Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 394
January 5, 2013
January 5-6, 2013: Crowd-Sourcing our Biggest Issues
[As this new year gets underway, America and the world are confronted by some pretty huge ongoing issues and crises. One reason I want to be a public AmericanStudies scholar is that I believe AmericanStudying can help us understand and engage with precisely such contemporary questions. So this week, I’ve highlighted four of the biggest and suggested a few ways AmericanStudies can help us deal with them. Everybody was apparently still too hung over to add their crowd-sourced responses and thoughts, but I’m still gonna put this post up, and hope that you’ll share some of yours in the comments. Thanks in advance, and let’s make this a truly American, in the best senses, 2013!]
Next series begins Monday,BenPS. What would you add to these thoughts?
Next series begins Monday,BenPS. What would you add to these thoughts?
January 4, 2013
January 4, 2013: AmericanStudying our Biggest Issues: Poverty
[As this new year gets underway, America and the world are confronted by some pretty huge ongoing issues and crises. One reason I want to be a public AmericanStudies scholar is that I believe AmericanStudying can help us understand and engage with precisely such contemporary questions. So this week, I’ll be highlighting four of the biggest and suggesting a few ways AmericanStudies can help us deal with them. Your thoughts, on these issues and on any others, will be very welcome for the crowd-sourced weekend post!]
On the hugely difficult, and equally crucial, step we need to take if we are to address our most desperate American lives and circumstances.I’ll be the first to admit that I have a hard time wrapping my own head around, much less writing about or teaching, the depths of poverty in which so many Americans have lived throughout our national existence and continue to live today. That difficulty is at least a bit ironic, since as a professor of (among other things) Ethnic American Literature I spend quite a bit of time teaching and writing about authors and communities whose American identities and experiences are, despite shared and core similarities for which I will argue until my last breath, quite distinct from my own in many ways. And yet while I would never claim to be able to speak for what a Frederick Douglass, a Sarah Winnemucca, a Gloria Anzaldúa experienced or lived, it is for whatever reason with significantly more hesitation still that I write about the identities and worlds of those (of any race or ethnicity, any gender, any community) in the American underclass.Part of the reason, I think, is that it’s so hard, for those of us who have been fortunate enough not to experience poverty in our own lives and who likewise have not in our professional careers engaged in any specific or experiential way with these harshest economic realities, not to speak in abstractions or generalities, not to lapse into politics or sociology. There’s no one surefire way to counter that tendency, short of going to live for a month at a homeless shelter or the equivalent (and even then, it seems to me that living in poverty as an experiment is as different from living in it as a swimming pool is from the Pacific); but certainly it helps, from an AmericanStudies perspective at least, to turn to those American authors and artists and reformers who have worked to depict with particular sensitivity and accuracy these most desperate and difficult conditions and existences. And near the top of that list by any measure has to be the Danish American reformer, journalist, and photographer Jacob Riis(1849-1914), and most especially his complex but indispensable masterwork How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890). Riis, who immigrated to the US at the age of 21 and worked for many years as a journeyman laborer, experiencing significant poverty in his own right, before making his way into the newspaper trade, is a worthy nominee for the Hall of American Inspiration for sure. He was a pioneer of the use of flash photography in America, was one of the first muckraking social journalists and a model for many Progressive writers of the next generation, and fought for poor and working Americans and for relevant necessary urban causes and reforms throughout his career and life. But even if he were only to be remembered for Other Half, it should be sufficient to ensure him a place in our national narratives and histories. The book is not without its flaws, most especially in its stereotyping portrayals of ethnic minorities such as the Chinese. But in its incredible depth and density of detail, its painstaking accuracy about places and living conditions (including extensive sketches and layouts produced on site by Riis), its use of photographs to ground that work in images as well as words more than in any prior American text, and, perhaps most impressively, in Riis’s ability to push past whatever generalities and images and narratives existed in his own head about these communities and lives and to engage with and represent the realities of their existences on their own terms (again, not for every community with equal success, but for most of those on which he focuses), the book stands alone, in its own era and in many ways into the century and a quarter that has followed.I can’t pretend to know much of what it means to be part of the “other half” in 2013, but I can do the best I can to remember and understand and (ideally and crucially) empathize with those lives; and Riis remains a very meaningful voice in that process. BenPS. Crowd-sourced post this weekend, so one more time: what do you think? Thoughts on this issue? Other questions you’d highlight?
