Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 374
September 10, 2013
September 10, 2013: Newport Stories: The Omelet King
[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 very American story—in some of the best and worst senses—of Rudy Stanish.While I hope that yesterday’s post complicated some of the simplest narratives about a figure like Cornelius Vanderbilt II, it was nonetheless, I admit, still pretty crazy to use the phrase “rags to riches” to describe Commodore Vanderbilt’s grandson. But Rudolph “Rudy” Stanish, who began life as the seventh of thirteen children born to an Eastern European (Croatian and Serbian) immigrant couple in Yukon, Pennsylvania and ended his life as the world famous Omelet King, chef to some of America’s most prominent people and families? A young man who was brought to Newport’s mansions before he was 16 (in 1929), to work as a kitchen boy with his godmother, and who through a combination of talent, hard work, luck and timing, and more found himself making John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural breakfast? Yup, I’d say that just about defines rags to riches.The principal question when it comes to such rags to riches stories has never been whether they’re possible at all, however, but whether they’re representative of something larger than their singular existence—whether, that is, they offer any sort of more general blueprint for success. As part of the audio tour of The Breakers—which is not where Stanish began his career but where he received his first big break, filling in as head chef at the last minute for a dinner party and impressing the hosts sufficiently to stay on—Stanish is quoted as saying precisely that his story was indeed telling; that in a world like that of The Breakers, those among the servants (“The Staff,” as the Vanderbilts insisted on calling them) who worked hard and gave it their best and, yes, were gifted at their jobs could make their way to something far beyond the cramped and hot upstairs quarters where they lived at The Breakers. And it’s hard to disagree: without at least the possibility of such mobility, more than just Stanish’s own story would lose a good bit of its appeal—the story of America would as well.But even if we accept that Stanish’s story is not only individually possible (which of course it was) but communally achievable, there remains at least one other significant criticism that can be levied against such stories. Which is that they represent more a form of celebrity, of our society’s unquestionable emphasis on and celebration of fame, than narratives of meritocracy, of opportunity, or, even more radically, of challenge to the existing hierarchies of wealth and class. That is, Stanish became famous for how well he served the nation’s powerful elites—but even if that fame granted him a place among those elites, it neither equated his identity with theirs nor (especially) led to any questions about the world in which they all operated. To be clear, that’s not the role of any individual, and I’m not critiquing Stanish in any way—but if his story is a uniquely American one, it is at least in part because it reflects the often superficial nature of success in our society.Next Breakers story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the very American story—in some of the best and worst senses—of Rudy Stanish.While I hope that yesterday’s post complicated some of the simplest narratives about a figure like Cornelius Vanderbilt II, it was nonetheless, I admit, still pretty crazy to use the phrase “rags to riches” to describe Commodore Vanderbilt’s grandson. But Rudolph “Rudy” Stanish, who began life as the seventh of thirteen children born to an Eastern European (Croatian and Serbian) immigrant couple in Yukon, Pennsylvania and ended his life as the world famous Omelet King, chef to some of America’s most prominent people and families? A young man who was brought to Newport’s mansions before he was 16 (in 1929), to work as a kitchen boy with his godmother, and who through a combination of talent, hard work, luck and timing, and more found himself making John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural breakfast? Yup, I’d say that just about defines rags to riches.The principal question when it comes to such rags to riches stories has never been whether they’re possible at all, however, but whether they’re representative of something larger than their singular existence—whether, that is, they offer any sort of more general blueprint for success. As part of the audio tour of The Breakers—which is not where Stanish began his career but where he received his first big break, filling in as head chef at the last minute for a dinner party and impressing the hosts sufficiently to stay on—Stanish is quoted as saying precisely that his story was indeed telling; that in a world like that of The Breakers, those among the servants (“The Staff,” as the Vanderbilts insisted on calling them) who worked hard and gave it their best and, yes, were gifted at their jobs could make their way to something far beyond the cramped and hot upstairs quarters where they lived at The Breakers. And it’s hard to disagree: without at least the possibility of such mobility, more than just Stanish’s own story would lose a good bit of its appeal—the story of America would as well.But even if we accept that Stanish’s story is not only individually possible (which of course it was) but communally achievable, there remains at least one other significant criticism that can be levied against such stories. Which is that they represent more a form of celebrity, of our society’s unquestionable emphasis on and celebration of fame, than narratives of meritocracy, of opportunity, or, even more radically, of challenge to the existing hierarchies of wealth and class. That is, Stanish became famous for how well he served the nation’s powerful elites—but even if that fame granted him a place among those elites, it neither equated his identity with theirs nor (especially) led to any questions about the world in which they all operated. To be clear, that’s not the role of any individual, and I’m not critiquing Stanish in any way—but if his story is a uniquely American one, it is at least in part because it reflects the often superficial nature of success in our society.Next Breakers story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
September 9, 2013
September 9, 2013: Newport Stories: Cornelius Vanderbilt II
[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 whether a child of privilege can also be a Horatio Alger story.Cornelius Vanderbilt II (1843-1899), the man for whom The Breakers was built (as perhaps the most luxurious “summer cottage” in human history), was named after his grandfather, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), who at his death was the wealthiest man in the United States. Which is to say, young Cornelius wasn’t just born into privilege; he was perhaps the closest thing to the royal baby American society has produced. Moreover, over the thirty-four years between his birth and his grandfather’s death, a period that culminated quite tellingly with the start of the Gilded Age, the family’s fortune only increased further. None of that is young Cornelius’ fault, and if he had decided to give the fortune away he’d have been about the first person ever to do so—but it does make it hard to see him as anything other than the scion of an American dynasty.Yet as illustrated at length by Cornelius’s entry in Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography (1900), the young man’s life did in some interesting ways mirror those of a Horatio Alger, rags to riches, self-made protagonist (without, of course, details like being orphaned or living on the streets). Beginning at the age of 16, Cornelius spent the next five years working as a clerk in two small New York banks, learning the ins and outs of the financial world; he then did the same with the railroad industry in which his family had made their fortune, working for two years as