Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 376
August 10, 2013
August 10-11, 2013: Crowd-sourced Virginia
[Two years ago, when the boys and I last traveled to Virginia, I wrote a series of blog posts about some of the state’s AmericanStudies connections. We’re headed back to my home turf in a week, so this week I’ve presented another series on Virginia histories and stories. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the responses and takes of fellow AmericanStudies—add yours, y’all!]
Jason Flinkstrom points to the recent archeaological discovery of evidence of cannibalism during the first years at Jamestown.Alex Theodoridis mentions complex and controversial Virginia Senator Harry Flood Byrd, Jr., who recently passed away.Donna Moody highlights Thomas Jefferson’s “Indian Mound,” and the many questions it raises: “there seems to be a ton of questionable data about it--when did he excavate it? What about his eyewitness report of seeing Indians going to and stopping by the mound--I've heard this is something he was told, something he reported 1st hand, date?--one story would have made him 8 yo at the time of witnessing this. Guess I would like some clarifications and references.”Speaking of Jefferson, Rob Velella highlights the complex and crucial Virginia histories of “Jefferson, Monticello, and the University of Virginia.” Leah Bianchi writes, “I know there’s a lot of history in Fredericksburg. I went on a tour once, very interesting stuff.”Special birthday series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginia histories or stories you’d highlight?
Jason Flinkstrom points to the recent archeaological discovery of evidence of cannibalism during the first years at Jamestown.Alex Theodoridis mentions complex and controversial Virginia Senator Harry Flood Byrd, Jr., who recently passed away.Donna Moody highlights Thomas Jefferson’s “Indian Mound,” and the many questions it raises: “there seems to be a ton of questionable data about it--when did he excavate it? What about his eyewitness report of seeing Indians going to and stopping by the mound--I've heard this is something he was told, something he reported 1st hand, date?--one story would have made him 8 yo at the time of witnessing this. Guess I would like some clarifications and references.”Speaking of Jefferson, Rob Velella highlights the complex and crucial Virginia histories of “Jefferson, Monticello, and the University of Virginia.” Leah Bianchi writes, “I know there’s a lot of history in Fredericksburg. I went on a tour once, very interesting stuff.”Special birthday series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginia histories or stories you’d highlight?
August 9, 2013
August 9, 2013: Back to Virginia: Macaca, Revisited
[Two years ago, when the boys and I last traveled to Virginia, I wrotea seriesof blog posts about some of the state’s AmericanStudies connections. We’re headed back to my home turf in a week, so here’s another series on Virginia histories and stories. Add your Virginian takes for a weekend post that’s for AmericanStudies lovers, y’all!]
On another way to look at a defining recent moment.In the final post in that 2011 series, I wrote about George Allen’s “macaca” moment as an exemplary one, not only in terms of that particular election but also as an illustration of changing trends in the state and nation overall. I wrote then that President Obama had won Virginia in the 2008 election, becoming the first Democratic candidate to do so in decades; he did so again in 2012, making clear that those political trends have continued. As with many other formerly solid “red states,” changing demographics and communities, among other shifts, have put Virginia in play—and as I wrote in that post, the “macaca” moment concisely highlighted both the political and the demographic trends (as well, of course, as the power of the intertubes to influence 21st century politics and society).If all those trends have helped define the last half-decade or so in American political and social life, however, an honest assessment compels me to add another and far more pessimistic complement, and also one evident in the “macaca” moment: that overt racial and ethnic bigotry has made a comeback over those same years. I’m not arguing that there’s any more such bigotry today than there was a decade ago, but I would say that the bigotry has come to the surface more easily and consistently in recent years; that the gradually increasing sense of shame which seemed to be associated with racism has, in many cases, apparently given way to a kind of warped pride, a perspective that the speaker will no longer let “political correctness” dictate his or her views. Nowhere in this clearer, to my mind, than in the responses to the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman trial—or even in the simple fact that so many American conservatives are overtly rooting for Zimmerman to be found not guilty (a position, I will admit, that seems inescapably tied to Martin’s race).S.R. Siddarth, the young man to whom Allen was referring, was the American-born son of Indian immigrants, and Allen’s “welcome to America” nonsense was thus quite distinct from anti-black racism such as that directed at Trayvon Martin. But having been on the receiving end of daily Tea Party emails for many years, I have to say that one of the most defining elements of those messages is a profound equivalence between a wide variety of ethnic “others”—President Obama, Muslims, the New Black Panther Party, illegal immigrants from (in most such narratives) Mexico, and, frankly, all those who seem by the color of their skin, their linguistic or religious heritage, their ancestry, their identity to occupy a space outside of what Allen called “the real Virginia.” The truth, of course, is that all such Americans have been a part of Virginia for (at least) decades, and are only coming to define its reality more fully as the 21st century evolves. But as they do, a substantial community of Americans seems increasingly comfortable calling them, well, “macaca.” And that’s a national problem, and one we had better start acknowledging and addressing.Crowd-sourced Virginia connections this weekend,BenPS. So what do you think? Responses to the week’s posts? Other Virginia connections you’d highlight and share?