On the hugely difficult, and equally crucial, step we need to take if we are to address our most desperate American lives and circumstances.I’ll be the first to admit that I have a hard time wrapping my own head around, much less writing about or teaching, the depths of poverty in which so many Americans have lived throughout our national existence and continue to live today. That difficulty is at least a bit ironic, since as a professor of (among other things) Ethnic American Literature I spend quite a bit of time teaching and writing about authors and communities whose American identities and experiences are, despite shared and core similarities for which I will argue until my last breath, quite distinct from my own in many ways. And yet while I would never claim to be able to speak for what a Frederick Douglass, a Sarah Winnemucca, a Gloria Anzaldúa experienced or lived, it is for whatever reason with significantly more hesitation still that I write about the identities and worlds of those (of any race or ethnicity, any gender, any community) in the American underclass.Part of the reason, I think, is that it’s so hard, for those of us who have been fortunate enough not to experience poverty in our own lives and who likewise have not in our professional careers engaged in any specific or experiential way with these harshest economic realities, not to speak in abstractions or generalities, not to lapse into politics or sociology. There’s no one surefire way to counter that tendency, short of going to live for a month at a homeless shelter or the equivalent (and even then, it seems to me that living in poverty as an experiment is as different from living in it as a swimming pool is from the Pacific); but certainly it helps, from an AmericanStudies perspective at least, to turn to those American authors and artists and reformers who have worked to depict with particular sensitivity and accuracy these most desperate and difficult conditions and existences. And near the top of that list by any measure has to be the Danish American reformer, journalist, and photographer Jacob Riis(1849-1914), and most especially his complex but indispensable masterwork How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890). Riis, who immigrated to the US at the age of 21 and worked for many years as a journeyman laborer, experiencing significant poverty in his own right, before making his way into the newspaper trade, is a worthy nominee for the Hall of American Inspiration for sure. He was a pioneer of the use of flash photography in America, was one of the first muckraking social journalists and a model for many Progressive writers of the next generation, and fought for poor and working Americans and for relevant necessary urban causes and reforms throughout his career and life. But even if he were only to be remembered for Other Half, it should be sufficient to ensure him a place in our national narratives and histories. The book is not without its flaws, most especially in its stereotyping portrayals of ethnic minorities such as the Chinese. But in its incredible depth and density of detail, its painstaking accuracy about places and living conditions (including extensive sketches and layouts produced on site by Riis), its use of photographs to ground that work in images as well as words more than in any prior American text, and, perhaps most impressively, in Riis’s ability to push past whatever generalities and images and narratives existed in his own head about these communities and lives and to engage with and represent the realities of their existences on their own terms (again, not for every community with equal success, but for most of those on which he focuses), the book stands alone, in its own era and in many ways into the century and a quarter that has followed.I can’t pretend to know much of what it means to be part of the “other half” in 2013, but I can do the best I can to remember and understand and (ideally and crucially) empathize with those lives; and Riis remains a very meaningful voice in that process. BenPS. Crowd-sourced post this weekend, so one more time: what do you think? Thoughts on this issue? Other questions you’d highlight?
January 3, 2013
January 3, 2013: AmericanStudying our Biggest Issues: Education Reform
[As this new year gets underway, America and the world are confronted by some pretty huge ongoing issues and crises. One reason I want to be a public AmericanStudies scholar is that I believe AmericanStudying can help us understand and engage with precisely such contemporary questions. So this week, I’ll be highlighting four of the biggest and suggesting a few ways AmericanStudies can help us deal with them. Your thoughts, on these issues and on any others, will be very welcome for the crowd-sourced weekend post!]
On the two simple and crucial truths about education that AmericanStudying can help us remember.As anyone who has read Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System (2011) can attest, the policies of accountability, testing, and school choice—cornerstones of educational reform for the last decade plus—have largely failed. It’s not quite as straightforward as that, of course; but Ravitch, herself one of the chief architects of those policies before extensive experience and evidence convinced her of their problems and limitations, dismantles No Child Left Behind and its many corollary concepts pretty thoroughly. To my mind, the much more difficult question is where we go from there, how education reform can move away from those models and toward something new and hopefully better. Ravitch has some ideas, of course; President Obama’s Race to the Top program represents some other possibilities; and the coming years will see many more suggestions, I’m sure.I don’t pretend to be equipped to argue educational policy, although I would always come back to something I’ve addressed in this space on multiple occasions: universal preschool. But beyond the specific and evolving questions of policy lie some basic truths about education that I feel sometimes get lost in the shuffle, and there I believe AmericanStudying can help remind us of what’s most important. For one thing, some of the most compelling American memoirs include passages that highlight the immense and inspiring power of education, its ability to offer hope in even the most desperate and difficult circumstances. From Frederick Douglass secretly learning to read and write as a slave on the streets of Baltimore to Richard Wright forging a library card and checking out classics from a Mississippi library, Mary Antin feeling like an American for the first time in her elementary school classes to Richard Rodriguez challenging his parents on the importance of learning English, and so many similar moments, these American lives were profoundly changed by the chance to become a student in the fundamental and significant sense. Remembering that basic and crucial fact, of the shared promise of education for all American children, itself becomes an argument for universal preschool, for focusing on improving the conditions and possibilities in every classroom and for every student, for keeping students (not institutions, not accountability, not outcomes) at the heart of every policy choice.There are various ways we can keep our focus on students, but I would argue that the most effective entails remembering and supporting the other most important part of every educational moment: the teacher. AmericanStudying reminds us that behind many of the most influential and inspiring Americans we can find the contributions of an impressive teacher: Annie Sullivan, the “Miracle Worker” who taught Helen Keller; William James, whose Harvard mentorship helped W.E.B. Du Bois achieve his full potential; Ella Baker, who mentored many of the Civil Rights movement’s leaders and activists; and so many other American educators and mentors, including those in my own AmericanStudying life (and, I’m quite sure, yours). Far from worrying so much about holding public educators “accountable,” much less critiquing them as so many of our current narratives do, it seems to me we should focus on empowering them as best we can to do their crucial job, and then getting out of their way. Who knows where the next Sullivan, James, or Baker is working with her or his Keller, Du Bois, or Martin Luther King, Jr.—and where some extra funding for resources, some professional training, some parental input and support, some communal encouragement could provide these inspiring teachers and students with the push they need?Next big issue tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on this issue? Other questions you’d highlight?
