Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 383

May 21, 2013: American Studies Beach Reads Redux, Part Two

[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 ginormous historical novel that’s well worth your (substantial) time.If you’re like me, I probably don’t need to convince you to read John Sayles’ 955-page A Moment in the Sun (2011). Which is to say, if you share my belief that Sayles has directed some of the best American films of the last half-century, and moreover share my sense that it’s both his novelistic style and form and his willingness to engage with the complexities of history that make those films as compelling and successful as they are, then I bet all I have to say is that Moment traces the lives and experiences of more than a dozen compelling American characters in a perfectly realized late 19th and early 20thcentury world—that it’s like a great Sayles film on the page, ready for you to dive into and immerse yourself in at your leisure—and you’ll be picking up a copy.But if you’re somehow not on the Sayles bandwagon already, would I still recommend Moment for your beach reading list? Hell yes I would, and I’m glad you asked. Like all the great historical fiction, Sayles’ novel really takes you there—to the frozen wasteland of the Yukon Gold Rush, to the sweltering jungles of the Filipino insurrection, to the terrifying streets of the Wilmington massacre, and to numerous other historical settings and moments that comprise, in each case but even more so collectively, under-remembered and potent American histories. You’ll look up at the sand dunes and have to remind yourself that you’re not actually climbing those frozen stairs with all your belongings on your back, desperately hoping that you’ll find a hot meal and perhaps a traveling companion you can trust at the top—and what can fiction do that’s better than such total immersion?Not much; but when a novel can be that compelling and immersive and yet at the same time feel profoundly salient to our own moment and issues, can take you far away from our world and yet at the same time leave you feeling as if you better understand where we are, well that’s an even more worthwhile read. And Sayles’ novel does that—not in the somewhat pedantic manner that sometimes characterizes his second-tier films, but simply by telling these American stories and creating these human characters, fictional experiences and identities that resonate with our own histories and lives and give us a chance to consider the worst and best of what America has been and continues to be. Believe me, I know what I’m asking—but bring this doorstopper to the beach. You won’t be disappointed.Next beach read tomorrow,BenPS. Nominations for AmericanStudies beach reads? Share ‘em please!

May 20, 2013: American Studies Beach Reads Redux, Part One

[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 book that takes us back to one of the most complex and inspiring American summers.One of the topics that came up a good deal in my just-completed English Studies Capstone course (about which I wrote last Thursday) was the coming summer, and how the students might be able to use it to move into or toward different careers, interests, passions, next steps of one kind or another. As you might expect in our current world and economy, work is a key component for these students—even those who were considering unpaid internships had to figure out how to balance them with compensated employment as well. But nonetheless, I consistently made the case that they need to consider not only what they need but also what they want, and what can inspire them—and one great model for the latter would be 1964’s Freedom Summer.Of the more than 1000 volunteers who traveled to Mississippi that June to help register African American voters, the three who were murdered in the first ten days are by far the most famous (and rightly so). Yet I would argue that many of the experiences of the other volunteers were just as extreme and lasting, if of course in less tragic and more evolving and inspiring ways—and I know that because of Doug McAdam’s pioneering and compelling Freedom Summer (1990). McAdam balances interviews with former volunteers and sociological analyses of their community and experiences with historical contexts and sweep; his book is as much about the afterlives of the volunteers (most of which do not at all fit the stereotypical ex-hippie-turned-yuppie narrative) as about their 1964 experiences, making it a history of late 20thcentury America on multiple, interconnected fronts.That combination of depth and breadth makes it a significant AmericanStudies text, but the book is also a great beach read for two additional reasons. For one thing, it’s a page-turner—we may know what happened with the Civil Rights Movement in general post-1964, but we don’t know much about these individual lives and identities, nor those of the communities with which they were engaged in that summer; and McAdam makes sure that we care a great deal about what happens to them. And to come back to my initial point, it’s also hugely inspiring, makes you want to get out of that hammock and do something to make the world a better place. Can’t think of a better cure for any potential summertime blues than that!Next beach read tomorrow,BenPS. Nominations for AmericanStudies beach reads? Share ‘em please!

