Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 366
December 12, 2013
December 12, 2013: Semester Recaps: Approaching Theory
[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 what literary theory doesn’t do very well, and what it does.Nearly two years ago, as part of a series on the upcoming spring 2012 semester, I wrote about how my AmericanStudies perspective had informed my work in creating and teaching a course far outside my scholarly wheelhouse: a graduate Introduction to Literary Theory. This semester, I had the chance to teach for the first time our undergraduate equivalent: Approaches to English Studies, a departmental gateway (sophomore-level) course that generally focuses in large part on introducing different modes and forms of literary theory and criticism to our majors and minors. I used a modified version of the graduate syllabus I described in that prior post, including the same back and forth between primary literary texts and theoretical readings and movements. And I’m ending the semester feeling, even more strongly than in the grad course, two very distinct but equally salient (to my mind at least) things about lit theory.One is that much of the time, literary theory has been and remains a separate conversation, one focused more on its own debates than on applications to, y’know, actual works of literature and art. More exactly, many of the authors and works that tend to be defined as “lit theory” in anthologies and the like (Freud, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Butler, Deleuze and Guattari, Spivak, many others) are really far closer to philosophical, intellectual, humanist theories that were never intended as specific to lit and art, and are thus very difficult to connect in any specific and practical way to those genres. Of course there’s value in reading and considering such figures and theories—but it seems to me that their prominence (even dominance) in lit theory anthologies and courses is not the best way to produce such engagement, both because of the ostensible job of these courses (theorizing about literature) and because as a result it’s harder to take, appreciate, and engage with these theoretical works for what they are, rather than for what we’re trying to do with them.I suppose that’s most especially a critique of the lit theory anthologies I’ve seen, and their emphasis on such non-literary figures and theories. On the other hand, I can’t recommend highly enough the texts in Bedford’s Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism (or the parallel Case Studies in Critical Controversy) series. What these texts do extremely well is demonstrate how theoretical frames and questions can be applied to particular literary works, and can help open up different approaches to those works than might otherwise be recognized or considered. If we treat lit theory as simply another part of our critical arsenal, a tool to be employed when and how it makes sense and helps us think about a work—like close reading, like engaging with biographical or historical contexts, like thinking about what fellow scholars have had to say—then, this class once again demonstrated for me, it feels far more meaningful to a group of students working to develop their own voices and ideas, rather than simply trying to figure out those of others. Not sure anything we do in a classroom is more important than encouraging such work.Next recap tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Fall classes, work, or other happenings you’d recap?
On what literary theory doesn’t do very well, and what it does.Nearly two years ago, as part of a series on the upcoming spring 2012 semester, I wrote about how my AmericanStudies perspective had informed my work in creating and teaching a course far outside my scholarly wheelhouse: a graduate Introduction to Literary Theory. This semester, I had the chance to teach for the first time our undergraduate equivalent: Approaches to English Studies, a departmental gateway (sophomore-level) course that generally focuses in large part on introducing different modes and forms of literary theory and criticism to our majors and minors. I used a modified version of the graduate syllabus I described in that prior post, including the same back and forth between primary literary texts and theoretical readings and movements. And I’m ending the semester feeling, even more strongly than in the grad course, two very distinct but equally salient (to my mind at least) things about lit theory.One is that much of the time, literary theory has been and remains a separate conversation, one focused more on its own debates than on applications to, y’know, actual works of literature and art. More exactly, many of the authors and works that tend to be defined as “lit theory” in anthologies and the like (Freud, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Butler, Deleuze and Guattari, Spivak, many others) are really far closer to philosophical, intellectual, humanist theories that were never intended as specific to lit and art, and are thus very difficult to connect in any specific and practical way to those genres. Of course there’s value in reading and considering such figures and theories—but it seems to me that their prominence (even dominance) in lit theory anthologies and courses is not the best way to produce such engagement, both because of the ostensible job of these courses (theorizing about literature) and because as a result it’s harder to take, appreciate, and engage with these theoretical works for what they are, rather than for what we’re trying to do with them.I suppose that’s most especially a critique of the lit theory anthologies I’ve seen, and their emphasis on such non-literary figures and theories. On the other hand, I can’t recommend highly enough the texts in Bedford’s Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism (or the parallel Case Studies in Critical Controversy) series. What these texts do extremely well is demonstrate how theoretical frames and questions can be applied to particular literary works, and can help open up different approaches to those works than might otherwise be recognized or considered. If we treat lit theory as simply another part of our critical arsenal, a tool to be employed when and how it makes sense and helps us think about a work—like close reading, like engaging with biographical or historical contexts, like thinking about what fellow scholars have had to say—then, this class once again demonstrated for me, it feels far more meaningful to a group of students working to develop their own voices and ideas, rather than simply trying to figure out those of others. Not sure anything we do in a classroom is more important than encouraging such work.Next recap tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Fall classes, work, or other happenings you’d recap?
December 11, 2013
December 11, 2013: Semester Recaps: Short Stories, Then and Now
[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 the benefits of connecting voices and texts across the centuries.This fall I had the chance to teach for a third time in Fitchburg’s Adult Learning in the Fitchburg Area (ALFA) program, and I decided to push my expectations—both of the program’s very impressive students and of my own work in the class—a bit further than in either previous course. I’d ask them this time to read two short stories for each class meeting, one from a contemporary American female author (which had been the course’s original planned focus) and one from a 19th (or turn of the 20th) century American female author whom we should better remember (which is obviously the kind of project I’m passionate about). Besides asking us to juggle those multiple texts and all their possible topics and frames, this plan would also require us to put seemingly very distant—chronologically and in many other ways—voices in conversation with each other.It worked, and did so in a couple distinct but equally significant ways. For one thing, some of the pairings helped us to think about identities, issues, and communities that have not changed nearly as much as we might expect—or, at least, that face many of the same challenges and histories today that they did a century and more ago. When we discussed two stories by Chinese American authors, for example—Sui Sin Far’s “Mrs. Spring Fragrance” (1912) and Gish Jen’s “Who’s Irish?” (1998)—it was remarkable how many moments and details seemed interchangeable, felt as if they could have been part of either story and community with equal accuracy. Although the stories are narrated very differently (Far’s by an outside third-person narrator, Jen’s a first-person narrator who is also one of the story’s main characters), even their voices feel quite similar, particularly in their use of humor and irony to provide a lighter touch on what could be very serious and even dark cultural conflicts. Had I not provided the publication dates, it would have been easy to locate the two stories much closer to one another in time, a telling reflection of the persistence of immigrant American identities, experiences, and communities.On the other hand, some of the pairings reflected and embodied sweeping changes in their settings and subjects, shifts that were likewise eye-opening about American history and culture. For example, I paired Kate McPhelim Cleary’s “Feet of Clay (1893) with Sandra Cisneros’ “Woman Hollering Creek” (1991), as both portray young women moving to a new, Western world with new and far from ideal husbands. Yet despite those central similarities, and despite the way in which each author contrasts the protagonist’s prior perspective with her current realities, what struck us most were the differences: not only between Cisneros’ Mexican American protagonist and McCleary’s Eastern and Anglo one, but also in the worlds to which they moved—the stark Great Plains frontier of McCleary’s Kansas contrasting so fully with the strip malls and suburban worlds of Cisneros’ Texas. And, in perhaps the most time period-related difference of all, the contrast between McCleary’s ending, with her protagonist seemingly trapped forever in this place and marriage, and Cisneros’, with hers making an escape from her abusive husband with the help of a strong female mentor. Some of the things that have changed from then to now, that is, seem pretty positive.Next recap tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Fall classes, work, or other happenings you’d recap?