On the two simple and crucial truths about education that AmericanStudying can help us remember.As anyone who has read Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System (2011) can attest, the policies of accountability, testing, and school choice—cornerstones of educational reform for the last decade plus—have largely failed. It’s not quite as straightforward as that, of course; but Ravitch, herself one of the chief architects of those policies before extensive experience and evidence convinced her of their problems and limitations, dismantles No Child Left Behind and its many corollary concepts pretty thoroughly. To my mind, the much more difficult question is where we go from there, how education reform can move away from those models and toward something new and hopefully better. Ravitch has some ideas, of course; President Obama’s Race to the Top program represents some other possibilities; and the coming years will see many more suggestions, I’m sure.I don’t pretend to be equipped to argue educational policy, although I would always come back to something I’ve addressed in this space on multiple occasions: universal preschool. But beyond the specific and evolving questions of policy lie some basic truths about education that I feel sometimes get lost in the shuffle, and there I believe AmericanStudying can help remind us of what’s most important. For one thing, some of the most compelling American memoirs include passages that highlight the immense and inspiring power of education, its ability to offer hope in even the most desperate and difficult circumstances. From Frederick Douglass secretly learning to read and write as a slave on the streets of Baltimore to Richard Wright forging a library card and checking out classics from a Mississippi library, Mary Antin feeling like an American for the first time in her elementary school classes to Richard Rodriguez challenging his parents on the importance of learning English, and so many similar moments, these American lives were profoundly changed by the chance to become a student in the fundamental and significant sense. Remembering that basic and crucial fact, of the shared promise of education for all American children, itself becomes an argument for universal preschool, for focusing on improving the conditions and possibilities in every classroom and for every student, for keeping students (not institutions, not accountability, not outcomes) at the heart of every policy choice.There are various ways we can keep our focus on students, but I would argue that the most effective entails remembering and supporting the other most important part of every educational moment: the teacher. AmericanStudying reminds us that behind many of the most influential and inspiring Americans we can find the contributions of an impressive teacher: Annie Sullivan, the “Miracle Worker” who taught Helen Keller; William James, whose Harvard mentorship helped W.E.B. Du Bois achieve his full potential; Ella Baker, who mentored many of the Civil Rights movement’s leaders and activists; and so many other American educators and mentors, including those in my own AmericanStudying life (and, I’m quite sure, yours). Far from worrying so much about holding public educators “accountable,” much less critiquing them as so many of our current narratives do, it seems to me we should focus on empowering them as best we can to do their crucial job, and then getting out of their way. Who knows where the next Sullivan, James, or Baker is working with her or his Keller, Du Bois, or Martin Luther King, Jr.—and where some extra funding for resources, some professional training, some parental input and support, some communal encouragement could provide these inspiring teachers and students with the push they need?Next big issue tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on this issue? Other questions you’d highlight?
January 2, 2013
January 2, 2013: AmericanStudying our Biggest Issues: The Debt
[As this new year gets underway, America and the world are confronted by some pretty huge ongoing issues and crises. One reason I want to be a public AmericanStudies scholar is that I believe AmericanStudying can help us understand and engage with precisely such contemporary questions. So this week, I’ll be highlighting four of the biggest and suggesting a few ways AmericanStudies can help us deal with them. Your thoughts, on these issues and on any others, will be very welcome for the crowd-sourced weekend post!]
On how AmericanStudying can help us understand the importance of responding to the dominant narratives about our current fiscal bogeyman.I’m deeply sympathetic to those who argue that the national debt is significantly less of a problem, particularly in a time of economic downturn, than our current narratives indicate. Besides my own perspective, that opinion is shared by multiple voices I trust in our current political and social climate: smart and rational bloggers like Digby and David Atkins; influential and brilliant economists like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich; and even the American Studies Association, whose 2013 annual conference’s main theme will focus on ways to move “Beyond the Logic of Debt.” Again, I share that perspective in many ways—but as someone with a strong interest in the history of national narratives, I have to admit that I’m pretty uneasy about deploying a narrative that was expressed most succinctly and overtly by none other than Dick Cheney: “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.”Moreover, even if I were comfortable sharing the same spectrum—or universe—of thought with Dick, AmericanStudying reminds me of a crucial reason to engage more fully with our collective concerns about the debt: a desire to take care of future generations, to leave them with a world better and stronger than our own. Such a desire is perhaps the most consistent and core element of the American Dream, and illustrates why a tragedy like the Newtown elementary school shooting resonantes with all Americans more deeply than any other parallel such event (horrific as they have always been). Even more signficantly, many of our most inspiring and influential advocates and campaigns for social change and progress have depended precisely on appeal to that shared and collective desire—as exemplified most poignantly by Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of a better future for his and all American children. To downplay these concerns about the world we leave subsequent generations is thus to deny core aspects of what has both defined America and helped us move toward our ideals.At the same time, such narratives of debt and the future provide an opportunity to talk about our communal priorities, and on this note too AmericanStudying can provide inspiring examples. Whatever your political position on Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, it’s hard to disagree that they were developed, at a time of economic crisis and fear, in response to precisely such questions of priorities: the programs demonstrate an explicit emphasis on the public arts, on infrastructure and energy, on providing steady and constructive jobs to as many Americans as possible and rebuilding national spaces in the process. On the other hand, we can look to more recent history, and specifically to how the George W. Bush administration entered office with a substantial surplus and quickly spent it all on the largest tax cut in national history, to illustrate the pursuit of a very different set of priorities in response to federal and governmental economic circumstances. Each case, like every other and like our own moment, is specific and demands its own analysis—but what they reveal in sum is the significance of making overt our conversations about our communal priorities, and about how we respond to federal debt and surplus, deficit and boom, through their lens.Next big issue tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on this issue? Other questions you’d highlight?