May 18-19, 2013: Next Semester Thoughts

After a week of reflections on the semester that’s ending, I thought it made sense to look ahead for a moment to the one that’ll start in a few months. I already spent a week blogging about my Major Author: W.E.B. Du Bois course, so here are quick thoughts on the other five courses I’m scheduled to teach this fall:
1)      My Next ALFA Course: Haven’t gotten too far into planning this one yet, but one thing that came up in the last ALFA discussion this time was the idea of pairing under-read 19th century American authors with compelling 21st century ones: Sui Sin Far and Gish Jen, for example. Suggestions for other such pairings very welcome!2)      Grad Historical Fiction: I’m extremely excited to be teaching, for the third time, a graduate course (in our Master’s program) that I created, on American Historical Fiction. It should probably be called Ben’s Favorite Authors and Novels: Hawthorne, Sedgwick, The Marrow of Tradition , Absalom, Ceremony , Oscar Wao, Lahiri…Yes, I’m drooling. Don’t judge.3)      Approaches to English Studies: I’ve never taught our gateway-for-majors course before, although I’ve taught grad lit theory many times and plan to use many of the same overall strategies (at an undergrad level of course). But more than the content, what really excites me about this course is the chance to work with a cohort of English Studies Majors at the outset of their time in the department, and help get them started on the best possible foot.4)      American Literature I: The only course I’ve taught as frequently as Am Lit II is, shockingly, Am Lit I. But this will be the first time in two years that I’ve done so, and I’m excited to introduce a new group to Cabeza de Vaca’s amazing narrative, John Smith’s stunning third-person mythmaking, Judith Sargent Murray’s and Olaudah Equiano’s Revolutionary lives and voices, the single best chapter in ante-bellum American fiction, and much else besides.5)      First-Year Writing I: It’s been four years since I taught first-year writing (for reasons related to the topics of these two posts), and I’m beyond thrilled to have the chance to do so again. Does it hurt that I teach close reading through a unit on song lyrics, and so get to spend some class time analyzing “The River”? No, no it doesn’t. But beyond even Bruce, the fact is that no class allows for a closer connection to students—to their writing, yes, but also their voices and perspectives and goals—than does this one. Seeing former Writing students graduate remains one of my favorite teaching experiences, and I can’t wait to meet this new batch!A lot to look forward to! Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What are you looking forward to this fall (or summer) (or any other time)?

May 17, 2013: End of Semester Thoughts, Part Five

[As another semester wraps up, a series on some AmericanStudies lessons I’ve learned from my courses and students this spring. Share some of your semesters, won’t you?]
On a very important rejoinder, or at least complement, to yesterday’s post.If Capstone provided one set of inspiring voices for me this spring, my group of ALFA (Adult Learning in the Fitchburg Area) students provided another, equally inspiring community with which I was deeply fortunate to be able to work. Moreover, if my inspiring soon-to-be-graduates make me at times frustrated with the state of the nation and world, the ALFA students—a group of 10 women in their late 50s and above—make clear that no one generation has a monopoly on impressiveness, and that the world is as full of goodness as it is of problems. They had amazing thoughts on the five contemporary short stories we read and discussed—but they also of course had a great deal more to say, and I wanted to highlight just two of those conversations here.Many of the students are retired teachers, and their experiences in the classroom came up on numerous occasions during our five discussions. But it was before our final discussion that a couple of the students shared a particularly interesting and inspiring idea: the creation of an Education Museum, perhaps housed at or at least connected to Fitchburg State (which began as a Normal School and remains one of the state’s premiere trainers of young educators). As these students argued, our increasingly digital and online world can make it hard to connect to the histories and materials that comprise the last century (and more) of public education in America—which makes it that much more important that we try to find ways to create such connections. I’m honored to be talking about this particular idea with these folks!Perhaps the most important thing I can say about teaching an ALFA class, though—and the most important rejoinder to any sense, in this series overall or in yesterday’s post in particular, that I have the answers and am just passing them along to students—is how much I learned from each and every student in it. Learned not only about education, life, America, the world, but also about the course’s specific topic and focus, as I got a ton of great reading and author recommendations. Also on the last day, for example, one of the students brought in a recent issue of the New York Times Book Review in which a ton of up-and-coming new authors are featured, most of which I haven’t yet heard of. Which is to say, of the countless reasons I love teaching ALFA courses, none is more crucial than the reminder of how much I still have to learn.Forward-looking post this weekend,BenPS. Spring semester experiences you’d share?

