Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 373

September 21-22, 2013: Welcome to AmericanStudier!

Since I’ve recently given the first few of my many scheduled book talks, I’m hoping that some of the folks who have attended those events might make their way here as well. So I wanted to take this chance to introduce myself and the blog a bit, through four different aspects of my ongoing scholarly work and identity. Whether you’re a brand-new visitor or a long-time reader, please feel free to say hi in comments!
1)      This Blog: Is barreling toward its three-year anniversary, in early November. For the first year or so I wrote mostly individual posts; for the last couple years I’ve done weekly series. In any case, your best starting point for finding out what’s here would be the Monthly Recaps (under that Label at right); you can also search for particular topics with the search bar at the top. If you’re interested in something in particular, feel free to leave a comment or to email me (brailton@fitchburgstate.edu).2)      The New Book: While I’m trying to tailor each of my talks to the particular place and context in which I’m giving it, they all connect to my most recent book, The Chinese Exclusion Act: What It Can Teach Us About America (Palgrave Pivot, June 2013). The book is available in either e-book or hard copy format, at that site, through Palgrave, or in many other places. But if you’re not able to pay for a copy, please feel free to email meand I’ll send you an e-copy of the proofs.3)      The Website-in-Progress: One of my goals for the coming year is to develop a new website, The Hall of American Inspiration . Right now that’s just a starting point, but I’d still to hear your thoughts on Americans who should be included in such a project—past or present, famous or not, public or private. Again, feel free to leave a comment below or to email me with any nominations, or any other thoughts on that project.4)      Public Scholarship: Those three provide good specific examples of different sides to my scholarly work and identity. But I should also mention a broader goal: what I call, in my Twitter bio, “Trying to make my tiny contribution to our national narratives.” I’ve written a good bit about that goal in many of the “Meta-Posts” (see Label at right) here, including this post from a few months back. Here I’ll just add that such public scholarship is, as I see it, entirely communal, and thus depends on my hearing your voices and perspectives just as much as on sharing my own. So please share yours, in comments, by email, on Twitter, however you want!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. If you’re new to the blog, or whatever the case may be, please say hi and let me know what you’d be interested in seeing here! Thanks!

September 20, 2013: Gloucester Stories: Hammond Castle

[A series of posts highlighting some of the many interesting American histories and stories in our oldest seaport. Add your thoughts, please!]
On the Gloucester site that is as random, weird, and fascinating as America itself.The term “Americana”gets thrown around a good bit, and I suspect we mean as many different things by it as that Wikipedia article suggests—but if I had to boil it down, at least for this AmericanStudier, I think I would have to go with what Weird Al Yankovic argues in “The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota” (off of the UHF album from 1989). “Kids, this here’s what America’s all about,” the song’s teary-eyed patriarchal speaker claims of the titular site and the many parallel (and all real!) ones for which they already have their window decals (“There's Elvis-O-Rama, the Tupperware Museum, The Boll Weevil Monument, and Cranberry World, The Shuffleboard Hall Of Fame, Poodle Dog Rock, And The Mecca of Albino Squirrels”).Along the coast near Gloucester is a site that, while not quite as strikingly strange as those, is pretty weird and unique in its own right: Hammond Castle. This faux medieval castle was built by eccentric inventor John Hays Hammond, Jr., between 1926 and 1929, and if the existence of a medieval castle on Massachusetts’ Cape Ann isn’t random enough for you, the three purposes for which Hammond built it (as elucidated on the Castle’s official website, linked above) should help: “as a backdrop for his collection of Roman, medieval, and Renaissance artifacts; as a wedding present for his wife Irene Fenton Hammond to prove how much he cared for her; and to house the Hammond Research Corporation, from which Dr. Hammond produced over 400 patents and the ideas for over 800 inventions.” I don’t mean to downplay that third motivation, since Hammond was indeed a serious and successful inventor (he’s known, for example, as the “Father of the Remote Control”)—but still, that’s a pretty eclectic set of rationales, no?So unlike The Biggest Ball of Twine, about which Al’s speaker asks “Oh, what on Earth would make a man decide to do that kind of thing?,” we have a definite answer (a trio of them, even) for Hammond Castle. But Al’s larger point, as further elucidated in the next lines—“What was he trying to prove? Who was he trying to impress?—still stands. The sheer audacity and hubris, the excess, and, most of all, the striking randomness of the Castle demands our attention and (my best pitchfork-carrying impulses notwithstanding) a begrudging respect. Probably didn’t hurt that on the day I visited the Castle was closed to host a “Psychic Faire,” and I happened to arrive just in time to see some of the psychics emerge from the medieval door in full regalia. Makes me want to write a song, actually.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other Gloucester or Cape Ann connections you’d share? Other sites you’d highlight?