On another way to look at a defining recent moment.In the final post in that 2011 series, I wrote about George Allen’s “macaca” moment as an exemplary one, not only in terms of that particular election but also as an illustration of changing trends in the state and nation overall. I wrote then that President Obama had won Virginia in the 2008 election, becoming the first Democratic candidate to do so in decades; he did so again in 2012, making clear that those political trends have continued. As with many other formerly solid “red states,” changing demographics and communities, among other shifts, have put Virginia in play—and as I wrote in that post, the “macaca” moment concisely highlighted both the political and the demographic trends (as well, of course, as the power of the intertubes to influence 21st century politics and society).If all those trends have helped define the last half-decade or so in American political and social life, however, an honest assessment compels me to add another and far more pessimistic complement, and also one evident in the “macaca” moment: that overt racial and ethnic bigotry has made a comeback over those same years. I’m not arguing that there’s any more such bigotry today than there was a decade ago, but I would say that the bigotry has come to the surface more easily and consistently in recent years; that the gradually increasing sense of shame which seemed to be associated with racism has, in many cases, apparently given way to a kind of warped pride, a perspective that the speaker will no longer let “political correctness” dictate his or her views. Nowhere in this clearer, to my mind, than in the responses to the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman trial—or even in the simple fact that so many American conservatives are overtly rooting for Zimmerman to be found not guilty (a position, I will admit, that seems inescapably tied to Martin’s race).S.R. Siddarth, the young man to whom Allen was referring, was the American-born son of Indian immigrants, and Allen’s “welcome to America” nonsense was thus quite distinct from anti-black racism such as that directed at Trayvon Martin. But having been on the receiving end of daily Tea Party emails for many years, I have to say that one of the most defining elements of those messages is a profound equivalence between a wide variety of ethnic “others”—President Obama, Muslims, the New Black Panther Party, illegal immigrants from (in most such narratives) Mexico, and, frankly, all those who seem by the color of their skin, their linguistic or religious heritage, their ancestry, their identity to occupy a space outside of what Allen called “the real Virginia.” The truth, of course, is that all such Americans have been a part of Virginia for (at least) decades, and are only coming to define its reality more fully as the 21st century evolves. But as they do, a substantial community of Americans seems increasingly comfortable calling them, well, “macaca.” And that’s a national problem, and one we had better start acknowledging and addressing.Crowd-sourced Virginia connections this weekend,BenPS. So what do you think? Responses to the week’s posts? Other Virginia connections you’d highlight and share?
August 8, 2013
August 8, 2013: Back to Virginia: The Valley Campaign
[Two years ago, when the boys and I last traveled to Virginia, I wrotea seriesof blog posts about some of the state’s AmericanStudies connections. We’re headed back to my home turf in a week, so here’s another series on Virginia histories and stories. Add your Virginian takes for a weekend post that’s for AmericanStudies lovers, y’all!]
On the allure, importance, and limitations of military history.As a young AmericanStudier, I was obsessed with the Civil War for a variety of reasons; but if I had to boil it down to one central obsession, it would have to be the maps of battles and campaigns. I flipped again and again to the lavish battle illustrations in Bruce Catton’s American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War; I laid out the forces in my favorite complicated board game, Avalon Hill’s Gettysburg; I even created my own maps for a futuristic “Second Civil War” (minus the whole slavery thing; what can I say, I was a younger AmericanStudier then). And when it came to perfectly mapped and charted strategies, I don’t know that any Civil War battle or campaign came close, in my young mind, to Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign of 1862.I was ignorant of a lot in those days (see: that whole slavery thing), but from what I can tell most Civil War and military historians agree with my youthful assessment, defining the Valley Campaign as one of the most impressive strategic efforts of the war. By successfully occupying and befuddling more than 50,000 Union troops who were otherwise headed for an assault on the Confederate capital of Richmond, Jackson won at least as decisive a victory as far more overt ones such as First Manassasor Fredericksburg. Even for those Americans not at all interested in military strategy or history, the Valley Campaign offers many valuable lessons: about how intelligence and subterfuge can outweigh might and raw numbers; about the importance of knowing and responding to the geography and environment around us; about charismatic and effective leadership, even when said leader is also widely thought to be crazy as can be.On the other hand, I’m no longer able to assess or analyze military history in a vacuum, and in context Jackson’s Valley Campaign is, at least from certain angles, a tragedy. Had those Union troops reached Richmond, the war might have ended three years earlier, hundreds of thousands of American lives (on both sides) might have been spared, slavery might have likewise ended far earlier (or perhaps not—history is never simple, and alternative history doubly so). Those historical contexts don’t make Jackson’s strategies any less impressive—and in pursuing them he was simply doing his job, and I don’t mean to argue otherwise—but, if this makes sense, they make me less impressed and more frustrated when I read about the campaign. To put it another way: there’s no doubt that the Union’s generals were for the first few years of the war consistently outmatched by the Confederacy’s; but while the youthful me responded to that fact with interest, as a student of military history, to the grown-up AmericanStudier it represents one of the great national horrors.Next Virginia post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginia connections you’d share for the weekend post?
