Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 379

July 6-7, 2013: A Crowd-sourced Revolution

[To celebrate the Fourth, this week’s series has focused on some of the realities behind our Revolutionary myths. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the responses and ideas of fellow AmericanStudiers—add your Revolutionary takes, please!]
Paul Beaudoin shares his “revolutionary memory: the story of Arthur Fiedler introducing the 1812 Overture as a part of the Boston Pops 4th of July celebrations on the Esplanade.”Donna Moody follows up the Ethan Allen post, writing, “The short version has to do with the illegal admission of 'Vermont' as the 14th state in 1791. The Non-Intercourse Act of 1790 specifically outlines takings of Indian lands. The Allens figured prominently in the formation of this homeland into a state. Ethan Allen was first and foremost a land speculator. Vermont came into the union as a no-man's land--Congress was told that there were no Indians here so no treaties had to be made and no compensation for land had to be given. It is all very ironic as Abenaki warriors fought on the side of the colonists in the Rev. War. I guess at war's end they all marched off to Canada. And of course, we all know that ‘the weight of history’ removed any Abenaki land claims.”Paolo Petrocchi hopes that we better remember “the representation (or lack of) women in the American Revolution.”I connected on Twitter this week with Todd Andrlik, author of Reporting the Revolutionary War (2012) and co-founded of All Things Liberty.Finally, this review essay on scholarly and popular histories of the Revolution is well worth checking out.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other Revolutionary histories or stories you’d highlight?

July 5, 2013: Revolutionary Realities: The Adams Letters

[To celebrate the Fourth, a series on some of the realities behind our Revolutionary myths. Add your takes and Revolutionary ideas and interests for a weekend post that’s sure to set off fireworks!]
On the many interesting takeaways from John and Abigail Adams’ correspondence.Writing to his wife Abigail on July 3rd, 1776 (she was back at home in Braintree managing the family farm and raising their children), the day after the Continental Congress had drafted the Declaration of Independence, John Adams argued that “the Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epoch, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”On one level, the letter reveals just how much myth-making is inherent in any national celebration—we celebrate independence on July 4th because the Declaration was signed, dated, and sent out to the American public for the first time on that day; but Adams’ emphasis makes clear that the date was and is an arbitrary one, and of course that Revolutionary acts, like all historical moments, develop over time. On another level, however, Adams’ letter reveals quite impressively how aware the Congress was of the significance of what was happening: not only in his quite thorough prediction of the celebrations that would come to commemorate the event; but also in his recognition of all that would follow the Declaration. “You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not,” he wrote. “I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means.”Reading the Adams’ correspondence offers even more Revolutionary realities than those. For one thing, it deeply humanizes the second President (and by extension all the framers); I defy anyone to read John’s heartfelt July 20th, 1776 letter of concern for both his ailing family and his own separation from them and not feel differently about the man and moment. For another, the letters provide a visceral and compelling argument for the Revolutionary era’s hugely impressive community of American women—Abigail was not as publicly minded as peers such as Judith Sargent Murray and Annis Boudinot Stockton, but she makes a thoroughly convincing case for what Murray called the equality of the sexes: in her overt arguments for such equality, but just as much in her intelligence, her eloquence, and her strength in supporting both the family and its business and her husband and the nation’s. Many of my realities this week have complicated our idealizing myths, but the Adams letters remind us that some realities were just as ideal.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So what would you add? Responses to the week’s posts? Other Revolutionary histories or stories you’d highlight?

