Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 397

November 26, 2012: American Winter, Part One

[This week’s series will focus on interesting and telling images of winter in American culture. Please share your wintry ideas and nominations for the chilly weekend post!]
On winter’s and America’s possibiliities and limits in two dark recent films.When you think about it, snow and the American Dream have a lot in common. (Don’t worry, I’m not talking about race. Not this time, anyway.) Both are full of possibility, of a sense of childlike wonder and innocence, conjuring up nostalgic connections to our families and our childhoods as well as ideals of play and community and warmth (paradoxical for snow I know but definitely true for me—snow always makes me think of hot chocolate and fires in the fireplace). Yet as we get to be adults, both also suggest much more realistic and limiting and even threatening details, of dangerous conditions and losses of power and the cold that can set in if we can’t afford to heat our home. And once we have kids of our own, the coexistence of those two levels is particularly striking—seeing their own excitement and innocence and thorough focus on the possibilities, and certainly sharing them, but also worrying that much more about whether we can get them through the drifts, drive them safely where they need to go, keep them warm. I might be stretching the connection to its breaking point, but the link might help explain why so many films that explore the promises and pitfalls of the American Dream seem to do so amidst a snow-covered landscape. Near the top of that list for me are two character-driven thrillers from the late 1990s: Paul Schrader’s Affliction (1997) and Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan (1998). Both are based on novels—the former a work of literary fiction by the great Russell Banks, the latter a page-turning thriller by Scott Smith—but both, to my mind, are among those rare examples of films that significantly improve upon the source material; partly they do so through amazing screenplays (Smith interestingly wrote the screenplay based on his own book, and I would argue changed it for the better in every way), but mostly through inspired and pitch-perfect casting: Afflictioncenters on a career-best performance from Nick Nolte, but his work is definitely equaled by James Coburn (in an Academy-Award winning turn), Sissy Spacek, Mary Beth Hurt, and Willem Dafoe; while Simple is truly an ensemble piece, with Billy Bob Thornton and Bill Paxton both doing unbelievable work but great contributions as well from Bridget Fonda, Brent Briscoe, Chelcie Ross, and Gary Cole. And in both, again, the snowy setting—small-town New Hampshire in Affliction, small-town North Dakota in Simple, but they might as well be next door—is a central presence and character in its own right.The multiple, interconnecting plot threads of both films are complex, rich, and intentionally suspenseful and mysterious, and I’m most definitely not going to spoil them here. But I will say that both are, at heart, stories of the dreams and weaknesses, the ideals and failures, that we inherit from our parents, and how as adults (and especially perhaps as adults struggling with the responsibilities of family and parenthood) we try to live up to and beyond the dreams and ideals but are pulled back by and ultimately risk becoming ourselves the weaknesses and failures. It is perhaps not much of a spoiler either (just look at the titles!) to note that both films, while offering their characters and audiences glimpses of possibility and hope, bring them and us to extremely bleak final images, worlds where the snow storms may have passed but where the silence and lifelessness they have left behind are all we can see and all we can imagine. And both do so, most powerfully, by bringing their protagonists back to their childhood homes, sites (in these cases) at one and the same time of those most innocent ideals and of some of the strongest influences in turning those ideals into something much darker and colder. When it comes to wintry or especially holiday fare, these two definitely aren’t It’s a Wonderful Life, which certainly connects it own bleak middle section very fully to a world of snow and storm but which of course ends with its protagonist in the warmest and most hopeful possible place (and in a home that has become again the source of such ideals). But either could make a pretty evocative snow day double feature with that equally great film of the American Dream and its limits. Next wintry post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Cultural images of winter you’d highlight? 11/26 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two inspiring abolitionistsand women’s rights activists, Sojourner Truth and Sarah Grimke.