treasurer and then ten as reasurer of the New York and Harlem railroad company. Which is to say, when he became Vice President of that railroad in 1877, at the age of 34, he did so after nearly thirteen years in the industry, and more than twenty in financial services; while it’d still be fair to say that he had been destined for the position and role from birth, it certainly would not be accurate to argue that it was in any blatant or nepotistic sense handed to him.So what?, you might ask. Do those years of work make the egregious excess, the truly conspicuous consumption, of The Breakers less grating or more sympathetic? Do they in any way complicate Cornelius’ status as the poster boy for Gilded Age inequities? I don’t know that they do—but I do know that they remind us of the complexities, nuances, contradictions, the messy dynamic humanity, at the heart of most every American identity and life, story and history, individual and community. It’s entirely fine—and, I would argue, an important part of a public AmericanStudier’s job—to critique what we see as the worst actions or attributes of historical figures like the Vanderbilts. But it’s not at all okay to do so by oversimplifying or mythologizing (in positive or negative ways) lives and identities, by turning the past into the black and white caricatures that such myths demand. Cornelius Vanderbilt II was a scion of privilege who built one of the most garish mansions in American history; he also worked, and apparently worked hard and well, for forty of his fifty-six years of life. That’s all part of the story of The Breakers for sure.Next Breakers story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On whether a child of privilege can also be a Horatio Alger story.Cornelius Vanderbilt II (1843-1899), the man for whom The Breakers was built (as perhaps the most luxurious “summer cottage” in human history), was named after his grandfather, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), who at his death was the wealthiest man in the United States. Which is to say, young Cornelius wasn’t just born into privilege; he was perhaps the closest thing to the royal baby American society has produced. Moreover, over the thirty-four years between his birth and his grandfather’s death, a period that culminated quite tellingly with the start of the Gilded Age, the family’s fortune only increased further. None of that is young Cornelius’ fault, and if he had decided to give the fortune away he’d have been about the first person ever to do so—but it does make it hard to see him as anything other than the scion of an American dynasty.Yet as illustrated at length by Cornelius’s entry in Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography (1900), the young man’s life did in some interesting ways mirror those of a Horatio Alger, rags to riches, self-made protagonist (without, of course, details like being orphaned or living on the streets). Beginning at the age of 16, Cornelius spent the next five years working as a clerk in two small New York banks, learning the ins and outs of the financial world; he then did the same with the railroad industry in which his family had made their fortune, working for two years as treasurer and then ten as reasurer of the New York and Harlem railroad company. Which is to say, when he became Vice President of that railroad in 1877, at the age of 34, he did so after nearly thirteen years in the industry, and more than twenty in financial services; while it’d still be fair to say that he had been destined for the position and role from birth, it certainly would not be accurate to argue that it was in any blatant or nepotistic sense handed to him.So what?, you might ask. Do those years of work make the egregious excess, the truly conspicuous consumption, of The Breakers less grating or more sympathetic? Do they in any way complicate Cornelius’ status as the poster boy for Gilded Age inequities? I don’t know that they do—but I do know that they remind us of the complexities, nuances, contradictions, the messy dynamic humanity, at the heart of most every American identity and life, story and history, individual and community. It’s entirely fine—and, I would argue, an important part of a public AmericanStudier’s job—to critique what we see as the worst actions or attributes of historical figures like the Vanderbilts. But it’s not at all okay to do so by oversimplifying or mythologizing (in positive or negative ways) lives and identities, by turning the past into the black and white caricatures that such myths demand. Cornelius Vanderbilt II was a scion of privilege who built one of the most garish mansions in American history; he also worked, and apparently worked hard and well, for forty of his fifty-six years of life. That’s all part of the story of The Breakers for sure.Next Breakers story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
September 7, 2013
September 7-8, 2013: Crowd-Sourced Daytrips
[In honor of my recent trip to Virginia, and to parallel my earlier series on New England daytrips, this week’s series has highlighted AmericanStudies trips in ole Virginia. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the suggestions of fellow traveling AmericanStudiers—add yours, please!]
In response to that earlier New England series, readers suggested The Shelburne Falls Bridge of Flowers, Holyoke's Dinosaur Footprints, Heritage Museum & Gardens, the Sandwich Glass Museum, and the Rokeby Museum's "Free and Safe" exhibition.Jeff Renyehighlights the Wampanoag Homesite, the Native American site at Plimoth Plantation.Also in response to that series, Rob Velella wrote, “If one does visit Walden Pond, continue beyond the replica cabin and remember to find the site of the real thing, a relatively short and simple hike from the swimming area at Walden. Also, a visit to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is an absolute must for those who admire the Concord authors (and Concord grapes, if you can find Mr. Ephraim Bull). Also, I feel obligated to point out that The Wayside is one of those witness structures and one generally open to the public (currently under rehabilitation). Unrecognizable today from its appearance in 1775, it is probably better remembered as the home of the Alcott family and the Hawthornes. It is one building which very well sums up so much of what makes Concord great.”Kisha Tracy suggests the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, not least because “The Rock monument is to [her] great-great grandfather’s brigade”!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Other trips (in New England, Virginia, or anywhere else) you’d share?
In response to that earlier New England series, readers suggested The Shelburne Falls Bridge of Flowers, Holyoke's Dinosaur Footprints, Heritage Museum & Gardens, the Sandwich Glass Museum, and the Rokeby Museum's "Free and Safe" exhibition.Jeff Renyehighlights the Wampanoag Homesite, the Native American site at Plimoth Plantation.Also in response to that series, Rob Velella wrote, “If one does visit Walden Pond, continue beyond the replica cabin and remember to find the site of the real thing, a relatively short and simple hike from the swimming area at Walden. Also, a visit to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is an absolute must for those who admire the Concord authors (and Concord grapes, if you can find Mr. Ephraim Bull). Also, I feel obligated to point out that The Wayside is one of those witness structures and one generally open to the public (currently under rehabilitation). Unrecognizable today from its appearance in 1775, it is probably better remembered as the home of the Alcott family and the Hawthornes. It is one building which very well sums up so much of what makes Concord great.”Kisha Tracy suggests the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, not least because “The Rock monument is to [her] great-great grandfather’s brigade”!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Other trips (in New England, Virginia, or anywhere else) you’d share?