July 4, 2013: Revolutionary Realities: The Declaration and Race

[To celebrate the Fourth, a series on some of the realities behind our Revolutionary myths. Add your takes and Revolutionary ideas and interests for a weekend post that’s sure to set off fireworks!]
On the complex interconnections between our founding documents and slavery.To their credit, secondary school history textbooks do, at least in my rapidly fading memories of them, often include in the midst of their celebrations of the Constitution some mention of the miserably cold 3/5ths compromise, the placating of the Southern states by means of an explicit definition of a slave as 3/5ths of a person when it came to determining population and so representation in the new Congress (and thus, ironically but very definitely, our founding legal document’s equally clear delineation of the absence of actual personhood, of any sense of belonging to “We the people,” in this key American community and population). But I think it would be even more beneficial for our national narratives of the Founders if we paid a bit more attention to the much more subtle way in which slavery was elided from the Declaration of Independence—Jefferson in his initial draft included a full paragraph on the topic, making it one of the list of wrongs that the King had foisted upon the colonies (“he has waged cruel war against human nature itself,” the passage began); but the paragraph was entirely excised by the Convention as a whole before the Declaration was published and read throughout the colonies. The irony of slavery existing alongside the self-evident truth that all men are created equal was, it would seem, a bit too biting to the Signers to bear any overt examination.Historians have rightly made a great deal of this founding and abiding national irony, with Edmund Morgan’s American Slavery, American Freedom representing a particularly complex and rich engagement with the theme. But much less well-known, and significantly more inspiring, is the use to which a large number of contemporary African Americans put the founding documents and their rhetoric. Within a year of the 1776 establishment of state legislatures, one of their main points of business was responding to (or ignoring, although even that is a response of course) the numerous petitions by individual and groups of slaves, using the words and ideals of the Declaration and other Revolutionary era narratives in direct support of their pleas for freedom specifically and the abolition of slavery more generally. One such slave, Quock Walker, brought his case all the way to the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and the 1781 ruling in his favor pretty much ended slavery in Massachusetts (it’s easy to forget that just 80 years before the Civil War began slavery was still a pretty significant part of life in Massachusetts and throughout New England).The slaves and activists who wrote a 1777 such petition made the link between founding document and anti-slavery argument crystal clear: “Your petitioners … cannot but express their astonishment,” they wrote, “that it has never been considered that every principle from which America has acted in the course of their unhappy difficulties with Great Britain pleads stronger than a thousand arguments in favor of your petitioners.” Seventy years later, the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls would produce a Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions that brilliantly adopted the Declaration’s language to argue for gender equality; that convention and text are rightly famous, but they, like Jefferson and his peers, comprised a highly educated and established community of reformers, writers, and activists, making that much more clearly impressive the similar efforts of these enslaved Americans three-quarters of a century earlier.Similarly, much has been written, and justly so, about the striking accomplishments that are the Declaration and the Constitution, about their place not only in our national narratives but in reshaping world history. But it is petitions like these that are to my mind truly our founding documents, that truly exemplify the spirit and community from which America arose. We would do well to remember and celebrate them, and especially their authors, on the 4th of July. Next Revolutionary reality tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Revolutionary histories or stories you’d highlight?

July 3, 2013: Revolutionary Realities: Ethan Allen

[To celebrate the Fourth, a series on some of the realities behind our Revolutionary myths. Add your takes and Revolutionary ideas and interests for a weekend post that’s sure to set off fireworks!]
On the less than noble side to one of the Revolution’s folk heroes.This is a tough post for me to write: Ethan Allenand the Green Mountain Boys might not have the national reputation of the Concord Minutemen, but in their native Vermont and throughout New England they’re definitely folk heroes; and I know that my Mom grew up (just outside of Boston) as a big fan. And there’s no question that their May 1775 surprise capture of Fort Ticonderoga represented one of the Revolution’s most significant victories, not only tactically but also symbolically (only a month after Lexington and Concord, with the very status of the Revolution still up in the air, the victory made clear that America’s war effort was to be a serious and ongoing one).I’m not here to challenge those histories (as far as I know Ticonderoga was all that and more)—but the Green Mountain Boys didn’t come into existence in 1775, and the details of their founding and virtually all of their other actions are far less admirable. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Boys were a local goon squad, organized by Allen and compatriots in 1770 to intimidate New York landowners into leaving the area (then part of New Hampshire) and ceding the so-called “Wentworth” land grantsto locals. As far as I can tell the Boys didn’t generally take violent action, preferring threats and intimidation, but at least one violent event (the 1775 “Westminster massacre,” in which apparently only one or two landowners died but many more were affected) resulted from these conflicts. Moreover, the Boys didn’t graduate from these local acts to Revolutionary ones so much as temporarily pause for the latter—as early as 1778 Allen and company were back in Vermont and focused once again on the land grant battles (as well as the possibility of becoming a separate British province!).So what would it mean if we remembered these different sides to Allen? Those who critique “revisionist history” would argue that I’m seeking to undermine his heroism, to tear down an American icon, and so on. Part of my response would be that both elements must be included in any accurate history of the man, his military importance to the Revolution as well as his more shady local endeavors. But another and more significant part would be that Allen offers a far more historically meaningful portrait of the Revolutionary era, a moment in which hugely defining and world-altering events existed side by side with the most petty and minor (and at times, indeed, ugly and divisive) conflicts. If anything, an awareness of that history makes the defining events that much more impressive still—in 1775, the 18th century equivalent of the Sons of Anarchy biker gang played an instrumental role in a victory without which there might not be a United States. Next Revolutionary reality tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Revolutionary histories or stories you’d highlight?