On the benefits of connecting voices and texts across the centuries.This fall I had the chance to teach for a third time in Fitchburg’s Adult Learning in the Fitchburg Area (ALFA) program, and I decided to push my expectations—both of the program’s very impressive students and of my own work in the class—a bit further than in either previous course. I’d ask them this time to read two short stories for each class meeting, one from a contemporary American female author (which had been the course’s original planned focus) and one from a 19th (or turn of the 20th) century American female author whom we should better remember (which is obviously the kind of project I’m passionate about). Besides asking us to juggle those multiple texts and all their possible topics and frames, this plan would also require us to put seemingly very distant—chronologically and in many other ways—voices in conversation with each other.It worked, and did so in a couple distinct but equally significant ways. For one thing, some of the pairings helped us to think about identities, issues, and communities that have not changed nearly as much as we might expect—or, at least, that face many of the same challenges and histories today that they did a century and more ago. When we discussed two stories by Chinese American authors, for example—Sui Sin Far’s “Mrs. Spring Fragrance” (1912) and Gish Jen’s “Who’s Irish?” (1998)—it was remarkable how many moments and details seemed interchangeable, felt as if they could have been part of either story and community with equal accuracy. Although the stories are narrated very differently (Far’s by an outside third-person narrator, Jen’s a first-person narrator who is also one of the story’s main characters), even their voices feel quite similar, particularly in their use of humor and irony to provide a lighter touch on what could be very serious and even dark cultural conflicts. Had I not provided the publication dates, it would have been easy to locate the two stories much closer to one another in time, a telling reflection of the persistence of immigrant American identities, experiences, and communities.On the other hand, some of the pairings reflected and embodied sweeping changes in their settings and subjects, shifts that were likewise eye-opening about American history and culture. For example, I paired Kate McPhelim Cleary’s “Feet of Clay (1893) with Sandra Cisneros’ “Woman Hollering Creek” (1991), as both portray young women moving to a new, Western world with new and far from ideal husbands. Yet despite those central similarities, and despite the way in which each author contrasts the protagonist’s prior perspective with her current realities, what struck us most were the differences: not only between Cisneros’ Mexican American protagonist and McCleary’s Eastern and Anglo one, but also in the worlds to which they moved—the stark Great Plains frontier of McCleary’s Kansas contrasting so fully with the strip malls and suburban worlds of Cisneros’ Texas. And, in perhaps the most time period-related difference of all, the contrast between McCleary’s ending, with her protagonist seemingly trapped forever in this place and marriage, and Cisneros’, with hers making an escape from her abusive husband with the help of a strong female mentor. Some of the things that have changed from then to now, that is, seem pretty positive.Next recap tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Fall classes, work, or other happenings you’d recap?
December 10, 2013
December 10, 2013: Semester Recaps: Early American Lit
[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 a pairing that embodies the best kind of literary and historical revisionism.On the first day of my American Literature I course, one of the two classes (alongside, wait for it, American Literature II) that I’ve taught most frequently in my 8.5 years at Fitchburg State, I connect the course’s syllabus and goals to a particular kind of revisionism. In each of the course’s four units/time periods, we start with a week of texts and figures that are often included in what I call The Story of America (the Pilgrims/Puritans, the Founding Fathers, etc.), and then add in two more weeks of texts and figures who help us think about other American Stories (Native Americans and other European arrivals, women and African Americans during the Revolutionary era, etc.). The goal, I try to make clear on that first day, isn’t revisionism as competition or replacement (let’s get rid of the emphasis on these dead white men, that sort of thing), but rather as addition and combination—thinking about how reading and engaging with all of these texts and figures helps us genuinely re-vise, see anew, each era and American history, culture, and identity through them.So that’s my vision for the course overall—but of course what it means in practice is always mostly and happily determined by the students and their thoughts, individually and collectively, on particular authors, on the units, and on the class’s conversations and work throughout. In the course’s second paper, the students have to put any two of our texts in conversation with each other, developing a central topic and thesis out of their ideas about that pairing, and the results often embody particularly unique and interesting ways to connect across the units and syllabus. This semester that meant, among many other great Paper 2 pairings: poems on faith, community, and identity by Anne Bradstreet and William Cullen Bryant; folk stories and myths put to historical uses by Chief Pontiac and Washington Irving; persuasive arguments developed by Tom Paine and Judith Sargent Murray; and, in the evocative pairing on which I’ll focus for my final paragraph in this post, the captivity stories of Mary Rowlandson and Phillis Wheatley.The student’s paper focused in particular on an interesting, two-part way to pair Rowlandson and Wheatley: that both are writing about their experiences as captives (Rowlandson in a narrative of her time with the Wampanoag tribe during King Philip’s War; Wheatley in a poem about her experiences of the Middle Passage and slavery); and that both use religious allusions and arguments to reframe those experiences in a surprising way for their audiences. But the pairing and paper also included—thanks to my response to those starting points and the student’s strong subsequent work—an even more complex topic: how each figure evolved as a result of her cross-cultural encounters, and how those evolutions are reflected in their voices and choices as writers. The result, again reflects the best kind of revisionism, one that doesn’t privilege any particular culture or history or text or figure, but instead forces us to think anew about captivity and community, identity and faith, and about the American histories and literatures that portray, engage with, and help create those ideas and images. Next recap tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Fall classes, work, or other happenings you’d recap?