On how AmericanStudying can help us understand the importance of responding to the dominant narratives about our current fiscal bogeyman.I’m deeply sympathetic to those who argue that the national debt is significantly less of a problem, particularly in a time of economic downturn, than our current narratives indicate. Besides my own perspective, that opinion is shared by multiple voices I trust in our current political and social climate: smart and rational bloggers like Digby and David Atkins; influential and brilliant economists like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich; and even the American Studies Association, whose 2013 annual conference’s main theme will focus on ways to move “Beyond the Logic of Debt.” Again, I share that perspective in many ways—but as someone with a strong interest in the history of national narratives, I have to admit that I’m pretty uneasy about deploying a narrative that was expressed most succinctly and overtly by none other than Dick Cheney: “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.”Moreover, even if I were comfortable sharing the same spectrum—or universe—of thought with Dick, AmericanStudying reminds me of a crucial reason to engage more fully with our collective concerns about the debt: a desire to take care of future generations, to leave them with a world better and stronger than our own. Such a desire is perhaps the most consistent and core element of the American Dream, and illustrates why a tragedy like the Newtown elementary school shooting resonantes with all Americans more deeply than any other parallel such event (horrific as they have always been). Even more signficantly, many of our most inspiring and influential advocates and campaigns for social change and progress have depended precisely on appeal to that shared and collective desire—as exemplified most poignantly by Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of a better future for his and all American children. To downplay these concerns about the world we leave subsequent generations is thus to deny core aspects of what has both defined America and helped us move toward our ideals.At the same time, such narratives of debt and the future provide an opportunity to talk about our communal priorities, and on this note too AmericanStudying can provide inspiring examples. Whatever your political position on Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, it’s hard to disagree that they were developed, at a time of economic crisis and fear, in response to precisely such questions of priorities: the programs demonstrate an explicit emphasis on the public arts, on infrastructure and energy, on providing steady and constructive jobs to as many Americans as possible and rebuilding national spaces in the process. On the other hand, we can look to more recent history, and specifically to how the George W. Bush administration entered office with a substantial surplus and quickly spent it all on the largest tax cut in national history, to illustrate the pursuit of a very different set of priorities in response to federal and governmental economic circumstances. Each case, like every other and like our own moment, is specific and demands its own analysis—but what they reveal in sum is the significance of making overt our conversations about our communal priorities, and about how we respond to federal debt and surplus, deficit and boom, through their lens.Next big issue tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on this issue? Other questions you’d highlight?
January 1, 2013
January 1, 2013: AmericanStudying our Biggest Issues: Climate Change
[As this new year gets underway, America and the world are confronted by some pretty huge ongoing issues and crises. One reason I want to be a public AmericanStudies scholar is that I believe AmericanStudying can help us understand and engage with precisely such contemporary questions. So this week, I’ll be highlighting four of the biggest and suggesting a few ways AmericanStudies can help us deal with them. Your thoughts, on these issues and on any others, will be very welcome for the crowd-sourced weekend post!]
On how a few important and inspiring AmericanStudiers would suggest we respond to the most long-term yet most pressing world crisis.“Simplify, simplify.” Those words and that message are at the heart of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854)—of Chapter 2, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”; and of the purpose and message of Thoreau’s time at the pond and book about the experience. It’s true that Thoreau wasn’t nearly as alone in his cabin as his book sometimes suggests—that he went to town and received visitors from there, that he depended on some help from his parents, that he was social as well as solitary during his Transcendental sojourn. But far from making Thoreau or the book hypocritical, as has sometimes been suggested, those facts make him and it more human and genuine and inspiring—represent his lived experience and demonstrate his attempt to wed that experience to ideals of simplicity and reconnection with the natural world. If we’re going to change the way we live in this 21st century moment, Thoreau would argue, it’s going to have to start with simplifying and reconnecting for sure.“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” So pioneering naturalist, conservationist, and author John Muir once noted in his journals (collected in this wonderful 1938 book, John of the Mountains). Muir is often described as a founding father of the National Park movement—or at least as sharing that honor with Teddy Roosevelt, since Muir died before the National Park Service was created—and there’s a good deal of truth to that designation. But even truer would be the recognition that for Muir, there’s no meaningful individual life, no communal American identity, and perhaps no world period that doesn’t include engagement with, respect for, and preservation of our natural spaces. Preserving, appreciating, and venturing into the wilderness isn’t, by itself, nearly enough to reverse or even impact climate change, of course. But the more we move into the wilderness in our individual lives—and the more we allow it to move into all of our perspectives—the more, Muir would argue, we can connect to the most universal and crucial human questions.“The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster.” So wrote environmental activist, scientist, and author Rachel Carson in Silent Spring (1962), one of the 20th century’s and America’s most prescient and salient works. Carson’s specific attention to the dangers of pesticides, and similar environmental hazards, had in her era and have continued to have significant, lasting, and very beneficial effects. But when it comes to her most overarching message, her concerns over the path of progress and where it is taking us, we have been far less able to hear and respond. Doing so won’t be easy, not only because of inertia and momentum, but also because progress and development most certainly have their own positive and beneficial impacts on the world and those who live in it. But at the very least, Carson would insist, we must examine every aspect of our world, and recognize that in a significant number of cases we will have to move away from easy or attractive ideas (see: fracking) in order to travel on the harder but more sustainable road.All voices we must hear, it seems to me. Next big issue tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on this issue? Other questions you’d highlight?