May 16, 2013: End of Semester Thoughts, Part Four

[As another semester wraps up, a series on some AmericanStudies lessons I’ve learned from my courses and students this spring. Share some of your semesters, won’t you?]
On idealism, realism, and my students’ futures.There are a lot of great things about teaching the English Studies Senior Capstone, chief among them the opportunity to read senior portfolios and be reinforced in my sense of the diversity and impressiveness of our English Majors. But as I wrote in that linked post, the Capstone (at least as I teach it) is just as much about the future as about the past, about where the students might go next and how the course and community and I can help them move forward toward those possible futures. We do various practical work in that regard, drafting resumes and cover letters and grad application personal statements and the like, and that feels meaningful and productive. But I have to admit that I end this semester no surer than I was in that post that I’ve addressed their broader worries or concerns about the future.If anything, I would say that many of our discussions, prompted by the particular readings I had chosen, led precisely to at best realistic (and at worst pessimistic) engagements with the difficulties of making a career as a professional writer (Zinsser’s On Writing Well), a creative writer (King’s On Writing), or a teacher (Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System). It’d be crazy of me to try to discourage such realism, or to pretend that any of those careers, or any of the related ones that my students are considering—or, frankly, any others right now—don’t entail substantial uncertainties and challenges and pitfalls and obstacles. I can and did suggest all the different ways I think they can maximize their materials and chances, can take positive steps, can take what control is possible of their own futures. But again, those positives were often not the focus of our discussions—and it’s impossible for me to blame them for their worries.So how to reconcile my idealism about my students and their voices and work with this realism about the world into which they’re moving? Truth be told, I don’t know. I have a lot of faith in them, but not a lot of faith in that world right now, particularly not when it comes to the idea of good things happening to good people. Teaching Capstone has, ironically, amplified both feelings—I’ve never felt better about this community of young Americans, specific to Fitchburg State but also in general, than I do; but I’ve also never been less certain about what they have in front of them (and, I’ll admit, what my sons have in front of them in another decade or so). I wish it felt as if my generation was doing more to make that world better for these subsequent generations—but I guess one place I feel I am doing my part is in the classroom, helping prepare these communities for their opportunity to do their part.Final semester conclusion tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

May 15, 2013: End of Semester Thoughts, Part Three

[As another semester wraps up, a series on some AmericanStudies lessons I’ve learned from my courses and students this spring. Share some of your semesters, won’t you?]On the many sides to the defining role that crosses all cultural and national borders.
For the first two identities about which we read in my Ethnic American Literature course, the absence of their mothers served as a tragic introduction to the world’s darkest sides. Frederick Douglass opens his Narrative (1845) with the heartbreaking story of his only experiences with his mother (before her very early death), when she would walk for miles from the plantation to which she had been sold in order to lie quietly beside him for a time at night. Richard Wright opens Black Boy (1945) with a scene in which his mother beats him brutally, but I’m thinking even more about the later section where Wright describes her extended illness as his fullest introduction to the world’s overarching brutalities. For both men, these separations from their mothers could be read as intimate reflections of the social worlds—slavery and segregation—into which they had been born.The course’s next two narrators, Mary Doyle Curran’s fictional Mary O’Connor and Michael Patrick MacDonald’s autobiographical Michael, are born into social struggles of their own; but for these two, their mothers provide instead powerful presences and groundings within those shifting and potentially threatening worlds. Mary ends the introductory first chapter by noting how much her mother’s voice and presence have stayed with her, despite a third-generation Irish American life that has taken her far away from her mother’s house. For Michael and his many siblings, the steady and strong presence of their Ma quite literally guides them through the Southie of Whitey Bulger, the busing riots, the crack epidemic, and the endemic violence against which Michael’s life and work become (in honor of his mother and all the neighborhood’s mothers) an activist protest.One of the course’s culminating two novels, Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989), comprises to my mind the most extended and effective portrayal of mother-daughter relationships in all of American literature. Much of Tan’s focus seems specific to the Chinese American experiences, issues, and conflicts embodied by her immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters. But when we pair Tan’s book with the course’s other culminating novel, Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine (1993), we see just how much such multi-generational American families and stories are defined by strong maternal influences—Erdrich’s Marie Kashpaw and Lulu Lamartine are two hugely complex women in their own right, but taken together they produce and embody the worst and best of the novel’s Chippewa American communities—and in the book’s beautiful final images, Marie’s adopted daughter June Kasphaw becomes a defining maternal presence for her son Lipsha and another generation.Next semester conclusion tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Literary mothers you’d highlight?

