Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 382

June 1-2, 2013: May 2013 Recap

[A recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

May 1: Communism in America: Dos Passos and Wright: The Communism series resumes with the 1930s and 40s arcs of two writers.May 2: Communism in America: Spies Like Us: On what we don’t know about two high-profile controversies, and what we do, next in the week’s series.May 3: Communism in America: Doctorow and Coover: The series concludes with two postmodern historical novels on the Rosenbergs.May 4-5: Crowd-sourced Communism: Responses and thoughts from fellow AmericanStudier’s to the week’s series, as well as links for further reading.May 6-10: What is American Studies?: A follow up to this year’s NEASA Colloquium, and a chance for you to share your thoughts on teaching, writing, and thinking American Studies.May 11-12: The Mother of All Stories: A Mother’s Day special post!May 13: End of Semester Thoughts, Part One: A spring wrap-up series starts with mixture and identity across American literary history.May 14: End of Semester Thoughts, Part Two: The series continues with three creative and inspiring examples of student work.May 15: End of Semester Thoughts, Part Three: Influential mothers across American ethnic literature, as the series rolls on.May 16: End of Semester Thoughts, Part Four: Idealism, realism, and the students in my English Studies Capstone course.May 17: End of Semester Thoughts, Part Five: The series concludes with reflections on my inspiring work with adult learners.May 18-19: Next Semester Thoughts: And the series is rounded off with a look ahead to five fall semester classes I’m excited about!May 20: American Studies Beach Reads Redux, Part One: Doug McAdam’s Freedom Summer!May 21: American Studies Beach Reads Redux, Part Two: John Sayles’ A Moment in the Sun!May 22: American Studies Beach Reads Redux, Part Three: Anna Deavere Smith’s one-woman shows!May 23: American Studies Beach Reads Redux, Part Four: Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall!May 24: American Studies Beach Reads Redux, Part Five: Five more nominees for summer reads!May 25-26: Crowd-sourced Beach Reads Redux: Summer reading ideas from fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours, please!May 27: Memory and Memorials: A special Memorial Day post kicks off the week’s series.May 28: Remembering William Dawes: The series continues with some reflections on Paul Revere’s much less famous fellow rider.May 29: Remembering Benedict Arnold: How we might remember our most famous traitor, as the series rolls on.May 30: Remembering the Battle of New Orleans: Three striking sides to one of our most insignificant military victories.May 31: Remembering Lee and Longstreet: The series concludes with the opposed arcs and meanings of two Confederate generals.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered on the blog? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute?

May 31, 2013: Remembering Lee and Longstreet

[This is the fifth and final entry in a series of Memorial Day-inspired posts. Checkout lastyear’s seriesfor more!]

