally answers Solomon’s plea for help with a muted promise of action punctuated by the caveat: “I am afraid.” By the film’s close, we are all afraid—of freedom as well as bondage. Indeed, Solomon’s tragedy, and that of millions of others coopted into oppressive systems, is that survival and the hope of freedom ultimately depend on passivity and deafness to the suffering of others, on repressing the capacity for moral agency, much less heroism. It is McQueen’s monumental achievement that he has crafted a Hollywood film that cuts straight to the heart of this painful, damning truth.”Special Holiday series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? I’ll add other takes on the film I get in comments—please feel free to do the same!
[I’ve written recently about my English Studies colleague Joe Moser. Joe wrote two great paragraphs toward the end of his book on director Steve McQueen’s two earlier films, and I asked his permission to quote those paragraphs here. And then he’s following them with two brand new paragraphs giving part of his take on 12 Years! Add your thoughts on the film in comments, please!][Quoting Joe’s book:] “Productively complicating this artistic landscape further is another phenomenal Irish film from 2008, Hunger. This is the work of Steve McQueen (b. 1969), also a Londoner, who is the son of West Indian immigrants. A renowned photographer and fine artist, McQueen transitioned to cinema to craft his visceral interpretation of the IRA hunger strikes at the Maze Prison in 1981. An astounding, revelatory debut, Hunger is by equal turns horrifying and breathtaking, as well as restrained and careful in its attention to the humanity of pro-British guards and IRA prisoners alike.McQueen followed up Hunger with a second collaboration with the versatile and enigmatic Michael Fassbender, the Irish-German actor who portrayed hunger striker Bobby Sands with harrowing depth and conviction. Their 2011 film Shame is another meditation on human degradation—one that reveals, through its portrait of sex addiction, the angst and excesses of modern Western masculinity with unflinching, clinical precision and insight. Fassbender’s Irish-American protagonist, Brandon, spends much of the film plundering New York City for increasingly lurid erotic stimulation, leading him to the brink of psychological breakdown and alienating him from his only close human connection, his fragile sister, whom Brandon abandons in her time of direst need. McQueen’s film leaves viewers in a Beckettian state of penultimacy, wondering if someone as damaged and self-destructive as Brandon, so far gone down the road of addiction, can ever lead a remotely normal, healthy life again. The movie is a devastating critique of the half-truths, self-deceptions and outright lies upon which patriarchal masculinity relies to maintain its ascendancy.”[Joe’s new paragraphs:] “McQueen’s third feature film, 12 Years a Slave(2013), is at once his most accessible and challenging film. Whereas Hunger’s portrayal of Bobby Sands is ripe for misinterpretation in some key respects, 12 Years offers few comforting illusions of masculine moral agency for viewers. The earlier film has been attacked by some critics and admired by others as a valedictory portrayal of an ambiguous historical figure (Bobby Sands); those who ignore McQueen’s sympathetic portrayal of the IRA prisoners’ adversary, the conflicted Long Kesh guard played by Stuart Graham, will fundamentally misunderstand the film. On the other hand, from its opening scene, 12 Years a Slave confronts viewers with the essential psychological horror of slavery: the systematic destruction of any individual will to resist and the coopting of humane men and women into acts of brutality and subjugation. McQueen amplifies the terror of Solomon Northup’s ordeal by rendering familiar scenes and tropes of American literature and film atrociously unfamiliar and pregnant with dread, including pivotal riverboat voyages, noble defenses of vulnerable women, benevolent authority figures confronting abusive underlings, and ingenious escape plans and attempts. Viewers able to endure the succession of visceral shocks wrought by the film’s first hour, however, will likely settle into a slightly more conventional latter half, as Solomon and his female counterpart, Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o), contend with their mercurial, tormented, vicious master, Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender, once again). This is no fault of the film, and the imbalanced battle of wills between Epps and his chattel Solomon and Patsey builds to a shattering but admirably restrained climax.If McQueen has erred in his handling of this breakthrough film, it is only in his marketing efforts. While promoting 12 Years a Slave to the brilliant satirist and tongue-in-cheek Southern apologist Stephen Colbert on cable television, McQueen touts his film as “a true story about an American hero.” With all due respect—tremendous respect—I emphatically disagree. The director’s greatest artistic coup with this work is the manner in which he assiduously pares away any notion of heroism and shows an oppressive system for precisely what it is: an authoritarian affront to human dignity and a concerted effort to turn its victims into degraded mirror images of its perpetrators. Fittingly, then, the film’s most intense moment of liberation parallels a demoralizing concession and betrayal from the opening act. In this sense, one of the most notable outlying critical opinions of 12 Years, that of Slant Magazine’s Ed Gonzalez , gets the film exactly right (in his two-star review): “Solomon almost appears deaf to the world. This is because the film practically treats him as passive observer to a litany of horrors that exist primarily for our own learning.” I completely agree that Solomon is frequently characterized by passivity, but regrettably, Gonzalez fails to appreciate McQueen’s scrupulous intelligence and artistic (as well as educational) purpose in holding his protagonist, and vicariously, his viewers, in that agonizing condition for the duration. Even the lone white abolitionist depicted in the movie—a carpenter (Brad Pitt) working briefly on Epps’ plantation—finally answers Solomon’s plea for help with a muted promise of action punctuated by the caveat: “I am afraid.” By the film’s close, we are all afraid—of freedom as well as bondage. Indeed, Solomon’s tragedy, and that of millions of others coopted into oppressive systems, is that survival and the hope of freedom ultimately depend on passivity and deafness to the suffering of others, on repressing the capacity for moral agency, much less heroism. It is McQueen’s monumental achievement that he has crafted a Hollywood film that cuts straight to the heart of this painful, damning truth.”Special Holiday series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? I’ll add other takes on the film I get in comments—please feel free to do the same!