On the allure, importance, and limitations of military history.As a young AmericanStudier, I was obsessed with the Civil War for a variety of reasons; but if I had to boil it down to one central obsession, it would have to be the maps of battles and campaigns. I flipped again and again to the lavish battle illustrations in Bruce Catton’s American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War; I laid out the forces in my favorite complicated board game, Avalon Hill’s Gettysburg; I even created my own maps for a futuristic “Second Civil War” (minus the whole slavery thing; what can I say, I was a younger AmericanStudier then). And when it came to perfectly mapped and charted strategies, I don’t know that any Civil War battle or campaign came close, in my young mind, to Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign of 1862.I was ignorant of a lot in those days (see: that whole slavery thing), but from what I can tell most Civil War and military historians agree with my youthful assessment, defining the Valley Campaign as one of the most impressive strategic efforts of the war. By successfully occupying and befuddling more than 50,000 Union troops who were otherwise headed for an assault on the Confederate capital of Richmond, Jackson won at least as decisive a victory as far more overt ones such as First Manassasor Fredericksburg. Even for those Americans not at all interested in military strategy or history, the Valley Campaign offers many valuable lessons: about how intelligence and subterfuge can outweigh might and raw numbers; about the importance of knowing and responding to the geography and environment around us; about charismatic and effective leadership, even when said leader is also widely thought to be crazy as can be.On the other hand, I’m no longer able to assess or analyze military history in a vacuum, and in context Jackson’s Valley Campaign is, at least from certain angles, a tragedy. Had those Union troops reached Richmond, the war might have ended three years earlier, hundreds of thousands of American lives (on both sides) might have been spared, slavery might have likewise ended far earlier (or perhaps not—history is never simple, and alternative history doubly so). Those historical contexts don’t make Jackson’s strategies any less impressive—and in pursuing them he was simply doing his job, and I don’t mean to argue otherwise—but, if this makes sense, they make me less impressed and more frustrated when I read about the campaign. To put it another way: there’s no doubt that the Union’s generals were for the first few years of the war consistently outmatched by the Confederacy’s; but while the youthful me responded to that fact with interest, as a student of military history, to the grown-up AmericanStudier it represents one of the great national horrors.Next Virginia post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginia connections you’d share for the weekend post?
August 7, 2013
August 7, 2013: Back to Virginia: Sorry, West Virginia
[Two years ago, when the boys and I last traveled to Virginia, I wrotea seriesof blog posts about some of the state’s AmericanStudies connections. We’re headed back to my home turf in a week, so here’s another series on Virginia histories and stories. Add your Virginian takes for a weekend post that’s for AmericanStudies lovers, y’all!]
On ignorance, humorous and less so.I’m not sure if this is true across the nation—although I suspect that it might be—but at least in Virginia, West Virginia seems mostly to serve as the butt of jokes about ignorance, inbreeding, and assorted other social backwardnesses. A fair number of the jokes I heard most frequently as an adolescent revolved around making fun of our northwestern neighbors for those qualities—and like most jokes, they were funny because they seemed (at least to me, then) to capture essential truths. That is, just as jokes about ignorant Poles or Irishmenreflect those nations’ relationships to their “superior” neighbors, so too did West Virginia jokes illustrate how much we Virginians used the state to feel good about ourselves in contrast.My titular apology is partly for my part in making and laughing at all those jokes—but it’s much more for how ignorant I was of the most fundamental part of West Virginia history: the reason for the state’s existence. In the spring of 1861, a group of Western Virginia counties and legislators met in Wheeling, events that would come to be called the Wheeling Convention and that produced a striking outcome: these counties voted to repeal Virginia’s Ordinance of Secession and rejoin the United States, as an entity known as the “restored government of Virginia.” The rest of the state did not, of course, follow suit, leading to this region becoming for all intents and purposes a separate state—an identity that was confirmed two years later, when West Virginia was admitted to the Union (one of only two states admitted during the Civil War) in June 1863.This is pure speculation (at least I’m willing to admit it!), but it seems quite possible to me that the stereotypes and jokes about West Virginia developed at least in part because we Virginians were ashamed of this history, and of the ways in which it reflected on our own state’s heritage of slavery and secession. More crucially, West Virginia’s history makes clear that secession was not a given even within the South, even within the state that would host the Confederate Capital. I believe most Americans are aware of the various moments and ways in which the North was divided over the Civil War—but far too few of us, Virginians included and especially, know of West Virginia’s resistance to the Confederacy. And that’s no laughing matter.Next Virginia post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginia connections you’d share for the weekend post?
On ignorance, humorous and less so.I’m not sure if this is true across the nation—although I suspect that it might be—but at least in Virginia, West Virginia seems mostly to serve as the butt of jokes about ignorance, inbreeding, and assorted other social backwardnesses. A fair number of the jokes I heard most frequently as an adolescent revolved around making fun of our northwestern neighbors for those qualities—and like most jokes, they were funny because they seemed (at least to me, then) to capture essential truths. That is, just as jokes about ignorant Poles or Irishmenreflect those nations’ relationships to their “superior” neighbors, so too did West Virginia jokes illustrate how much we Virginians used the state to feel good about ourselves in contrast.My titular apology is partly for my part in making and laughing at all those jokes—but it’s much more for how ignorant I was of the most fundamental part of West Virginia history: the reason for the state’s existence. In the spring of 1861, a group of Western Virginia counties and legislators met in Wheeling, events that would come to be called the Wheeling Convention and that produced a striking outcome: these counties voted to repeal Virginia’s Ordinance of Secession and rejoin the United States, as an entity known as the “restored government of Virginia.” The rest of the state did not, of course, follow suit, leading to this region becoming for all intents and purposes a separate state—an identity that was confirmed two years later, when West Virginia was admitted to the Union (one of only two states admitted during the Civil War) in June 1863.This is pure speculation (at least I’m willing to admit it!), but it seems quite possible to me that the stereotypes and jokes about West Virginia developed at least in part because we Virginians were ashamed of this history, and of the ways in which it reflected on our own state’s heritage of slavery and secession. More crucially, West Virginia’s history makes clear that secession was not a given even within the South, even within the state that would host the Confederate Capital. I believe most Americans are aware of the various moments and ways in which the North was divided over the Civil War—but far too few of us, Virginians included and especially, know of West Virginia’s resistance to the Confederacy. And that’s no laughing matter.Next Virginia post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginia connections you’d share for the weekend post?