On the Civil War general we idolize—and the other one we should.This blog might make it seem as if I’m immune to the processes of buying into simplifying narratives, of forgetting or ignoring certain complexities and realities in favor of more black and white or appealing histories and stories, that I spend a lot of time writing about here. Well, I’m here today to tell you that the truth is quite the opposite—in many if not most of these cases, I’m aware of the power of the existing narratives precisely because they’ve significantly influenced me in one way or another, and my attempts to push back against them, to highlight the events and figures and texts and stories that they elide or subsume, are thus for my own continuing benefit at least as much as they are for any and all audiences who might find and read this blog. And for no topic does that apply nearly as fully as it does for today’s starting point, the deification of Robert E. Lee.I grew up in a town that—like many in the South I’m sure—had a park and statue honoring Lee, so maybe my childhood affection for the General began with simple osmosis. But as I started to become a hard-core Civil War buff in my own right, that affection only grew—partly because the guy just plain knew how to win battles (especially compared to those morons and buffoons who led the Union Army right up until Grant; if you can feel any affection for McClellan, you’re a better buff than I), but also because of that sense of a thoughtful and sensitive and impressive personality and character existing alongside the tactical genius. This was the man who, the story goes, in looking over the aftermath of Fredericksburg, a Confederate victory but also one of the bloodier battles in which he participated, famously remarked that “it is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it.” And even as I got older and more cognizant of the evils for which the Confederacy stood (and the more subtle but perhaps even more evil forces that had contributed greatly to commemorations of the Confederacy and its leaders after the War), I still for many years fully endorsed the narrative of Lee as a reluctant Confederate, one who disagreed with the cause and hated fighting against his old West Point comrades but who couldn’t turn his back on the Virginia that was his home and homeland in every sense.There’s some truth to that narrative, without question. But as I researched (for a couple chapters in my dissertation/first book) the late 19th century rise of a Southern version of both the Civil War and American history more generally (what came to be known in part as the Lost Cause narrative and in part as the plantation tradition), I began to learn about just how much that rise coincided with the deification of Lee, with Southern mythmakers figuring out how to frame the man to make him not only palatable for national audiences, but in fact a hero who could help the nation elide the slavery and race-related sides to the Civil War almost entirely. And at the same time, I learned much more about one of Lee’s fellow Confederate generals (and in many ways his second-in-command), James Longstreet, a man whose political and social perspectives and opinions underwent dramatic transformations in the post-bellum years, leading him to embrace not only Reconstruction and the Republican Party of Lincoln but also equal rights for African Americans. All of those changes, along with Longstreet’s explicit criticisms of Lee in conversations and speeches and then published writings during this period, made him an easy target for the Lost Cause chroniclers, a figure whose demonization could parallel Lee’s deification very fully and successfully. And I’ll be the first to admit that the two processes worked, even 100 years after the fact; young devotee of everything Civil War-related that I was, I knew and liked a lot about Lee, and thought of Longstreet mostly as the guy whose mistakes greatly contributed to the Confederacy’s turning-point loss at Gettysburg.The identities and lives of both men don’t, of course, fit any more perfectly into a flipped hierarchy than they did into the Lost Cause’s one. Lee was indeed thoughtful and did have his issues with secession, although he was also (among other flaws) deeply elitist about class and status; Longstreet was clearly a prickly and difficult person in many ways, although he was also (among other strengths) one of the most well-read and intelligent American military leaders of any era. So the main lesson here is, as always, that we need to look back into the histories and texts and identities ourselves, rather than accepting the narratives that have been created and recreated for so long; and the parallel lesson here is, very clearly I hope, just how much that process impacts and continues for me as well.May Recap tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

May 30, 2013: Remembering the Battle of New Orleans

[This is the fourth in a series of Memorial Day-inspired posts. Checkout lastyear’s seriesfor more!]

On three striking sides to one of America’s most insignificant victories.The first thing that stands out about the January 1815 Battle of New Orleans is that it was entirely unnecessary. Not in the “War: what is it good for?” sense, but quite literally unnecessary: the War of 1812 had been ended by the Treaty of Ghent in December 1814, but the various signatories were still in the process of ratifying the treaty and word had not reached the British troops who were trying to take the city and with it the rest of the Louisiana Purchase territory. So the attack continued, the American troops led by Major General Andrew Jackson fought back, and the U.S. won its clearest military victory of the war after that conflict had officially ceased.If the victory was thus officially meaningless, however, the composition of those American forces was far more significant. I’ve written elsewhere in this space about the uniquely multicultural, -national, and –lingual identify of New Orleans, and the army fighting to protect the city reflected that identity very fully: the relatively small force (it numbered around 8000, noticeably fewer than the British forces) included French Creole troops from New Orleans (some commanded by the former pirate Jean Lafitte), both free African American residents of the city (colloquially known as fmcs, “free men of color”) and slaves who had been freed specifically to aid in the battle, and Choctaw Native Americans, among other communities.Moreover, one particular such community is even more striking and unremembered in our national narratives. Since the mid-18thcentury, a group of Filipino immigrants had settled in a Louisiana town known as Manila Village, comprising what seems likely to be the oldest (and certainly the most enduring) Asian American community. Men from the village joined Lafitte’s forces for the battle, helping to create the truly multicultural fighting unit known as the “Batarians.” It’s difficult for me to overstate how much would change in our understanding of American history and community if we acknowledged at all, much less engaged at length with, this fact: that in one of our earliest military efforts, our forces included French Creole and Filipino Americans, fighting side by side to defend the city and nation that were and remain their home.The week’s final remembering tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

May 29, 2013: Remembering Benedict Arnold

[This is the third in a series of Memorial Day-inspired posts. Checkout lastyear’s seriesfor more!]

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 remembering tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

May 28, 2013: Remembering William Dawes

[This is the second in a series of Memorial Day-inspired posts. Checkout lastyear’s seriesfor more!]