September 6, 2013
September 6, 2013: Virginia Daytrips: Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center
[In honor of my recent trip to Virginia, and to parallel my earlier series on New England daytrips, this week’s series will highlight AmericanStudies trips in ole Virginia. Add your nominations, whether in the Commonwealth or anywhere else, please!]
On the limitations and benefits to a museum that goes big—really big.I’ve been to the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum a few times in my distant past, but on this trip I had the chance to take the boys (and myself) for the first time to the Museum’s new companion facility, Northern Virginia’s Udvar-Hazy Center. The Center has a lot in common with two other museums about which I’ve written in this space, San Diego’s U.S.S. Midway and Fall River (Mass.)’s Battleship Cove; you can’t walk onto or through the numerous planes, spacecraft, and other vehicles at the Udvar-Hazy Center, as you can the ships at those other sites, but what all three spaces share is a commitment to including only full-size, real vehicles that truly convey to their visitors a sense of the size, scope, and power of these technological marvels.Indeed, the Udvar-Hazy Center includes far more vehicles than either of those other sites (impressively stocked as they both are): the Center comprises both the Boeing Aviation Hanger, with hundreds of places and aircraft including a Concorde, a jet airliner, an SR-71 Blackbird, the Enola Gay , and many more; and the James S. McDonnell Space Hanger, which features the space shuttle Discovery among its many spacecraft and rockets and exhibits. The Center’s hangers are so giant and so full, in fact, that I found it ironically difficult to appreciate each individual item and exhibit, particularly those in the Aviation Hanger; the Discovery is isolated enough that visitors can really gauge its size and take time to examine its details, but the planes and airfract in the Aviation Hanger are so plentiful that it’s possible (hard as it might be to imagine this) to overlook the Concorde, to walk directly beneath the Boeing jetliner without realizing it’s up there, to miss out on the fact that the big silver military plane is none other than the Enola Gay. In some ways, that is, the Center feels more like a warehouse than a museum, and it’s hard to learn as much from a warehouse.On the other hand, there are definite advantages to the Center’s particular approach. For one thing, I can say with certainty that it works well for young boys, who wouldn’t be able to stand still long enough to appreciate all the details of any one exhibit but who can through the Center’s holdings collectively appreciate so much of the breadth and depth of aviation, space exploration, technology, history, and related themes. And for adults, the Center offers so many different focal points that it’s hard to imagine anyone not finding some particular exhibit and space that doesn’t speak to our interests and identities. Want to see a plane that Amelia Earhart flew, or one of the Wright Brothers’ first efforts? They’re there. Prefer to learn about stunt flying as it has evolved over the years? You’re covered. Want to really compare the first manned space vehicles against a space shuttle? Go for it. If a Museum’s job is to cover its subjects thoroughly and compellingly—and that is one main job for sure—then the Center succeeds, and then some.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So what do you think? Takes on the week’s trips? Other ones (anywhere) you’d highlight?
On the limitations and benefits to a museum that goes big—really big.I’ve been to the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum a few times in my distant past, but on this trip I had the chance to take the boys (and myself) for the first time to the Museum’s new companion facility, Northern Virginia’s Udvar-Hazy Center. The Center has a lot in common with two other museums about which I’ve written in this space, San Diego’s U.S.S. Midway and Fall River (Mass.)’s Battleship Cove; you can’t walk onto or through the numerous planes, spacecraft, and other vehicles at the Udvar-Hazy Center, as you can the ships at those other sites, but what all three spaces share is a commitment to including only full-size, real vehicles that truly convey to their visitors a sense of the size, scope, and power of these technological marvels.Indeed, the Udvar-Hazy Center includes far more vehicles than either of those other sites (impressively stocked as they both are): the Center comprises both the Boeing Aviation Hanger, with hundreds of places and aircraft including a Concorde, a jet airliner, an SR-71 Blackbird, the Enola Gay , and many more; and the James S. McDonnell Space Hanger, which features the space shuttle Discovery among its many spacecraft and rockets and exhibits. The Center’s hangers are so giant and so full, in fact, that I found it ironically difficult to appreciate each individual item and exhibit, particularly those in the Aviation Hanger; the Discovery is isolated enough that visitors can really gauge its size and take time to examine its details, but the planes and airfract in the Aviation Hanger are so plentiful that it’s possible (hard as it might be to imagine this) to overlook the Concorde, to walk directly beneath the Boeing jetliner without realizing it’s up there, to miss out on the fact that the big silver military plane is none other than the Enola Gay. In some ways, that is, the Center feels more like a warehouse than a museum, and it’s hard to learn as much from a warehouse.On the other hand, there are definite advantages to the Center’s particular approach. For one thing, I can say with certainty that it works well for young boys, who wouldn’t be able to stand still long enough to appreciate all the details of any one exhibit but who can through the Center’s holdings collectively appreciate so much of the breadth and depth of aviation, space exploration, technology, history, and related themes. And for adults, the Center offers so many different focal points that it’s hard to imagine anyone not finding some particular exhibit and space that doesn’t speak to our interests and identities. Want to see a plane that Amelia Earhart flew, or one of the Wright Brothers’ first efforts? They’re there. Prefer to learn about stunt flying as it has evolved over the years? You’re covered. Want to really compare the first manned space vehicles against a space shuttle? Go for it. If a Museum’s job is to cover its subjects thoroughly and compellingly—and that is one main job for sure—then the Center succeeds, and then some.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So what do you think? Takes on the week’s trips? Other ones (anywhere) you’d highlight?