November 25, 2012: Extra Thanks

One more bonus thanks, for the many sides of my favorite American filmmaker and one of my true American heroes, John Sayles.
At this time last weekend I was flying back from Puerto Rico, where I had attended the annual American Studies Association conference (and had squeezed in some beachside tennis as well). It was a great few days for a lot of reasons, but most especially because of a surprise with which my conference time ended—I learned, upon consulting the full program when I arrived, that John Sayles was screening his most recent film, Amigo (2010), as well as holding a Q&A afterward and then singing copies of his newest novel, A Moment in the Sun (2011). Needless to say, it was an amazing event, and reinforced for me many of the reasons why I’m thankful for Sayles. Here are three:1)      His complex, character-driven movies: I know Amigohas gotten mixed reviews, and that many critics (and some colleagues I talked to at ASA) feel that it’s a bit too on-the-nose in the parallels between its Filipino American War setting and later American conflicts (Vietnam, the second Iraq War). There were a couple moments that perhaps went there, but honestly I couldn’t disagree more—I think the film did a great job focusing on the lives and identities and perspectives of, and the evolving and nuanced relatioships between, its specific characters, in and around a small Filipino village in the second year of the US occupation and the guerrilla rebellion against it. And the main character, the village’s “head man” (played by an apparently legendary Filipino actor), is one of my all-time favorite Sayles characters—which is saying something.2)      His huge (in every sense) novels: I haven’t read more than a chapter or two of Moment yet, but I can definitely already testify to one sense of huge—the nearly 1000-page novel made my suitcase a lot heavier on the way back than it was going down to PR! But having talked a bit with Sayles about the novel while he was signing it for me, I can also say that it’s huge in a more important sense as well—its ability to engage with a wide and important range of turn of the 20th century histories and stories. Including, I’m very excited to report, one of the under-known American histories to which I’m most attached, the Wilmington coup and massacre. Can’t wait to read the whole thing, although, yeah, it might take a while.3)      His voice: Much has been written and said about Sayles as one of the most iconic and inspiration independent filmmakers, and I wouldn’t disagree with any of it. But when you see the man in person, as I have on two occasions now—and even more when you get to talk to him one-on-one, as I’ve been fortunate enough to do for a few minutes in both cases—he’s also just a perfect combination of intelligent and inquisitive, confident and open to other perspectives and ideas, grounded and philosophical, political and artistic. It’s not necessarily common that the more you learn about someone, including in person, the more you admire and even idolize them. But that’s the case with Sayles for sure.Lots to be thankful for there! Hope you had a great holiday weekend, and the next series starts next week,BenPS. Who are you thankful for?11/25 Memory Day nominee: Ben Lindsey, the jurist and social reformer who helped originate the idea of juvenile court and was a lifelong advocate for progressive ideas about children, family, and society.

November 24, 2012: Crowd-sourced Thanks

[When things are tough, it’s that much more important to remember the best things, those for which we should say a big thanks. So for this week’s series, I’ve highlighted some American moments, figures, and texts for which I’m particularly thankful. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the communal gratitude of a fellow AmericanStudier—but I know there’s more to share, so please add your thanks, thanks!]
On Twitter, Gavan Dtonic expresses his thanks for James  Baldwin’s essay “Many Thousands Gone.”One more special thankful post tomorrow,BenPS. So who and what are you thankful for?11/24 Memory Day nominee: Junipero Serra, who was certainly more of a Columbus than a Las Casas, but who can also help us connect to the founding and defining cross-cultural histories of California and America.

November 23, 2012: AmericanThanking, Part Five

[When things are tough, it’s that much more important to remember the bestthings, thosefor whichwe should say a big thanks. So for this week’s series, I’ll highlight some American moments, figures, and texts for which I’m particularly thankful. Please add your own nominations, those things for which you’re thankful, for the weekend post—thanks!]
Five American artists for whose works I will always be thankful, and to which I turn for strength and inspiration time and again:1)      Bruce, and especially this song;2)      John Sayles, and especially these movies;3)      Charles Chesnutt, and especially this novel;4)      Jhumpa Lahiri, and especially stories like this;5)      Gloria Anzaldúa, and especially her cross-cultural perspective and voice.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So one more time, what do you think? Moments, figures, artists, and/or texts you’re thankful for?11/23 Memory Day nominee: Theodore Dwight Weld, for his ardent abolitionism, his deeply progressive perspective, and his inspiring American marriage, among other things.