On a pairing that embodies the best kind of literary and historical revisionism.On the first day of my American Literature I course, one of the two classes (alongside, wait for it, American Literature II) that I’ve taught most frequently in my 8.5 years at Fitchburg State, I connect the course’s syllabus and goals to a particular kind of revisionism. In each of the course’s four units/time periods, we start with a week of texts and figures that are often included in what I call The Story of America (the Pilgrims/Puritans, the Founding Fathers, etc.), and then add in two more weeks of texts and figures who help us think about other American Stories (Native Americans and other European arrivals, women and African Americans during the Revolutionary era, etc.). The goal, I try to make clear on that first day, isn’t revisionism as competition or replacement (let’s get rid of the emphasis on these dead white men, that sort of thing), but rather as addition and combination—thinking about how reading and engaging with all of these texts and figures helps us genuinely re-vise, see anew, each era and American history, culture, and identity through them.So that’s my vision for the course overall—but of course what it means in practice is always mostly and happily determined by the students and their thoughts, individually and collectively, on particular authors, on the units, and on the class’s conversations and work throughout. In the course’s second paper, the students have to put any two of our texts in conversation with each other, developing a central topic and thesis out of their ideas about that pairing, and the results often embody particularly unique and interesting ways to connect across the units and syllabus. This semester that meant, among many other great Paper 2 pairings: poems on faith, community, and identity by Anne Bradstreet and William Cullen Bryant; folk stories and myths put to historical uses by Chief Pontiac and Washington Irving; persuasive arguments developed by Tom Paine and Judith Sargent Murray; and, in the evocative pairing on which I’ll focus for my final paragraph in this post, the captivity stories of Mary Rowlandson and Phillis Wheatley.The student’s paper focused in particular on an interesting, two-part way to pair Rowlandson and Wheatley: that both are writing about their experiences as captives (Rowlandson in a narrative of her time with the Wampanoag tribe during King Philip’s War; Wheatley in a poem about her experiences of the Middle Passage and slavery); and that both use religious allusions and arguments to reframe those experiences in a surprising way for their audiences. But the pairing and paper also included—thanks to my response to those starting points and the student’s strong subsequent work—an even more complex topic: how each figure evolved as a result of her cross-cultural encounters, and how those evolutions are reflected in their voices and choices as writers. The result, again reflects the best kind of revisionism, one that doesn’t privilege any particular culture or history or text or figure, but instead forces us to think anew about captivity and community, identity and faith, and about the American histories and literatures that portray, engage with, and help create those ideas and images. Next recap tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Fall classes, work, or other happenings you’d recap?
December 9, 2013
December 9, 2013: Semester Recaps: Du Bois
[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 one thing I already knew about one of my favorite Americans, and one I learned.I wrote a whole series this past spring looking forward to my Special Author course on W.E.B. Du Bois, the man with a (now tragically lost) post on whom I began this blog more than three years ago and to whom I’ve returned in multiple other posts since. So it’s fair to say that this Du Bois class was the most-anticipated of my teaching career to date, and it didn’t disappoint. Oh, there were certainly texts that didn’t work as well as I had hoped; I love that Du Bois wrote three novels as part of his incredibly diverse career, but I couldn’t quite figure out the best way to get us talking about the best of those three, Dark Princess (1928). But the semester overall went and felt great, thanks in no small measure to a wonderful group of juniors and seniors who were very up for the many challenges that Du Bois and the course presented to them—but thanks also to two striking things about Du Bois himself.The first is something I knew about Du Bois and that our semester of readings and conversations fully reinforced: his singular ability to think, write, and work in many different genres, professions, and communities. It’s not just that Du Bois wrote historical scholarship and op ed journalism, autoethnographic analyses of himself and biographical pieces on numerous other figures, novels and essays, sociology and speeches; it’s that in each and every case he clearly invested himself deeply and thoroughly in the genre and style in question, and in the many variations of perspective and voice, audience and purpose, structure, and other elements that constitute all writing. As a result, moving through Du Bois’s writings allowed us to think and talk and write not only about those specific texts and focal points, but also about both these different genres and general writing questions, making for a semester that was at one and the same time deeply informed by history and culture and centrally connected to writing and English Studies.The second thing about Du Bois that made our semester’s work much richer and more enjoyable is something I hadn’t entirely recognized prior to this course: that Du Bois writes in a powerfully unique and engaging way about parenthood, family, and identity, folding poetic representations of and engagements with these deeply human and emotional subjects into his more analytical, cultural, and historical voice and style. The single best example of this style is the stunning “Of the Passing of the First-Born”chapter from The Souls of Black Folk (1903), but there are numerous other examples scattered throughout Du Bois’s life and career. Du Bois is of course not the only writer to engage with these subjects—but when located alongside his public stature and his work in all the other genres and forms I mentioned above, these compelling glimpses into his most personal and intimate relationships and identity added a layer to our conversations and class that, it seems to me, spoke to each and all of us in hugely affecting ways.Next recap tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Fall classes, work, or other happenings you’d recap?