September 19, 2013: Gloucester Stories: What’s Next

[A series of posts highlighting some of the many interesting American histories and stories in our oldest seaport. Add your thoughts, please!]
On where a city like Gloucester goes from here.There’s a really striking and compelling sign located on the Gloucester waterfront. I wish I could remember exactly what it says (and the Google is letting me down in my searches for it), but the gist of it is this: there’s a currently unoccupied and pretty sizeable plot of land standing vacant amidst the Harbor Walk, the restaurants, and the fishing docks, and the city has posted a sign explicitly asking visitors (and presumably locals) to share their ideas about what could be done with the space. It’s a unique and impressive approach to city planning and public policy, but it’s also profoundly symbolic of the kinds of questions that Gloucester and all so-called “post-industrial” cities face as they transition from the economies that have supported them for centuries to … well, whatever’s next.I don’t mean to suggest that Gloucester’s fishing industry no longer exists; nearly 25 years after Billy Joel released “The Downeaster Alexa”(1989) and sang that “there ain’t much future for a man who works the sea,” I still saw plenty of active fishing boats on the city’s docks. But like Martha’s Vineyard, a fishing community with which I’m deeply familiar, Gloucester can certainly no longer depend on the sea to sustain its community. The obvious answer, particularly for a place with as much interesting history as Gloucester, is tourism; but besides being hugely vague, that option (at least if pursued too comprehensively or predominantly) seems to me as if it risks turning a place into a museum to itself, rather than a living 21st century community. Emblematic of that danger would have to be the Crow’s Nest bar, a local establishment that was recreated (nearly adjacent to the actual space) for the film version of The Perfect Storm (2000) and that continues to fly a banner proclaiming its role in that story and movie.I’m not going to pretend that I have all the answers about where Gloucester could go from here—and in any case I agree with the idea behind that striking sign, that such developments should be crowd-sourced in the fullest and best sense, should solicit and build upon as many voices and perspectives as possible. Interestingly, there’s already one space where many Gloucester residents are already sharing such voices and perspectives, and it’s a digital one: the blog “GoodMorningGloucester.”Started by one man, Joey C., the blog has evolved into a deeply communal space, one as likely to highlight current events, restaurants and attractions, and inspiring local residents as historical and cultural connections, scenic views, and local issues and debates. Such a blog isn’t itself a next step for the city, necessarily—but it certainly illustrates the role that digital and social media can play in helping to bring a community together, present what’s best about that place, and, perhaps, imagine how the community builds upon those starting points as it moves forward.Final Gloucester story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