August 6, 2013
August 6, 2013: Back to Virginia: Virginia Tech in Contexts
[Two years ago, when the boys and I last traveled to Virginia, I wrotea seriesof blog posts about some of the state’s AmericanStudies connections. We’re headed back to my home turf in a week, so here’s another series on Virginia histories and stories. Add your Virginian takes for a weekend post that’s for AmericanStudies lovers, y’all!]
On two ways in which AmericanStudies can provide contexts for one of our most devastating recent tragedies.It’s very difficult for me to write a post about the Virginia Tech massacre. Partly that’s for personal reasons, on two different levels: my best friend is an alum of the engineering program at VT, the community in which many of those students and faculty killed worked (and many of my other high school friends and classmates likewise attended the university); and the shooting took place on April 16th, 2007, the birthday of my younger son Kyle. And partly it’s because the event and memories are still raw enough that I worry about offending or hurting those particularly affected and still grieving. But part of public AmericanStudies scholarship is engaging with all our histories, distant and recent, inspiring and horrific—and, when we can, finding ways to provide contexts through which we can better understand any individual event.One set of particularly complex such contexts relates to immigration and identity. I’ve written before about the grotesque and bigoted way in which Pat Buchanan used the Virginia Tech shooter’s Korean American identity to attack diversity, and won’t rehash my objections. But while I entirely disagree with Buchanan’s use of the term “alien” to describe Cho Seung-Hui, that doesn’t mean that Cho’s own sense of alienation—which came through so palpably in his various statements and documents—isn’t complicatedly connected to his struggles with assimilation, acculturation, and education in America. Leon Czolgosz, the Michigan-born son of Eastern European immigrants who assassinated President McKinley in September 1901, had suffered at least one significant mental breakdown in the years prior to that shooting. In he connected those struggles, and his attraction to anarchism, to a sense of alienation from America; and he described the president as a representation of that nation’s official structures and systems.In Czolgosz’s era, there was no significant attempt to understand those breakdowns as symptoms of any sort of mental illness—and even if there had been, he likely would have been only stigmatized further as a result. When I see the way in which clearly (to my mind) mentally ill criminals such as Cho, Jared Loughner, James Holmes, and others are described in media coverage, I wonder whether we have progressed far (if at all) in our communal narratives of mental illness. That is not to say that our resources or treatments are the same as they were in Dorothea Dix’s era—but I’m not at all sure that our conversations about mental illness have caught up to those medical shifts. Indeed, an engagement with Dix’s own efforts might reveal just how closely many of our narratives of criminals like Cho mirror the ways in which we have described the mentally ill for centuries—which, while it does not have to lessen in any way our outrage at what Cho did, might help us move toward a society that can respond to such illnesses more successfully and perhaps prevent future such outrages.Next Virginia post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginia connections you’d share for the weekend post?
On two ways in which AmericanStudies can provide contexts for one of our most devastating recent tragedies.It’s very difficult for me to write a post about the Virginia Tech massacre. Partly that’s for personal reasons, on two different levels: my best friend is an alum of the engineering program at VT, the community in which many of those students and faculty killed worked (and many of my other high school friends and classmates likewise attended the university); and the shooting took place on April 16th, 2007, the birthday of my younger son Kyle. And partly it’s because the event and memories are still raw enough that I worry about offending or hurting those particularly affected and still grieving. But part of public AmericanStudies scholarship is engaging with all our histories, distant and recent, inspiring and horrific—and, when we can, finding ways to provide contexts through which we can better understand any individual event.One set of particularly complex such contexts relates to immigration and identity. I’ve written before about the grotesque and bigoted way in which Pat Buchanan used the Virginia Tech shooter’s Korean American identity to attack diversity, and won’t rehash my objections. But while I entirely disagree with Buchanan’s use of the term “alien” to describe Cho Seung-Hui, that doesn’t mean that Cho’s own sense of alienation—which came through so palpably in his various statements and documents—isn’t complicatedly connected to his struggles with assimilation, acculturation, and education in America. Leon Czolgosz, the Michigan-born son of Eastern European immigrants who assassinated President McKinley in September 1901, had suffered at least one significant mental breakdown in the years prior to that shooting. In he connected those struggles, and his attraction to anarchism, to a sense of alienation from America; and he described the president as a representation of that nation’s official structures and systems.In Czolgosz’s era, there was no significant attempt to understand those breakdowns as symptoms of any sort of mental illness—and even if there had been, he likely would have been only stigmatized further as a result. When I see the way in which clearly (to my mind) mentally ill criminals such as Cho, Jared Loughner, James Holmes, and others are described in media coverage, I wonder whether we have progressed far (if at all) in our communal narratives of mental illness. That is not to say that our resources or treatments are the same as they were in Dorothea Dix’s era—but I’m not at all sure that our conversations about mental illness have caught up to those medical shifts. Indeed, an engagement with Dix’s own efforts might reveal just how closely many of our narratives of criminals like Cho mirror the ways in which we have described the mentally ill for centuries—which, while it does not have to lessen in any way our outrage at what Cho did, might help us move toward a society that can respond to such illnesses more successfully and perhaps prevent future such outrages.Next Virginia post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Virginia connections you’d share for the weekend post?
August 5, 2013
August 5, 2013: Back to Virginia: Jamestown Today
[Two years ago, when the boys and I last traveled to Virginia, I wrotea seriesof blog posts about some of the state’s AmericanStudies connections. We’re headed back to my home turf in a week, so here’s another series on Virginia histories and stories. Add your Virginian takes for a weekend post that’s for AmericanStudies lovers, y’all!]