On how a few important and inspiring AmericanStudiers would suggest we respond to the most long-term yet most pressing world crisis.“Simplify, simplify.” Those words and that message are at the heart of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854)—of Chapter 2, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”; and of the purpose and message of Thoreau’s time at the pond and book about the experience. It’s true that Thoreau wasn’t nearly as alone in his cabin as his book sometimes suggests—that he went to town and received visitors from there, that he depended on some help from his parents, that he was social as well as solitary during his Transcendental sojourn. But far from making Thoreau or the book hypocritical, as has sometimes been suggested, those facts make him and it more human and genuine and inspiring—represent his lived experience and demonstrate his attempt to wed that experience to ideals of simplicity and reconnection with the natural world. If we’re going to change the way we live in this 21st century moment, Thoreau would argue, it’s going to have to start with simplifying and reconnecting for sure.“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” So pioneering naturalist, conservationist, and author John Muir once noted in his journals (collected in this wonderful 1938 book, John of the Mountains). Muir is often described as a founding father of the National Park movement—or at least as sharing that honor with Teddy Roosevelt, since Muir died before the National Park Service was created—and there’s a good deal of truth to that designation. But even truer would be the recognition that for Muir, there’s no meaningful individual life, no communal American identity, and perhaps no world period that doesn’t include engagement with, respect for, and preservation of our natural spaces. Preserving, appreciating, and venturing into the wilderness isn’t, by itself, nearly enough to reverse or even impact climate change, of course. But the more we move into the wilderness in our individual lives—and the more we allow it to move into all of our perspectives—the more, Muir would argue, we can connect to the most universal and crucial human questions.“The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster.” So wrote environmental activist, scientist, and author Rachel Carson in Silent Spring (1962), one of the 20th century’s and America’s most prescient and salient works. Carson’s specific attention to the dangers of pesticides, and similar environmental hazards, had in her era and have continued to have significant, lasting, and very beneficial effects. But when it comes to her most overarching message, her concerns over the path of progress and where it is taking us, we have been far less able to hear and respond. Doing so won’t be easy, not only because of inertia and momentum, but also because progress and development most certainly have their own positive and beneficial impacts on the world and those who live in it. But at the very least, Carson would insist, we must examine every aspect of our world, and recognize that in a significant number of cases we will have to move away from easy or attractive ideas (see: fracking) in order to travel on the harder but more sustainable road.All voices we must hear, it seems to me. Next big issue tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on this issue? Other questions you’d highlight?
December 31, 2012
December 31, 2012: December 2012 Recap
[Recapping the month that was in AmericanStudying.]
December 1-2: Chilly Crowd-sourcing: A series on winter in American culture concludes with the responses and thoughts of some fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours, please!December 3: AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part One: A Pearl Harbor-inspired series starts with a post on commemorating or remembering war—and Clint Eastwood films.December 4: AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part Two: The series continues with the two distinct sides of San Diego’s USS Midway Museum.December 5: AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part Three: On Midway, The Thin Red Line, and two distinct eras and types of war movies.December 6: AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part Four: On what I took away from a childhood building war-related models, as the series rolls on. December 7: AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part Five: The series concludes with a special post on remembering Pearl Harbor and similarly infamous days. December 8-9: Lincoln, Culture, and History: Another special post, this one on some of the questions about cultural images of history raised by the new Spielberg film. December 10: Fireside Reads, Part One: A series on AmericanStudies works to read on long winter’s nights begins with two late 19th century mega-novels.December 11: Fireside Reads, Part Two: The series continues with Carlos Bulosan’s contribution to our fireside reading.December 12: Fireside Reads, Part Three: On my favorite American poet, and one with whom you could definitely spend some quality time by the fire.December 13: Fireside Reads, Part Four: The American mystery novelist who will give you the best kind of winter chills, as the series rolls on.December 14: Fireside Reads, Part Five: The series concludes with some worthy fireside reads from international, honorary AmericanStudiers.December 15-16: Crowd-sourced Fireside Reads: Suggestions for fireside reads from fellow AmericanStudiers—add your own, please!December 17-23: AmericanStudier Needs You: The old AmericanStudier site is sadly defunct, but I plan to rebuild in the new year—and would love your suggestions, contributions, and feedback!December 24: Making My List (Again), Part One: My annual list of wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves kicks off with the Christmas Eve attitude we could all use a bit more of.December 25: Making My List (Again), Part Two: The series continues with my wish for what we can all take away from the best Christmas film ever.December 26: Making My List (Again), Part Three: On my wish for American attitudes toward and inclusion of atheists.December 27: Making My List (Again), Part Four: The website and project that all Americans should engage with and support, as the series rolls on. December 28: Making My List (Again), Part Five: The series concludes with my wish for an experience that all American kids should get to have.December 29-30: Making Our Lists: A crowd-sourced post on AmericanStudies wish lists—but it could use some more wishes! Add yours, please!New year and series stars tomorrow,BenPS. Things you’d like to read about in this space in 2013? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know!