May 14, 2013: End of Semester Thoughts, Part Two

[As another semester wraps up, a series on some AmericanStudies lessons I’ve learned from my courses and students this spring. Share some of your semesters, won’t you?]
On three perfect examples of how student voices and ideas keep me moving forward.Along with the longer and more developed papers, my American Literature II course includes a couple of shorter and more creative exercises, offering (I hope) different ways for students to connect to and analyze particular readings. In the second, I ask them to pick any character other than the protagonist in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand or Passing (we read both) and to imagine that character’s perspective on that protagonist (since Larsen gives us only the protagonists’ perspectives on everyone else). The creative exercises always produce some of my favorite work of the semester, but this time students made particularly original and effective choices, with these three at the top of the list:1)      One student created the perspective of God (!) on Quicksand ’s Helga Crane. As she wrote, religion plays a central and complex role throughout the novella, leading up to its crucial influence in Helga’s final setting and role. But the choice also allowed this student to consider questions of free will and fate—and thus of how much responsibility Helga bears for her decisions and life—in a truly striking way.2)      Another student created the perspective of the cab driver who picks up Irene Redfield in the opening scene of Passing . This profoundly minor character appears for only a few paragraphs, but this student did a wonderful job considering how much the cabbie helps introduce themes of social perception and identification that permeate every moment of the novella. And he managed to imagine the voice of a 1920s Chicago cabbie pitch-perfectly to boot!3)      A third student worked with the same opening scene of Passing, but created instead the perspective of another very minor character—the unnamed man who escorts Clare Kendry to the rooftop restaurant where she unexpectedly reunites with Irene. All we ever know of this man is that he’s not Clare’s husband and yet seems intimately connected to her—but as this student highlighted, that’s more than enough to introduce key aspects of Clare’s situation and character, and to foreshadow one of the novella’s climactic revelations.I learned a great deal from these exercises, and from so many of my students’ voices and ideas, this semester as every semester. Works for me! Next semester conclusion tomorrow,BenPS. Student work you’d highlight?

May 13, 2013: End of Semester Thoughts, Part One

[As another semester wraps up, a series on some AmericanStudies lessons I’ve learned from my courses and students this spring. Share some of your semesters, won’t you?]
On mixture, identity, and performance across the American literary landscape.I have both professional and personal stakes in a heightened national awareness of and engagement with racial and cultural mixture, as I wrote in this follow-up to my second book. But what really hit me for the first time this semester, as my American Literature II (1865-present) sections moved through our syllabus, is just how many of my favorite American novels focus on characters engaging with their own mixed heritages: Janet Miller in The Marrow of Tradition , Helga Crane in Quicksand (and more subtly Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry in Passing), and Tayo in Ceremony are all centrally connected to that kind of cross-cultural identity and experience.Moreover, because my Am Lit II syllabus pairs those works with another text from their respective eras, I also thought a great deal this semester about the ways in which other, more seemingly culturally unified American identities include their share of mixture as well. Huck Finn, for example, is (at least by his novel’s end) a mixture of Pap, Tom Sawyer, and Jim; Jay Gatsby is a mixture of that self-constructed identity with James Gatz, the identity into which he was born; Gogol Ganguli mixes his parents’ Bengali immigrant identities with his own evolving ABCD (American-Born Confused Desi) status. I’m not trying to equate any or all of these characters—in the cases of Huck and Gatsby, at least, I would argue that their white privilege allows them to choose when and how to perform in a way that differentiates them from the others—but I saw, and appreciated, the parallels this spring.Appreciating those parallels also allows us to consider just how much any American identity, whatever its internal elements, comprises at the same time an external performance. Gatsby, of course, literally performs that identity, with James Gatz always lurking somewhere underneath; but so too for example does Gogol perform the identity of Nikhil, to which he legally changes his name the summer before college (but which Lahiri’s narrator never calls him). Huck is constantly performing various identities (as a girl to gain information, as a fictional boy to navigate the feuding families, as Tom Sawyer in the closing section) in order to survive, but so too does Tayo perform ceremonies—both more traditional Laguna Pueblo rituals and Betonie’s more mixed ones—in order to bridge the different sides to his heritage and experiences. Which is to say: when the speaker of Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” (which we also read in Am Lit II) describes her life and death as “an art, like everything else,” she’s damn right.Next semester conclusion tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

May 11-12, 2013: The Mother of All Stories

[In honor of Mother’s Day, I’ll repeat this post, one of my favorites—because it’s on an amazing short story, because it deals with the challenges and complexities and amazing possibilities of one of my very favorite subjects (parenting), and because it reminds me of some of the most inspiring people I know: mothers. Happy Mother’s Day! You rock!]