On three historic sites that collectively illustrate our contemporary approach to the past.Historic Jamestowne, the official historic site dedicated to the first permanent English settlement in the New World, is run by the National Park Service, as part of Virginia’s Colonial National Historical Park. As would be expected from an NPS site, Historic Jamestowne is particularly strong in two areas: grounding the area’s histories in the physical and geographic spaces, such as along the Island Loop Drive; and representing the distinct but interconnected cultures that came to occupy the area by the early 17th century, including unflinching engagements with the experiences of the first African slaves to arrive in America. If you want strong, complex, compelling interpretations of the place and its histories, the NPS site is a great place to start.That historic site is located on the village’s original grounds—but if you want to visit a re-creation of the village and many related elements, you travel next door, to the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation’s Jamestown Settlement museum. At this site, which closely parallels Plimoth Plantation (on which I believe it must have been at least partly modeled), visitors can visit and explore re-creations of the three ships that made the initial (1607) voyage from England, one of the first forts that those colonists built, and a Powhatan village, interacting in each case with historical interpreters who seek to bring that moment to life. The Jamestown Settlement sites are no less scholarly or interpretative than those at Historic Jamestowne, but nonetheless there are differences in presentation, tone, and explicit appeal to audience, distinctions captured by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation’s web address: www.historyisfun.org.There is, of course, another kind of site through which more and more Americans access our histories—a digital kind (duh, since you’re reading this on one). And in that vein, for the 2007 400th anniversary of the English settlement scholars at Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, and the Virginia Center for Digital History collaborated to create Virtual Jamestown, an interesting and impressive digital archive, interpretation, and community that continues to grow and evolve. As that homepage reflects, Virtual Jamestown works to include traditional historiography (such as assembling and interpreting primary archival sources), digital innovation (such as creating an interactive 3D longhouse), and a variety of other conversations (such as this brief but important blog). While a site such as this cannot replicate the experience of visiting the Jamestown historic sites, neither can they offer all that the virtual site does—meaning that the three work best as complementary, collective engagements with this place and past.Next Virginia post tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on these sites or others like them? Other Virginia connections you’d share for the weekend post?
On three historic sites that collectively illustrate our contemporary approach to the past.Historic Jamestowne, the official historic site dedicated to the first permanent English settlement in the New World, is run by the National Park Service, as part of Virginia’s Colonial National Historical Park. As would be expected from an NPS site, Historic Jamestowne is particularly strong in two areas: grounding the area’s histories in the physical and geographic spaces, such as along the Island Loop Drive; and representing the distinct but interconnected cultures that came to occupy the area by the early 17th century, including unflinching engagements with the experiences of the first African slaves to arrive in America. If you want strong, complex, compelling interpretations of the place and its histories, the NPS site is a great place to start.That historic site is located on the village’s original grounds—but if you want to visit a re-creation of the village and many related elements, you travel next door, to the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation’s Jamestown Settlement museum. At this site, which closely parallels Plimoth Plantation (on which I believe it must have been at least partly modeled), visitors can visit and explore re-creations of the three ships that made the initial (1607) voyage from England, one of the first forts that those colonists built, and a Powhatan village, interacting in each case with historical interpreters who seek to bring that moment to life. The Jamestown Settlement sites are no less scholarly or interpretative than those at Historic Jamestowne, but nonetheless there are differences in presentation, tone, and explicit appeal to audience, distinctions captured by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation’s web address: www.historyisfun.org.There is, of course, another kind of site through which more and more Americans access our histories—a digital kind (duh, since you’re reading this on one). And in that vein, for the 2007 400th anniversary of the English settlement scholars at Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, and the Virginia Center for Digital History collaborated to create Virtual Jamestown, an interesting and impressive digital archive, interpretation, and community that continues to grow and evolve. As that homepage reflects, Virtual Jamestown works to include traditional historiography (such as assembling and interpreting primary archival sources), digital innovation (such as creating an interactive 3D longhouse), and a variety of other conversations (such as this brief but important blog). While a site such as this cannot replicate the experience of visiting the Jamestown historic sites, neither can they offer all that the virtual site does—meaning that the three work best as complementary, collective engagements with this place and past.Next Virginia post tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on these sites or others like them? Other Virginia connections you’d share for the weekend post?
August 3, 2013
August 3-4, 2013: American Families: The Railtons
[As we head into a month of AmericanStudier birthdays—my own, my Dad’s, my sister’s—this week’s series has focused on interesting, multi-generational American families. These are some of the many other posts I’ve written about my own impressive American family. Share your family histories and stories below, please!]
I could dedicate this whole blog to what I have learned and continue to learn about America from my own multi-generational family. I’ve restrained myself from doing so, but have touched on those connections in various posts through the years. Here are a handful:1) I wrote about the inspiring American life and identity of my paternal grandfather, Art Railton, in this tribute post.2) I wrote about the model digital scholarly work being done by my father, Steve Railton, in this post.3) I wrote about the crucial educational and American work being done by my mother, Ilene Railton, in this post—and Ilene also contributed my very first guest post.4) I wrote about the very American elements to the wedding of my sister, Annie Railton, in this post.5) And I was inspired by the birthdays of my sons, Aidan and Kyle, to write these two self-reflective posts.I’m sure my family will inspire more posts in the years to come—and of course all my posts, like all of me, are connected to them.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What about you? Family histories or inspirations you’d share?