July 2, 2013: Revolutionary Realities: Benedict Arnold

[To celebrate the Fourth, a series on some of the realities behind our Revolutionary myths. This one’s a repeat of a recent but relevant post. Add your takes and Revolutionary ideas and interests for a weekend post that’s sure to set off fireworks!]

On the benefits and the limitations to remembering our most infamous traitor the way we do.I’m not going to argue that we shouldn’t remember Benedict Arnold as one of our first, and one of our most enduring, national traitors, because, well, he was. Compared to the contested and still controversial treason accusations leveled at his contemporary Aaron Burr, Arnold’s traitorous acts were far more overt and undisputed—when Major Andre was caught and Arnold’s plan to hand over the fort at West Point to British forces discovered, Arnold immediately went over to the British side and helped lead their war effort for the war’s remaining two years; after the Revolution he settled in England and lived out his remaining two decades of life in that adopted homeland.So Arnold was a traitor to the Revolutionary army and cause, and remembering him as such is certainly accurate to the specific histories and events. Doing so is also beneficial on a broader level, as it forces us to recognize the Founding Fathers and their iconic Revolutionary peers as no less human and flawed than any other leaders or people. Arnold was one of the Revolution’s first war heroes, playing a decisive role in the early victory at Saratoga and other conflicts; yet just two short years later, politics and preferences within the Continental Army, coupled with financial difficulties (perhaps due to lending money to the Continental Army, which would be a textbook definition of irony), led Arnold to cast his lot with the same forces he had helped defeat at Saratoga.  Yet there’s at least one significant downside to remembering Arnold as a traitor, or more exactly to the collective blind spot that such memories reveal. After all, the most simple yet most commonly ignored fact of the Revolution is this: it represented an act of treason against the colonists’ Royal government, and each and every American involved in it was thus a traitor. (There was a reason why Ben Franklin worried, at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, about everyone hanging separately if they did not hang together.) Awareness of that fact might not change our collective perspective on the Revolution and its leaders—but might it not at least shift our understanding of the loyalists, of those who sided (lawfully) with England during the war? As a soldier who sold out his comrades, Arnold was of course something more than just a loyalist—but the point here is that treason, during the Revolution, was a loaded and complex concept however we look at it.Next Revolutionary reality tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Revolutionary histories or stories you’d highlight?