December 20, 2013
December 20, 2013: Representing Slavery: 12 Years a Slave
[A couple weeks ago I finally had the chance to see the amazing film
12 Years a Slave
, one of the greatest American cultural representations of slavery. In this week’s series I’ll AmericanStudy some other cultural representations, leading up to two posts on 12 Years—one from me, one a special guest post! SLIGHT SPOILERS for the opening of the film in this post.]
On two distinct and equally powerful ways to read one of the film’s first images of slavery.12 Years a Slave opens (before the title card comes on screen) with a striking short prelude, a series of moments/vignettes set during (what we will later realize is) a random period of Solomon Northrup’s time in slavery. The accumulated moments highlight many sides to the daily realities and details (as well as brutalities and oppressions) of slavery, but culminate in a particularly surprising one: the female slave sleeping next to Solomon on a crowded floor wordlessly implores him to touch her and give her pleasure, and he does so, after which they silently roll apart and turn away from each other. And this moment is immediately juxtaposed with an even more striking shift, to a wordless scene of a younger Solomon and his wife lying in bed together, holding and looking at each other with tenderness and love; after this idyllic image is held for a few seconds the title card comes up and the film’s more chronological narrative begins.The most overt, and certainly an accurate and salient, way to read these juxtaposed images is through their stunning contrasts, not only in tone and theme, but in every sensory detail: Solomon and his wife are dressed in fine, comfortable clothes, lying on a large and pillowy mattress, bathed in light, silent because no words need be spoken in a moment like this; Solomon and the slave woman are dressed in rags, lying on a dirty floor in the darkness, trying to stay silent for safety and survival. The fact that it is Solomon in both moments and images only heightens the sense of contrast, and foreshadows very succinctly and perfectly the thorough and horrific shift that he will undergo when he is kidnapped from his comfortable and happy free life into the depths of the slave South. What makes Solomon’s unique narrative and story so potent is precisely these contrasts, the way in which his prior life and identity could so full reveal the absolute horrors and inhumanities of the slave system. And as with so many choices in McQueen’s economical film, these two juxtaposed images present those contrasts more evocatively than any extended exposition ever could.But on the other hand, if we see Solomon as somehow more human or more tragic than any and every other slave, we miss another crucial theme of the film, one likewise introduced through this opening image: that every slave was a human being, with all the complex needs and desires and emotions and thoughts and soul that all humans possess. It’s easy to say that, but (I would argue) very hard to really wrap our heads around it, around the recognition that all the millions and millions of American slaves were complex individuals (so were the slaveowners, of course, but that’s a topic for another day). By introducing, as the first individual fellow slave of Solomon’s, this woman desperate for any kind of human contact, as well as for a moment of selfish (in an entirely understandable sense) pleasure, McQueen immediately and irrevocably establishes this shared humanity. Which is to say, this unnamed fellow slave is not all contrasted to Solomon and his wife in that other image—her situation may be the exact opposite of theirs, but she is far more similar to than different from them (and me, and you). Another vital theme of Solomon’s story and McQueen’s film, and one likewise highlighted from these opening moments on.Guest post on the film and its director this weekend,BenPS. What do you think?
On two distinct and equally powerful ways to read one of the film’s first images of slavery.12 Years a Slave opens (before the title card comes on screen) with a striking short prelude, a series of moments/vignettes set during (what we will later realize is) a random period of Solomon Northrup’s time in slavery. The accumulated moments highlight many sides to the daily realities and details (as well as brutalities and oppressions) of slavery, but culminate in a particularly surprising one: the female slave sleeping next to Solomon on a crowded floor wordlessly implores him to touch her and give her pleasure, and he does so, after which they silently roll apart and turn away from each other. And this moment is immediately juxtaposed with an even more striking shift, to a wordless scene of a younger Solomon and his wife lying in bed together, holding and looking at each other with tenderness and love; after this idyllic image is held for a few seconds the title card comes up and the film’s more chronological narrative begins.The most overt, and certainly an accurate and salient, way to read these juxtaposed images is through their stunning contrasts, not only in tone and theme, but in every sensory detail: Solomon and his wife are dressed in fine, comfortable clothes, lying on a large and pillowy mattress, bathed in light, silent because no words need be spoken in a moment like this; Solomon and the slave woman are dressed in rags, lying on a dirty floor in the darkness, trying to stay silent for safety and survival. The fact that it is Solomon in both moments and images only heightens the sense of contrast, and foreshadows very succinctly and perfectly the thorough and horrific shift that he will undergo when he is kidnapped from his comfortable and happy free life into the depths of the slave South. What makes Solomon’s unique narrative and story so potent is precisely these contrasts, the way in which his prior life and identity could so full reveal the absolute horrors and inhumanities of the slave system. And as with so many choices in McQueen’s economical film, these two juxtaposed images present those contrasts more evocatively than any extended exposition ever could.But on the other hand, if we see Solomon as somehow more human or more tragic than any and every other slave, we miss another crucial theme of the film, one likewise introduced through this opening image: that every slave was a human being, with all the complex needs and desires and emotions and thoughts and soul that all humans possess. It’s easy to say that, but (I would argue) very hard to really wrap our heads around it, around the recognition that all the millions and millions of American slaves were complex individuals (so were the slaveowners, of course, but that’s a topic for another day). By introducing, as the first individual fellow slave of Solomon’s, this woman desperate for any kind of human contact, as well as for a moment of selfish (in an entirely understandable sense) pleasure, McQueen immediately and irrevocably establishes this shared humanity. Which is to say, this unnamed fellow slave is not all contrasted to Solomon and his wife in that other image—her situation may be the exact opposite of theirs, but she is far more similar to than different from them (and me, and you). Another vital theme of Solomon’s story and McQueen’s film, and one likewise highlighted from these opening moments on.Guest post on the film and its director this weekend,BenPS. What do you think?