September 5, 2013
September 5, 2013: Virginia Daytrips: Monticello
[In honor of my recent trip to Virginia, and to parallel my earlier series on New England daytrips, this week’s series will highlight AmericanStudies trips in ole Virginia. Add your nominations, whether in the Commonwealth or anywhere else, please!]
On two tours that help visitors think about the contradictions inherent in one of our most beloved historic homes.Like Thomas Jefferson, the man who built and lived in it, Charlottesville’s Monticello is a hugely challenging and contradictory place. Those contradictions exist on multiple levels: the thinker who wrote so frequently about the dangers of an overly powerful government was also the president whose Louisiana Purchase was perhaps the most sweeping exercise in federal authority in American history; the champion of the yeoman farmer was also the speculator who ended his life so deeply in debt that his home had to be sold off. But the most defining Jeffersonian contradictions, and certainly the most embodied in his home, are those related to slavery: that the man most famous as the author of the Declaration of Independence and the line “All men are created equal” lived in a house where well more than three-quarters of the inhabitants were enslaved African Americans (a contradiction, to be fair, that was present at the national level, and with which Jefferson had tried to deal in his draft of the Declaration).When I was a schoolkid visiting Monticello (in the 1980s), the site did a pretty lousy job addressing that latter contradiction: to the best of my recollection (and my parents bear this out), the tours (which were and remain the only way to get into the house) referred to slaves only as “servants,” among many other elisions. But of course the times they have a-changed, and to its credit Monticello has most definitely changed with them: the site now offers an hourly (free) Slavery at Monticello tour, as well as numerous exhibitions, conferences, and online articles dedicated to the subject. It’d be fair to ask whether it might not make more sense to fold the slavery tour into the main house tour, not least because that would force each and every visitor to engage with those issues and contradictions (rather than opening them to the self-selected group who choose the slavery tour). But on the other hand, the separate slavery tour has far more time and space through which to tell those histories and stories than would be the case if it were part of the broader overall tour, and is thus far more able to bring to complex and vital life those hundreds of enslaved Monticello inhabitants.Because I visited Monticello with my two young AmericanStudiers, I was able to experience another new tour: one that specifically targets elementary-age kids. This wonderful tour highlighted another, less dark contradiction to Jefferson and Monticello: that the president and statesman was also a grandfather, one whose many grandchildren played in and around the house throughout his years there. But our particular tour guide, Tom Nash, ended the tour with a beautiful moment that brought home the themes of slavery as well: having shown us many of the ways in which the Jefferson grandchildren played in the house, Tom brought the kids on the tour close to him and took out a small bag; in it he had replicas of the kinds of small, homemade toys that Monticello slaves made for and passed down to their children, items that have been found in the site’s archaeological digs. As Tom put it, Monticello’s slaves wanted the best for their children and families just as fully as did Jefferson; and those shared and human—if too often tragically denied—desires are part of the histories and stories of Monticello as well.Final Virginia trip tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Daytrips you’d recommend?
On two tours that help visitors think about the contradictions inherent in one of our most beloved historic homes.Like Thomas Jefferson, the man who built and lived in it, Charlottesville’s Monticello is a hugely challenging and contradictory place. Those contradictions exist on multiple levels: the thinker who wrote so frequently about the dangers of an overly powerful government was also the president whose Louisiana Purchase was perhaps the most sweeping exercise in federal authority in American history; the champion of the yeoman farmer was also the speculator who ended his life so deeply in debt that his home had to be sold off. But the most defining Jeffersonian contradictions, and certainly the most embodied in his home, are those related to slavery: that the man most famous as the author of the Declaration of Independence and the line “All men are created equal” lived in a house where well more than three-quarters of the inhabitants were enslaved African Americans (a contradiction, to be fair, that was present at the national level, and with which Jefferson had tried to deal in his draft of the Declaration).When I was a schoolkid visiting Monticello (in the 1980s), the site did a pretty lousy job addressing that latter contradiction: to the best of my recollection (and my parents bear this out), the tours (which were and remain the only way to get into the house) referred to slaves only as “servants,” among many other elisions. But of course the times they have a-changed, and to its credit Monticello has most definitely changed with them: the site now offers an hourly (free) Slavery at Monticello tour, as well as numerous exhibitions, conferences, and online articles dedicated to the subject. It’d be fair to ask whether it might not make more sense to fold the slavery tour into the main house tour, not least because that would force each and every visitor to engage with those issues and contradictions (rather than opening them to the self-selected group who choose the slavery tour). But on the other hand, the separate slavery tour has far more time and space through which to tell those histories and stories than would be the case if it were part of the broader overall tour, and is thus far more able to bring to complex and vital life those hundreds of enslaved Monticello inhabitants.Because I visited Monticello with my two young AmericanStudiers, I was able to experience another new tour: one that specifically targets elementary-age kids. This wonderful tour highlighted another, less dark contradiction to Jefferson and Monticello: that the president and statesman was also a grandfather, one whose many grandchildren played in and around the house throughout his years there. But our particular tour guide, Tom Nash, ended the tour with a beautiful moment that brought home the themes of slavery as well: having shown us many of the ways in which the Jefferson grandchildren played in the house, Tom brought the kids on the tour close to him and took out a small bag; in it he had replicas of the kinds of small, homemade toys that Monticello slaves made for and passed down to their children, items that have been found in the site’s archaeological digs. As Tom put it, Monticello’s slaves wanted the best for their children and families just as fully as did Jefferson; and those shared and human—if too often tragically denied—desires are part of the histories and stories of Monticello as well.Final Virginia trip tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Daytrips you’d recommend?
September 4, 2013
September 4, 2013: Virginia Daytrips: Colonial Williamsburg
[In honor of my recent trip to Virginia, and to parallel my earlier series on New England daytrips, this week’s series will highlight AmericanStudies trips in ole Virginia. Add your nominations, whether in the Commonwealth or anywhere else, please!]