I would be the first to admit that I am doing what is without a doubt my most important life’s work—as a dad to the two crazy and crazy cute young dudes pictured above—in near-ideal conditions. However you slice it, from past role models to present support from family and friends, economic security to good health, neighborhood and community to (at least when it comes to something like mixed-race identity) a very tolerant and open-minded historical era and time period, I can’t imagine there being more positive influences on my ability to be a good dad (don’t worry, I’m knocking on wood while typing all that). And still, it’s hard. It’s hard especially on two distinct and crucial levels: on its own terms, it’s hard to feel day in and day out like I’m doing everything I can do for and with them, to prepare them for the best and happiest and most successful futures and lives; and in a broader context, it’s hard much of the time to feel as if I’m balancing out parenting and my career in ways that are mutually productive. And I don’t think those things are even vaguely distinctive for me—quite the opposite, I think they’re indications of just how hard these questions are for everybody.But of course the reality is that these questions are much, much harder for a great many Americans. If even one of those positive influences that I listed above is replaced with a negative one—if one doesn’t have much familial or social support, if one’s financial situation is unstable or disadvantaged or bleak, if health issues become prominent, if one’s community is dangerous or threatening, and so on—the difficulties increase exponentially. And if multiple or even most of the influences become negative, if in fact being a good parent becomes an effort to rise above (rather than, in my case, to live up to) all of what surrounds one—as, I believe, is the case for many of the impoverished families and parents with whom my Mom works in a Head Start-like program in Central Virginia (although she and that program are, just to be clear, one extremely positive influence in their worlds)—well, I can’t even imagine how difficult it becomes at that point. And yet, as if so often the case, a singular and singularly amazing work of American literature allows me to imagine, even in a small way, what it feels like to be in that situation, to try to parent well, or even perhaps just to parent at all, in the face of most every single factor and influence and aspect of one’s situation.That work is “I Stand Here Ironing,” a short story by Tillie Olsen. Olsen spent the first half of her life living with these questions, as a working single mother who was trying both to be a good parent and to find time or space to hone her considerable talents as a creative and critical writer; when she finally achieved success, with the book of short stories Tell Me a Riddle (1961) that featured “Ironing,” she spent the second half of her life writing about (among many other things) precisely these questions, such as in the unique and important scholarly study Silences (1978) which traces the effects of work and parenthood on women writers in a variety of nations and time periods. Yet I don’t think she ever captured these themes more evocatively or perfectly than in “Ironing,” a brief story in which a mother imagines—while performing the titular act of housework—how she might describe her relationship to her oldest and most troubled daughter (named Emily) to a school official who has asked her to do so. Although the narrator is now in a more stable situation, the first years of her daughter’s life comprised her lowest point in every sense, and for much of the story she reflects with sadness and regret and pain on all that she was not able to offer and give to and be for her daughter during those years. But she comes at the end to a final vision of her now teenage daughter that is, while by no means idealistic or naïve, a recognition that Emily is becoming her own person, that she is strong and independent, and that she has the opportunity to carve out a life that, at the very least, can go far beyond where it began. It’s a beautiful and powerful story, and a very complex one, not least because no parent can read it with the perspective of simply a literary critic or a distanced reader in any sense. It pushes us up against the most difficult aspects of this role, makes clear how much more difficult still they can be than most of us (fortunately) will ever know, and then finally reminds us of the absolutely unalterable and singular and crucial meanings of what is, again, the most important thing we’ll ever do. Word to your mother.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Any great works about mothers to highlight?

May 6-10, 2013: What is American Studies?

On Saturday, May 4th, this AmericanStudier was honored to host the third annual New England American Studies Association Spring Colloquium, held at Suffolk University’s Poetry Center.
This year's Colloquium focused on the questions, “American Studies: What, How, and Why,” and featured two roundtables: one with American Studies directors and instructors discussing the discipline from those programmatic and pedagogical standpoints; and one with scholars highlighting how they practice American Studies approaches, methodologies, and skills in their work. They were great conversations, and I’d love to follow them up with some further discussion here!So I’ll ask you: if American Studies is a part of your teaching, officially or otherwise, what does that entail? If you’d say that your work is interdisciplinary in American Studies ways, how do you try to do that? And, for everybody, why do you think American Studies matters? What does it add, to these efforts or any and all others? Comments on these and any other questions or topics that come to mind will be very welcome, and will help ensure that we keep these discussions alive. Thanks!Special Mother's Day post this weekend,BenPS. You know what to do!