September 18, 2013: Gloucester Stories: Rocky Neck

[A series of posts highlighting some of the many interesting American histories and stories in our oldest seaport. Add your thoughts, please!]
On the art colony that complicates, beautifies, and enriches our narratives of Gloucester and the past.Much of my argument in yesterday’s post, or at least much of my final point about why we don’t better remember Gloucester’s longterm histories, depended on the city’s identity as a predominantly working—and thus working class—community. But of course no place—and certainly no place in America—is as uniform or simple as that, and Gloucester is no exception. I’m sure there would be plenty of ways to complicate such narratives of Gloucester’s working class identity, to highlight other histories and communities that have contributed to the city’s story as it has unfolded over nearly four hundred years; but the easiest complication to spot is located directly across the harbor, on the beautiful peninsula known as Rocky Neck: the Rocky Neck Art Colony.The Art Colony’s history dates back to at least the early 19th century, when local painter Fitz Henry Lane (long misidentified as Fitz Hugh Lane) began to capture Gloucester’s landscapes, cityscapes, and ships in a unique style that came to be known as Luminism. As the Colony attracted additional artists over the subsequent century—most famously Winslow Homer for a time, but also Frank Duveneck, John Sloan, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, and many others—it continued to be defined by a close relationship between Gloucester’s images and these artistic ones. That is, while of course such artists were drawn to the area and colony because of that legacy and supportive community of other artistic presences and relationships, they were also clearly drawn (as their works consistently reflected) to the city’s natural and manmade beauties and views, making the art colony truly inseparable from Gloucester’s overall and evolving identity and histories.The Art Colony is alive and vibrant into the 21st century, with numerous galleries in which (as this AmericanStudier can attest) you’re likely to meet the artists themselves, if not indeed to catch them at work. Because of that continuity, a visit to Rocky Neck, particularly if we can do so informed by the place’s longer term histories and community (which I confess I was not prior to my visit), becomes a kind of intimate historical interpretation, a way in which we can inhabit what the place has long been and meant. Too often, historic sites in America are explicitly separated from the present places and life around them, treated as a monuments rather than as a living and evolving part of their communities; Rocky Neck Art Colony is impossible to treat in that way, and demands instead that we engage with both past and present, and all the artists and images that they contain. Next Gloucester story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

September 17, 2013: Gloucester Stories: The Sense of the Past

[A series of posts highlighting some of the many interesting American histories and stories in our oldest seaport. Add your thoughts, please!]
On a couple important reasons to better remember Gloucester’s long-term histories.This AmericanStudier is never ashamed to admit all the things I’m still learning about America; heck, I wrote a whole recent series on that topic! But this might be the first time that one of the central premises of a week’s series has fallen into that category: before I visited Gloucester for the first time, in late August, I had no idea that the city was as old as it is. I probably would have guessed sometime in the late 17th or early 18th century for Gloucester’s origin, but in fact the city was permanently settled as a fishing and trade village in 1623, only three years after the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth. Moreover, initial explorations of the area by both French explorer Samuel de Champlain and English adventurer John Smith significantly predate either of those arrivals, making Gloucester and Cape Ann one of the oldest sites of European contact in New England. Such early, complex, and foundational American histories are, as I have argued many times, worth better remembering for their own sakes; but there are also other benefits to improving our collective memories of Gloucester’s past. For one thing, recognizing that 1623 settlement date forces us to engage with just how diverse—in purpose and mission, in demographics, in identity—the English settlers and communities in Massachusetts have always been. Even the Mayflower arrivals were composed not only of the stereotypical Puritans seeking religious freedom but also of many other Englishmen and women hoping for a new and better economic and personal situation, as the Plimoth Plantation interpreters do a great job highlighting. And as Gloucester demonstrates, within a few years the Massachusetts and New England world would include entire English communities dedicated entirely to such commercial pursuits—and thus, for example, ones with very distinct and far more economically motivated relationships to local Native American tribes and communities than those of the Massachusetts Bay colony as a whole.Partly we have tended to equate the English in New England with the Puritans because they’re a really compelling (if often oversimplified or falsified) story—but partly we have done so because the colony’s own leaders and historians, from William Bradford and John Winthrop down to the Mathers and many others, emphasized precisely that identity. So better remembering Gloucester’s place in that early history would also help us to see how much such collective narratives of community and identity are constructed, in their own moment and in the writing of their histories—and how much they are influenced by factors such as religious ideology and class. Certainly the former seems to have been paramount for the Puritan leaders and historians, but I would argue that it’s difficult to separate religion from class, Puritanism from elitism—which is to say, that Gloucester’s working class identity was as much a factor in its earliest histories as it has continued to be in its 20th and 21stcentury story (on which more later this week). We’re not so good at talking about class here in America, but a place like Gloucester can certainly help us to do so.Next Gloucester story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

September 16, 2013: Gloucester Stories: Judith Sargent

[A series of posts highlighting some of the many interesting American histories and stories in our oldest seaport. Add your thoughts, please!]