On the vagaries of collective memory, and whether they matter.Is it just as simple as the need for rhymes? That’s long been the predominant theory for why Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote his poetic ballad about “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”instead of Revere’s fellow rider William Dawes. There seems to be some truth to that, but it’s also true that by 1860, when Longfellow composed his poem, Revere was already significantly better remembered in our Revolutionary histories than Dawes. Longfellow’s easily memorized bit of verse certainly cemented that status and permanently relegated Dawes to a distant second fiddle; but somehow, Revere seems to have been the front-runner from the very first lighting of those lanterns.Whatever the timeline and reasons, clearly our collective memories feature Paul Revere far more fully than they do William Dawes. But does it matter? After all, few American actions have been as much about shaping the present, impacting the immediate moment and its vital needs, as the two men’s rides—had they not succeeded in warning the colonists of the Redcoats’ imminent arrival, it’s entirely possible that there would be no America, or at least that its Revolution would have gotten off to a significantly different and less victorious start. Which is to say, what William Dawes did in his life echoes in eternityprecisely as much as does Revere’s ride, and no disparity in memory can change that shared influence.And yet. Obviously I believe that remembering our histories with more accuracy and complexity matters, and Dawes presents a case in point. For one thing, I’d say it’s pretty significant that the midnight ride was a joint endeavor—we love our rugged individuals here in America, but so much of the time it really takes a village, or at least a couple of guys coordinating their efforts, to get the job done. And for another thing, better remembering Dawes would help us to recognize how constructed and over-simplified and mythic our national narratives tend to be—which might be fine for a ballad about a larger-than-life hero, but is woefully inadequate when it comes to the dynamic messiness that is history. It might be a lot harder to fit “The midnight rides of Paul Revere and William Dawes” into a rhyme scheme and rhythm, that is, but we most definitely need to fit them into our collective memories.Next remembering tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

May 27, 2013: Memory and Memorials

[This is the first of a series of Memorial Day-inspired posts; this one a repeat of a still relevant post! Checkout lastyear’s seriesfor more!]

In a long-ago post on the Statue of Liberty, I made a case for remembering, and engaging much more fully, with what the Statue was originally intended, by its French abolitionist creator, to symbolize: the legacy of slavery and abolitionism in both America and France, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the memories of what he had done to advance that cause, and so on. I tried there, hopefully with some success, to leave ample room for what the Statue has come to mean, both for America as a whole and, more significantly still, for generation upon generation of immigrant arrivals to the nation: I think those meanings, especially when tied to Emma Lazarus’ poem and its radically democratic and inclusive vision of our national identity, are beautiful and important in their own right. But how much more profound and meaningful, if certainly more complicated, would they be if they were linked to our nation’s own troubled but also inspiring histories of slavery and abolitionism, of sectional strife and Civil War, of racial divisions and those who have worked for centuries to transcend and bridge them?I would say almost exactly the same thing when it comes to the history of Memorial Day. For the last century or so, at least since the end of World War I, the holiday has meant something broadly national and communal, an opportunity to remember and celebrate those Americans who have given their lives as members of our armed forces. While I certainly feel that some of the narratives associated with that idea are as simplifying and mythologizing and meaningless as many others I’ve analyzed here—“they died for our freedom” chief among them; the world would be a vastly different, and almost certainly less free, place had the Axis powers won World War II (for example), but I have yet to hear any convincing case that the world would be even the slightest bit worse off were it not for the quarter of a million American troops who lives were wasted in the Vietnam War (for another)—those narratives are much more about politics and propaganda, and don’t change at all the absolutely real and tragic and profound meaning of service and loss for those who have done so and all those who know and love them. One of the most pitch-perfect statements of my position on such losses can be found in a song by (surprisingly) Bruce Springsteen; his “Gypsy Biker,” from Magic (2007), certainly includes a strident critique of the Bush Administration and Iraq War, as seen in lines like “To those who threw you away / You ain’t nothing but gone,” but mostly reflects a brother’s and family’s range of emotions and responses to the death of a young soldier in that war.Yet as with the Statue, Memorial Day’s original meanings and narratives are significantly different from, and would add a great deal of complexity and power to, these contemporary images. The holiday was first known as Decoration Day, and was (at least per the thorough histories of it by scholars like David Blight) originated in 1865 by a group of freed slaves in Charleston, South Carolina; the slaves visited a cemetery for Union soldiers on May 1st of that year and decorated their graves, a quiet but very sincere tribute to what those soldiers have given and what it had meant to the lives of these freedmen and –women. The holiday quickly spread to many other communities, and just as quickly came to focus more on the less potentially divisive, or at least less complex as reminders of slavery and division and the ongoing controversies of Reconstruction and so on, perspectives of former soldiers—first fellow Union ones, but by the 1870s veterans from both sides. Yet former slaves continued to honor the holiday in their own way, as evidenced by a powerful scene from Constance Fenimore Woolson’s “Rodman the Keeper” (1880), in which the protagonist observes a group of ex-slaves leaving their decorations on the graves of the Union dead at the cemetery where he works. On the one hand, these ex-slave memorials are parallel to the family memories that now dominate Memorial Day, and serve as a beautiful reminder that the American family extends to blood relations of very different and perhaps even more genuine kinds. But on the other hand, the ex-slave memorials represent far more complex and in many ways (I believe) significant American stories and perspectives than a simple familial memory; these acts were a continuing acknowledgment both of some of our darkest moments and of the ways in which we had, at great but necessary cost, defeated them.Again, I’m not trying to suggest that any current aspects or celebrations of Memorial Day are anything other than genuine and powerful; having just heard some eloquent words about what my Granddad’s experiences with his fellow soldiers had meant to him (he even commandeered an abandoned bunker and hand-wrote a history of the Company after the war!), I share those perspectives. But as with the Statue and with so many of our national histories, what we’ve forgotten is just as genuine and powerful, and a lot more telling about who we’ve been and thus who and where we are. The more we can remember those histories too, the more complex and meaningful our holidays, our celebrations, our memories, and our futures will be.Next Memorial Day post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