December 19, 2013
December 19, 2013: Representing Slavery: Django
[A couple weeks ago I finally had the chance to see the amazing film
12 Years a Slave
, one of the greatest American cultural representations of slavery. In this week’s series I’ll AmericanStudy some other cultural representations, leading up to two posts on 12 Years—one from me, one a special guest post!]
On anachronism, accuracy, and what we owe to the past.Reading Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage (1990) was one of the most discordant experiences of my AmericanStudying life. Johnson’s novel is a National Book Award-winning historical novel, and a nautical adventure story and first-person narrative of self-discovery to boot; which is to say, a book aimed at multiple Ben sweetspots. Yet it didn’t do much of anything for me, and if I had to say why, the answer would be a pretty simple one: anachronism. It’s not just that Johnson’s narrator, Rutherford Calhoun, uses terms like brontasaurus and astronaut that had not yet come into existence in the novel’s 1830 setting. It’s that these linguistic anachronisms reflect a broader, entirely purposeful choice on Johnson’s part: to create a narrator and character who is distinctly more modern than the novel’s historical setting, who feels anachronistic by design to the period and to histories of slavery, the slave trade, and other antebellum American experiences.In the interview available at that latter hyperlink, Johnson calls his use of these anachronisms both an attempt “to close the distance between the past and the present” and “a kind of ironic winking at the reader.” Similarly dual purposes, thematic and stylistic, seem clearly to animate Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012), a film that uses both the scores to 1970s film Westerns and 21st century rap songs as the musical accompaniment to its depiction of a mid-19thcentury America that seems at one and the same time Southern and Western, antebellum and contemporary, mythic and realistic, boundary-pushing on multiple levels. Along with closing the distance and ironicallly winking, I’m sure Tarantino would argue—and likely has, although I have a hard time watching his interviews—that his film’s anachronisms help him create, in his two central slave characters Django and Broomhilda, figures who explode any stereotypical or mythic images of slavery, replacing them with a badass action hero and his German-speaking idealized beauty of a wife.I don’t think that either a novel or a film has a necessary responsibility to be accurate to the past, either in small details (like word choices and musical accompaniments) or big ones (like the historical realities of the slave system); these texts are created to entertain and engage, and if we look to them for education in any overt sense, we’re likely setting them and ourselves up for failure. But on the other hand, I would disagree with Johnson that such inaccuracies or anachronisms close the distance between the past and the present—quite the opposite, they create more of a distance, reinforcing our present perspectives and world at the expense of a possible connection to this distant period. And so while Rutherford and Django might feel more positive or heroic than prior slave characters and stereotypes, they’re no less mythical, no less an artificial construction imposed on these histories for present purposes. And I do believe that we owe our pasts—and especially our darkest pasts—an attempt to engage them as best we can on their own terms, rather than to manipulate or reshape them (even with the best of intentions). On that score, both Johnson and Tarantino fall short.First 12 Years post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On anachronism, accuracy, and what we owe to the past.Reading Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage (1990) was one of the most discordant experiences of my AmericanStudying life. Johnson’s novel is a National Book Award-winning historical novel, and a nautical adventure story and first-person narrative of self-discovery to boot; which is to say, a book aimed at multiple Ben sweetspots. Yet it didn’t do much of anything for me, and if I had to say why, the answer would be a pretty simple one: anachronism. It’s not just that Johnson’s narrator, Rutherford Calhoun, uses terms like brontasaurus and astronaut that had not yet come into existence in the novel’s 1830 setting. It’s that these linguistic anachronisms reflect a broader, entirely purposeful choice on Johnson’s part: to create a narrator and character who is distinctly more modern than the novel’s historical setting, who feels anachronistic by design to the period and to histories of slavery, the slave trade, and other antebellum American experiences.In the interview available at that latter hyperlink, Johnson calls his use of these anachronisms both an attempt “to close the distance between the past and the present” and “a kind of ironic winking at the reader.” Similarly dual purposes, thematic and stylistic, seem clearly to animate Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012), a film that uses both the scores to 1970s film Westerns and 21st century rap songs as the musical accompaniment to its depiction of a mid-19thcentury America that seems at one and the same time Southern and Western, antebellum and contemporary, mythic and realistic, boundary-pushing on multiple levels. Along with closing the distance and ironicallly winking, I’m sure Tarantino would argue—and likely has, although I have a hard time watching his interviews—that his film’s anachronisms help him create, in his two central slave characters Django and Broomhilda, figures who explode any stereotypical or mythic images of slavery, replacing them with a badass action hero and his German-speaking idealized beauty of a wife.I don’t think that either a novel or a film has a necessary responsibility to be accurate