Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 38

September 9, 2024: Classic TV Studying: Amos ‘n’ Andy

[This weekmarks the anniversaries of the premieres of two classic TV shows: the 50th anniversary of LittleHouse on the Prairie and the 70thof Lassie. So I’ll AmericanStudy those and otherclassic TV shows and contexts, leading up to a special post on what we canlearn from a couple current hits I finally got around to checking out thissummer!]

On astrikingly different way the early sitcom could have gone, and why thedifference matters.

By thetime the television adaptation of Amos ‘n’ Andy premieredon CBS in June 1951, it had been a popular radio program for nearly a quarter-century.Freeman Gosden andCharles Correll, the two white Vaudeville actors and radio hosts who hadmet in North Carolina in 1920, transitioned to work at Chicago’s WQJ radio stationin 1925, and then createdAmos ‘n’ Andy and its main characters in the late 1920s andbeen central to the program ever since, had been working since the mid-1940s onwhether and how to transition the show to the emerging medium of TV. Apparentlytheir working goal throughout those early years, and indeed per aDecember 1950 Pittsburgh Press article their plan when the show wasin its initial production phase, was for the two of them to continue providingthe voices of the characters (as they had throughout its radio run, and notjust Amos and Andy; they provided as many as 170 different character voices),and for Black actors to be seen on screen but only to lip sync the parts.

Supposedly(per Melvin Patrick Ely’s excellent book The Adventures of Amos ‘n’Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon [2001]) Gosdenand Correll recognized that they would not work as well as television actors(not least because their one attempt to bring the show to the big screen, the 1930 film Check andDouble Check, had been an unmitigated flop that Gosden would later call“just about the worst movie ever”) but wanted to be paid more than the TV show’sBlack performers, and since speaking lines make a part more substantive andthus higher-paying they devised this plan. But even without that overtly racistmotivation, the lip syncing plan was a truly awful idea. At the very least, itwould have made the show’s Black performers into quite literally minstrelshow characters, stand-ins for the racist stereotypes created by whiteartists. It’s even possible to see Black actors in this plan as an inverted butjust as gross form of the longstanding cultural tradition, in but also wellbeyond such minstrel shows, of Blackfaceperformance.

Fortunately,Gosden and Correll’s plan did not come to pass, and when the show premiered inJune 1951 it not only featured exclusively Black actors—including as Amos, as Andy, andthe well-known Vaudeville comedian as their shady friendKingfish—but they also spoke all the lines. The show only ran for two seasons(totaling 52 episodes), and was unquestionably controversial throughout thattime, as illustrated by the NAACP’s1951 publication “Why the Amos ‘n Andy TV Show Should Be Taken Offthe Air.” But it also seems to have represented a positive influence for manyAfrican American viewers and communities, at least according to historian HenryLouis Gates Jr. who wrote in his 2012 AmericanHeritage essay “Growing Up Colored”that “everybody loved Amos ‘n’ Andy—I don’t care what people say today.What was special to us was that their world was all colored, just like ours.” Thatwould have technically still been true if the Black actors had only lip syncedtheir lines, I suppose, but hearing their voices was of course part and parcelof their presence, and so I’m very glad that this early TV show went that way.

Next TVStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other classic TV you’d analyze?

September 6, 2024: Fall Semester Previews: Aidan at Vanderbilt!

[As my 20th(!) year at Fitchburg State University kicks off, I’ll focus my Fall Semesterpreviews on one thing I’m especially excited about for each of my courses.Leading up to a special post on a new scholarly project I’m very excited aboutas well!]

By thetime this post airs, I will be down in Nashville for Family Weekend, visitingmy olderson Aidan as his first year at Vanderbilt University kicks off in earnest. Idon’t want to pretend that I know what his Fall semester will hold, no morethan I do any other part of these next four years and beyond (although I’msuper excited to find out!). But I know that one of the courses he’ll be takingthis Fall, alongside a bunch of Engineering and Engineering-adjacent ones as hestarts his major in Civil Engineering, will be Literature and the Environment, taughtby EnglishProfessor Rachel Teukolsky. I don’t expect Aidan will take many Englishcourses in his time at Vandy, and I hope y’all know me well enough to know I’mmore than good with that. But I can’t lie, I’m excited to think about his firstyear featuring one such course, and to talk about it with him, at Family Weekendand beyond.