November 22, 2012: AmericanThanking, Part Four

[When things are tough, it’s that much more important to remember the bestthings, thosefor whichwe should say a big thanks. So for this week’s series, I’ll highlight some American moments, figures, and texts for which I’m particularly thankful. Please add your own nominations, those things for which you’re thankful, for the weekend post—thanks!]
On this Thankgiving, I’d be thankful if you’d pass along this post to any dittoheads you know.Nothing would make me more thankful—okay, that’s not true, but in this particular space, very few things would make more thankful—than if I never again had to engage in my AmericanStudies thoughts with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and their ilk; if, that is, this could be a space where the worst of our contemporary political culture, and even more exactly the most egregiously horrific voices therein, could be genuinely and correctly absent from our national narratives and conversations. But they can’t, at least not entirely, and as I wrote multiple times in last week’s series, there’s a very simple and significant reason why: such voices have become more and more centrally concerned with putting forth their own, almost always profoundly inaccurate and destructive, visions of our national history and identity; and so part of the work of a public scholar in American Studies has to be engaging with and correcting such visions. Beck is probably the most consistent offender in this regard—just google “Glenn Beck and Woodrow Wilson” if you doubt it; I’ll be damned if I’ll hyperlink directly to these folks—but today I’m writing instead about El Rushbo (as he calls himself at the end of the story I’ll reference, and to which I also won’t link), and his yearly recounting of “The REAL Story of Thanksgiving” on his radio program.As Limbaugh frames it, quoting—he claims—directly from William Bradford, the first Thanksgiving was not at all about the Pilgrims’ celebrating their survival of the first year in the New World, nor about the related communal gathering with some of the local Native Americans who had so influenced that survival (not that Rush mentions that latter point at all, shockingly). Instead, in this version, the first Thanksgiving represented the culmination of the Pilgrims’ transition from a socialist vision of land and community to a capitalist one, and thus was a celebration of the first (of many, Rush does not hesitate to add) rejection of an American experiment with socialism. It probably goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that he is entirely wrong on the specifics: the first Thanksgiving, such as it was (and it is never given that name in Bradford’s text; the Pilgrims did call a separate event in the summer of 1623 by the name, but that day was devoted entirely to prayer and has nothing to do with any subsequent versions of Thanksgiving), was a multi-day autumn festival with which the Pilgrims celebrated their first successful harvest in the fall of 1621, and which did include a few of the local Native Americans and most certainly did implicitly recognize that Plymouth Plantation had survived its first and most brutal winter and was beginning to prosper.Limbaugh is not wrong that the plantation eventually transitioned from a communal to an individual policy of landholding, a shift that took place about two years later and did indicate the continuing evolution of the Pilgrims’ perspectives on their community and mission and identity (topics that require and have received extended and complex analytical work). But Limbaugh’s error in connecting this transition to “Thanksgiving” is to my mind deeply significant for at least three reasons. First, it illustrates that he has no actual interest in the specifics or details of the text he is allegedly citing and even quoting, that instead his engagement with this key American text is both too poor to be accepted in a first-year college writing course and likely to produce many thousands of Americans with a similarly false understanding. Second, it is a great piece of evidence for how much a political approach to analyses of and narratives about our past is on its face doomed to oversimplify and falsify, to find what the political narratives need rather than the historical record contains. And third, and most relevantly to this blog, it demonstrates how much such mythical versions of our history tend to connect to our most overarching cultural markers—such as Thanksgiving; see also the controversies over the Pledge of Allegiance, the “War on Christmas,” the Ten Commandments in courthouses, and so on—and thus seek to define our most shared national events and elements through their particular, political, and propagandistic lens. The answer, for me, is not to respond with propaganda on or for the other side, tempting as that might be; such a move is probably unwise or at least irresponsible even in the political arena, but is critically off-base when it comes to the work and narratives that comprise American Studies and history and identity. Instead, the way to push back against Limbaugh and Beck’s narratives of our history is first and foremost to point to the history itself, to highlight the texts and voices and stories that constitute it, and ask us to engage with them on their own terms, as fully and broadly as we can, and see what vision of America is the result. I’m pretty confident it won’t be Rush’s, and would be thankful if you’d help prove me right. Final thankful post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Moments, figures, and/or texts you’re thankful for?11/22 Memory Day nominee: Abigail Adams, quite simply one of the most impressive and inspiring Americans.