I could dedicate this whole blog to what I have learned and continue to learn about America from my own multi-generational family. I’ve restrained myself from doing so, but have touched on those connections in various posts through the years. Here are a handful:1) I wrote about the inspiring American life and identity of my paternal grandfather, Art Railton, in this tribute post.2) I wrote about the model digital scholarly work being done by my father, Steve Railton, in this post.3) I wrote about the crucial educational and American work being done by my mother, Ilene Railton, in this post—and Ilene also contributed my very first guest post.4) I wrote about the very American elements to the wedding of my sister, Annie Railton, in this post.5) And I was inspired by the birthdays of my sons, Aidan and Kyle, to write these two self-reflective posts.I’m sure my family will inspire more posts in the years to come—and of course all my posts, like all of me, are connected to them.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What about you? Family histories or inspirations you’d share?
August 2, 2013
August 2, 2013: American Families: The Lowells
[As we head into a month of AmericanStudier birthdays—my own, my Dad’s, my sister’s—a series on interesting, multi-generational American families. Add your family histories and stories, public and personal, please!]
On the interconnections and variations within one family, and the compelling poems that depict them.Across multiple generations, in multiple arenas, the Lowell family fought to end the system of slavery. James Russell Lowell and his wife Maria White worked closely with abolitionists throughout the 1840s, with James editing the Pennsylvania Freeman (an abolitionist newspaper in Philadelphia) and publishing The Biglow Papers (1848), a collection of the most overtly anti-slavery poems published before the Civil War. When that war began, Lowell’s nephew Charles Russell Lowell left his successful job as the head of Maryland ironworks to serve as a captain in the Union Army; before his tragic death at the Battle of Cedar Creek he managed both to distinguish himself on numerous occasions and to marry the sister of fellow officer and ardent abolitionist Robert Gould Shaw.Half a century later, as American society and literature shifted into new 20th century forms, the Lowell family would produce two unique and talented poets. Amy Lowell, whose impressive generation included brothers Percival (a noteworthy astronomer) and Abbott(a Harvard president), published collections of imagist poems throughout the 1910s and 20s that rival those of contemporary proto-modernists Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and H.D. In the next generation, Amy’s distant cousin Robert Lowell would befriend Ford Madox Ford, Randall Jarrell, John Crowe Ransom, and many other young writers, serve prison time as a World War II conscientious objector, teach at a half dozen significant writing programs, and publish many volumes of postwar poetry, including the classics Life Studies (1959) and For the Union Dead (1964).As both of those books’ titles suggest, Robert Lowell’s poems were intensely biographical and historical, and so offer compelling depictions of precisely these family histories. In the sonnet “Charles Russell Lowell: 1835-1864” (included in the collection Notebook 1967-1968 [1969]), for example, Lowell examines both that impressive ancestor and (as he does throughout Union Dead) the meaning of such histories for present-day Massachusetts and America (an America involved in a far more controversial war, one that Lowell would actively and famously protest). In that poem, as in most of his works, Lowell reminds us that being part of an American family is about more than genetics or bloodlines—it’s a set of histories and stories that become part of our own evolving identity and perspective, and of what we pass on, in our writing and lives, to those who follow us.Special family post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Family histories or stories you’d highlight, American or yours?
On the interconnections and variations within one family, and the compelling poems that depict them.Across multiple generations, in multiple arenas, the Lowell family fought to end the system of slavery. James Russell Lowell and his wife Maria White worked closely with abolitionists throughout the 1840s, with James editing the Pennsylvania Freeman (an abolitionist newspaper in Philadelphia) and publishing The Biglow Papers (1848), a collection of the most overtly anti-slavery poems published before the Civil War. When that war began, Lowell’s nephew Charles Russell Lowell left his successful job as the head of Maryland ironworks to serve as a captain in the Union Army; before his tragic death at the Battle of Cedar Creek he managed both to distinguish himself on numerous occasions and to marry the sister of fellow officer and ardent abolitionist Robert Gould Shaw.Half a century later, as American society and literature shifted into new 20th century forms, the Lowell family would produce two unique and talented poets. Amy Lowell, whose impressive generation included brothers Percival (a noteworthy astronomer) and Abbott(a Harvard president), published collections of imagist poems throughout the 1910s and 20s that rival those of contemporary proto-modernists Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and H.D. In the next generation, Amy’s distant cousin Robert Lowell would befriend Ford Madox Ford, Randall Jarrell, John Crowe Ransom, and many other young writers, serve prison time as a World War II conscientious objector, teach at a half dozen significant writing programs, and publish many volumes of postwar poetry, including the classics Life Studies (1959) and For the Union Dead (1964).As both of those books’ titles suggest, Robert Lowell’s poems were intensely biographical and historical, and so offer compelling depictions of precisely these family histories. In the sonnet “Charles Russell Lowell: 1835-1864” (included in the collection Notebook 1967-1968 [1969]), for example, Lowell examines both that impressive ancestor and (as he does throughout Union Dead) the meaning of such histories for present-day Massachusetts and America (an America involved in a far more controversial war, one that Lowell would actively and famously protest). In that poem, as in most of his works, Lowell reminds us that being part of an American family is about more than genetics or bloodlines—it’s a set of histories and stories that become part of our own evolving identity and perspective, and of what we pass on, in our writing and lives, to those who follow us.Special family post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Family histories or stories you’d highlight, American or yours?
August 1, 2013
August 1, 2013: American Families: The Holmes
[As we head into a month of AmericanStudier birthdays—my own, my Dad’s, my sister’s—a series on interesting, multi-generational American families. Add your family histories and stories, public and personal, please!]