On the necessarily political but still magical sides to any living history site.One of my favorite things when I was a kid was attending Civil War reenactments with my Dad. I didn’t get to many, probably half a dozen or so, but each time it was a truly magical experience, like entering directly into a historical world. Part of that effect was my status as a bona fide Civil War buff—I can’t count the number of hours I spent thumbing through the beautiful pages of Bruce Catton’s Illustrated History of the Civil War, most of them spent staring at the gorgeous painted recreations of key battle sites and maps—but a bigger part, I’d say, was the sense that these were people trying to make history come alive again, to inhabit it and help us do so as well, at least for a space. As I’ve gotten older, I haven’t moved away from that perspective—I think most reenactors love history and do have that as a central goal—so much as added a more uncomfortable but important second perspective: that in many cases, the overwhelmingly (if not entirely) white participants in the reenactments were also embodying a very specific post-Civil War narrative, one that sought to reunify white soldiers from both sides through emphases on their shared valor and heroism and, concurrently and crucially, deemphases on the war’s racial and social causes (the first bit of Birth of a Nation is a great example of that narrative).That combination of genuine and impressive historical interest and more contemporary and unsettling purposes also, if much more subtly, drove the multi-decade creation of one of America’s most successful historical landmarks, Colonial Williamsburg. The historical recreation of this center of political and social life in both colonial-era and Revolutionary Virginia began in the 1920s and 1930s, and was, I believe, most definitely driven by a desire to connect Americans and tourists from all over the world more fully back to this crucial early American site and community; the project’s motto was and remains, “That the future may learn from the past,” and in many ways the site has done a great job bringing that past into the American present in very engaging and successful ways. Certainly for many decades the inclusion of African Americans, either as participants or as tourists, was painfully slight and segregated, but over the last few decades Colonial Williamsburg, like most such historical landmarks, has begun to do a much better job balancing its portrayals of the different communities and experiences that existed within its boundaries, and of the best and worst of late 1700s Virginia and America that it comprised.Yet the most significant push to build up and expand Colonial Williamsburg took place not in the 20s and 30s, but in the 1960s and 70s, and in analyzing that moment the historical purpose must be balanced with a much more contemporary and political one. The driving force behind the renewed efforts was the Rockefeller family; the oil magnate John D. had been a central part of the 20s efforts, and so even in that era it would be possible to consider more political goals for the project, but the work of Winthrop Rockefeller and his family in this Cold War era was much more overtly politically motivated. Perhaps the Rockefellers chief interest in the decades after World War II was in highlighting and exporting America’s greatest identities, in communicating to the world (in direct opposition, to be sure, to the USSR’s international presence and images of itself) the ideal versions of our national past and stories and selves. They did so for example through public art exhibits and museums that traveled the world, highlighting some of the masters (among them Jackson Pollock and Norman Rockwell) working in America in these years. But they did so as well through historical endeavors like Williamsburg, and the recreations there of the ideals (and in the 1960s and 70s it was still very much the ideals on which Williamsburg focused) of the Revolution and Founding.W.E.B. Du Bois entitles the last chapter of his groundbreaking Black Reconstruction in America (1936) “The Propaganda of History”; he focuses there on the dominant (and almost entirely false) historical narrative of Reconstruction that had developed in the prior three decades or so, but his ideas could easily be extended to any moments in which historical narratives are wedded to contemporary political purposes. But just as such links can perhaps never be entirely absent, even in the most well-intentioned efforts, so too is the more genuine attempt to revivify and connect us to our history still a part of these endeavors. We can and need to try our best to recognize the political side, lest the propaganda blind us, but we can still feel that magic of history coming alive before us. Next Virginia trip tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Daytrips you’d recommend?
On the necessarily political but still magical sides to any living history site.One of my favorite things when I was a kid was attending Civil War reenactments with my Dad. I didn’t get to many, probably half a dozen or so, but each time it was a truly magical experience, like entering directly into a historical world. Part of that effect was my status as a bona fide Civil War buff—I can’t count the number of hours I spent thumbing through the beautiful pages of Bruce Catton’s Illustrated History of the Civil War, most of them spent staring at the gorgeous painted recreations of key battle sites and maps—but a bigger part, I’d say, was the sense that these were people trying to make history come alive again, to inhabit it and help us do so as well, at least for a space. As I’ve gotten older, I haven’t moved away from that perspective—I think most reenactors love history and do have that as a central goal—so much as added a more uncomfortable but important second perspective: that in many cases, the overwhelmingly (if not entirely) white participants in the reenactments were also embodying a very specific post-Civil War narrative, one that sought to reunify white soldiers from both sides through emphases on their shared valor and heroism and, concurrently and crucially, deemphases on the war’s racial and social causes (the first bit of Birth of a Nation is a great example of that narrative).That combination of genuine and impressive historical interest and more contemporary and unsettling purposes also, if much more subtly, drove the multi-decade creation of one of America’s most successful historical landmarks, Colonial Williamsburg. The historical recreation of this center of political and social life in both colonial-era and Revolutionary Virginia began in the 1920s and 1930s, and was, I believe, most definitely driven by a desire to connect Americans and tourists from all over the world more fully back to this crucial early American site and community; the project’s motto was and remains, “That the future may learn from the past,” and in many ways the site has done a great job bringing that past into the American present in very engaging and successful ways. Certainly for many decades the inclusion of African Americans, either as participants or as tourists, was painfully slight and segregated, but over the last few decades Colonial Williamsburg, like most such historical landmarks, has begun to do a much better job balancing its portrayals of the different communities and experiences that existed within its boundaries, and of the best and worst of late 1700s Virginia and America that it comprised.Yet the most significant push to build up and expand Colonial Williamsburg took place not in the 20s and 30s, but in the 1960s and 70s, and in analyzing that moment the historical purpose must be balanced with a much more contemporary and political one. The driving force behind the renewed efforts was the Rockefeller family; the oil magnate John D. had been a central part of the 20s efforts, and so even in that era it would be possible to consider more political goals for the project, but the work of Winthrop Rockefeller and his family in this Cold War era was much more overtly politically motivated. Perhaps the Rockefellers chief interest in the decades after World War II was in highlighting and exporting America’s greatest identities, in communicating to the world (in direct opposition, to be sure, to the USSR’s international presence and images of itself) the ideal versions of our national past and stories and selves. They did so for example through public art exhibits and museums that traveled the world, highlighting some of the masters (among them Jackson Pollock and Norman Rockwell) working in America in these years. But they did so as well through historical endeavors like Williamsburg, and the recreations there of the ideals (and in the 1960s and 70s it was still very much the ideals on which Williamsburg focused) of the Revolution and Founding.W.E.B. Du Bois entitles the last chapter of his groundbreaking Black Reconstruction in America (1936) “The Propaganda of History”; he focuses there on the dominant (and almost entirely false) historical narrative of Reconstruction that had developed in the prior three decades or so, but his ideas could easily be extended to any moments in which historical narratives are wedded to contemporary political purposes. But just as such links can perhaps never be entirely absent, even in the most well-intentioned efforts, so too is the more genuine attempt to revivify and connect us to our history still a part of these endeavors. We can and need to try our best to recognize the political side, lest the propaganda blind us, but we can still feel that magic of history coming alive before us. Next Virginia trip tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Daytrips you’d recommend?