to the past, either in small details (like word choices and musical accompaniments) or big ones (like the historical realities of the slave system); these texts are created to entertain and engage, and if we look to them for education in any overt sense, we’re likely setting them and ourselves up for failure. But on the other hand, I would disagree with Johnson that such inaccuracies or anachronisms close the distance between the past and the present—quite the opposite, they create more of a distance, reinforcing our present perspectives and world at the expense of a possible connection to this distant period. And so while Rutherford and Django might feel more positive or heroic than prior slave characters and stereotypes, they’re no less mythical, no less an artificial construction imposed on these histories for present purposes. And I do believe that we owe our pasts—and especially our darkest pasts—an attempt to engage them as best we can on their own terms, rather than to manipulate or reshape them (even with the best of intentions). On that score, both Johnson and Tarantino fall short.First 12 Years post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
December 18, 2013
December 18, 2013: Representing Slavery: The Middle Passage
[A couple weeks ago I finally had the chance to see the amazing film
12 Years a Slave
, one of the greatest American cultural representations of slavery. In this week’s series I’ll AmericanStudy some other cultural representations, leading up to two posts on 12 Years—one from me, one a special guest post!]
On the innovative and impressive lengths to which writers will go to capture one of our most horrific histories.
I know this is a strange way to start a post, but I can still remember how impressed I was when Alex Haley stripped down to his underwear. Toward the end of Haley’s Roots(1976), the author details his painstakingly thorough research into the life of his slave ancestors, and particularly into the book’s main protagonist, Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped into slavery in Africa and brought to the Americas as part of the Middle Passage. In an effort to get slightly closer to the experience of that horrific journey, Haley stripped down and climbed into the crowded hold of a freight ship, imagining himself in his tiny space surrounded by a sea of enchained, enfeebled, sick and death-ridden and terrified fellow slaves, not knowing whether he would survive nor where he was headed if he did. As Haley freely admits, the act might seem silly, both literally and in its distance from the Middle Passage itself—but it also symbolizes nicely Haley’s willingness to do whatever he could to imagine himself back into his family’s, people’s, and our national past; a willingness that certainly resulted in a highly detailed and hugely compelling work of autobiographical and historical fiction.It’s difficult to imagine getting any closer to the details and specifics of the Middle Passage than did Haley, in his own action and in the resulting section of the book. But details and specifics are only part of a historical event, of course, and not necessarily the most evocative or significant part. And other American authors have made equally interesting stylistic choices in an attempt to capture other, more ephemeral but no less meaningful sides to the Middle Passage. Robert Hayden’s dense and demanding poem “Middle Passage” (1962), for example, utilizes numerous and varied formal elements to capture the passage’s many voices and identities: direct quotes from journals and letters (written by not only slaves but also slavers, other sailors, and more); the Biblical names of slave ships juxtaposed with passages from Scripture; an extended quote from Shakespeare that echoes many of the passage’s themes; Hayden’s own highly poetic and evocative language and descriptions. The poem does not, to my mind, capture much at all (nor does Hayden intend to) the experience or emotions for any one slave—but it portrays the whole communal experience with deep and real power, and contextualizes it in a longer literary, cultural, and human history at the same time. Certainly both of those effects are likewise key to remembering the Middle Passage.Yet so too is that individual side, and while Haley’s book does a great job conveying all the details of what an individual slave might have experienced, I don’t know that his journalistic style is quite able to capture the emotions and effects of those experiences. For that, I’d highlight a brief but crucial section of one of the most prominent American historical novels: Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). Beloved is about the whole of slavery, among many other weighty American themes, but in one particularly complex, dazzling, and important passage Morrison makes it very specifically about the Middle Passage; the passage, which represents the only section in which Morrison uses her stream of consciousness style to portray the perspective of the ghostly title character during her experiences after being killed and before coming back to life (spoilers, sorry!), locates that character on the Middle Passage, even though neither she nor any of the novel’s other characters actually experienced the journey. There are thematic and historical effects to that choice, making clear how much the passage served as a formative and foundational experience for—a ghost that haunted, if you will—all that followed in slavery, for African Americans, for America, and so on. Yet Morrison’s hugely compelling stream of consciousness style also simply capturesthe passage, the feel and emotions and moments of it, in a way that neither of those other talented authors quite accomplishes for me.Next representations tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the innovative and impressive lengths to which writers will go to capture one of our most horrific histories.