July 1, 2013: Revolutionary Realities: The French

[To celebrate the Fourth, a series on some of the realities behind our Revolutionary myths. Add your takes and Revolutionary ideas and interests for a weekend post that’s sure to set off fireworks!]
On all that our Revolution and existence owe to the French.Even before the recent controversy surrounding the Iraq War and the resulting boycotts (including perhaps the silliest action ever taken by Congress, the renaming of French fries as Freedom fries in the House of Representatives’ cafeteria), there was a pretty sizeable cottage industry in American politics and culture devoted to belittling and even attacking the French. Perhaps the most common critiques stemmed from World War II, and specifically the idea that the French had quickly folded in the face of and then formed a puppet government in support of Hitler; although the more pro-American narratives tended to emphasize instead that the US military had swept in to save the French at the end of that war (and in some narratives, by extension but with significantly less accuracy, in World War I as well). But in a number of other cultural arenas, including language and film, there have likewise long existed narratives of French elitism and snobbery, as illustrated (if with more satirical self-awareness than most such narratives) by a line in Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad (1879): “In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.”As with any negative perspectives on another culture and community, these attitudes have revealed far more about America than they ever could about France. But in this particular case, they have also depended on a pretty thorough elision of two distinct but equally crucial ways in which America’s founding identity and Revolutionary existence depended on Frenchmen. While the founding ideas and core elements captured in the Constitution have been rightly linked to a number of significant political and social theorists and thinkers, none has more of a presence in our nation’s defining document than Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, and especially his book The Spirit of the Laws (1748). The core of that book represents an argument for why the separation of powers into legislative, executive, and judicial bodies, all bound by the rule of law, could best keep a government from turning into despotism; Montesquieu (as he is usually known) was the first and most prominent thinker to develop that concept, and if any single feature best defines America’s political system as articulated in the Constitution, it is its separation into three equal, balanced, law-bound branches. Moreover, many of the broader ideas on which Montesquieu touched in Spirit, including a sense of the law as profoundly open to reform and improvement, a belief that it is generally a mistake to base civil laws on religious principles, and an emphasis on the need for religious tolerance both in the state and between different religions in a society, likewise became central to both the Bill of Rights and the general concept of the Constitution as open to and in fact defined by the promise of continuing amendment.There likely wouldn’t have ever been a Constitution, though, if it weren’t for another Frenchman, Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834). Lafayette was a twenty-eight year old military officer in the fall of 1775 when conversations were taking place all over Paris about the opening salvos of the American Revolution and what role France should play in it; influenced by one voice in particular, Abbé Guillaume Raynal, and his support for the rights of man and America’s cause, as well as by what he later called his own immediate sympathies (“when I first learned of that quarrel, my heart was enlisted”), Lafayette spent the next two years working with an American agent (Silas Deane) and various powerful French relatives to find a way to join the American military. He was successful, and between 1777 and 1781 fought with and led American troops in many of the Revolution’s most significant battles, including Brandywine (where he was wounded but still organized an orderly retreat that kept the army from total disaster), Monmouth (one of the first genuine American victories, and one where Lafayette’s strategic awareness and quick actions alerted Washington to the opportunity for victory), and Yorktown (where the arrival of the French fleet, due almost entirely to Lafayette, essentially sealed Cornwallis’s surrender and the end of the war). And his contributions did not end there—in the years after the war Lafayette remained very close with Washington and Jefferson (among other founding figures), toured most of the new United States, and spoke and worked on behalf of a strong federal union, as well as the emancipation of slaves and peace treaties with Native American tribes. The honorary citizenships that he was granted by many states during these years could not be more appropriate; despite his subsequent return to France Lafayette was, in many ways, one of the first and certainly one of the most impressive Revolutionary Americans.Part of the reason for our history of anti-French sentiments is, it seems to me, a desire to define the United States through negation, in contrast to other nations; Mitt Romney famously remarked during the 2008 presidential campaign that “Barack Obama looks to Europe for a lot of his inspiration; John McCain is going to make sure that America stays America.” But as with virtually every aspect of American history and culture and identity, the truth about our founding is that it was strongly influenced by, and really created out of, many other cultures and communities, with none more influential and foundational than the French. Je suis un American! Next Revolutionary reality tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Revolutionary histories or stories you’d highlight?