On the relatively nondescript home that served as both prison and liberation for Judith Sargent.
I’ve often thought that to be far ahead of one’s time, especially when it comes to one’s own rights and freedoms, likely feels both confining and liberating—a combination of recognizing things which one is frustratingly denied and yet seeing a broader and more open world beyond them. Certainly we can feel both sides to that coin in “On the Equality of the Sexes” (1790), the poem and essay written by Gloucester’s own Judith Sargent Murray. Like her close contemporary (English) feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, Murray was extremely intelligent, and she ironically but crucially opens “Equality” with an argument for why people are notequal—for why, indeed, certain minds are far more destined for greatness than others. Seeing herself in that light (as she seems to have, and deservedly so) would, again, have likely made Murray feel both good and bad—like part of a Talented Tenth of sorts, but one arbitrarily held back due solely to the biological accident of gender.The (at the time; over the next century the waterfront was significantly shifted) waterfront Gloucester home built in 1782for Sargent and her first husband, Captain John Stevens, served first as a direct remainder of such arbitrary and frustrating limitations. Stevens was at the time enjoying a brief period of prosperity as a local merchant, but his fortunes would shortly and permanently decline (thanks in part to the Revolution and in part to his own shortcomings as a businessman); by 1785 Stevens was so deeply in debt that the house was turned into a debtor’s prison, one in which both Stevens and Judith (who was of course literally married to his debt and legally powerless to control her own finances in any way) were held as collateral for those debts. A year later Stevens fled the city and tried to start fresh in the West Indies, but he ended up similarly indebted and imprisoned there, and died in prison. It was during these same years that Judith began to write her articles and essays (under the pseudonym “Constantia”), and such efforts reflect quite literally the only way that she could escape the prison into which her husband’s failures had cast her.Yet the same period, and the same house, also contained a man who would, on multiple levels, help Judith achieve a far freer and happier existence. John and Judith were among America’s earliest supporters of Unitarian Universalism, the controversial new religion that represented a direct challenge to New England’s ruling Puritanism; they expressed that support by, among other things, providing a home for John Murray, the founder of the religion’s American church and its most prominent preacher. Murray and Judith developed a close friendship and relationship, and by the time of her husband’s death it was clearly something more; a few years later they were married and began a new life together, in the same Gloucester home. Judith’s final years were marked by a series of tragedies, culminating in the 1820 deaths of Judith, her daughter, and her grandson; but for the thirty years prior to those tragedies she had lived in a home and marriage—and philosophy—that were far closer to the social, political, and human ideals she espoused in her writings. Gloucester’s Sargent House contains and --interprets all those sides to her life—and also includes some paintings and pictures donated by her most famous descendent, John Singer Sargent!Next Gloucester story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

September 14-15, 2013: Public AmericanStudying Update

[Some thanks, some thoughts, and a hello at the end of my first week of book talks!]
This week I had the wonderful opportunity to talk about my book, and many other related histories, stories, and ideas, at Suffolk University and Wellesley College. So here are three follow ups to these first of many talks in what should be the most active and exciting year of my professional life:1)      First, I have to say thanks to my very hospitable and generous hosts at each institution. At Suffolk, my talks were co-sponsored by the Asian Studies program, the American Studies program, and the Rosenberg Institute for East Asian Studies; I owe particular thanks to Da Zheng, Ron Suleski, Pat Reeve, Allan Tow, and Yong Xue. At Wellesley, I was the guest of Yoon Sun Lee, and of the many programs (English, American Studies, Asian American Studies) in which she works. And throughout both days, I benefited greatly from the questions, responses, and ideas of numerous other faculty members and students at both institutions.2)      If I was excited about this year of book talks before this week, I’m infinitely more so now—for many reasons, but perhaps especially because of how much I could feel my ideas shifting and growing throughout the talks, classes, and conversations. For example, it was during my main talk at Suffolk that I articulated for the first time my sense of why we need to remember the 1921and 1924 Quota Acts just as fully as the Exclusion Act—because those broader, more encompassing acts were just as exclusionary, in fact just extended the CEA’s purpose to many more nationalities and communities; which means that American immigration law itself developed, for its first century of existence (until the 1965 Immigration Act), based on principles of unfairness and inequity. That seems well worth our remembering.3)      Finally, I just wanted to say hello to anybody who attended those talks and is visiting the blog for the first time! The Monthly Recaps, under that Label at the right, are a good place to get an overall sense of my posts over this blog’s nearly three years of existence; so too are thesethree birthdayspecial posts. I’ve got upcoming weekly series on American stories connected to Gloucester (MA), race and justice in American history, and cultural images of the fall (seasonal and symbolic), among others. I’m also always looking for both suggestions for other topics and focal points and ideas for Guest Posts, so feel free to leave those in the comments or email them to me directly. Welcome!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. If you’re new to the blog, please say hi and let me know what you’d be interested in seeing here! Thanks!