May 25-26, 2013: Crowd-Sourced Beach Reads Redux

[Last year, I helped celebrate summer with a series on American Studies Beach Reads. It was a lot of fun, so I’ve done the same this year. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the suggestions of fellow AmericanStudiers and beachgoers—please share your nominees to give us the most options for our tan-inducing page-turners!]
Kelly Sloane suggests, “1Q84, anything Junot Diaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, Tennessee Williams, or Sandra Cisneros’ Caramelo .”Erin Kingsley writes, “If I had time, I would read Wolf Hall , The Orphan Master's Son , then Where'd You Go, Bernadette . If I had time...”Chance Lee writes, “Karen Russell's Swamplandia! is an excellent beach read. It's set in Florida -- oh land of meth heads, sinkholes, Disney World, and alligator-filled swamps -- and Russell does a great job portraying all the different sides of this strange state (drugs! theme parks! alligators!) and transforming them into a compelling coming-of-age story. There's even a little bit of Florida history tucked in for bonus educational value. It's sticky and sweaty and weird; so: perfect for summer reading.”Wesley Raabe writes, “If your contemporary lit friends are reading 50 Shades, then you could whip out Maria Monk's Awful Disclosures .”Susan Stark writes, “My recommendation is Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. While apocalyptic-type novels have been done to death, this one manages to catch onto a few interestingly complex ideas. If there were only a handful of people left, what parts of your culture would you be capable of carrying forward? How long could you live like a parasite off of the remains of a system that no longer exists? And how do you start over when you are surrounded by the crumbling remains of a dead society? In one of the most poignant scenes, the main character tries to express to his children (born after the ‘disaster’) the importance of reading so that they may learn all of the things their forefathers have already figured out. But to the children, the library is a source of fuel for their fires, not their minds. How would you let it all go? And what things are truly worth fighting to save? Good stuff to think about on the beach!”Steve Railton writes, “My favorite summer reading includes RE-reading, i.e. to make sure I take one book I read some time ago and loved, and give myself the chance to see what the experience of reading it is like now.”Since I wrote this week’s series, I’ve also come upon another great historical novel that rivals Sayles’ in summer readability (if not quite in size): Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day .Next series starts Monday, BenPS. What are you bringing to the beach this summer?