I know this is a strange way to start a post, but I can still remember how impressed I was when Alex Haley stripped down to his underwear. Toward the end of Haley’s Roots(1976), the author details his painstakingly thorough research into the life of his slave ancestors, and particularly into the book’s main protagonist, Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped into slavery in Africa and brought to the Americas as part of the Middle Passage. In an effort to get slightly closer to the experience of that horrific journey, Haley stripped down and climbed into the crowded hold of a freight ship, imagining himself in his tiny space surrounded by a sea of enchained, enfeebled, sick and death-ridden and terrified fellow slaves, not knowing whether he would survive nor where he was headed if he did. As Haley freely admits, the act might seem silly, both literally and in its distance from the Middle Passage itself—but it also symbolizes nicely Haley’s willingness to do whatever he could to imagine himself back into his family’s, people’s, and our national past; a willingness that certainly resulted in a highly detailed and hugely compelling work of autobiographical and historical fiction.It’s difficult to imagine getting any closer to the details and specifics of the Middle Passage than did Haley, in his own action and in the resulting section of the book. But details and specifics are only part of a historical event, of course, and not necessarily the most evocative or significant part. And other American authors have made equally interesting stylistic choices in an attempt to capture other, more ephemeral but no less meaningful sides to the Middle Passage. Robert Hayden’s dense and demanding poem “Middle Passage” (1962), for example, utilizes numerous and varied formal elements to capture the passage’s many voices and identities: direct quotes from journals and letters (written by not only slaves but also slavers, other sailors, and more); the Biblical names of slave ships juxtaposed with passages from Scripture; an extended quote from Shakespeare that echoes many of the passage’s themes; Hayden’s own highly poetic and evocative language and descriptions. The poem does not, to my mind, capture much at all (nor does Hayden intend to) the experience or emotions for any one slave—but it portrays the whole communal experience with deep and real power, and contextualizes it in a longer literary, cultural, and human history at the same time. Certainly both of those effects are likewise key to remembering the Middle Passage.Yet so too is that individual side, and while Haley’s book does a great job conveying all the details of what an individual slave might have experienced, I don’t know that his journalistic style is quite able to capture the emotions and effects of those experiences. For that, I’d highlight a brief but crucial section of one of the most prominent American historical novels: Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). Beloved is about the whole of slavery, among many other weighty American themes, but in one particularly complex, dazzling, and important passage Morrison makes it very specifically about the Middle Passage; the passage, which represents the only section in which Morrison uses her stream of consciousness style to portray the perspective of the ghostly title character during her experiences after being killed and before coming back to life (spoilers, sorry!), locates that character on the Middle Passage, even though neither she nor any of the novel’s other characters actually experienced the journey. There are thematic and historical effects to that choice, making clear how much the passage served as a formative and foundational experience for—a ghost that haunted, if you will—all that followed in slavery, for African Americans, for America, and so on. Yet Morrison’s hugely compelling stream of consciousness style also simply capturesthe passage, the feel and emotions and moments of it, in a way that neither of those other talented authors quite accomplishes for me.Next representations tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
December 17, 2013
December 17, 2013: Representing Slavery: Hattie McDaniel
[A couple weeks ago I finally had the chance to see the amazing film
12 Years a Slave
, one of the greatest American cultural representations of slavery. In this week’s series I’ll AmericanStudy some other cultural representations, leading up to two posts on 12 Years—one from me, one a special guest post!]
On the power, limitations, and possibilities of performance.To follow up the start of yesterday’s post, another argument for re-releasing Disney’s Song of the South (1946) would be that it features one of the final film performances of Hattie McDaniel, the multi-talented singer and actress who performed in more than 90 films (!) between 1932 and 1949 and who became in 1940 the first African American to win an Academy Award (for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind [1939]). In many ways, McDaniel, whose parents were former slaves and whose father fought with the US Colored Troops during the Civil War, embodies the most inspiring kind of American life; and her Oscar victory, like her legendary and hugely successful film career, reflects just how culturally and socially influential that life was. You can’t tell the story of the rise of Hollywood in the 1930s without a chapter on Hattie McDaniel.But does it matter to that story that so many of McDaniel’s most famous characters, from Mammy in Gone and Aunt Tempy in Song to the nostalgic post-Civil War mammy figure in Shirley Temple’s The Little Colonel (1935), embodied stereotypical, even mythic, visions of African American identity, figures for whom slavery seemed to be the pleasant idyll of plantation tradition legend and in whose life the highest duty seemed to be caring for young white children? The preponderence of such roles is, to my mind, a reflection of McDaniel’s era and culture far more than of any choices or emphases of hers; but nonetheless, it does seem impossible to tell McDaniel’s individual story without recognizing the ways in which it too often dovetailed with a broader, longstanding, and still in that period dominant narrative of African American identity and community. Which is to say, an Academy Award-winning performance as a mammy is still a performance as a mammy—and one hardly (if at all) distinguishable from century-old images of that stock type.Yet if the