December 1-2: Chilly Crowd-sourcing: A series on winter in American culture concludes with the responses and thoughts of some fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours, please!December 3: AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part One: A Pearl Harbor-inspired series starts with a post on commemorating or remembering war—and Clint Eastwood films.December 4: AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part Two: The series continues with the two distinct sides of San Diego’s USS Midway Museum.December 5: AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part Three: On Midway, The Thin Red Line, and two distinct eras and types of war movies.December 6: AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part Four: On what I took away from a childhood building war-related models, as the series rolls on. December 7: AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part Five: The series concludes with a special post on remembering Pearl Harbor and similarly infamous days. December 8-9: Lincoln, Culture, and History: Another special post, this one on some of the questions about cultural images of history raised by the new Spielberg film. December 10: Fireside Reads, Part One: A series on AmericanStudies works to read on long winter’s nights begins with two late 19th century mega-novels.December 11: Fireside Reads, Part Two: The series continues with Carlos Bulosan’s contribution to our fireside reading.December 12: Fireside Reads, Part Three: On my favorite American poet, and one with whom you could definitely spend some quality time by the fire.December 13: Fireside Reads, Part Four: The American mystery novelist who will give you the best kind of winter chills, as the series rolls on.December 14: Fireside Reads, Part Five: The series concludes with some worthy fireside reads from international, honorary AmericanStudiers.December 15-16: Crowd-sourced Fireside Reads: Suggestions for fireside reads from fellow AmericanStudiers—add your own, please!December 17-23: AmericanStudier Needs You: The old AmericanStudier site is sadly defunct, but I plan to rebuild in the new year—and would love your suggestions, contributions, and feedback!December 24: Making My List (Again), Part One: My annual list of wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves kicks off with the Christmas Eve attitude we could all use a bit more of.December 25: Making My List (Again), Part Two: The series continues with my wish for what we can all take away from the best Christmas film ever.December 26: Making My List (Again), Part Three: On my wish for American attitudes toward and inclusion of atheists.December 27: Making My List (Again), Part Four: The website and project that all Americans should engage with and support, as the series rolls on. December 28: Making My List (Again), Part Five: The series concludes with my wish for an experience that all American kids should get to have.December 29-30: Making Our Lists: A crowd-sourced post on AmericanStudies wish lists—but it could use some more wishes! Add yours, please!New year and series stars tomorrow,BenPS. Things you’d like to read about in this space in 2013? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know!
December 29, 2012
December 29-30, 2012: Making Our Lists
[Last year around the holidays, I shared a few items on my AmericanStudier wish list, things I hope Americans could do and be. In this most wonderful time of the year™, I wanted to do the same with a handful of new wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the response and wish of a fellow AmericanStudier—but I know there are more wishes to share, so please add yours below. Thanks, and happy holidays!]
Rob Gosselin wishes, simply and crucially, for “patience and tolerance.”December Recap Monday, and a new year of posts beyond,BenPS. What do you think? Wishes you’d add to Rob’s?
Rob Gosselin wishes, simply and crucially, for “patience and tolerance.”December Recap Monday, and a new year of posts beyond,BenPS. What do you think? Wishes you’d add to Rob’s?
December 28, 2012
December 28, 2012: Making My List (Again), Part Five
[Last year around the holidays, I shareda few itemson my AmericanStudier wish list, things I hopeAmericans could do and be. In this most wonderful time of the year™, I wanted to do the same with a handful of new wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves. Please share your own wishes and hopes, and I’ll add ‘em to the weekend’s post and make sure the Elves get ‘em too. Thanks, and happy holidays!]
On the educational experience that I wish all American children could have.Today is the birthday of my first Guest Poster, one of the most inspiring Americans I know, and, yes, my Mom, Ilene Railton. I wrote in the post hyperlinked under “the most inspiring Americans” about the amazing work that she has been able to do and contribute to as part of the Albemarle County (Virginia) Bright Stars preschool program. I also made the case, in the first paragraph of this post on John Dewey, for why preschool should be universally available to—in fact, mandatory for—all American children (especially those in the most desperate situations, such as the Bright Stars kids; but really all of them, with no exceptions). Given that, as I wrote in that Dewey post, a year of such universal preschool for all American children could be paid for simply by the additional revenue that would be gained if the Bush tax cuts for the highest tax bracket were allowed to expire, I find it frankly disgusting that our society seems to prioritize garage elevators (for example) over universal preschool.I don’t know that there’s much more I need to say, AmericanStudies Elves. I wish that all American kids could get at least one year of preschool education. But even more than that, I wish that we as a society could prioritize education period, early childhood education specifically, and such ideas in general so much more fully and centrally than we do. I believe a lot of our most challenging and destructive problems would be substantially ameliorated by such programs and priorities. But I also believe that we’d be a better, stronger, more communal nation as a result, one significantly closer to the best of our ideals and what we could be. Let’s make it happen, Elves!Crowd-sourced wishes this weekend,BenPS. So last chance: what do you think? Responses to this wish? Wishes of your own you’d share with the Elves?
On the educational experience that I wish all American children could have.Today is the birthday of my first Guest Poster, one of the most inspiring Americans I know, and, yes, my Mom, Ilene Railton. I wrote in the post hyperlinked under “the most inspiring Americans” about the amazing work that she has been able to do and contribute to as part of the Albemarle County (Virginia) Bright Stars preschool program. I also made the case, in the first paragraph of this post on John Dewey, for why preschool should be universally available to—in fact, mandatory for—all American children (especially those in the most desperate situations, such as the Bright Stars kids; but really all of them, with no exceptions). Given that, as I wrote in that Dewey post, a year of such universal preschool for all American children could be paid for simply by the additional revenue that would be gained if the Bush tax cuts for the highest tax bracket were allowed to expire, I find it frankly disgusting that our society seems to prioritize garage elevators (for example) over universal preschool.I don’t know that there’s much more I need to say, AmericanStudies Elves. I wish that all American kids could get at least one year of preschool education. But even more than that, I wish that we as a society could prioritize education period, early childhood education specifically, and such ideas in general so much more fully and centrally than we do. I believe a lot of our most challenging and destructive problems would be substantially ameliorated by such programs and priorities. But I also believe that we’d be a better, stronger, more communal nation as a result, one significantly closer to the best of our ideals and what we could be. Let’s make it happen, Elves!Crowd-sourced wishes this weekend,BenPS. So last chance: what do you think? Responses to this wish? Wishes of your own you’d share with the Elves?