June 29-30, 2013: June 2013 Recap

[A recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]
June 3: Summer Blockbusters: Star Wars: A series on AmericanStudying summer blockbusters starts with a cross-cultural force.June 4: Summer Blockbusters: Jaws: The series continues with the layers of American communities at the heart of one of the first summer blockbusters.June 5: Summer Blockbusters: ID4: The blockbuster that embodies the worst, and perhaps also the best, of America, as the series rolls on.June 6: Summer Blockbusters: Pearl Harbor: The uses and abuses of history in Michael Bay’s most serious blockbuster.June 7: Summer Blockbusters: The Patriot: The series concludes with a look at the monstrous flaw in Mel Gibson’s patriotic blockbuster.June 8-9: A Crowd-sourced Blockbuster: The responses and nominations of fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours, please!June 10: AmericanStudier Blogroll: Teaching Blogs: A series of blog recommendations begins with three great pedagogical blogs.June 11: AmericanStudier Blogroll: Lit and Culture Blogs: The series continues with three great blogs that examine American literature and popular culture.June 12: AmericanStudier Blogroll: History Blogs: Three great blogs dedicated to the layers and complexities of American history, as the series rolls on.June 13: AmericanStudier Blogroll: American Identity Blogs: Three great blogs that analyze individual, collective, and national identity in America.June 14: AmericanStudier Blogroll: Blogger, Examine Thyself: The series concludes with a few thoughts on my own blog and blogging at the 2.5 year mark.June 15-16: Crowd-sourced Blogroll: Blog recommendations from fellow AmericanStudiers—add your favorites (or your own blog), please!June 17: American Swims: Gatsby’s Pool: A summertime series begins with an ambiguous symbol from one of our great literary works.June 18: American Swims: Weissmuller and Phelps: The series continues with the distinct and telling arcs of two famous American swimmers.June 19: American Swims: Edna and the Ocean: How we read two complex swimming scenes and what that reveals about us, as the series paddles on.June 20: American Swims: Race at the Pool: One of the most common and insidious sites of American segregation and discrimination.June 21: American Swims: Cheever’s Swimmer: The series concludes with a pitch-perfect summertime story from one of our literary greats.June 22-23: Crowd-sourced Summer: Responses, American swims, and other summertime thoughts from fellow AmericanStudiers—share some of your own!June 24: Book Release Reflections, Part One: A series in honor of my newly released third book begins with a post on a crucial challenge of public scholarship.June 25: Book Release Reflections, Part Two: The series continues with three spaces where my book’s ideas incubated.June 26: Book Release Reflections, Part Three: The things I knew would be in my book and the things I discovered along the way, as the series rolls on.June 27: Book Release Reflections, Part Four: On a new way I’m trying to get my book, ideas, and voice into our conversations.June 28: Book Release Reflections, Part Five: The series concludes with three life lessons I learned along the way.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see addressed in this space? Ideas for guest posts?

June 28, 2013: Book Release Reflections, Part Five

[My newest book, The Chinese Exclusion Act: What It Can Teach Us About America , was released last Friday (check out that low low Kindle price!). So for this week’s series, I’ll be thinking about some different aspects of the book’s process, goals, and meanings. Would love to hear your thoughts—and if you’re interested in the book but can’t buy it, email me and I’ll send you a copy!]
On three life lessons I’ve learned along the way.1)      Be Open: When my editor at Palgrave wrote to ask me if I had any proposals that might fit the new Pivot series, my instinct was to say no; I was already working on a book that’s too long for the series, and, as always, had too many other balls in the air as well. But luckily I took a step back and realized how fortunate I was to be asked, and thought about ideas that might work for Pivot books. The rest is, well, present.2)      Be Realistic: My original hope was to finish the manuscript in time for submission for the first run of Pivot books. But as that deadline approached, I just wasn’t happy with the draft I had. I suppose I could have tried to produce some sort of finished version and send it along, but a) it almost certainly would have been rejected; and b) even if it had slipped through, I wouldn’t be happy with it now. So I missed that deadline, made another one, and here we are.3)      Be Friendly: When I got my readers’ reports back, one of them was pretty challenging, and I genuinely had no idea how to respond. Fortunately, my best friend Steve was visiting that weekend, and on a long car trip back from a festival with the boys, I talked to him about the book, the reader’s report, my uncertainties, etc. And in so doing, I quite literally came up with the resolution, the way to frame my Intro and project for multiple audiences that I discussed in the History Society post. Thanks, Steve!Lifelong learning, y’know? June Recap this weekend,BenPS. What lessons have you learned recently?