November 21, 2012: AmericanThanking, Part Three

[When things are tough, it’s that much more important to remember the bestthings, thosefor whichwe should say a big thanks. So for this week’s series, I’ll highlight some American moments, figures, and texts for which I’m particularly thankful. Please add your own nominations, those things for which you’re thankful, for the weekend post—thanks!]
On an American voice I’m very thankful we have the opportunity to hear.To my mind, one of the most fundamental American voices that has been unfortunately lost, or at least severely limited, in our public conversations over the last couple of decades is that of the progressive and socially critical preacher. Some of the most significant religious voices and perspectives in American life, from John Woolman and Jonathan Edwards all the way up to Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King Jr., have used their deep spirituality and knowledge of scripture to, as the saying goes, comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, to challenge the status quo and advance their own visions of the socially radical ideas that are at the heart of the New Testament and Christ’s teachings. It can be difficult, in this era of megachurches on the one hand (with their seeming perfection of televangelist practices and goals) and fundamentalist opposition to gay marriage on the other (with its cooption of Christian beliefs for deeply intolerant ends), to remember in fact just how radical and counter-culture religious voices in America have often been.No American preacher fits that description better than William Apess. Born to mixed-race parents and into extreme poverty in the last years of the 18thcentury, Apess’s bio reads like a hyperbolic mashup of Early Republic and Native American issues: he lived (as he narrates it, at least) in the woods near Colrain, Massachusetts until he was five; the next decade or so spent as an indentured servant to various families in the area; enlisting in a New York militia at the age of 16 and fighting in the War of 1812; battling alcoholism throughout that time, and eventually finding hope in both marriage and his baptism and later ordination as an itinerant Methodist preacher during the period that came to be known as the Second Great Awakening; publishing both his own autobiography, A Son of the Forest (1829, the first published autobiography by a Native author) and the conversion narratives of “Five Christian Indians of the Pequot Tribe” (1833); helping instigate and lead the peaceful Native American protest known as the Mashpee Revolt (1833), against state and national land and governance policies; becoming increasingly radical and cynical, culminating in his controversial speech and pamphlet Eulogy on King Philip (1836); and descending after that point into a brief final period of obscurity, alcoholism, and poverty, ending with his 1841 death in New York City. Each of those stages and experiences can open up its own complex window into, again, a whole range of local, ethnic, and national issues and identities in the period, making Apess one of the most rich subjects of study of all those American voices rediscovered in the last couple decades of scholarly work.But if I had to boil that hugely full and complex life and work down to one text, it would have to be the pseudo-sermon “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man,” a work that Apess appended, almost as an afterthought, to the “Five Christian Indians” collection. The piece’s first sentence alone is I believe sufficient to introduce its striking combination of orality (Apess could and usually did write perfectly grammatical sentences, but doesn’t feel the need to do so consistently in this piece, and all I can say is that it works), strident and impassioned tone, and deeply radical and leveling religious themes: “Having a desire to place a few things before my fellow creatures who are travelling with me to the grave, and to that God who is the maker and preserver both of the white man and the Indian, whose abilities are the same, and who are to be judged by one God, who will show no favor to outward appearances, but will judge righteousness.” Damn straight. Later, Apess hits upon maybe the single most convincing religious rebuttal to racial prejudice ever constructed: “If black or red skins, or any other skin of color is disgraceful to God, it appears that he has disgraced himself a great deal—for he has made fifteen colored people to one white, and placed them here upon this earth.” Say Amen, somebody, as my personal favorite radical revivalist preacher, Bruce Springsteen, has been known to put it.What Apess does in those moments, and throughout this amazing, provocative, and powerful piece, is exactly what his title promises, and what all of these radical preachers have done so successfully in their own ways: holding a mirror up to the most hypocritical and horrific American attitudes and realities, comparing those attitudes and realities to the spiritual values that so many Americans have professed, and demanding of their audiences that they begin to take responsibility for what they see and what they say and what they do. We could use a few more such voices, I believe, and should be very thankful for the ones we’ve got. Thanksgiving post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Moments, figures, and/or texts you’re thankful for?11/21 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Lewis Henry Morgan, for his pioneering anthropology but also for his legal and political activism and his inspiring friendship; and Isaac Bashevis Singer, for his singular, cross-cultural, and profoundly American stories.