December 27, 2012
December 27, 2012: Making My List (Again), Part Four
[Last year around the holidays, I shareda few itemson my AmericanStudier wish list, things I hopeAmericans could do and be. In this most wonderful time of the year™, I wanted to do the same with a handful of new wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves. Please share your own wishes and hopes, and I’ll add ‘em to the weekend’s post and make sure the Elves get ‘em too. Thanks, and happy holidays!]
On the man and project that I wish we could all give our fullest support.First, a link; not to that post itself, although it’s interesting as always from Digby, but to the NYT Magazine story to which she links, and which I believe you can read login-free if you go through her site. Jose Antonio Vargas, the author of that TimesMagazine story, has been well-known for some time as a Pulitzer-winning journalist; but in this lengthy and incredibly powerful essay he outed himself as an undocumented immigrant, and more exactly as precisely the kind of American identity whom the DREAM Act is meant to aid—came to the US as a very young kid, made a success of himself in this home land including college and much after, and has more than fulfilled every possible promise he possessed and opportunity he earned. Jose hasn’t stopped at sharing these potentially controversial but also deeply inspiring personal experiences, though; he has created a website and project, Define American, where he hopes to use his story and the many, many American stories like it to help revise and strengthen two types of crucial national narratives: the specific ones about illegal immigrants and immigration overall; and the broader and even more vital ones about who is and is not an American. It no doubt goes without saying, even for those who know me only through this blog, that I am fully and admiringly and gratefully in support of what he’s doing; not only his work with these crucial national narratives, but also and even more strikingly his willingness to open up about his own, far-too-often attacked but entirely impressive, American identity and experiences.On the other hand, I suppose it’s possible for someone to dismiss Vargas’ efforts, his work to change these broader narratives, as simply (or even partly) self-justification or –rationalization, as an attempt to legitimize his own otherwise illegitimate identity. (I would hope that no one would feel that way after reading his piece or checking out the website, but of course a large part of adhering to simplistic narratives often entails not engaging with the evidence and texts.) Which makes it that much more vital, AmericanStudies Elves, for those of us with no conceivable personal stake in this equation to express both support for Vargas and, even more significantly, our own shared beliefs that if American is to mean anything genuine and important, if it is to comprise a community that’s more than just geographic or political or legal, that’s human and interconnected and inspiring, it simply must include, and should in fact celebrate, an identity and life like Vargas’. So Elves, I wish that we all could give Vargas’ site and project the attention it deserves, and see where we go from there.Final wish of mine tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this wish? Wishes of your own you’d share with the Elves?
On the man and project that I wish we could all give our fullest support.First, a link; not to that post itself, although it’s interesting as always from Digby, but to the NYT Magazine story to which she links, and which I believe you can read login-free if you go through her site. Jose Antonio Vargas, the author of that TimesMagazine story, has been well-known for some time as a Pulitzer-winning journalist; but in this lengthy and incredibly powerful essay he outed himself as an undocumented immigrant, and more exactly as precisely the kind of American identity whom the DREAM Act is meant to aid—came to the US as a very young kid, made a success of himself in this home land including college and much after, and has more than fulfilled every possible promise he possessed and opportunity he earned. Jose hasn’t stopped at sharing these potentially controversial but also deeply inspiring personal experiences, though; he has created a website and project, Define American, where he hopes to use his story and the many, many American stories like it to help revise and strengthen two types of crucial national narratives: the specific ones about illegal immigrants and immigration overall; and the broader and even more vital ones about who is and is not an American. It no doubt goes without saying, even for those who know me only through this blog, that I am fully and admiringly and gratefully in support of what he’s doing; not only his work with these crucial national narratives, but also and even more strikingly his willingness to open up about his own, far-too-often attacked but entirely impressive, American identity and experiences.On the other hand, I suppose it’s possible for someone to dismiss Vargas’ efforts, his work to change these broader narratives, as simply (or even partly) self-justification or –rationalization, as an attempt to legitimize his own otherwise illegitimate identity. (I would hope that no one would feel that way after reading his piece or checking out the website, but of course a large part of adhering to simplistic narratives often entails not engaging with the evidence and texts.) Which makes it that much more vital, AmericanStudies Elves, for those of us with no conceivable personal stake in this equation to express both support for Vargas and, even more significantly, our own shared beliefs that if American is to mean anything genuine and important, if it is to comprise a community that’s more than just geographic or political or legal, that’s human and interconnected and inspiring, it simply must include, and should in fact celebrate, an identity and life like Vargas’. So Elves, I wish that we all could give Vargas’ site and project the attention it deserves, and see where we go from there.Final wish of mine tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this wish? Wishes of your own you’d share with the Elves?
December 26, 2012
December 26, 2012: Making My List (Again), Part Three
[Last year around the holidays, I shareda few itemson my AmericanStudier wish list, things I hopeAmericans could do and be. In this most wonderful time of the year™, I wanted to do the same with a handful of new wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves. Please share your own wishes and hopes, and I’ll add ‘em to the weekend’s post and make sure the Elves get ‘em too. Thanks, and happy holidays!]