June 27, 2013: Book Release Reflections, Part Four

[My newest book, The Chinese Exclusion Act: What It Can Teach Us About America , was released on Friday (check out that low low Kindle price!). So for this week’s series, I’ll be thinking about some different aspects of the book’s process, goals, and meanings. Would love to hear your thoughts—and if you’re interested in the book but can’t buy it, email me and I’ll send you a copy!]
On my new plan for getting the word out about the book’s ideas.As I’ve discussed a good bit in this space, one of the most important yet at times more frustratingly hard-to-control aspects of public scholarship is the need to connect to audience. And not just an academic audience, of course—that isn’t a given either, and I’m always hugely grateful for any academic response and feedback on my work; but at the very least an academic book or article feels like an overt way to add our voices to those conversations. But if I’m writing public scholarship, I’m doing so because I feel that my focal points are likewise and perhaps most fundamentally of interest and value to audiences beyond academia—yet it can feel at best totally random, and at worst impossible, for our work to find its way to such broader audiences.There are various ways to push back on that feeling and try to connect to audiences, and I’ve engaged in many for a good while now: blogging (duh), writing op-eds (so far without publication success, but I’m not giving up!), working with organizations both academic (NEASA) and public (the American Writers Museum). But with this current book, I’ve decided to focus on another and even more direct method of connecting my voice and ideas to audiences, and to do so far more aggressively than I would instinctively prefer: I’ve been contacting numerous institutions and organizations and asking if it would be possible for me to give a talk/presentation on aspects of the book. I’ve already got about a dozen such talks preliminarily lined up for the upcoming year, and have a lot more possibilities still in the mix.None of the talks are quite finalized enough for me to mention them specifically here (but watch this space for info down the road!), so I’ll just briefly highlight two different categories and the different audiences to which I hope to connect through them. Some talks will be at universities, both as guest lectures in individual courses and as talks for groups of faculty and students; my primary goal for them will be to give students a better understanding of our collective past, and a secondary goal will be to share my take on public scholarship for fellow AmericanStudiers. And some will be at libraries, historical societies, museums, and other public institutions; my goal for them is more overtly parallel to my goal for the book itself, to share the lessons of these histories and stories with interested public American audiences. I’m excited to see what responses I get, and will be sure to keep you posted!Final reflection tomorrow,BenPS. To continue the aggressiveness, do you have suggestions for places (specific or general) where I could share these ideas? I’d love to hear ‘em!

June 26, 2013: Book Release Reflections, Part Three

[My newest book, The Chinese Exclusion Act: What It Can Teach Us About America , was released on Friday (check out that low low Kindle price!). So for this week’s series, I’ll be thinking about some different aspects of the book’s process, goals, and meanings. Would love to hear your thoughts—and if you’re interested in the book but can’t buy it, email me and I’ll send you a copy!]
On what I knew my book would include—and what I didn’t.At the time of my dissertation/first book, I was deeply invested in strategies of inductive argumentation. I believed so strongly that a work’s main ideas and arguments should develop out of the research and reading and writing process that I didn’t even have a central argument yet when I submitted the final copies of my dissertation ahead of my defense—it was only in conversations before and at that defense that I finally pulled together that thesis! There were definite disadvantages to that approach (when I sent out job cover letters, for example, I wasn’t yet able to articulate my main argument, which I’m sure didn’t help my chances), but also many advantages, including this one: it allowed me to discover numerous texts and focal points as I worked, many of which became crucial to the project.For my secondand (current) third books, however, I have shifted gears dramatically: starting each project with pretty clear main ideas and arguments. Partly that’s due to an even more dramatic life change: since parenting is now my #1 priority, I have far less time at the moment to wander the stacks of Harvard’s Widener Library, discovering focal texts as I go. And partly it’s due to my shift toward public scholarship, which (I believe) requires clearer and more defined main arguments in order to connect to and make its case for broad audiences.  With this current book, for example, I don’t believe it would be sufficient to argue, “We need to remember the Chinese Exclusion Act, and in this project I’ll explore those memories and see what they produce”; I had from the outset a much more defined sense of what lessons I wanted to highlight, and they remain the focal points of my book’s three chapters.Yet such clear and defined main ideas shouldn’t preclude unexpected discoveries, of course, and each of my chapters likewise includes significant and (I hope) interesting such finds. To highlight only three: I knew next to nothing of New York’s Castle Garden Immigration Station until I began researching the process of arrival for 19thcentury immigrants; I first learned of Louisiana’s 18thcentury Filipino community while researching foundational American diversity; and I had never heard of one of America’s most inspiring individuals, Chang Hon Yen, until I looked into the individual lives of Chinese Educational Mission students. Such discoveries are far from secondary to projects like this one—if the main arguments can highlight the contemporary and ongoing stakes of doing public scholarly work, the forgotten moments and communities and figures can provide the compelling histories and stories that help us all connect to our national past.Next reflections tomorrow,BenPS. What have you discovered that you’d want to share? Other thoughts on these questions?