type had not changed much, the performers certainly had. The Mammy role in D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), for example, was played by a white actress, Jennie Lee, in blackface; a quarter of a century McDaniel would win her Oscar. Change and progress aren’t always pretty, and they’re hardly ever ideal; but the shift from Lee to McDaniel—like McDaniel’s busy and successful two decades of work more generally—represents change and progress to be sure. Indeed, it’s fair to ask whether the far more complex female slave characters and performances I’ll analyze later in this series—Django Unchained’s Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) and 12 Years a Slave’s Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o)—would have been possible without Hattie McDaniel and her mammies. I don’t know that they would have—and I certainly know that McDaniel comprised a vital, and far too easily dismissed, step along the way.Next representations tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the power, limitations, and possibilities of performance.To follow up the start of yesterday’s post, another argument for re-releasing Disney’s Song of the South (1946) would be that it features one of the final film performances of Hattie McDaniel, the multi-talented singer and actress who performed in more than 90 films (!) between 1932 and 1949 and who became in 1940 the first African American to win an Academy Award (for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind [1939]). In many ways, McDaniel, whose parents were former slaves and whose father fought with the US Colored Troops during the Civil War, embodies the most inspiring kind of American life; and her Oscar victory, like her legendary and hugely successful film career, reflects just how culturally and socially influential that life was. You can’t tell the story of the rise of Hollywood in the 1930s without a chapter on Hattie McDaniel.But does it matter to that story that so many of McDaniel’s most famous characters, from Mammy in Gone and Aunt Tempy in Song to the nostalgic post-Civil War mammy figure in Shirley Temple’s The Little Colonel (1935), embodied stereotypical, even mythic, visions of African American identity, figures for whom slavery seemed to be the pleasant idyll of plantation tradition legend and in whose life the highest duty seemed to be caring for young white children? The preponderence of such roles is, to my mind, a reflection of McDaniel’s era and culture far more than of any choices or emphases of hers; but nonetheless, it does seem impossible to tell McDaniel’s individual story without recognizing the ways in which it too often dovetailed with a broader, longstanding, and still in that period dominant narrative of African American identity and community. Which is to say, an Academy Award-winning performance as a mammy is still a performance as a mammy—and one hardly (if at all) distinguishable from century-old images of that stock type.Yet if the type had not changed much, the performers certainly had. The Mammy role in D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), for example, was played by a white actress, Jennie Lee, in blackface; a quarter of a century McDaniel would win her Oscar. Change and progress aren’t always pretty, and they’re hardly ever ideal; but the shift from Lee to McDaniel—like McDaniel’s busy and successful two decades of work more generally—represents change and progress to be sure. Indeed, it’s fair to ask whether the far more complex female slave characters and performances I’ll analyze later in this series—Django Unchained’s Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) and 12 Years a Slave’s Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o)—would have been possible without Hattie McDaniel and her mammies. I don’t know that they would have—and I certainly know that McDaniel comprised a vital, and far too easily dismissed, step along the way.Next representations tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
December 16, 2013
December 16, 2013: Representing Slavery: Uncle Remus
[A couple weeks ago I finally had the chance to see the amazing film
12 Years a Slave
, one of the greatest American cultural representations of slavery. In this week’s series I’ll AmericanStudy some other cultural representations, leading up to two posts on 12 Years—one from me, one a special guest post!]
On the racist caricature and myth that’s also something more.There are few ways in which I would claim to have had any opportunities that my boys don’t have—the opposite is far more frequently the case, which of course is precisely as it should be—but one complex and interesting such opportunity is that I had the chance to see the Walt Disney film Song of the South (1946) as a kid. I confess to not knowing the details of where or when I saw it with my Dad, but I’m sure it was in a theatrical re-release, as the film has to my knowledge never been released on home video in any format. I don’t think that’s any great loss to America’s youth or film cultures, but on the other hand as you would expect I’m not a big fan of suppressing or censoring any American text; certainly I would hope that if and when any kids do get to see it, they have the benefit (as I did, and as my boys would) of a parent who’s able to frame some of the contexts (of race, region, and slavery) into which the film fits, but it does also contain some funny and impressive (and I believe largely non-controversial) animated versions of Brer Rabbit stories, and a few (perhaps more controversial, but not any worse than Peter Pan’s “What Makes the Red Man Red?”) catchy tunes.Song was based pretty closely on Uncle Remus, His Songs and Sayings (1881), the first in the series of books that late 19th-century Southern journalist and folklorist Joel Chandler Harris wrote about that title character and his “legends of the old plantation.” I’ve only read the first two books in that series, Uncle and its 1883 sequel Nights with Uncle Remus —I wrote about them, in an extended version of what I’ll say in this post, as part of the “race question” question in my dissertation/first book—and certainly in some key ways found them as objectionable as the worst elements of Song of the South and as (I believe) the images conjured up by the name Uncle Remus in our collective consciousness. Uncle’s version of that title character embodies in multiple ways some of the most ideologically and socially disgusting characteristics