September 3, 2013
September 3, 2013: Virginia Daytrips: Frontier Culture Museum
[In honor of my recent trip to Virginia, and to parallel my earlier series on New England daytrips, this week’s series will highlight AmericanStudies trips in ole Virginia. Add your nominations, whether in the Commonwealth or anywhere else, please!]
On the living history site with a profound organizing argument.I’ve already blogged briefly, as part of this post on Virginia AmericanStudies connections across the centuries, about Mechal Sobel’s amazing The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in 18th Century Virginia (1988). What made Sobel’s book so unique and impressive to me when I read it in college—and what made it a significant influence on the idea of cross-cultural transformation at the heart of my own Redefining American Identity —was her use and analysis of seemingly small, everyday items and details to develop her sweeping and convincing argument about how Virginia’s multiple cultures and communities came together to produce its own unique and enduring identity. She located some of our biggest and most defining ideas in some of our smallest and most intimate practices, a skill that exemplifies what AmericanStudies can do and offer.I’m not sure exactly what I expected as my boys, my Dad, and I drove out to Staunton’s Frontier Culture Museum, but I know it had a lot more to do with Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone than Mechal Sobel. But while the Museum did indeed include replicated or reassembled versions of 18thand 19thcentury Virginia cabins and homes (in which young Davy and Daniel and their peers certainly could have been born and raised), it also included exhibits on old world homes that were just as painstakingly and lovingly constructed and inhabited: English, Irish, German, and West Africansites and homes, to be exact. (The newest exhibit, on Native American homes, is still under construction but promises to be just as compelling.) Each site was staffed by historical interpreters dressed in period costume but offering a 21st century perspective on the place, time, and details, a choice that interestingly complements how Plimoth Plantation presents its histories and stories.That diversity and depth of sites was already surprising and effective to this AmericanStudies visitor, but the Museum took things one big step further. As the orientation film (narrated by David McCullough!) notes, the Museum’s exhibits are divided into two distinct sections: the old world sites in a first part, linked to one another as some of the places from which these Virginian arrivals came; and the new world/Virginia sites in a second part. As such, for those visitors who travel through the exhibits in that suggested order (and the site is spaced so as to make it difficult to do so in any other way), the Virginia exhibits quite literally build on those old world starting points, making clear how much they developed out of the cultures that came here but became part of a new and shared culture all their own. Without losing sight of all the individual details and aspects that define each particular site and moment, that is, the Museum as a whole builds, just as Sobel’s book does, to a broader, defining argument about the Virginian and American culture composed out of those details and all the peoples they comprised. Next Virginia trip tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Daytrips you’d suggest?
On the living history site with a profound organizing argument.I’ve already blogged briefly, as part of this post on Virginia AmericanStudies connections across the centuries, about Mechal Sobel’s amazing The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in 18th Century Virginia (1988). What made Sobel’s book so unique and impressive to me when I read it in college—and what made it a significant influence on the idea of cross-cultural transformation at the heart of my own Redefining American Identity —was her use and analysis of seemingly small, everyday items and details to develop her sweeping and convincing argument about how Virginia’s multiple cultures and communities came together to produce its own unique and enduring identity. She located some of our biggest and most defining ideas in some of our smallest and most intimate practices, a skill that exemplifies what AmericanStudies can do and offer.I’m not sure exactly what I expected as my boys, my Dad, and I drove out to Staunton’s Frontier Culture Museum, but I know it had a lot more to do with Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone than Mechal Sobel. But while the Museum did indeed include replicated or reassembled versions of 18thand 19thcentury Virginia cabins and homes (in which young Davy and Daniel and their peers certainly could have been born and raised), it also included exhibits on old world homes that were just as painstakingly and lovingly constructed and inhabited: English, Irish, German, and West Africansites and homes, to be exact. (The newest exhibit, on Native American homes, is still under construction but promises to be just as compelling.) Each site was staffed by historical interpreters dressed in period costume but offering a 21st century perspective on the place, time, and details, a choice that interestingly complements how Plimoth Plantation presents its histories and stories.That diversity and depth of sites was already surprising and effective to this AmericanStudies visitor, but the Museum took things one big step further. As the orientation film (narrated by David McCullough!) notes, the Museum’s exhibits are divided into two distinct sections: the old world sites in a first part, linked to one another as some of the places from which these Virginian arrivals came; and the new world/Virginia sites in a second part. As such, for those visitors who travel through the exhibits in that suggested order (and the site is spaced so as to make it difficult to do so in any other way), the Virginia exhibits quite literally build on those old world starting points, making clear how much they developed out of the cultures that came here but became part of a new and shared culture all their own. Without losing sight of all the individual details and aspects that define each particular site and moment, that is, the Museum as a whole builds, just as Sobel’s book does, to a broader, defining argument about the Virginian and American culture composed out of those details and all the peoples they comprised. Next Virginia trip tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Daytrips you’d suggest?