On one thing I already knew about one of my favorite Americans, and one I learned.I wrote a whole series this past spring looking forward to my Special Author course on W.E.B. Du Bois, the man with a (now tragically lost) post on whom I began this blog more than three years ago and to whom I’ve returned in multiple other posts since. So it’s fair to say that this Du Bois class was the most-anticipated of my teaching career to date, and it didn’t disappoint. Oh, there were certainly texts that didn’t work as well as I had hoped; I love that Du Bois wrote three novels as part of his incredibly diverse career, but I couldn’t quite figure out the best way to get us talking about the best of those three, Dark Princess (1928). But the semester overall went and felt great, thanks in no small measure to a wonderful group of juniors and seniors who were very up for the many challenges that Du Bois and the course presented to them—but thanks also to two striking things about Du Bois himself.The first is something I knew about Du Bois and that our semester of readings and conversations fully reinforced: his singular ability to think, write, and work in many different genres, professions, and communities. It’s not just that Du Bois wrote historical scholarship and op ed journalism, autoethnographic analyses of himself and biographical pieces on numerous other figures, novels and essays, sociology and speeches; it’s that in each and every case he clearly invested himself deeply and thoroughly in the genre and style in question, and in the many variations of perspective and voice, audience and purpose, structure, and other elements that constitute all writing. As a result, moving through Du Bois’s writings allowed us to think and talk and write not only about those specific texts and focal points, but also about both these different genres and general writing questions, making for a semester that was at one and the same time deeply informed by history and culture and centrally connected to writing and English Studies.The second thing about Du Bois that made our semester’s work much richer and more enjoyable is something I hadn’t entirely recognized prior to this course: that Du Bois writes in a powerfully unique and engaging way about parenthood, family, and identity, folding poetic representations of and engagements with these deeply human and emotional subjects into his more analytical, cultural, and historical voice and style. The single best example of this style is the stunning “Of the Passing of the First-Born”chapter from The Souls of Black Folk (1903), but there are numerous other examples scattered throughout Du Bois’s life and career. Du Bois is of course not the only writer to engage with these subjects—but when located alongside his public stature and his work in all the other genres and forms I mentioned above, these compelling glimpses into his most personal and intimate relationships and identity added a layer to our conversations and class that, it seems to me, spoke to each and all of us in hugely affecting ways.Next recap tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Fall classes, work, or other happenings you’d recap?
December 7, 2013
December 7-8, 2013: Remembering Pearl Harbor
[In honor of National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, a repeat post on how we remember that attack and days like it. Add your thoughts, please!]
On the complex, challenging, and crucial question of how we remember our infamous days.Few presidential statements have been proven as accurate by the subsequent decades as Franklin Roosevelt’s description of December 7th, 1941 as “a date which will live in infamy.” We have a fair number of national memory days of one kind or another, of course, but I can’t think of another that remembers anything that’s anywhere near as explicitly negative and destructive as does National Pear Harbor Remembrance Day (although of course Columbus Day would qualify from the counter-argument side). The only potential equivalent would be September 11th, which doesn’t currently have an official remembrance day but likely will get there—and for that reason, along with many others, it’s worth considering how we remember an event like Pearl Harbor, and what the stakes are.In the Atlantic essay that I hyperlinked under “likely will get there,” historian and educator Kevin Levin argues that, as the essay’s synopsis puts it, “Over time, our memory of national catastrophes becomes less personal and more nuanced.” But Levin’s comparison for September 11th is to our national memories of the Civil War, and I would argue that there’s an overt and key difference between that horrific event and either 9/11 or Pearl Harbor: everyone involved in the Civil War was an American (whether they wanted to admit it at the time or not), and so after the event it became and has continued for the next 150 years to be important (for better and for worse reasons) for us to find ways to produce more nuanced and less divisive memories of it. Obviously there are American communities of which we could say the same when it comes to Pearl Harbor (ie, the Japanese Internment) and 9/11 (the anti-Muslim backlash), but the fact remains that those infamous events were caused by nations and entities outside of America, and so it’s entirely possible for us to continue to define them through a more explicitly divided, us vs. them frame.Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, or at least not absolutely—Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were both, in their definitely distinct ways, attacks on the United States by such external forces, and there’s no way we can or should try to remember them outside of such a frame. While I would certainly emphasize remembering those who were lost in the attacks, rather than focusing our attention on the attackers, that shift wouldn’t change the fundamental frame so much as (potentially) produce different emotional responses to it (mourning rather than anger, for example). The White House statement hyperlinked at “National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day” in the intro section above illustrates this kind of emphasis and emotion nicely, I’d say. But to come back to Levin’s argument, I would agree with him that more nuance—more understanding of the multiple perspectives and histories contained in an event, and the various and often competing causes and elements that lead up to it, and the equally varied and in many cases still unfolding results—should always be part of our goal for such remembrance as well. That it’s far more difficult to reach for such nuance when it comes to these external attacks (compared to the Civil War) only makes the effort that much more valuable.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? How should we remember days and events like this?
On the complex, challenging, and crucial question of how we remember our infamous days.Few presidential statements have been proven as accurate by the subsequent decades as Franklin Roosevelt’s description of December 7th, 1941 as “a date which will live in infamy.” We have a fair number of national memory days of one kind or another, of course, but I can’t think of another that remembers anything that’s anywhere near as explicitly negative and destructive as does National Pear Harbor Remembrance Day (although of course Columbus Day would qualify from the counter-argument side). The only potential equivalent would be September 11th, which doesn’t currently have an official remembrance day but likely will get there—and for that reason, along with many others, it’s worth considering how we remember an event like Pearl Harbor, and what the stakes are.In the Atlantic essay that I hyperlinked under “likely will get there,” historian and educator Kevin Levin argues that, as the essay’s synopsis puts it, “Over time, our memory of national catastrophes becomes less personal and more nuanced.” But Levin’s comparison for September 11th is to our national memories of the Civil War, and I would argue that there’s an overt and key difference between that horrific event and either 9/11 or Pearl Harbor: everyone involved in the Civil War was an American (whether they wanted to admit it at the time or not), and so after the event it became and has continued for the next 150 years to be important (for better and for worse reasons) for us to find ways to produce more nuanced and less divisive memories of it. Obviously there are American communities of which we could say the same when it comes to Pearl Harbor (ie, the Japanese Internment) and 9/11 (the anti-Muslim backlash), but the fact remains that those infamous events were caused by nations and entities outside of America, and so it’s entirely possible for us to continue to define them through a more explicitly divided, us vs. them frame.Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, or at least not absolutely—Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were both, in their definitely distinct ways, attacks on the United States by such external forces, and there’s no way we can or should try to remember them outside of such a frame. While I would certainly emphasize remembering those who were lost in the attacks, rather than focusing our attention on the attackers, that shift wouldn’t change the fundamental frame so much as (potentially) produce different emotional responses to it (mourning rather than anger, for example). The White House statement hyperlinked at “National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day” in the intro section above illustrates this kind of emphasis and emotion nicely, I’d say. But to come back to Levin’s argument, I would agree with him that more nuance—more understanding of the multiple perspectives and histories contained in an event, and the various and often competing causes and elements that lead up to it, and the equally varied and in many cases still unfolding results—should always be part of our goal for such remembrance as well. That it’s far more difficult to reach for such nuance when it comes to these external attacks (compared to the Civil War) only makes the effort that much more valuable.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? How should we remember days and events like this?