of the plantation tradition: a former slave who wishes only to return to and recapture the world of slavery, who (in the Reconstruction-focused “Sayings” portion of the book in particular) full-throatedly rejects the potential advancements of the Reconstruction era (freedom, education, opportunities outside of the plantation world, etc.), and who seeks to influence his young post-bellum white audience through these beliefs. And through one particularly unhappy choice Nights extends and amplifies those qualities, moving the setting and characters back to the antebellum era, and thus making clear the mythologized reasons for Remus’s preference for the world of slavery and all of its benefits for himself, his wife, and his fellow slaves.I don’t want to elide any of those aspects of Harris’s books, but I would nonetheless also note some of the much more complex and even progressive qualities of Harris’s work in these texts. In my book’s analyses I linked those qualities to the interconnected concepts of “voice” and “dialogue” on at least three levels: the ways in which Uncle Remus’s “Brer Rabbit” stories themselves create a set of voices that seem, at least times, quite clearly allegorical for some of the less happy and idyllic sides to the world of slavery; the ways in which both books, and especially Nights, create an evolving and at times quite powerful and inspiring dialogue between Remus and the young white boy who is his audience and (I would argue) student; and the presence in Nights of three other slave voices in Remus’s cabin, each with his or her own identity and perspective (including on slavery itself), creating an exemplary, powerfully African American dialogic space from which the boy likewise can and does learn. Obviously those are interpretative points, and it’s possible to read Harris’s books quite differently—but at the least that’d mean reading them for yourself and figuring out where you come down on these questions.Next representations tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the racist caricature and myth that’s also something more.There are few ways in which I would claim to have had any opportunities that my boys don’t have—the opposite is far more frequently the case, which of course is precisely as it should be—but one complex and interesting such opportunity is that I had the chance to see the Walt Disney film Song of the South (1946) as a kid. I confess to not knowing the details of where or when I saw it with my Dad, but I’m sure it was in a theatrical re-release, as the film has to my knowledge never been released on home video in any format. I don’t think that’s any great loss to America’s youth or film cultures, but on the other hand as you would expect I’m not a big fan of suppressing or censoring any American text; certainly I would hope that if and when any kids do get to see it, they have the benefit (as I did, and as my boys would) of a parent who’s able to frame some of the contexts (of race, region, and slavery) into which the film fits, but it does also contain some funny and impressive (and I believe largely non-controversial) animated versions of Brer Rabbit stories, and a few (perhaps more controversial, but not any worse than Peter Pan’s “What Makes the Red Man Red?”) catchy tunes.Song was based pretty closely on Uncle Remus, His Songs and Sayings (1881), the first in the series of books that late 19th-century Southern journalist and folklorist Joel Chandler Harris wrote about that title character and his “legends of the old plantation.” I’ve only read the first two books in that series, Uncle and its 1883 sequel Nights with Uncle Remus —I wrote about them, in an extended version of what I’ll say in this post, as part of the “race question” question in my dissertation/first book—and certainly in some key ways found them as objectionable as the worst elements of Song of the South and as (I believe) the images conjured up by the name Uncle Remus in our collective consciousness. Uncle’s version of that title character embodies in multiple ways some of the most ideologically and socially disgusting characteristics of the plantation tradition: a former slave who wishes only to return to and recapture the world of slavery, who (in the Reconstruction-focused “Sayings” portion of the book in particular) full-throatedly rejects the potential advancements of the Reconstruction era (freedom, education, opportunities outside of the plantation world, etc.), and who seeks to influence his young post-bellum white audience through these beliefs. And through one particularly unhappy choice Nights extends and amplifies those qualities, moving the setting and characters back to the antebellum era, and thus making clear the mythologized reasons for Remus’s preference for the world of slavery and all of its benefits for himself, his wife, and his fellow slaves.I don’t want to elide any of those aspects of Harris’s books, but I would nonetheless also note some of the much more complex and even progressive qualities of Harris’s work in these texts. In my book’s analyses I linked those qualities to the interconnected concepts of “voice” and “dialogue” on at least three levels: the ways in which Uncle Remus’s “Brer Rabbit” stories themselves create a set of voices that seem, at least times, quite clearly allegorical for some of the less happy and idyllic sides to the world of slavery; the ways in which both books, and especially Nights, create an evolving and at times quite powerful and inspiring dialogue between Remus and the young white boy who is his audience and (I would argue) student; and the presence in Nights of three other slave voices in Remus’s cabin, each with his or her own identity and perspective (including on slavery itself), creating an exemplary, powerfully African American dialogic space from which the boy likewise can and does learn. Obviously those are interpretative points, and it’s possible to read Harris’s books quite differently—but at the least that’d mean reading them for yourself and figuring out where you come down on these questions.Next representations tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
December 14, 2013
December 14-15, 2013: Semester Recaps: Book Talks
[Wednesday is my last day of classes, so all week I’ve been highlighting some AmericanStudies takeaways from the Fall 2013 semester. This weekend post will add in a couple responses to the newest part of my fall schedule. I’d still love to hear your fall recaps too!]