September 2, 2013
September 2, 2013: Labor Day Special
[In honor of Labor Day I’m taking the day off from blogging—but in the spirit of what this holiday should entail, a genuine effort to remember and engage with the complex and crucial histories of work and the labor movement in this country, here are a handful of past posts where I’ve tried to provide such engagement. Please add your own thoughts on labor, work, and America below!]
What It’s Like: On work, art, and empathyin Rebecca Harding Davis’s novella Life in the Iron-Mills (1861). A Human and Yet Holy Day: On Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement.Workers Write: On the images of young female mill workers in two very different but interestingly complementary 19th century texts, Herman Melville’s “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids” (1855) and The Lowell Offering (1840-1845).Anarchy in the USA: On the presence and absence of anarchists and revolutionaries in American history in general and social movements like labor in particular.Public Art: Diego Rivera’scontroversial, partially Marxist Rockefeller Center mural was one of the inspirations for this post on the complexities of public art.Next series starts tomorrow,BenPS. Any texts or histories related to work or the labor movement that you’d highlight? Other thoughts on these themes and questions?
What It’s Like: On work, art, and empathyin Rebecca Harding Davis’s novella Life in the Iron-Mills (1861). A Human and Yet Holy Day: On Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement.Workers Write: On the images of young female mill workers in two very different but interestingly complementary 19th century texts, Herman Melville’s “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids” (1855) and The Lowell Offering (1840-1845).Anarchy in the USA: On the presence and absence of anarchists and revolutionaries in American history in general and social movements like labor in particular.Public Art: Diego Rivera’scontroversial, partially Marxist Rockefeller Center mural was one of the inspirations for this post on the complexities of public art.Next series starts tomorrow,BenPS. Any texts or histories related to work or the labor movement that you’d highlight? Other thoughts on these themes and questions?
August 31, 2013
August 31-September 1, 2013: August 2013 Recap
[A recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]
August 1: American Families: The Holmes: The series on multi-generational families resumes with the father and son who illustrate two very distinct ways to achieve greatness—and one common thread.August 2: American Families: The Lowells: The series concludes with the many different prominent members of a Boston family, and the poems that depict them.August 3-4: American Families: The Railtons: A special weekend post highlights some of the posts through which I’ve paid tribute to my own multi-generational family.August 5: Back to Virginia: Jamestown Today: A series on my native state kicks off with three different sites through which we can engage with Virginia’s earliest multi-national histories.August 6: Back to Virginia: Virginia Tech in Contexts: The series continues with a couple contexts for the state’s most horrific and tragic recent event.August 7: Back to Virginia: Sorry, West Virginia: On more and less humorous ignorance and our northwestern neighbors, as the series rolls on.August 8: Back to Virginia: The Valley Campaign: Stonewall Jackson, a youthful AmericanStudier, and the value and limitations of military history.August 9: Back to Virginia: Macaca, Revisited: The series concludes with another look at the striking political moment with which I concluded my last Virginia series.August 10-11: Crowd-sourced Virginia: The responses and Virginia connections of fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours, y’all!August 12-18: 36 for 36: To celebrate my 36th birthday, a vacation week post on 36 favorite posts from the past year.August 19: Still Studying: George Sanchez: A series on subjects about which I’m just learning begins with a seminal scholarly text I still need to read.August 20: Still Studying: Foshay Tower: The series continues with the Minneapolis figure and building that embody an American icon.August 21: Still Studying: Abenaki Histories: The many layers to the histories and stories of a northeastern tribe, as the series rolls on.August 22: Still Studying: Melville at Work: A fellow scholar helps me recognize why we need to rethink our narratives on authors and work.August 23: Still Studying: Known Unknowns: The series concludes with three examples of how much we can learn from a very 21st century resource.August 24-25: Crowd-sourced Studying: Fellow AmericanStudiers weigh in on what they’re still learning about—add your thoughts in progress, please!August 26: Fall Forward: NEASA Conference: A series on upcoming autumn events starts with communal connections at September’s New England ASA Conference.August 27: Fall Forward: ASA Conference: The series continues with three things I’m looking forward to at November’s ASA Conference.August 28: Fall Forward: Book Talks: Three different examples of upcoming presentations through which I’ll be sharing my third book with audiences, as the series rolls on.August 29: Fall Forward: Next Book Question: As I return to work on my next book project, a key question about what to add to the chapters—one that needs your input!August 30: Fall Forward: Three Years!: The series concludes with three memories on the occasion of this blog’s third anniversary.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What would you like to see in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute?