Specialweekend update tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatare you excited to teach or work on this Fall?

September 5, 2024: Fall Semester Previews: American Lit II Online

[As my 20th(!) year at Fitchburg State University kicks off, I’ll focus my Fall Semesterpreviews on one thing I’m especially excited about for each of my courses.Leading up to a special post on a new scholarly project I’m very excited aboutas well!]

One of themore unexpected ways my teaching career has evolved over the last few years hasbeen the chance to teach the same course in multiple modalities, and thus toreally experiment with variations of the syllabus, readings, assignments, andmore in those distinct spaces and time periods. This past year has been aparticularly striking case in point: in Fall 2023 I taught an online acceleratedsection (which met for only the last 8 weeks of the semester); in the Spring semesterI taught an in-person section of my American Lit II survey; in the Summersemester I taught a 5-week online version; and this Fall I’ll be teaching itonline again, but this time for the whole 15-week semester. For those keepingcount, that’s four distinct versions of the same course in about a calendaryear—a blend of in-person and online, full-semester and accelerated indifferent ways. I can’t lie, I still don’t always feel that I’ve masteredonline teaching (despite having done it for more than a decade now). But I doknow that each way I teach a course challenges me and helps keep it fresh as aresult, and for one of the classes I’ve been teaching throughout my 20-year FSUcareer, that effect is a welcome one indeed.

Nextpreview post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatare you excited to teach or work on this Fall?

September 4, 2024: Fall Semester Previews: English Studies Capstone

[As my 20th(!) year at Fitchburg State University kicks off, I’ll focus my Fall Semesterpreviews on one thing I’m especially excited about for each of my courses.Leading up to a special post on a new scholarly project I’m very excited aboutas well!]

As I’ve tracedhere in multiple end of semester reflection posts (hyperlinked below), one ofmy favorite things over the last few years of teaching has been the opportunityfor my English Studies Senior Capstone students to connect with authors we’veread in that course. That’s included my fellow public scholar KevinGannon for his book Radical Hope, but also the authors of our lasttwo 21st century literary texts: MoniqueTruong and EricNguyen. I try to keep that spot on the syllabus particularly fresh, so forthis semester’s Capstone section I’ve slotted in a new, very recent novel: JesmynWard’s bracing and beautiful LetUs Descend (2023). I know the students will get a lot out of Ward’sbook no matter what, and I’m excited to have a couple weeks of intenseconversations about this intense and important novel. But I’m certainly hopingwe can connect with Ward, at the very least to share some questions as I didwith Nguyen last year. I’ll keep y’all posted on the results!

Nextpreview post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatare you excited to teach or work on this Fall?

September 3, 2024: Fall Semester Previews: First-Year Writing

[As my 20th(!) year at Fitchburg State University kicks off, I’ll focus my Fall Semesterpreviews on one thing I’m especially excited about for each of my courses. Leadingup to a special post on a new scholarly project I’m very excited about aswell!]

I’vetaught at least one section of First-Year Writing I in every one of those 20Fall semesters, so it’s fair to say that most of what happens in this coursewill not be new to me (even if it’s genuinely the case that each community ofstudents forms its own identity in a way that keeps these courses freshnonetheless). But I do try to find ways to update the syllabi when possible,and for my two sections this Fall I’ve done so with the culminating assignment,a paper where the students combine personal and academic modes of writingaround a complex central topic of their choice. I’m a big believer in this finalpaper, as it helps me remind students that their personal identities, voices, perspectives,and experiences should always be part of their more formal academic work. Buthere in 2024, it seems to me that for many students, this assignment might makemore sense with digital components (or as an entirely digital product), ratherthan in writing on paper—so I’m going to include that as a parallel but distinctoption for this final paper, and hopefully we’ll work together to figure outhow each and every student can make this assignment fully and successfully theirs.

Next previewpost tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatare you excited to teach or work on this Fall?