May 24, 2013: American Studies Beach Reads Redux, Part Five

[Last year, I helped celebrate summer with a series on American Studies Beach Reads. It was a lot of fun, so I thought I’d do the same this year; I’m doing so a good bit earlier this time to give you some good options for your Memorial Day Weekend reading. Please share your nominees for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll kick off its shoes and settle into the hammock!]
Five more nominations for great beach reads, drawn from past blog posts:1)      Ross MacDonald’s hardboiled PI novels;2)      Lucille Clifton’s collected poems;3)      Ambrose Bierce’s short stories and nonfiction;4)      Susan Glaspell’s Trifles;5)      Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father.All worth your seaside time! Crowd-sourced reads this weekend,BenPS. So what would you nominate as an AmericanStudies beach read? I need suggestions for my towel time too!

May 23, 2013: American Studies Beach Reads Redux, Part Four

[Last year, I helped celebrate summer with a series on American Studies Beach Reads. It was a lot of fun, so I thought I’d do the same this year; I’m doing so a good bit earlier this time to give you some good options for your Memorial Day Weekend reading. Please share your nominees for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll kick off its shoes and settle into the hammock!]
On the biting autobiographical novel that also packs an emotional punch.I’ve written about Fanny Fern at length in two prior posts, so in lieu of my first two paragraphs I’ll just link to those:This post about her unique and amazingly modern voice and style;And this one on her inspiring partnership with and third marriage to James Parton.Any of Fern’s writing would keep you good company on the beach, but here I want to make a brief case for her autobiographical first novel, Ruth Hall (1854). It’s true that if you know the real-life people on whom many of the novel’s character are based, it takes on an added layer of sting; but even without that knowledge, Ruth offers the same striking combination as Fern’s best columns: a mixture of sarcastic humor and poignant emotion, of sly wit and painful honesty, of social satire and confessional roman àclef. Like Sylvia Plath’s The Bell-Jar (1963), with which it has a good deal in common, Fern’s novel will make you laugh and cry within the same page, or even the same sentence—and that pretty rare feat makes for some great beach reading if you ask me.Final beach reads tomorrow,BenPS. Nominations for AmericanStudies beach reads? Share ‘em please!

May 22, 2013: American Studies Beach Reads Redux, Part Three

[Last year, I helped celebrate summer with a series on American Studies Beach Reads. It was a lot of fun, so I thought I’d do the same this year; I’m doing so a good bit earlier this time to give you some good options for your Memorial Day Weekend reading. Please share your nominees for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll kick off its shoes and settle into the hammock!]
On the two one-woman shows that are just as evocative on the page as on the stage.In this era of tablets and smartphones (which Word doesn’t identify as a spelling error, just to drive the point home), there’s no reason we’d have to limit beach reads to written texts. You can watch a YouTube video clip just as easily, and when it comes to theatrical performances, there’s a lot to be said for doing so, for getting at least a sense of their performative (that one Word underlines, but I’m going to keep it) qualities. So I’d be remiss if I didn’t first link to this opening part of Anna Deavere Smith’s Fires in the Mirror(1991) and this trailer for an adaptation of her Twilight: Los Angeles (1992).As the first clip’s introduction notes, Smith works in a very unique and compelling way: interviewing hundreds of people in response to a particular historical event (New York’s Crown Heights riot for Fires, the 1992 LA riots for Twilight), and then turning their words and voices into a crowd-sourced document that she performs herself in their various characters (although the above-linked Twilight adaptation uses multiple actors instead). Smith is as talented a performer as she is a writer, and so again there’s much to be said for watching and hearing her take on these voices and stories, as you can do (if you have an hour and some good wifi) with all four parts of the above-linked version of Fires.But if you’re on the beach without internet access or a high-tech 21st century device? Well, I was introduced to Smith through the published, textual version of Twilight, and I can say with certainty that she makes these voices and characters and communities come to life just as powerfully in that form. Indeed, there’s something to be said for the opportunity to hear them all in our own head, with no performance choices filtering them, distinguishing them from one another, perhaps rendering one or another sympathetic or annoying to our ears. Their subjects are the height of divisive and violent controversies, moments that pitted Americans against Americans in the worst ways—but the texts offer us the chance to hear all sides, and, as Walt put it, “filter them from your self.” Pretty good way to spend some quality beach time if you ask me.Next beach read tomorrow,BenPS. Nominations for AmericanStudies beach reads? Share ‘em please!