December 6, 2013
December 6, 2013: Harrisburg Histories: Whither American Cities?
[In October, I had the chance to visit Harrisburg (PA) for the first time, and to start to learn about the city’s rich and complex histories. This week, I’ll highlight five responses to some of what I encountered in Pennsylvania’s capitol city.]
On the question at the core of the week’s series, and two ways to start answering it.A few years back, the New England American Studies Association conference (held at the amazing Boott Cotton Mills Museum in the Lowell National Historical Park) focused on the theme of the “Post-American City.” It’s a provocative and challenging idea, drawn from the title of Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World (2008), but it also has the potential (if misdirected, I’d argue) to elide the simple but crucial question of where America’s cities go from here. My grad school home of Philadelphia, with its neighborhoods of “blight” but also its downtown and Old City resurgences, often exemplifies these uncertain and evolving urban arcs, as I wrote in that linked post. But in its own ways, as I hope this week’s series has demonstrated, Harrisburg and its histories, stories, communities, and present realities, are just as much at the heart of this question.I’m not going to pretend that I have the answer; but I would argue that one of the greatest cultural works of the last couple decades, the TV series The Wire, would be a really good place to start. On one level, that’s because the show confronts the realities of 21st century American cities far more directly and unflinchingly and thoroughly than any other text I know. But on another, The Wire offers one seemingly simple but generally overlooked way to consider those cities’ futures: by engaging with all of their communities and populations, including the African American communities that tend to be either left out of our narratives or included in incredibly simplistic and stereotypical ways. By focusing in large part (at least initially) on the drug trade in West Baltimore, The Wiremight be superficially read as reinforcing such stereotypes—but it very quickly moved well beyond those narratives, and by the time we met the four middle school boys at the center of Season Four, I would argue the show was presenting a side of 21st century African American life we had never seen on American television before.So that’d be one way for us to start answering my post’s titular question—to engage more fully with all those communities who comprise our 21st century cities. A second, and related, way would be to stop thinking about cities as so completely distinct from (and even opposed to) other American places and communities. Obviously our cities have their own identities and histories, individually and then collectively, that differentiate them from small towns or rural communities or any other social space. But just as obviously (to anyone who cares to think about it, at least) they’re full of Americans struggling with the same 21st century issues we all are: jobs and housing, education and health care, addictions and crime, communal conflicts and connections, hope and despair. And like all of us, they can do so better if they recognize a couple things: the continuing role and meaning of their histories, including the kinds I’ve highlighted in this series; and the way in which those histories, like so much else, are unifying links that all Americans share, a part of the legacies that make us who we are and that we carry with us into our collective future—whatever we make it.Special weekend post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the question at the core of the week’s series, and two ways to start answering it.A few years back, the New England American Studies Association conference (held at the amazing Boott Cotton Mills Museum in the Lowell National Historical Park) focused on the theme of the “Post-American City.” It’s a provocative and challenging idea, drawn from the title of Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World (2008), but it also has the potential (if misdirected, I’d argue) to elide the simple but crucial question of where America’s cities go from here. My grad school home of Philadelphia, with its neighborhoods of “blight” but also its downtown and Old City resurgences, often exemplifies these uncertain and evolving urban arcs, as I wrote in that linked post. But in its own ways, as I hope this week’s series has demonstrated, Harrisburg and its histories, stories, communities, and present realities, are just as much at the heart of this question.I’m not going to pretend that I have the answer; but I would argue that one of the greatest cultural works of the last couple decades, the TV series The Wire, would be a really good place to start. On one level, that’s because the show confronts the realities of 21st century American cities far more directly and unflinchingly and thoroughly than any other text I know. But on another, The Wire offers one seemingly simple but generally overlooked way to consider those cities’ futures: by engaging with all of their communities and populations, including the African American communities that tend to be either left out of our narratives or included in incredibly simplistic and stereotypical ways. By focusing in large part (at least initially) on the drug trade in West Baltimore, The Wiremight be superficially read as reinforcing such stereotypes—but it very quickly moved well beyond those narratives, and by the time we met the four middle school boys at the center of Season Four, I would argue the show was presenting a side of 21st century African American life we had never seen on American television before.So that’d be one way for us to start answering my post’s titular question—to engage more fully with all those communities who comprise our 21st century cities. A second, and related, way would be to stop thinking about cities as so completely distinct from (and even opposed to) other American places and communities. Obviously our cities have their own identities and histories, individually and then collectively, that differentiate them from small towns or rural communities or any other social space. But just as obviously (to anyone who cares to think about it, at least) they’re full of Americans struggling with the same 21st century issues we all are: jobs and housing, education and health care, addictions and crime, communal conflicts and connections, hope and despair. And like all of us, they can do so better if they recognize a couple things: the continuing role and meaning of their histories, including the kinds I’ve highlighted in this series; and the way in which those histories, like so much else, are unifying links that all Americans share, a part of the legacies that make us who we are and that we carry with us into our collective future—whatever we make it.Special weekend post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
December 5, 2013
December 5, 2013: Harrisburg Histories: Communal Activism, Then and Now
[In October, I had the chance to visit Harrisburg (PA) for the first time, and to start to learn about the city’s rich and complex histories. This week, I’ll highlight five responses to some of what I encountered in Pennsylvania’s capitol city.]