September 2, 2024: Fall Semester Previews: 20C Af Am Lit

[As my 20th(!) year at Fitchburg State University kicks off, I’ll focus my Fall Semesterpreviews on one thing I’m especially excited about for each of my courses. Leadingup to a special post on a new scholarly project I’m very excited about aswell!]

Five yearsafter I got to teachit for the first time, I’m very excited for my second opportunity to teachour 20th Century African American Literature survey (a complement to19thCentury African American Lit that I got to teach a couple semesters back). Byfar the best part of that first section was the student presentation component:I asked each of them to pick one cultural figure/text from a list featuring a varietyof examples and categories (music, TV, film, theater, art, and more), or to suggesttheir own if they preferred, and in the final few weeks of the semester theygave short presentations on a few layers to their chosen subject. I stillremember the student presentation on Otis Redding, one ofthe true stand-out moments in my first 19 years at FSU! So while I’m changingvarious aspects of the syllabus this time around, you best believe I’m keepingthis presentation component, and I can’t wait to see what stands out this timearound!

Next previewpost tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatare you excited to teach or work on this Fall?

August 31-September 1, 2024: August 2024 Recap

[A Recapof the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

July 29:Martin Sheen Studying: Youthful Origin Points: A series for the legend’s 84thbirthday kicks off with three foundational moments that helped make the man.

July30: Martin Sheen Studying: Catholic Activism: The series continues with agreat example of art imitating life.

July31: Martin Sheen Studying: Estévez Legacies: Two important ways that Sheen’sbirth and legal name have carried on, as the series rolls on.

August1: Martin Sheen Studying: The West Wing: The iconic actor was almostPresident Bartlett, and two ways to AmericanStudy the one who was.

August2: Martin Sheen Studying: The series concludes with two ways the sitcompushed our cultural boundaries, and one way it happily did not.

August3-4: A Proudly Tearful Tribute: Before we dropped my older son at college,a tribute to a few of the countless ways the boys have inspired me.

August5-18: Birthday Bests: I won’t link them all individually here, but this wasthe start of my annual series highlighting some favorite posts from each of theblog’s now 14 (!) years.

August19: NashvilleStudying: Three Origin Points: A series on my son’s newhometown kicks off with three communities that together built the city.

August20: NashvilleStudying: Cholera: The series continues with how a devastatingepidemic connected Nashville to the nation and the world.

August21: NashvilleStudying: The Fisk Jubilee Singers: They were from Memphis,but I couldn’t resist dedicating one post in the series to this amazingcultural group.

August22: NashvilleStudying: Altman’s Film: AmericanStudies contexts for three ofthe many character in Robert Altman’s sweeping masterpiece, as the series singson.

August23: NashvilleStudying: Kane Brown: And speaking of singing, a tribute toour favorite new country artist who’s a lot more.

August26: American Catholics: Maryland: In honor of Elizabeth Ann Seton’s 250thbirthday, a series on American Catholics kicks off with ideals and realities ofthe Catholic colony.

August27: American Catholics: Anti-Catholic Prejudice: The series continues withthe frustratingly long reach of conspiracy theories.

August28: American Catholics: Elizabeth Ann Seton: For her 250th,three telling stages in the life of the first American Saint.

August29: American Catholics: The Catholic Worker: Three telling details aboutDorothy Day and Peter Maurin’s groundbreaking newspaper, as the series rollson.

August30: American Catholics: Carlo Acutis: The series concludes with what’s familiar,what’s new, and what’s complicated about the young man likely to be the first21st century Saint.

FallSemester previews start Monday,

Ben

PS. Topicsyou’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

August 30, 2024: American Catholics: Carlo Acutis

[250 yearsago this week, ElizabethAnn Seton was born in New York City. The first US-born Saint, Seton isone of the most famous individual examples of an American Catholic, so thisweek I’ll analyze her and other American Catholic histories!]

[NB. I’mstretching the limits of AmericanStudying with today’s blog subject, ashe was born in England and lived most of his tragically brief life in Italy. Buthis maternal great-grandmotherwas from New York City, and plus my wife thoughtfully suggested this excellent conclusionto the week’s series so I’m going with it!]

On what’s familiarabout the young man likelyto be the newest Saint, what’s new, and what’s especially complicated.