On the American community I wish we could recognize and include more fully.If there’s one way in which I have occasionally been made to feel like an American minority, left out of many of our national narratives—don’t worry, I’m not going to go into one of those routines about how tough it’s getting for a white male these days; I have long since instructed friends and family that if I ever come within a million miles of that utterly nonsensical perspective, they should have me euthanized immediately—it’s as an atheist. In my Intro to American Studies class on the 1980s we watch a portion of Ronald Reagan’s 1983 “evil empire” speech, and as part of that speech’s intro he approvingly quotes an anonymous entertainer who had said that he would rather his two young girls die as children, believing in God, then grow old and die non-believers in the USSR. Despite the Cold War-specific context, Reagan absolutely and unequivocally endorses the broader themes of the anecdote, making clear, at least to this atheist, that the man who was president for eight of my first eleven years of life feels I would have been better off dying as a child then living a full life with my particular spiritual point of view. (And yes, the speech was delivered to an evangelical organization, but the president is still the American president, regardless of where or to whom he’s speaking, so I still take that sentiment pretty personally.)That was more than twenty-five years ago, of course, and I suppose there have been signs that this particular limit of our national definitions is broadening slightly. Certainly I was deeply gratified when Barack Obama, in his 2009 Inaugural address, argued (and the Reagan speech proves just how much it is an argument, not a given) that “we are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers”; moreover, while that line and various other meaningless moments and details have contributed to the deeply sleazy line of right-wing attacks on Obama as a closet atheist(and/or Muslim) who only professes a Christian faith, for the most part Obama’s inclusion of non-believers in the national community went unremarked upon. Yet no one can listen to the president end every speech with “God Bless America,” or listen to both my son’s preschool class and my university’s honors convocation still including “under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance, or witness the number of ballparks at which “God Bless America” has permanently replaced “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” for the 7th inning stretch, among many other daily and constant reminders, and argue that we do not still define ourselves as a religious people in ways that implicitly but unquestionably render us atheist Americans slightly less fully part of the national community. Again, I hasten to add that this kind of exclusion is far, far less weighty than others on which I have focused in this space—but nonetheless, until we can imagine an avowed atheist successfully winning the presidency, exclusion it very much is.With it being just after Christmas and all, this post might seem unnecessarily provocative or argumentative. But AmericanStudies Elves, I’m not wishing for anyone to lose their own personal faith, for anyone to feel the slightest bit mocked in what they believe or obligated to believe as I do (or don’t), for any American community not to feel that its identity is part of who we are. Quite the opposite, I’m wishing that every such community, including one that does not believe in God, be recognized as just as definingly and meaningfully American. In his keynote speech at this year’s Republican National Convention, Marco Rubio argued that “faith in our Creator is the most important American value of all.” So Elves, we’ve got a ways to go yet, and I’m hoping that we can make some progress in the year to come.Next wish tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this wish? Wishes of your own you’d share with the Elves?
On the American community I wish we could recognize and include more fully.If there’s one way in which I have occasionally been made to feel like an American minority, left out of many of our national narratives—don’t worry, I’m not going to go into one of those routines about how tough it’s getting for a white male these days; I have long since instructed friends and family that if I ever come within a million miles of that utterly nonsensical perspective, they should have me euthanized immediately—it’s as an atheist. In my Intro to American Studies class on the 1980s we watch a portion of Ronald Reagan’s 1983 “evil empire” speech, and as part of that speech’s intro he approvingly quotes an anonymous entertainer who had said that he would rather his two young girls die as children, believing in God, then grow old and die non-believers in the USSR. Despite the Cold War-specific context, Reagan absolutely and unequivocally endorses the broader themes of the anecdote, making clear, at least to this atheist, that the man who was president for eight of my first eleven years of life feels I would have been better off dying as a child then living a full life with my particular spiritual point of view. (And yes, the speech was delivered to an evangelical organization, but the president is still the American president, regardless of where or to whom he’s speaking, so I still take that sentiment pretty personally.)That was more than twenty-five years ago, of course, and I suppose there have been signs that this particular limit of our national definitions is broadening slightly. Certainly I was deeply gratified when Barack Obama, in his 2009 Inaugural address, argued (and the Reagan speech proves just how much it is an argument, not a given) that “we are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers”; moreover, while that line and various other meaningless moments and details have contributed to the deeply sleazy line of right-wing attacks on Obama as a closet atheist(and/or Muslim) who only professes a Christian faith, for the most part Obama’s inclusion of non-believers in the national community went unremarked upon. Yet no one can listen to the president end every speech with “God Bless America,” or listen to both my son’s preschool class and my university’s honors convocation still including “under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance, or witness the number of ballparks at which “God Bless America” has permanently replaced “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” for the 7th inning stretch, among many other daily and constant reminders, and argue that we do not still define ourselves as a religious people in ways that implicitly but unquestionably render us atheist Americans slightly less fully part of the national community. Again, I hasten to add that this kind of exclusion is far, far less weighty than others on which I have focused in this space—but nonetheless, until we can imagine an avowed atheist successfully winning the presidency, exclusion it very much is.With it being just after Christmas and all, this post might seem unnecessarily provocative or argumentative. But AmericanStudies Elves, I’m not wishing for anyone to lose their own personal faith, for anyone to feel the slightest bit mocked in what they believe or obligated to believe as I do (or don’t), for any American community not to feel that its identity is part of who we are. Quite the opposite, I’m wishing that every such community, including one that does not believe in God, be recognized as just as definingly and meaningfully American. In his keynote speech at this year’s Republican National Convention, Marco Rubio argued that “faith in our Creator is the most important American value of all.” So Elves, we’ve got a ways to go yet, and I’m hoping that we can make some progress in the year to come.Next wish tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this wish? Wishes of your own you’d share with the Elves?
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