On one of the best parts of a city’s history, and its echo in a contemporary moment.My last couple posts have focused quite a bit on negative aspects of Harrisburg, at least in its present situation and issues. That’s of course connected to the kinds of struggles facing American cities more generally, ones embodied quite clearly in Harrisburg’s recent and ongoing challenges. But while no AmericanStudier can or should ignore those difficult present realities, it’d be equally reductive and inaccurate to think about Harrisburg or any American city through only (or even primarily) that lens. The truth, as I hope this week’s series has illustrated, is that our cities are full of complex but also rich and meaningful histories and stories, and that they too inform and contribute to and help shape the present and future of these American spaces.In Harrisburg, as in many Northern cities and communities, one prominent but also easily overlooked such history is that of the Underground Railroad. As best I can tell, the city’s significant role in that vital network is represented by a single Historical Marker, located near the Capitol building and highlighting how by 1850 the nearby Tanner’s Alley (or Tanner’s Lane) neighborhood housed much of the city’s sizeable African American community (about 12 percent of the 1850 population) and became the site of these abolitionist activities. As was usually the case, the city’s Underground Railroad depended on a combination of local African American leaders (such as Joseph Bustill and William “Pap” Jones in Harrisburg), regional African American abolitionists (such as Philadelphia’s William Still), and on a network of sympathetic white supporters (such as Daniel Kaufman and Stephen Weakly in this area of Pennsylvania), making it a truly communal activist history.The timing of my visit to Harrisburg in October happened to coincide with the 2013 Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk, which started and ended on the beautiful City Island in the Susquehanna River. I walked down from my hotel and along the river the morning of the walk and saw the sizeable crowds gathering for the event, and I was particularly struck by both their numbers (downtown Harrisburg felt a little quieter than I expected otherwise) and their diversity (in a city that, like most American urban spaces these days, feels racially and ethnically segregated to a degree). Harrisburg is of course not alone in featuring such walks—quite the opposite, they —and I suppose that’s precisely my point: genuinely communal activism, the kind that unites us across all sorts of arbitrary boundaries and differences, is alive and well, in Harrisburg as in America more generally. No matter how bleak things might seem at times, for our cities and for our nation, we would do well to remember and highlight such activisms, past and present.Final Harrisburg history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On one of the best parts of a city’s history, and its echo in a contemporary moment.My last couple posts have focused quite a bit on negative aspects of Harrisburg, at least in its present situation and issues. That’s of course connected to the kinds of struggles facing American cities more generally, ones embodied quite clearly in Harrisburg’s recent and ongoing challenges. But while no AmericanStudier can or should ignore those difficult present realities, it’d be equally reductive and inaccurate to think about Harrisburg or any American city through only (or even primarily) that lens. The truth, as I hope this week’s series has illustrated, is that our cities are full of complex but also rich and meaningful histories and stories, and that they too inform and contribute to and help shape the present and future of these American spaces.In Harrisburg, as in many Northern cities and communities, one prominent but also easily overlooked such history is that of the Underground Railroad. As best I can tell, the city’s significant role in that vital network is represented by a single Historical Marker, located near the Capitol building and highlighting how by 1850 the nearby Tanner’s Alley (or Tanner’s Lane) neighborhood housed much of the city’s sizeable African American community (about 12 percent of the 1850 population) and became the site of these abolitionist activities. As was usually the case, the city’s Underground Railroad depended on a combination of local African American leaders (such as Joseph Bustill and William “Pap” Jones in Harrisburg), regional African American abolitionists (such as Philadelphia’s William Still), and on a network of sympathetic white supporters (such as Daniel Kaufman and Stephen Weakly in this area of Pennsylvania), making it a truly communal activist history.The timing of my visit to Harrisburg in October happened to coincide with the 2013 Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk, which started and ended on the beautiful City Island in the Susquehanna River. I walked down from my hotel and along the river the morning of the walk and saw the sizeable crowds gathering for the event, and I was particularly struck by both their numbers (downtown Harrisburg felt a little quieter than I expected otherwise) and their diversity (in a city that, like most American urban spaces these days, feels racially and ethnically segregated to a degree). Harrisburg is of course not alone in featuring such walks—quite the opposite, they —and I suppose that’s precisely my point: genuinely communal activism, the kind that unites us across all sorts of arbitrary boundaries and differences, is alive and well, in Harrisburg as in America more generally. No matter how bleak things might seem at times, for our cities and for our nation, we would do well to remember and highlight such activisms, past and present.Final Harrisburg history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
December 4, 2013
December 4, 2013: Harrisburg Histories: The Capitol Building
[In October, I had the chance to visit Harrisburg (PA) for the first time, and to start to learn about the city’s rich and complex histories. This week, I’ll highlight five responses to some of what I encountered in Pennsylvania’s capitol city.]
On the incredibly lavish building that embodies a city’s contradictions—and what to do about it.To use a current colloquialism that seems to be the best choice for the occasion, Harrisburg’s State Capitol building is cray cray. Designed in 1902, after the city’s longstanding first capitol building burned down (in 1897) and the very plain second was abandoned pre-completion (in 1899), the capitol has come to be known as a “palace of art” due to its numerous sculptures, murals, and stained-glass windows, as well as its stunning façade and 52-million pound (!) dome modeled on Rome’s St. Peter’s Basilica. Frankly, none of that—nor noting that the building has been designated a National Historic Landmark—does full justice to the experience of seeing and exploring the building; it is, quite simply, the most lavish and overwhelming public building I’ve been in (and the closest I’ve felt, in the United States, to being inside the Vatican).In 1906, the same year that the Capitol was completed, a newly elected State Treasurer began investigating allegations of graft in the building’s construction; the investigation would result, two years later, in numerous convictions, including of principal architect Joseph Miller Huston and multiple local and state officials. On one level, this scandal reflects quite concisely the lavish nature and Gilded Age context of the Capitol; but on another, it highlights a contradiction between the building as the impressive, inspiring symbol of a city and state and some of the less attractive economic and social realities that underlay it. And those contradictions are certainly just as present in 21st century Harrisburg, a city that still features (and often in promotional materials foregrounds) the Capitol in all its lavish splendor and that also filed for federal bankruptcy in 2011 and has continued to struggle with those financial and economic woes in the two years since.So it’s fair to ask, un-AmericanStudies-like as this question might seem, whether the Capitol building should be taken apart and sold in order to make its city solvent once more. I’m not suggesting that the art and architecture be melted down or anything—I’m quite sure many museums and similar institutions would love to feature these items, and in so doing would be fulfilling their civic mission while the money might help Harrisburg and Pennsylvania better fulfill theirs. But just because that extreme response isn’t likely doesn’t mean that we can simply accept doing nothing as the only alternative. For example, currently admission to and tours of the Capitol are free, and I’m willing to bet tourists would pay (say) $5 each; the building is well worth it, and the funds could be directly used for Harrisburg’s vital and ongoing civic needs. In any case, the contradictions between the Capitol and the city are too overt, and too telling, to simply take as one more illustration of the Gilded Ages, then and now. Next Harrisburg history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the incredibly lavish building that embodies a city’s contradictions—and what to do about it.To use a current colloquialism that seems to be the best choice for the occasion, Harrisburg’s State Capitol building is cray cray. Designed in 1902, after the city’s longstanding