1)     Saintly Simplifications: I’m quite sure thatthe childhood stories told about any individual who ended up canonized as a CatholicSaint would read like a fairy tale, but it’s particularly striking to read suchsaintly simplifications for a kid wholived from 1991 to 2006. My personal favorite such sentence from Acutis’ Wikipedia page isdefinitely, “Also an animal lover, he became very angry when he encounteredyoung people who trod on lizards.” But a close second, from that same section “Actsof Kindness,” is, “While at the beach, he used an inflatable boat, snorkel, andfins to retrieve rubbish in the ocean.” As the father of two young men who caredeeply about both the environment and our animal friends, I don’t doubt thatAcutis also had such views and put them into practice at times; but he was alsoa boy, not a saint, and descriptions or details that lean too hard into thelatter make him feel like a constructed persona rather than the real humanbeing he undoubtedly was.

2)     Digital Details: A significant part of Acutis’real humanity was that he grew up in the internet age, and to my mind the mostinteresting details of his life and identity reflect those digital contexts. Hewas apparently both drawnto and skilled at the use of coding and web design programs like Dreamweaverand Java, and despite passing away at the age of 15 he created two fullwebsites: first a page for his parish, Milan’s Santa Maria Segreta; andthen, far more fully and tellingly for his future canonization, a site Acutis beganin 2004 and launchedin October 2006 (just days before his death) that catalogued all of theworld’s Eucharistic miracles and Marian apparitions among other Catholicconnections. It stands to reason that the “firstMillenial Saint” (as Acutis is frequently known) would have such digitaldetails in his biography, but this was clearly a kid who was particularly andmeaningfully interested in the possibilities of linking the internet toCatholicism.

3)     Church Controversies: Acutis’ story is aninteresting and impressive one, but it is of course far from the most prominent21stcentury story about young people and the Catholic Church. I’m hesitant tosay too much more than that here, both because this has got to be one of themost fraught subjects I’ve ever included in a post (a competitive list to besure) and because I know we’re all already quite familiar with that subject. ButI can’t conclude a series on American Catholicism without acknowledging thisstory—which was very much initially uncoveredby American reporters, and has featured countlessAmerican priests and churches—and I have to admit being at least a littlesuspicious of the timing of the Vatican’s plans to canonize a teenage boy. Ofcourse canonization will continue to be a thing for the Catholic Church, and ofcourse that process will likely include both modern figures and younger people.But at the very least, we can’t let this inspiring individual draw ourattention away from what is unquestionably the more overarching and significantstory.

AugustRecap this weekend,

Ben

PS. What doyou think? Catholic histories or contexts you’d highlight?

August 29, 2024: American Catholics: The Catholic Worker

[250 yearsago this week, ElizabethAnn Seton was born in New York City. The first US-born Saint, Seton isone of the most famous individual examples of an American Catholic, so thisweek I’ll analyze her and other American Catholic histories!]

Threetelling details about DorothyDay and Peter Maurin’sgroundbreaking newspaper.

1)     The Origins: Day and Maurin published the first issue of TheCatholic Worker on May Day 1933, launching not just this new periodical butreally the whole of their Catholic Worker Movement in the process. ApparentlyMaurin preferred the name TheCatholic Radical, but Day, rooted in both her prior experiences withCommunism and her overall sense of solidarity with all who labor in any way, successfullyadvocated for calling it The Catholic Worker. Clearly that chosen titleand the newspaper’s contents (largely written byDay, both in that initial issue and for most of them thereafter) didresonate with readers, perhaps especially in that Depression-era moment, andafter an initial print run of 2500 copies (which Day sold in New York’s UnionSquare, calling out “Arise, ye prisoners of starvation” while she did so) thecirculation numbers exploded to 20,000 in September 1933 and 150,000 by 1936.