November 20, 2012: AmericanThanking, Part Two

[When things are tough, it’s that much more important to remember the bestthings, thosefor whichwe should say a big thanks. So for this week’s series, I’ll highlight some American moments, figures, and texts for which I’m particularly thankful. Please add your own nominations, those things for which you’re thankful, for the weekend post—thanks!]
On one of the Americans I’m most thankful for—and the moment in his life that illustrates why.When it comes to sheer intellect and talent, Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) takes a backseat to nobody in his candidacy for the American Hall of Inspiration. His novel All the King’s Men (1946) might well merit its own blog post someday, partly for the ways in which it forces us to take a longer look at controversial Louisiana governor Huey Long than our main narratives of the man might allow, but mostly for its incredibly rich and complex perspectives on history, historical fiction, and American identity. His Collected Poems (1998, but including poems written as early as the 1920s and as late as the late 1980s) is the kind of book where you can open to any page (and it runs over 800 pages) and be blown away. And throughout his sixty-year career he was also one of America’s most prominent and important literary critics, historians of the South and the Civil War, biographers (his first book, a biography of John Brown, was published when he was twenty-four and is one of the best works on that hugely complex American life), and public intellectuals.But Penn Warren’s most inspiring text and moment cannot, for better and for worse, be separated from what seems clear to me to be his lowest point (at least of his publications and career). During his time in college and graduate school at Vanderbilt Penn Warren became a part of a group of poets and scholars (including John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Donald Davidson) who called themselves the Fugitives; in the late 20s they shifted to a more political and social (and explicitly conservative) focus, renamed themselves the Southern Agrarians, and published a manifesto entitled I’ll Take My Stand (1930). The book’s essays touched on a variety of interconnected and overtly reactionary topics and themes; Penn Warren’s contribution, “The Briar Patch,” was to his discredit a defense of segregation as an imperfect but still the best option through which the South could address the issue of race. Issues of prejudice and racism are difficult to define in absolute ways, without keeping in mind the specific contexts of time period and community and upbringing; and yet Warren was (and, more exactly, was already at the age of twenty-five) one of the most brilliant and well-read American writers, and so I can’t find any way to explain “The Briar Patch” away through such contexts. Du Bois had published The Souls of Black Folk over twenty years before; Penn Warren could and should have known better.As I have argued about earlier focal figures here, however, the genuine sources of inspiration are not necessarily—or at least not just—found in ideals, but rather in realities, in attempts to grapple with the complexities of history and community and identity, both national and (more difficult still) our own. And to his great credit, Penn Warren revisited, very publicly and honestly, the question of segregation and his own ideas about it, and did so at a time when, if anything, Southern opinion in general had hardened even more fully against integration. His 1956 essay “Divided South Searches Its Soul” appeared in Life magazine, perhaps the most prominent national publication; in it Penn Warren examined his own prior beliefs, fully admitted their inadequacy, took stock of the nascent Civil Rights Movement and found it just as inspiring as we could hope, and became, from then on, a firm supporter of the Movement and of racial integration (culminating in his 1965 book Who Speaks for the Negro?, which featured interviews with black leaders like Malcolm X and King). It might seem from afar as if such a reversal, coming two years after Brown v. Board of Education, is a sort of social frontrunning, but I would argue that nothing could be further from the truth—this was the era of Little Rock, of the collective white South (or at the very least its most vocal and powerful leaders and representatives, virtually across the board) entrenching its heels and resisting the Court in every way and beginning the move toward George Wallace’s 1963 embrace of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Penn Warren didn’t reexamine and radically revise his views because it was convenient or appropriate; he did so, it seems clear to me, because it was right.Nothing in life is a zero-sum game, and so the second essay does not cancel out the first; any assessment of Penn Warren’s legacy must, I believe, acknowledge and include his connection to the Agrarians in general and his work in “The Briar Patch” in particular. Yet one of the surest ways to get a good grade in a class taught by me is to demonstrate improvement, to work hard to strengthen one’s voice and ideas, to grow as a writer and thinker and analyzer and, through them, as a student and person. And In “Divided South,” Penn Warren, in the face of imperatives of his community and region and contexts, models such growth. Color me thankful. Next post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Moments, figures, and/or texts you’re thankful for?11/20 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Peregrine White, who was the first European Americanborn in Massachusetts; and Robert F. Kennedy, who I would argue represents one of the state’s and nation’s most inspiring sons.