August 1: American Families: The Holmes: The series on multi-generational families resumes with the father and son who illustrate two very distinct ways to achieve greatness—and one common thread.August 2: American Families: The Lowells: The series concludes with the many different prominent members of a Boston family, and the poems that depict them.August 3-4: American Families: The Railtons: A special weekend post highlights some of the posts through which I’ve paid tribute to my own multi-generational family.August 5: Back to Virginia: Jamestown Today: A series on my native state kicks off with three different sites through which we can engage with Virginia’s earliest multi-national histories.August 6: Back to Virginia: Virginia Tech in Contexts: The series continues with a couple contexts for the state’s most horrific and tragic recent event.August 7: Back to Virginia: Sorry, West Virginia: On more and less humorous ignorance and our northwestern neighbors, as the series rolls on.August 8: Back to Virginia: The Valley Campaign: Stonewall Jackson, a youthful AmericanStudier, and the value and limitations of military history.August 9: Back to Virginia: Macaca, Revisited: The series concludes with another look at the striking political moment with which I concluded my last Virginia series.August 10-11: Crowd-sourced Virginia: The responses and Virginia connections of fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours, y’all!August 12-18: 36 for 36: To celebrate my 36th birthday, a vacation week post on 36 favorite posts from the past year.August 19: Still Studying: George Sanchez: A series on subjects about which I’m just learning begins with a seminal scholarly text I still need to read.August 20: Still Studying: Foshay Tower: The series continues with the Minneapolis figure and building that embody an American icon.August 21: Still Studying: Abenaki Histories: The many layers to the histories and stories of a northeastern tribe, as the series rolls on.August 22: Still Studying: Melville at Work: A fellow scholar helps me recognize why we need to rethink our narratives on authors and work.August 23: Still Studying: Known Unknowns: The series concludes with three examples of how much we can learn from a very 21st century resource.August 24-25: Crowd-sourced Studying: Fellow AmericanStudiers weigh in on what they’re still learning about—add your thoughts in progress, please!August 26: Fall Forward: NEASA Conference: A series on upcoming autumn events starts with communal connections at September’s New England ASA Conference.August 27: Fall Forward: ASA Conference: The series continues with three things I’m looking forward to at November’s ASA Conference.August 28: Fall Forward: Book Talks: Three different examples of upcoming presentations through which I’ll be sharing my third book with audiences, as the series rolls on.August 29: Fall Forward: Next Book Question: As I return to work on my next book project, a key question about what to add to the chapters—one that needs your input!August 30: Fall Forward: Three Years!: The series concludes with three memories on the occasion of this blog’s third anniversary.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What would you like to see in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute?
August 30, 2013
August 30, 2013: Fall Forward: Three Years!
[As part of my end of spring semester series, I blogged about my upcoming fall courses. But there are lots of other things going on this fall, so in this week’s series I’ll highlight a handful of other upcoming events and some of their meanings. Please share some of what your autumns will include!]
Three memories on the occasion of my blog’s upcoming third anniversary.On November 6th, AmericanStudies will finally leave behind the Terrible Twos and turn three. It’s a big and happy occasion, and yes, I’ll be expecting cake. Or presents. Well, and/or presents. In the meantime, here are three of my strongest memories from the first three years:1) The Rizolis Weigh In: If I had to identify one moment when I began to recognize that I was reaching broader audiences than, y’know, my parents (Hi guys! Thanks for reading!), it was in late June 2011. That was when my repeat post on the histories of legal and illegal immigration (linked above) got a comment from Joe Rizoli, one of Framingham’s famous Rizoli brothers (anti-immigration activists and an SPLC-designated hate group). You can’t be a public scholar if you’re not willing to debate all perspectives, including those that couldn’t be more opposed to your own (in every sense), and since June 2011 I’ve always been ready for that possibility.2) An Editor’s Pick: For the blog’s first two years, I posted a mirror verson on Salon.com’s Open Salon blogging platform; I didn’t do a good enough job connecting to other bloggers there, and the subsequent lack of response, coupled with the site’s spam and slowness issues, finally drove me away late last year. But my time at Salon did yield one really great memory: my Memorial Day post on “Remembering Pat Tillman” (linked above) was chosen as an Editor’s Pick, and sat atop the Open Salon front page for a day. I got a ton of views and comments, and really felt part of the community and conversation there.3) Reader Response: I look (somewhat obsessively, I can’t lie) at the blog’s statistics, so I can tell that it’s getting views. But in the absence of comments—remember, I’d love for you to say hi and what brings you here in the comments!—it can be hard sometimes to feel that I’m really getting read. Which is why it was both surprising and incredibly inspiring when, at both January’s MLA conference and March’s NeMLA one, folks I didn’t know read my name tag and told me that they were readers of my blog. Pretty amazing 21st century moments, those, and more than enough to keep me going into year four.August recap this weekend,BenPS. You know what to do!
Three memories on the occasion of my blog’s upcoming third anniversary.On November 6th, AmericanStudies will finally leave behind the Terrible Twos and turn three. It’s a big and happy occasion, and yes, I’ll be expecting cake. Or presents. Well, and/or presents. In the meantime, here are three of my strongest memories from the first three years:1) The Rizolis Weigh In: If I had to identify one moment when I began to recognize that I was reaching broader audiences than, y’know, my parents (Hi guys! Thanks for reading!), it was in late June 2011. That was when my repeat post on the histories of legal and illegal immigration (linked above) got a comment from Joe Rizoli, one of Framingham’s famous Rizoli brothers (anti-immigration activists and an SPLC-designated hate group). You can’t be a public scholar if you’re not willing to debate all perspectives, including those that couldn’t be more opposed to your own (in every sense), and since June 2011 I’ve always been ready for that possibility.2) An Editor’s Pick: For the blog’s first two years, I posted a mirror verson on Salon.com’s Open Salon blogging platform; I didn’t do a good enough job connecting to other bloggers there, and the subsequent lack of response, coupled with the site’s spam and slowness issues, finally drove me away late last year. But my time at Salon did yield one really great memory: my Memorial Day post on “Remembering Pat Tillman” (linked above) was chosen as an Editor’s Pick, and sat atop the Open Salon front page for a day. I got a ton of views and comments, and really felt part of the community and conversation there.3) Reader Response: I look (somewhat obsessively, I can’t lie) at the blog’s statistics, so I can tell that it’s getting views. But in the absence of comments—remember, I’d love for you to say hi and what brings you here in the comments!—it can be hard sometimes to feel that I’m really getting read. Which is why it was both surprising and incredibly inspiring when, at both January’s MLA conference and March’s NeMLA one, folks I didn’t know read my name tag and told me that they were readers of my blog. Pretty amazing 21st century moments, those, and more than enough to keep me going into year four.August recap this weekend,BenPS. You know what to do!
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