September 13, 2013: Newport Stories: To Preserve or Not to Preserve

[Like so many evocative American places, the Newport, Rhode Island mansion The Breakerscontains and connects to numerous histories, stories, and themes worth sharing. So in this series, I’ll highlight and analyze five such topics. As always, your thoughts will be very welcome too!]
On the million-dollar question about Newport’s (and all) historic homes.I was pleasantly surprised by the quality, depth, and breadth of the self-guided audio tour at The Breakers—that tour, to be clear, provided starting points for all five of this week’s blog topics—but was particularly taken aback, in a good way, by a provocative question raised right at the tour’s outset. To put it bluntly, the narrator asked directly whether preserving mansions like The Breakers is a worthwhile pursuit for an organization such as The Preservation Society of Newport County—whether such mansions are architecturally or artistically worth preserving, whether they are historically or culturally worth remembering, whether, in short, these kinds of homes merit the obvious expense and effort that is required to keep them open and accessible to visitors. The tour presented arguments on both sides of the question, and left it up to the listener to decide as he or she continues with his or her visit.Of course my first instinct, as an AmericanStudier, as a public scholar, as a person deeply interested in the past, was to respond that of course we should preserve such historic sites. But if we take a step back and consider what the question would mean in a contemporary context, things get a bit more complicated. Can we imagine a future organization spending millions of dollars to preserve Donald Trump’s many homes? Oprah Winfrey’s Lake Como getaway? Bill Gates’ estate? Certainly I can imagine tourists a hundred years hence being interested in visiting those places—well, hopefully not the Donald’s homes; but yeah, probably them too—but is that a sufficient argument for them to be preserved? Or does there indeed have to be something architecturally or artistically significant, or something historically or culturally resonant (beyond their owners’ obvious prominence), to merit the preservation of a private home? And do these “white elephants” (as Henry James famously called them) make the cut?The question thus isn’t quite as simple as I had first imagined. But my own answer would, I believe, be to point precisely to the topics covered in this week’s blog posts. A site like The Breakers is the repository of so many compelling and vital American histories and stories, so many moments and identities that can help us understand and analyze who we’ve been and who we are. Of course there would be ways to remember and tell those histories and stories without preserving the house, but I do believe that historic sites provide a particularly effective grounding for them, a starting point from which visitors (like this AmericanStudier) can continue their investigations into those themes. I know that my own ideas about America were expanded and amplified by my visit to Newport and The Breakers, as they have been by all my AmericanStudies trips. So while I know it’s not entirely practical, I vote for preserving anything and everything that can help with such ongoing and inspiring AmericanStudying.Special public scholarship update this weekend,BenPS. What do you think?