2)     The Tides of History: The Great Depression wasonly the first of many significant historical events with which The CatholicWorker engaged forthrightly and controversially. The next such controversy didsignificantly affect the paper’s circulation numbers—Day was committed to an unpopularpacifist stance during World WarII, and as a result circulationdecreased by 75% during the war, from a high of nearly 200,000 to 50,000. Butthis trend in no way affected Day and the paper’s dedication to takingprincipled stances on unfolding histories, as illustrated just five years afterthe war: in the July 1, 1950 issue the paper publisheda letter from the African American nurse, educator, and Catholic activist HelenCaldwell Day Riley that represented an early and powerful argument forwedding the Catholic Worker Movement to thenascent Civil Rights Movement.

3)     The Price!: I’m not sure I’ll ever write amore striking sentence in a blog post than this one: the price for each issueof The Catholic Worker hasremained steady at 1 cent (that’s one pretty penny) from that first May1933 issue up to the present moment. If you want an annual subscription(which gets you the paper’s seven issues a year by mail), however, you do haveto be willing to shell out 25 cents (that’s one shiny quarter). I genuinely can’timagine a more impressive way to put philosophy and ideology into practice thanthat, and I’m apparently not alone; according to this2023 The Nation article, the paper still has more than 25,000subscribers. Amen to that!

LastCatholicAmericanStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Catholic histories or contexts you’d highlight?

August 28, 2024: American Catholics: Elizabeth Ann Seton

[250 yearsago this week, ElizabethAnn Seton was born in New York City. The first US-born Saint, Seton isone of the most famous individual examples of an American Catholic, so thisweek I’ll analyze her and other American Catholic histories!]

On three tellingstages in the life of the first American Saint.

1)     Conversion: ElizabethAnn Bayley (1774-1821) was born in New York City to a prominent Episcopalianfamily who raised her in that church; when she married WilliamMagee Seton at the age of 19, she continued to practice that faith, passingit on to their five children who were born between 1795 and 1802. But when William’srecurring tuberculosis brought the family to Italy and he passed away while inquarantine in the winter of 1803, Elizabeth was taken in by William’s Italianbusiness partners Filippoand Antonio Filicchi and introduced to Catholicism. When she and her childreneventually returned to America, Elizabeth gradually completed her conversion,being first received into the Catholic Church at NewYork’s St. Peter’s Church (one of the few in the city at the time, as anti-Catholiclaws had been in effect until just a few years before) in March 1805 andthen receiving confirmation from the nation’s only Catholic Bishop, Baltimore’s John Carroll,in 1806.

2)     Good Works: When she was just a childElizabeth helped her stepmother, CharlotteAmelia Barclay, who was active in social ministry efforts in the city; as amarried woman she continued those efforts, including as a founding member ofthe Societyfor the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children (1797). So when Elizabethfound herself in that precise situation, it was no surprise that she onlydeepened her charitable efforts, including as the founder of a congregation ofnuns known as the Sistersof Charity of St. Joseph’s (leading to her nickname of “Mother Seton”). Butshe also extended her charitable efforts to educational endeavors, with hermost lasting legacy likely being the 1809 founding of the Emmitsburg, Maryland SaintJoseph’s Academy and Free School. Since Elizabeth’s own religious story wasvery much one of education, experienced when she was a young widow in need of communalsupport in a variety of ways, this combination of good works was quiteappropriate.

3)     Sanctification: Elizabeth died (like herhusband, of tuberculosis) at the tragically young age of 46in January 1821, but the Sister’s of St. Joseph’s continued to foundschools and other communal and charitable organizations over the remainder ofthe 19th century. Those legacies certainly made Elizabeth worthy ofcanonization as a Saint, but thatprocess proceeded quite slowly, no doubt due in part to the lack of anyAmerican-born Saints. It formally began with her receiving the title Servant ofGod in 1940, and after a child’s miraculous healing was attributed to prayersto Seton in 1952, she was beatifiedin March 1963. But sanctification requires at least two miracles, and itwas a second such miraculous healing, of a man given hours to life withmeningitis in 1963, that cemented her case and led to her September1975 canonization by Pope Paul VI. It’s hard for me to say how much of thatposthumous story really had to do with Elizabeth, but I do value thesewords of the Pope’s: “All of us say this with special joy and with theintention of honoring the land and the nation from which she sprang forth…ElizabethAnn Seton was wholly American!”

NextCatholicAmericanStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Catholic histories or contexts you’d highlight?