On two very different models for impressive American lives—and what they share.Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., was the quintessential 19th century American Renaissance Man. The scion of a prominent New England family that traced its ancestry back to Anne Bradstreet, Holmes was trained in the burgeoning new field of medicine, studying both in Paris and at Harvard Medical School; he went on a long and productive career as a physician, medical school educator, and medical reformer. Yet throughout those same decades Holmes was establishing a well-deserved reputation as one of America’s foremost poets and essayists, as well as a preeminent supporter of the arts in a young nation that still needed such vocal advocacy. As a leading figure in two such seemingly separate and even opposed fields, Holmes Sr. proved that neither identity nor inspiration can be pigeon-holed.Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in contrast, devoted nearly his entire adult life to a single profession, the law. After a defining early experience as a Union officer during the Civil War, Holmes returned to Massachusetts, finished his Harvard education and passed the bar, and settled into that lifelong legal career, including extended stints as a lawyer, an editor and author, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and, finally and most famously, three decades on the U.S. Supreme Court. And Holmes’ legal career was defined not simply by longevity, but by influence: his theories of legal realismand of the law as an experiential, evolving organism profoundly impacted American society and culture. As one of America’s most prominent legal minds, Holmes Jr. proved that dedicating a life to one profession can produce an unparalleled legacy both within and beyond that sphere.Despite these very different trajectories, however, I would argue that father and son share more than just a name, and would emphasize one particularly significant shared trait. Throughout their lives, each man turned again and again to writing—not only as a literary pursuit (as was the case with Sr.’s poetry), but as a crucial vehicle through which to advance their professional goals and ideas. Holmes Jr.’s Collected Works, published in the 1990s by the University of Chicago Press, span three volumes and nearly 1500 pages; Holmes Sr. published, in addition to his many volumes of poetry, five collections of essays, three novels, three biographies, and countless journalistic pieces and medical studies. Which proves that however we achieve American greatness, writing is likely to be found at the core of it.Next family tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Family histories or stories you’d highlight, American or yours?
On two very different models for impressive American lives—and what they share.Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., was the quintessential 19th century American Renaissance Man. The scion of a prominent New England family that traced its ancestry back to Anne Bradstreet, Holmes was trained in the burgeoning new field of medicine, studying both in Paris and at Harvard Medical School; he went on a long and productive career as a physician, medical school educator, and medical reformer. Yet throughout those same decades Holmes was establishing a well-deserved reputation as one of America’s foremost poets and essayists, as well as a preeminent supporter of the arts in a young nation that still needed such vocal advocacy. As a leading figure in two such seemingly separate and even opposed fields, Holmes Sr. proved that neither identity nor inspiration can be pigeon-holed.Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in contrast, devoted nearly his entire adult life to a single profession, the law. After a defining early experience as a Union officer during the Civil War, Holmes returned to Massachusetts, finished his Harvard education and passed the bar, and settled into that lifelong legal career, including extended stints as a lawyer, an editor and author, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and, finally and most famously, three decades on the U.S. Supreme Court. And Holmes’ legal career was defined not simply by longevity, but by influence: his theories of legal realismand of the law as an experiential, evolving organism profoundly impacted American society and culture. As one of America’s most prominent legal minds, Holmes Jr. proved that dedicating a life to one profession can produce an unparalleled legacy both within and beyond that sphere.Despite these very different trajectories, however, I would argue that father and son share more than just a name, and would emphasize one particularly significant shared trait. Throughout their lives, each man turned again and again to writing—not only as a literary pursuit (as was the case with Sr.’s poetry), but as a crucial vehicle through which to advance their professional goals and ideas. Holmes Jr.’s Collected Works, published in the 1990s by the University of Chicago Press, span three volumes and nearly 1500 pages; Holmes Sr. published, in addition to his many volumes of poetry, five collections of essays, three novels, three biographies, and countless journalistic pieces and medical studies. Which proves that however we achieve American greatness, writing is likely to be found at the core of it.Next family tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Family histories or stories you’d highlight, American or yours?
July 31, 2013
July 31, 2013: July 2013 Recap
[A recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]
July 1: Revolutionary Realities: The French: A series on re-viewing the Revolution starts with how much we need to say merci to our friends across the Pond.July 2: Revolutionary Realities: Benedict Arnold: The series continues with how we remember our most notorious traitor, and how we should.July 3: Revolutionary Realities: Ethan Allen: The inspiring and significantly less inspiring sides to the Green Mountain Boys, as the series rolls on.July 4: Revolutionary Realities: The Declaration and Race: A July 4th special on race and the nation’s founding document.July 5: Revolutionary Realities: The Adams Letters: The series concludes with how much we can learn from John and Abigail Adams’ letters.July 6-7: A Crowd-sourced Revolution: More Revolutionary thoughts and ideas from fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours!July 8: Southwest Stories: Mary Hunter Austin: A series on the Southwestern U.S. begins with the many sides to one of the region’s foremost chroniclers.July 9: Southwest Stories: Taos: The series continues with three compelling stories connected to one small New Mexico town.July 10: Southwest Stories: Los Alamos: AmericanStudying the site of our most famous and