September 12, 2013: Newport Stories: Alice and Alva Vanderbilt

[Like so many evocative American places, the Newport, Rhode Island mansion The Breakerscontains and connects to numerous histories, stories, and themes worth sharing. So in this series, I’ll highlight and analyze five such topics. As always, your thoughts will be very welcome too!]
On the Newport sisters-in-law whose later lives diverged dramatically.At the same time that Cornelius and Alice Vanderbilt were building The Breakers, Cornelius’ brother William and his wife Alva were completing their own Newport mansion, Marble House. Located just down the street from each other, these two Vanderbilt homes jointly exemplified and dominated late 19th century Newport society, and it’s easy to see the two women as similarly parallel. Yet the two marriages ended in very different ways—Cornelius died suddenly in 1899, at the age of 56, and the widowed Alice lived 34 more years but never remarried; Alva controversially divorced William in 1895 and married the younger Oliver H.P. Belmont, moving down the street into his home Belcourt Castle—and those ends foreshadowed the two women’s increasingly divergent trajectories.Both Alice and Alva would continue to play significant roles in Newport and New York society for their more than three remaining decades of life, but in dramatically different ways. Alice, known as the dowager Mrs. Vanderbilt, made her New York and Newport homes the social centers for which purpose they had been built, donated philanthropically to numerous causes (including endowing a building at Yale and one at Newport Hospital), and generally maintained her traditional, influential, powerful high society status. Alva, on the other hand, forged more pioneering and modern paths: her passion for architecture led her to become one of the first female members of the American Institute of Architects; her dissatisfaction with the highly traditional New York Academy of Music led to co-found the Metropolitan Opera; and, most tellingly, she became one of the most active and ardent supporters of women’s suffrage, forming the Political Equality League, establishing the National Women’s Party, and working with Anna Shaw, Alice Paul, and other luminaries to help ensure the passage of the 19th Amendment.From an early 21st century perspective, Alva’s path seems clearly the far more influential, impressive, and inspiring one; whatever we think of her architectural and musical endeavors (and they were certainly important), few 20th century American achievements were more significant and lasting than women’s suffrage, and Alva’s efforts played a meaningful role in helping effect that change. But I think it would be a mistake to discount all that Alice did and accomplished in those thirty-plus years after her husband’s unexpected death, and the legacy that her efforts likewise left behind. Indeed, Alice’s independent and influential life offers an implicit but compelling argument for women’s social and political equality, for how much every American has to offer his or her society and era. Without the presences and contributions of both of these women, far more than just Newport society would have been impoverished.Final Breakers story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

September 11, 2013: Newport Stories: Gertrude Vanderbilt

[Like so many evocative American places, the Newport, Rhode Island mansion The Breakerscontains and connects to numerous histories, stories, and themes worth sharing. So in this series, I’ll highlight and analyze five such topics. As always, your thoughts will be very welcome too!]
On the Vanderbilt heiress whose seemingly stereotypical life belies a far more individual identity.Just in case Gertrude Vanderbilt (1875-1942), eldest surviving daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his wife Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt, didn’t seem to have enough of an elite American legacy on which to live, she went ahead and married Harry Payne Whitney (1872-1930), son of a famous attorney, grandson of a Standard Oil executive, and heir to a sizeable fortune in his own right. Together the two expanded upon those impressive starting points, inhabiting a New York mansion of their own, becoming prominent racehorse breeders, world travelers, and art patrons, and, in a Gospel of Wealth moment for Depression-era America, endowing the New York Whitney Museum of American Art just before Harry’s death in 1930.If we see that latter act as simply the kind of thing super-rich people do with their money toward the ends of their lives, however, we miss a far more intimate and lifelong factor. Gertrude apparently had a strong affinity and passion for the arts from a young age, but the Vanderbilts’ society in New York and Newport did not seem to present her with opportunities to act upon those perspectives. After her 1901 marriage, both because of the greater degree of independence it afforded her and because (it seems) Harry supported her efforts, she finally found such opportunities: organizing and promoting women artists, individually and in exhibitions; and studying art and sculpture in her own right. She went on to achieve a career as a public sculptor, creating for example a fountain in the famous patio of the Pan American building in Washington, DC. One of her works is even —not because of her last name, but because it merits inclusion in such a space.Rebecca Harding Davis’ novella Life in the Iron-Mills (1861) focuses on the tragic life and death of Hugh Wolfe, a factory worker whose talent for sculpture goes unappreciated and unrewarded in his grimly realistic environment. While Hugh is a fictional character, the point is real and important: that whatever limitations Gertrude Vanderbilt faced on her way to a successful artistic career, her family and status also certainly provided possibilities that the Hugh Wolfes of the world are far less likely to find. But on the other hand, Gertrude also represented a new, modern American woman—one who not only pursued and achieved her own artistic career, but who at the same time supported the careers and art of her peers and her nation. That her money helped her to do so is an unquestionable truth for which all who visit the Whitney should give thanks.Next Breakers story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?