On two broader takeaways from my fall of travels and talks.I’ve written a lot in this space about the book talks that I’ve added to my public scholarly work, goals, and life. No, really, a lot. I won’t reiterate what I said in those posts, nor will I write follow ups to each of the great events that have followed the most recent such post; although I do have to thank all the folks at the Him Mark Lai Branch of the San Francisco Public Library; Kate Tranquada and the Waltham Public Library; Gabriella Ibieta, Heidi West, and everybody at Drexel University; and Katy Fuller, David Nathans, and the Martha’s Vineyard Museum (along with Jack Shea and the MV Times) for all that they did to make those wonderful events happen. All the support and generosity and collegiality I’ve encountered makes me that much more excited for the spring’s slate of talks and the individuals, institutions, and communities they’ll help me connect to!Speaking of such institutions, one of my broader takeaways from these talks has been a fuller recognition of the amazing collection of museums, historic and cultural sites, and other such resources we have in this country. To cite one that I haven’t mentioned in other posts yet (but will come back to in a future series on San Francisco): the Chinese Historical Society of America, led by Executive Director Sue Lee. Like every institution I’ve visited and connected to, the CHSA is doing vital, irreplaceable, historical and cultural and intellectual and public work—work in its community, but work for all American communities and audiences and conversations. And also like every institution I’ve visited, the CHSA needs more support—which is of course partly about our national and political priorities when it comes to funding, but also very much about awareness and engagement with the existence and efforts of these institutions. So check out the CHSA’s website (linked above) and work, visit if you’re in San Fran, and please spread the word on it—and any and all such institutions with which you’re familiar (like here in the comments!).The second broader takeaway from these talks is just my optimistic sense of my fellow Americans. The audiences for the talks have been hugely diverse, from students and colleagues to community members in places as varied as San Francisco and New York’s Chinatowns, Martha’s Vineyard, Harrisburg, rural Maine, and Waltham. To a degree of course they’ve been self-selected (by choosing to attend the talk, I mean), although in many cases they’ve come as part of a class, group, or program. And in any case, they’ve consistently—indeed, always—been interested and engaged, sharing their perspectives and voices but open to learning more, passionate about questions of identity and community but not myopic or rigid in their understandings of such core themes. It’s easy to despair about the seemingly irreversible divisions that plague American society and life these days, and I don’t want to minimize those problems—but traveling to give these talks has also reminded me of the striking and powerful things that we share, that connect rather than divide us. Makes me that much more excited to envision a career as a public scholar, adding my voice to those communal, connecting conversations in any and every way I can.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Responses to this post? What else from your fall would you recap and share?
On two broader takeaways from my fall of travels and talks.I’ve written a lot in this space about the book talks that I’ve added to my public scholarly work, goals, and life. No, really, a lot. I won’t reiterate what I said in those posts, nor will I write follow ups to each of the great events that have followed the most recent such post; although I do have to thank all the folks at the Him Mark Lai Branch of the San Francisco Public Library; Kate Tranquada and the Waltham Public Library; Gabriella Ibieta, Heidi West, and everybody at Drexel University; and Katy Fuller, David Nathans, and the Martha’s Vineyard Museum (along with Jack Shea and the MV Times) for all that they did to make those wonderful events happen. All the support and generosity and collegiality I’ve encountered makes me that much more excited for the spring’s slate of talks and the individuals, institutions, and communities they’ll help me connect to!Speaking of such institutions, one of my broader takeaways from these talks has been a fuller recognition of the amazing collection of museums, historic and cultural sites, and other such resources we have in this country. To cite one that I haven’t mentioned in other posts yet (but will come back to in a future series on San Francisco): the Chinese Historical Society of America, led by Executive Director Sue Lee. Like every institution I’ve visited and connected to, the CHSA is doing vital, irreplaceable, historical and cultural and intellectual and public work—work in its community, but work for all American communities and audiences and conversations. And also like every institution I’ve visited, the CHSA needs more support—which is of course partly about our national and political priorities when it comes to funding, but also very much about awareness and engagement with the existence and efforts of these institutions. So check out the CHSA’s website (linked above) and work, visit if you’re in San Fran, and please spread the word on it—and any and all such institutions with which you’re familiar (like here in the comments!).The second broader takeaway from these talks is just my optimistic sense of my fellow Americans. The audiences for the talks have been hugely diverse, from students and colleagues to community members in places as varied as San Francisco and New York’s Chinatowns, Martha’s Vineyard, Harrisburg, rural Maine, and Waltham. To a degree of course they’ve been self-selected (by choosing to attend the talk, I mean), although in many cases they’ve come as part of a class, group, or program. And in any case, they’ve consistently—indeed, always—been interested and engaged, sharing their perspectives and voices but open to learning more, passionate about questions of identity and community but not myopic or rigid in their understandings of such core themes. It’s easy to despair about the seemingly irreversible divisions that plague American society and life these days, and I don’t want to minimize those problems—but traveling to give these talks has also reminded me of the striking and powerful things that we share, that connect rather than divide us. Makes me that much more excited to envision a career as a public scholar, adding my voice to those communal, connecting conversations in any and every way I can.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Responses to this post? What else from your fall would you recap and share?
December 13, 2013
December 13, 2013: Semester Recaps: Historical Fiction
[Wednesday is my last day of classes, so all week I’ll be highlighting some AmericanStudies takeaways from the Fall 2013 semester. Add your thoughts and fall recaps in comments, please!]
On three works from my favorite grad class, and the dark American histories they help us remember.1) Catherine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie (1826), and the Pequot War.
2) Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (1901), and the Wilmington coup and massacre.
3) Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao(2008), and the U.S. relationship with Trujillo.Special weekend post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Fall classes, work, or other happenings you’d recap?
On three works from my favorite grad class, and the dark American histories they help us remember.1) Catherine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie (1826), and the Pequot War.
2) Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (1901), and the Wilmington coup and massacre.
3) Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao(2008), and the U.S. relationship with Trujillo.Special weekend post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Fall classes, work, or other happenings you’d recap?
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