controversial research project, as the series rolls on.July 11: Southwest Stories: Rudolfo Anaya: The Southwestern writer whose debut novel redirected American literature—and was just the beginning.July 12: Southwest Stories: Southwestern Mysteries: The week’s series concludes with a post on some compelling regional mysteries, past and present.July 13-14: Southwest Stories: Folk Heroes: But wait! The series is extended with this special post on Southwestern folk heroes, cross-posted from my contribution to William Kerrigan’s great blog.July 15: AmericanStudies Daytrips: Battleship Cove: A series on New England daytrips commences with the limitations and possibilities of Fall River’s military memorial.July 16: AmericanStudies Daytrips: Plimoth Plantation: The series continues with the multiple complex and impressive sides to this living history site.July 17: AmericanStudies Daytrips: Fort Warren: How this Harbor Island site brings light and darkness to the American past, as the series rolls on.July 18: AmericanStudies Daytrips: Concord: Three reasons to visit one of America’s most historic and defining spots.July 19: AmericanStudies Daytrips: Native American Museums: The series concludes with three distinct but complementary New England museums.July 20-21: William Kerrigan’s Guest Post: Scholar and fellow AmericanStudies blogger William Kerrigan on Searching for Johnny Appleseed in Massachusetts.July 22: AmericanStudying Ambiguous Hits: “American Pie”: A series on how AmericanStudies can help us analyze ambiguous pop classics commences with Don McLean’s ballad.July 23: AmericanStudying Ambiguous Hits: “Buddy Holly”: The series continues with the ambiguous nostalgia at the heart of Weezer’s first big hit.July 24: AmericanStudying Ambiguous Hits: “Cleaning Out My Closet”: Personas, art, and the confessional in Sylvia Plath and Eminem, as the series rolls on.July 25: AmericanStudying Ambiguous Hits: “Like a Prayer”: The long-term historical contexts for Madonna’s controversial classic, and how we should really remember it.July 26: AmericanStudying Ambiguous Hits: “State Trooper”: The series concludes with two ways to analyze one of Springsteen’s most ambiguous tracks.July 27-28: Crowd-sourced Hits: Fellow AmericanStudiers add their takes on the week’s songs and other ambiguous classics—share yours, please!July 29: American Families: The Mathers: A series on multi-generational American families kicks off with three generations of one of New England’s founding families.July 30: American Families: The Adams: The series continues with all that Henry Adams had to live up to, and why I believe he did.The American Families series resumes tomorrow,BenPS. Any topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know (brailton@fitchburgstate.edu)!
July 1: Revolutionary Realities: The French: A series on re-viewing the Revolution starts with how much we need to say merci to our friends across the Pond.July 2: Revolutionary Realities: Benedict Arnold: The series continues with how we remember our most notorious traitor, and how we should.July 3: Revolutionary Realities: Ethan Allen: The inspiring and significantly less inspiring sides to the Green Mountain Boys, as the series rolls on.July 4: Revolutionary Realities: The Declaration and Race: A July 4th special on race and the nation’s founding document.July 5: Revolutionary Realities: The Adams Letters: The series concludes with how much we can learn from John and Abigail Adams’ letters.July 6-7: A Crowd-sourced Revolution: More Revolutionary thoughts and ideas from fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours!July 8: Southwest Stories: Mary Hunter Austin: A series on the Southwestern U.S. begins with the many sides to one of the region’s foremost chroniclers.July 9: Southwest Stories: Taos: The series continues with three compelling stories connected to one small New Mexico town.July 10: Southwest Stories: Los Alamos: AmericanStudying the site of our most famous and controversial research project, as the series rolls on.July 11: Southwest Stories: Rudolfo Anaya: The Southwestern writer whose debut novel redirected American literature—and was just the beginning.July 12: Southwest Stories: Southwestern Mysteries: The week’s series concludes with a post on some compelling regional mysteries, past and present.July 13-14: Southwest Stories: Folk Heroes: But wait! The series is extended with this special post on Southwestern folk heroes, cross-posted from my contribution to William Kerrigan’s great blog.July 15: AmericanStudies Daytrips: Battleship Cove: A series on New England daytrips commences with the limitations and possibilities of Fall River’s military memorial.July 16: AmericanStudies Daytrips: Plimoth Plantation: The series continues with the multiple complex and impressive sides to this living history site.July 17: AmericanStudies Daytrips: Fort Warren: How this Harbor Island site brings light and darkness to the American past, as the series rolls on.July 18: AmericanStudies Daytrips: Concord: Three reasons to visit one of America’s most historic and defining spots.July 19: AmericanStudies Daytrips: Native American Museums: The series concludes with three distinct but complementary New England museums.July 20-21: William Kerrigan’s Guest Post: Scholar and fellow AmericanStudies blogger William Kerrigan on Searching for Johnny Appleseed in Massachusetts.July 22: AmericanStudying Ambiguous Hits: “American Pie”: A series on how AmericanStudies can help us analyze ambiguous pop classics commences with Don McLean’s ballad.July 23: AmericanStudying Ambiguous Hits: “Buddy Holly”: The series continues with the ambiguous nostalgia at the heart of Weezer’s first big hit.July 24: AmericanStudying Ambiguous Hits: “Cleaning Out My Closet”: Personas, art, and the confessional in Sylvia Plath and Eminem, as the series rolls on.July 25: AmericanStudying Ambiguous Hits: “Like a Prayer”: The long-term historical contexts for Madonna’s controversial classic, and how we should really remember it.July 26: AmericanStudying Ambiguous Hits: “State Trooper”: The series concludes with two ways to analyze one of Springsteen’s most ambiguous tracks.July 27-28: Crowd-sourced Hits: Fellow AmericanStudiers add their takes on the week’s songs and other ambiguous classics—share yours, please!July 29: American Families: The Mathers: A series on multi-generational American families kicks off with three generations of one of New England’s founding families.July 30: American Families: The Adams: The series continues with all that Henry Adams had to live up to, and why I believe he did.The American Families series resumes tomorrow,BenPS. Any topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know (brailton@fitchburgstate.edu)!
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