November 19, 2012: AmericanThanking, Part One

[When things are tough, it’s that much more important to remember the bestthings, thosefor whichwe should say a big thanks. So for this week’s series, I’ll highlight some American moments, figures, and texts for which I’m particularly thankful. Please add your own nominations, those things for which you’re thankful, for the weekend post—thanks!]
On one of the historical turning points for which I’m most thankful, and the man who made it happen.If I’m wary about identifying distinct literary transitions and turning points—as I’ve argued in this space, just before identifying one of course—then I’m even more wary about doing so with historical events. Of course it’s easy, and not inaccurate, to highlight singular and significantly influential events like presidential elections (or, on the bleaker side, like the Wilmington coup and massacre with which I began this blog); but to attribute sweeping historical changes or shifts to those, or any other individual events, seems to me to elide the subtleties and nuances and gradualism and multipart nature of historical movement and change. All of this might be especially true when it comes to wars, since they’re so overt and striking and can seem to hinge so much on singular moments and battles and choices. And yet—and you knew this was coming—I think it is possible to boil down the whole trajectory of the Civil War to a single moment and incredibly bold and risky choice, made by perhaps the most unlikely military leader in our nation’s history.This moment, and everything surrounding it, is a central focus of both Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer-winning historical novel The Killer Angels (1974) and the Hollywood film Gettysburg (1993), so it may be a bit better known than many of my focal points in this space. But then again, every time I’ve told it to someone—and I have done so not infrequently, as it’s one of my favorite American stories—it has been new to them; both of those things (the newness and the favorite-ness) make me feel that it’s okay to include it here. For the contexts, it’s worth noting first, as Shaara does at length, how much the future of the Civil War, and thus America as a whole, hinged on the outcome of Gettysburg—not just militarily but also and more importantly diplomatically, since Confederate General Robert E. Lee was carrying a letter given him by CSA President Jefferson Davis in which, to be brief, the English government basically promised to enter the war on the side of the Confederacy if its army could win a decisive victory on Northern territory. If the war and the American future thus hinged on this battle, the battle itself largely hinged on what happened on the hill called Little Round Top—it was at the extreme Southern end of the Union lines and was the high ground, and if the Confederate army managed to take it, it was likely that the Union army would have to retreat, thus quite possibly giving the battle to Lee. And by the most random but crucial quirk of fate, the Union officer whose regiment was charged with holding Little Round Top was Colonel Joshua Chamberlain of the 20th Maine.Whole books, including much of Shaara’s, have been written about Chamberlain, so here I’ll just highlight a couple of things: he was a college professor of rhetoric and modern languages who had volunteered for the Union army out of a sense of duty; and prior to Gettysburg his principal battlefield experience had been a horrific night (chronicled in his diary) spent huddled amongst corpses during the brutal Union defeat at Fredericksburg (an event that, among others, had led Chamberlain in that same diary to admit to some significant uncertainty about whether he was capable of adequately leading men in battle; and it’s worth adding that many of his men had come to share those doubts, and had nearly staged a mutiny against his leadership not long before Gettysburg). Throughout the second day of the fighting at Gettysburg (July 2nd, 1863), Chamberlain and the 20thMaine were assaulted again and again by Confederate troops trying to take Little Round Top; they managed to hold off those attackers by the late afternoon were virtually out of ammunition (many men were entirely out) and likely could not withstand another charge. No historian or strategist could fault Chamberlain if he had retreated under those circumstances, but instead he called for the ultimate bluff: he ordered his men to fix bayonets and charge the Southern regiment that was preparing for another charge at them. Taken by surprise, and of course unaware of how little ammo their attackers possessed, the Confederate troops surrendered to Chamberlain; Little Big Top did not fall, the Union army took the advantage into the third and final day of fighting, Lee in desperation ordered the infamous Pickett’s Charge, and the rest, of the battle and in many ways the war, was history.It’s impossible, to reiterate where I started this post, to know for sure what would have happened, in any historical moment or situation, had things gone differently. But it is certainly possible, perhaps even likely, that had Chamberlain made a different choice, the battle and war could have gone to the Confederacy, and from then on American history would have looked so different as to be unrecognizable. Chamberlain, who won the Medal of Honor for this moment, would go on to a very diverse and distinguished career, including four one-year terms as governor of Maine, a decade as president of Bowdoin College, and many other posts and accomplishments. But it doesn’t get any more meaningful than that July 2ndbluff—and we should all be thankful for it. Next post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Moments or figures you’re thankful for?11/19 Memory Day nominee: Allen Tate, whose perspective on America and race was as complex as for the rest of his fellow Agrarians, but whose poemsand novelengage with great power with key regional and national questions of history and identity.