first capitol building burned down (in 1897) and the very plain second was abandoned pre-completion (in 1899), the capitol has come to be known as a “palace of art” due to its numerous sculptures, murals, and stained-glass windows, as well as its stunning façade and 52-million pound (!) dome modeled on Rome’s St. Peter’s Basilica. Frankly, none of that—nor noting that the building has been designated a National Historic Landmark—does full justice to the experience of seeing and exploring the building; it is, quite simply, the most lavish and overwhelming public building I’ve been in (and the closest I’ve felt, in the United States, to being inside the Vatican).In 1906, the same year that the Capitol was completed, a newly elected State Treasurer began investigating allegations of graft in the building’s construction; the investigation would result, two years later, in numerous convictions, including of principal architect Joseph Miller Huston and multiple local and state officials. On one level, this scandal reflects quite concisely the lavish nature and Gilded Age context of the Capitol; but on another, it highlights a contradiction between the building as the impressive, inspiring symbol of a city and state and some of the less attractive economic and social realities that underlay it. And those contradictions are certainly just as present in 21st century Harrisburg, a city that still features (and often in promotional materials foregrounds) the Capitol in all its lavish splendor and that also filed for federal bankruptcy in 2011 and has continued to struggle with those financial and economic woes in the two years since.So it’s fair to ask, un-AmericanStudies-like as this question might seem, whether the Capitol building should be taken apart and sold in order to make its city solvent once more. I’m not suggesting that the art and architecture be melted down or anything—I’m quite sure many museums and similar institutions would love to feature these items, and in so doing would be fulfilling their civic mission while the money might help Harrisburg and Pennsylvania better fulfill theirs. But just because that extreme response isn’t likely doesn’t mean that we can simply accept doing nothing as the only alternative. For example, currently admission to and tours of the Capitol are free, and I’m willing to bet tourists would pay (say) $5 each; the building is well worth it, and the funds could be directly used for Harrisburg’s vital and ongoing civic needs. In any case, the contradictions between the Capitol and the city are too overt, and too telling, to simply take as one more illustration of the Gilded Ages, then and now. Next Harrisburg history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
December 3, 2013
December 3, 2013: Harrisburg Histories: Preserving Front Street
[In October, I had the chance to visit Harrisburg (PA) for the first time, and to start to learn about the city’s rich and complex histories. This week, I’ll highlight five responses to some of what I encountered in Pennsylvania’s capitol city.]
On the beauties, but also the limitations, of maintaining an architectual legacy.My favorite part of Harrisburg, at least on that first visit, was the strikingly beautiful and evocative area along the Susquehanna River. And my favorite part of that area, seven impressive bridges and island with a minor league baseball stadium notwithstanding, was Front Street, and more exactly the historical, often 19th century buildings and architecture that have been preserved along most of that river-facing thoroughfare. Seemingly every other edifice on the street had a placard describing its historical, social, and cultural significances; and even those that didn’t comprise a wide and impressive range of architectural, aesthetic, and social styles and stories. It’s an amazingly evocative AmericanStudies street, and one I can’t wait to return to in April.The preservation of Front Street wasn’t haphazard or accidental—quite the opposite, it developed as a centerpiece of the city’s embrace of the late 19th and early 20thcentury City Beautiful movement. One of those historic homes and placards on Front Street commemorates Mira Lloyd Dock, the talented and inspiring naturalist, conservationist, and progressive civic leader who spearheaded Harrisburg’s connection to City Beautiful and specifically the preservation of Front Street. As this nuanced historical analysis illustrates, the City Beautiful efforts in Harrisburg—as in any city—destroyed as much as they preserved of the city’s neighborhoods, spaces, and histories, just as any urban planning and project does and must. Yet while we can’t overlook those different effects and issues, Harrisburg’s City Beautiful projects also help us remember another inspiring side to the movement—not only its emphasis on green public spaces like Central and Fairmount Parks, but also its contributions to urban historical continuities and memories that might otherwise have been lost.And yet (how many paragraphs in this space have I begun that way?). As I’ll address more fully in a couple subsequent posts this week, Harrisburg has had its share—more than its share—of tough economic and social circumstances over the last half-century, and I can’t help but think that Front Street’s 19th century dynamic reflects at least in part a city that has not quite found its way yet into the 21st century. I’m not, to be clear, suggesting either that Front Street should be redeveloped or that redevelopment in general is necessarily the way forward for America’s historical urban spaces. But I suppose what I’m thinking about is this: Front Street’s amazing buildings were, in their own era, signs of the city’s impressive and evolving history and story, its significant American identity and community localized in these edifices and places. We AmericanStudiers can’t help but admire them today, but we have to be willing to think about why contemporary cities don’t seem to include such places nearly as regularly, and what can be done about that.Next Harrisburg history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the beauties, but also the limitations, of maintaining an architectual legacy.My favorite part of Harrisburg, at least on that first visit, was the strikingly beautiful and evocative area along the Susquehanna River. And my favorite part of that area, seven impressive bridges and island with a minor league baseball stadium notwithstanding, was Front Street, and more exactly the historical, often 19th century buildings and architecture that have been preserved along most of that river-facing thoroughfare. Seemingly every other edifice on the street had a placard describing its historical, social, and cultural significances; and even those that didn’t comprise a wide and impressive range of architectural, aesthetic, and social styles and stories. It’s an amazingly evocative AmericanStudies street, and one I can’t wait to return to in April.The preservation of Front Street wasn’t haphazard or accidental—quite the opposite, it developed as a centerpiece of the city’s embrace of the late 19th and early 20thcentury City Beautiful movement. One of those historic homes and placards on Front Street commemorates Mira Lloyd Dock, the talented and inspiring naturalist, conservationist, and progressive civic leader who spearheaded Harrisburg’s connection to City Beautiful and specifically the preservation of Front Street. As this nuanced historical analysis illustrates, the City Beautiful efforts in Harrisburg—as in any city—destroyed as much as they preserved of the city’s neighborhoods, spaces, and histories, just as any urban planning and project does and must. Yet while we can’t overlook those different effects and issues, Harrisburg’s City Beautiful projects also help us remember another inspiring side to the movement—not only its emphasis on green public spaces like Central and Fairmount Parks, but also its contributions to urban historical continuities and memories that might otherwise have been lost.And yet (how many paragraphs in this space have I begun that way?). As I’ll address more fully in a couple subsequent posts this week, Harrisburg has had its share—more than its share—of tough economic and social circumstances over the last half-century, and I can’t help but think that Front Street’s 19th century dynamic reflects at least in part a city that has not quite found its way yet into the 21st century. I’m not, to be clear, suggesting either that Front Street should be redeveloped or that redevelopment in general is necessarily the way forward for America’s historical urban spaces. But I suppose what I’m thinking about is this: Front Street’s amazing buildings were, in their own era, signs of the city’s impressive and evolving history and story, its significant American identity and community localized in these edifices and places. We AmericanStudiers can’t help but admire them today, but we have to be willing to think about why contemporary cities don’t seem to include such places nearly as regularly, and what can be done about that.Next Harrisburg history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
December 2, 2013
December 2, 2013: Harrisburg Histories: The Veterans Parade
[In October, I had the chance to visit Harrisburg (PA) for the first time, and to start to learn about the city’s rich and complex histories. This week, I’ll highlight five responses to some of what I encountered in Pennsylvania’s capitol city.]