November 17-18, 2012: Crowd-sourcing Public Scholarship

[This week marks AmericanStudies’ two-year anniversary (I began the blog, not coincidentally, right after the 2010 elections). So I’ve celebrated that occasion by highlighting five posts in which I’ve considered some of the reasons, possibilities, and issues related to public scholarship, blogging, and related work. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from other AmericanStudiers’ responses to those questions—please add yours!]
Lito Velasco links Monday’s post on Beck University to “how many of the textbooks in America are just plain full-of-crap. I compare the books I used in high school to those used by some people I know (my wife's, for instance) and it amazes me to see the liberties, exaggerations, and really...flat out lies being espoused and taught to kids by some of those books. But...if they're being used by an educational institution, people take it as ‘truth.’ When really, it's a ‘version’ of the truth being spread to hundreds (if not more) of kids because of the agenda of one group of people who wish to partially rewrite American and even global history.”Mike Parker responds to Wednesday’s post on attitudes toward universities by writing that “Since the election, I've been viewing my college experiences with a renewed appreciation. It's interesting watching so many white newscasters and politicians expressing their surprise at the ‘new’ America that emerged out of this election, referring of course to the impact the minority vote had on the outcome. Some are dumbfounded, some are saddened, some are outright scared. And yet, thanks to the Liberal Arts education I received in Comparative Literature and Spanish, which exposed me to diverse American and international works of literature and allowed me to interact with a wide array of young American and International students, I'm free of the above-mentioned struggles others are having with this so-called ‘new’ America. The fact is my education had me prepared for this ‘new’ America even before it became a mainstream story. In attending a multicultural university, where Affirmative Action had ensured a diverse student population, and where professors were committed to teaching diverse voices and perspectives, I was able to address many of my own negative emotional reactions to diversity and shared power at a time when my mind was still open to new ideas. I guess what I'm saying is that this election, and the struggle many whites are having with it, is a vindication of higher education in the Humanities and the Liberal Arts, where professors have been way ahead of the game in preparing students for the future, and providing students with the tools to function in this world with understanding and empathy, and without fear or hatred.”Jeff Renye follows up Mike’s thoughts, adding, “I quote from the end of Chapter 8 of Diane Ravitch's book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System , the latest edition, 2011 [This quote is a mix of Ravitch and citations from a 1988 statement made by the National Academy of Education on the value of the National Assessment of Educational Progress]: "'While these competencies [reading, mathematics, and writing, which the NAEP test is meant to measure] are important prerequisites for living in our modern world and fundamental to general and continuing education, they represent only a portion of the goals of elementary and secondary schooling.' They represent neither the humanities nor the 'aesthetic and moral aims of education' that cannot be measured. The scholars warned that 'when test results become the arbiter of future choices, a subtle shift occurs in which fallible and partial indicators of academic achievement are transformed into major goals of schooling...Those personal qualities that we hold dear--resilience and courage in the face of stress, a sense of craft in our work, a commitment to justice and caring in our social relationships, a dedication to advancing the public good in our communal life--are exceedingly difficult to assess. And so, unfortunately, we are apt to measure what we can, and eventually come to value what is measured over what is left unmeasured.'" To play off of a title from a book written by the scientist and historian Stephen Jay Gould, here is the mismeasure of education. And the miscalculation of what it is and what it is worth.”11/17 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two unique, influential, and very impressive American educators and activists, Yung Wing and Grace Abbott.11/18 Memory Day nominee: Wilma Mankiller, the first female Chief of the Cherokee Nation and a lifelong activist and voice for Native American rights and communities.

November 16, 2012: Public Scholarship, Part Five

[This week marks AmericanStudies’ two-year anniversary (I began the blog, not coincidentally, right after the 2010 elections). So I’m going to celebrate that occasion by highlighting five posts in which I’ve considered some of the reasons, possibilities, and issues related to public scholarship, blogging, and related work. I’d love to hear your thoughts on those questions, or any other 21st century forms and conversations, for the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!]
On the perils and benefits of complexity and nuance for public scholars.I once had a pretty unpleasant Facebook-thread argument—in the immediate context of the summer 2011 debt ceiling nonsense and President Obama’s responses to it—with a leftist political activist (not someone I know personally, but such are the promise and peril of Facebook and the internet) who feels that “academic liberals” are “the lamest, most clueless, most useless motherfuckers in the world.” Since he said this to me directly, after I had offered him what he admitted was “unreciprocated civility,” the line certainly reflects most centrally the guy’s particular and unattractive online voice and personality. But leaving the insults aside, his broader points, which focused on how academic liberals (and perhaps liberals more generally) don’t have the will or tenacity to do whatever it takes to “win” political arguments and thus are ultimately powerless in the face of win-at-all-costs conservatives like those currently running the show in DC, are ones I have myself considered often, including in and in regard to this space.For example, much of my yesterday’s post focused explicitly on the question (in response to a few prompts, including William Hazlitt’s still relevant 1820 essay “On the Spirit of Partisanship” and the work of Reconstruction-era activist and writer Albion Tourgée) of whether liberals should fight conservative fire with fire or with complexity, should (at least at times and when necessary) abandon the high roads of historical awareness and knowledge and context (among many others) and play dirty in order to take on conservative movements that seem often to rely heavily, even depend, upon propaganda and misrepresentations and bald-faced lies. Since this blog began I have, I will admit, included more contemporary and political topics among my focal points here than I had initially planned; but I have not, I devoutly hope, abandoned even a fraction of my desire for nuance and context, for awareness and knowledge, for connecting such issues thoroughly to the long and multi-part threads that can be traced from them to so much of our national history and identity and narratives. As I wrote in yesterday’s post, and as I certainly believe, trying to provide all of those layers is the right thing to do; but what my Facebook interlocutor might ask (if with more vulgarity), and what I certainly ask myself frequently as well, is whether it’s the best thing to do, at least for those of us seeking to enter into and even ideally influence broader national conversations.I’d be lying if I said I had the answer to that question. But I think another 2011 news story illustrates, if I do say so myself, the real and urgent need in our national conversations not only for the voices of public AmericanStudies scholars in general, but in this particular case for the argument at the heart of my second book specifically. In this story, the despicable anti-Muslim bigot Pamela Geller, about whom I wrote in my July 25th and July 26th, 2011 posts, comes out in support of Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik; Geller makes that disgusting case in a variety of ways, but in one particularly telling comment (later scrubbed from her site but caught in a screen capture) she captions a photo of the kids at the Norwegian youth camp (taken the day before the shooting) by asking her readers to “note the faces which are more Middle Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian.” Geller may think that she’s making a point there about Norway specifically or European societies more generally—and certainly she, like Breivik and the rest of their anti-Muslim ilk, are indeed intertwined with social changes and concurrent hate movements throughout the continent—but to my AmericanStudier’s mind the loudest echoes are of deeply American narratives about who is and is not a “pure” or “real” American, narratives which have been and continue to be constructed in direct response both to immigration and to racial and cultural mixture. And narratives, yes, that represent precisely a crucial inspiration for much of my own attempt to define American identity precisely through the concept of such mixtures, to make them the most “pure” version of who and what we have been and are.If I had to guess, I’d say that my Facebook conversant would argue that the best, and perhaps the only, way to respond to somebody like Geller is to publicly attack and shame her, to put her bigotry and vitriol on display for all to see—and to make clear at the same time how deeply interconnected she and they are to the current Republican party (note the photo of her with House Majority Whip Eric Cantor in that linked news story). Again, he might well have a point. But to me, responding by first noting the deep-seated national narratives to which her bigotry and vitriol connect, and then positing some alternative and more genuinely communal narratives in their place, can and, I still believe, will ultimately allow us to move into a future where we all stand a better shot of winning, maybe not immediate prizes of power or influence but fundamental and more meaningful ones of equality and hope. At the end of the day, I’m going to keep making that point, here and everywhere else.Crowd-sourced post tomorrow,BenPS. So what do you think? Responses to any of the week’s posts and questions, or any related issues, for that weekend post?11/16 Memory Day nominee: W.C. Handy, the factory worker and son of ex-slaves who became one of America’s most pioneering and significant ragtimeand blues musicians and composers.