On one of the terrible, and then one of the great, American moments.As part of my Veteran’s Week series, I wrote about the frustrating contradiction embodied by African American World War I soldiers—the way in which their impressive collective service gave way to continued discrimination and mistreatment once they were back stateside. Those responses were made possible, or at least greatly enabled, by the nation’s ability to forget the soldiers’ service, to write this hugely inspiring history right out of our communal memories (despite the best efforts of writers and leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois). And it’s important to note that such post-war communal forgetting and elision had happened before, and in an even more overtly ironic way: the forgetting and elision of the histories and stories of the more than 180,000 African Americans who served as US Colored Troops during the Civil War.Given all the challenges faced by those African American Civil War soldiers, given Abraham Lincoln’s clear crediting of them with helping turn the tide of the war, and given the freakin’ overarching cause of the war itself, our immediate and absolute forgetting and elision of this community of veterans was and remains a national disgrace and shame. And while those processes unfolded over many years, they also can be localized in one specific and very telling moment: the May 23-24, 1865 Grand Review of the Armies in Washington, DC, in which over two hundred thousand Union veterans marched from the Capitol to the White House—and for which not a single USCT soldier was invited or allowed to participate. It’s impossible to know whether Abraham Lincoln, had he lived, would have permitted the Grand Review to develop in that way; but it’s certainly fair to link the moment and exclusion directly to the immediate post-war changes in Reconstruction plans and goals enacted by the Andrew Johnson administration and much of the rest of the federal government.If the Grand Review was thus a low moment in American history, it also led, six months later, to one of our high points: Harrisburg’s Grand Review of Black Troops. On November 14, 1865, Harrisburg’s own —Civil War journalist, recruiter, and leader; son of an escaped slave who would go on to study law and become an educational leader and much more; one of America’s most inspiring figures by any measure—served as grand marshal for a parade of US Colored Troops, who marched through the city to the home of former secretary of war Simon Cameron (who reviewed and thanked the troops). Speeches by Octavius Catto, William Howard Day, and other luminaries helped frame the moment’s true historical, social, and national significance. And significant it was and remains: while it’s vital to remember, and rage against, the way in which the African American soldiers and veterans were forgotten and elided in our collective memories, then and (to at least too great of an extent) now, it’s just as important to remember the kinds of inspiring alternative histories and communities represented by great moments like Harrisburg’s Grand Review.Next Harrisburg history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On one of the terrible, and then one of the great, American moments.As part of my Veteran’s Week series, I wrote about the frustrating contradiction embodied by African American World War I soldiers—the way in which their impressive collective service gave way to continued discrimination and mistreatment once they were back stateside. Those responses were made possible, or at least greatly enabled, by the nation’s ability to forget the soldiers’ service, to write this hugely inspiring history right out of our communal memories (despite the best efforts of writers and leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois). And it’s important to note that such post-war communal forgetting and elision had happened before, and in an even more overtly ironic way: the forgetting and elision of the histories and stories of the more than 180,000 African Americans who served as US Colored Troops during the Civil War.Given all the challenges faced by those African American Civil War soldiers, given Abraham Lincoln’s clear crediting of them with helping turn the tide of the war, and given the freakin’ overarching cause of the war itself, our immediate and absolute forgetting and elision of this community of veterans was and remains a national disgrace and shame. And while those processes unfolded over many years, they also can be localized in one specific and very telling moment: the May 23-24, 1865 Grand Review of the Armies in Washington, DC, in which over two hundred thousand Union veterans marched from the Capitol to the White House—and for which not a single USCT soldier was invited or allowed to participate. It’s impossible to know whether Abraham Lincoln, had he lived, would have permitted the Grand Review to develop in that way; but it’s certainly fair to link the moment and exclusion directly to the immediate post-war changes in Reconstruction plans and goals enacted by the Andrew Johnson administration and much of the rest of the federal government.If the Grand Review was thus a low moment in American history, it also led, six months later, to one of our high points: Harrisburg’s Grand Review of Black Troops. On November 14, 1865, Harrisburg’s own —Civil War journalist, recruiter, and leader; son of an escaped slave who would go on to study law and become an educational leader and much more; one of America’s most inspiring figures by any measure—served as grand marshal for a parade of US Colored Troops, who marched through the city to the home of former secretary of war Simon Cameron (who reviewed and thanked the troops). Speeches by Octavius Catto, William Howard Day, and other luminaries helped frame the moment’s true historical, social, and national significance. And significant it was and remains: while it’s vital to remember, and rage against, the way in which the African American soldiers and veterans were forgotten and elided in our collective memories, then and (to at least too great of an extent) now, it’s just as important to remember the kinds of inspiring alternative histories and communities represented by great moments like Harrisburg’s Grand Review.Next Harrisburg history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
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