Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 408
August 25, 2012
August 25-26, 2012: Crowd-Sourcing Bad Memories
[One of this blog’s central premises is that we Americans need to do a better job remembering many of our histories, including, even especially, our most dark and negative histories. But the question of how to do so is a pretty challenging and complicated one. This week I have examined five such dark histories and highlighted a few distinct options for how we might better remember them. This crowd-sourced post is drawn out of the responses of other American Studiers to those posts and this topic—please add your thoughts below!]
Responding to Monday’s post, two fellow American Studiers suggest Benjamin Ray’s Salem Witch Trials “documentary archive and transcription project.”And Rob Gosselin writes that “When I think of the Salem Witch Trials I think of Giles Corey. An old man crushed to death under a board and pile of stones. His only crime apparently was to defend his wife from a charge of witchcraft. From what I have read he offered no defense at trial. It is not much of an intellectual leap to move forward three hundred years or so to the modern experience of the United States water boarding Muslim prisoners held under military custody. Torture is never acceptable. It is a crime often supported by the desperate and erroneous excuses of people infected with irrational fear.”Responding to Tuesday’s post, Matt Goguen notes that “Aaron Huey gave a TED talk about photographing poverty at the Pine Ridge Reservation and some of his photos are featured in a recent issue of National Geographic. Along with it is a discussion of the AIM's efforts in the past thirty years.” Matt also nominates the Tuskegee syphilis study as another particularly egregious bad American memory.Monica Jackson argues that “People seem to think that because the horrible things that happened were so long ago, everyone should have gotten over everything by now. But, as Lisa Ling pointed out in her documentary Our America: Life on the Rez , no one has considered that the reservations were never really rebuilt. Just like when we go to war in another country, our military must stay there to help rebuild the country because of the damage that we've caused. Unfortunately, although we do this for others to make our country look good, we don't do it for ourselves. Therefore, even though Wounded Knee happened so long ago, the aftermath is still very real. There are many Natives who suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome, the more severe effects of diabetes (gangrene and amputated limbs) and cancer. There are really high numbers of teen suicides each year and it's because a lot of things happen on the reservation that no one ever hears about. There was a magazine called Jane and they once had an article about high profile cases. Two Caucasian girls were kidnapped and there was a huge media frenzy over them. At the exact same time, on one of the reservations, two Native teenage girls were murdered, the family knew who killed them, but the killer only spent 30 days in jail, no media attention was given to them. There is a lot of abuse that happens on the reservation, but the justice system does not work the same at all. It's almost like living in a different country right here in the U.S. The most effective way to bring attention to the Natives is through the media, but it would really be great if Native Americans suddenly had an arts & literature movement (like the Harlem Renaissance) where a lot of writers and artists would suddenly emerge. But, they need teachers to help them with that.”Emily Hegarty writes, “Last year, I was horrified when white students in a Native American literature course argued that the Wounded Knee Massacre was a justifiable act of war. They specifically argued that the 7th Cavalry was not to blame as they must have been suffering from PTSD after fighting so many Indians. Their arguments were based on their belief that it is always wrong to criticize the U.S. military during a time of war. In their minds, this policy applies equally to all wars throughout history. It was a disturbing class discussion.”Jeff Renye adds that “Thunderheart, which I first saw with the author of this blog, pairs very nicely with one of the documentary films in the PBS series We Shall Remain. You can view this film, about the Wounded Knee Occupation of 1973, in its entirety and access its transcript at this site. One of the important values of work like Ben Railton’s is showing in actuality, from a variety of narrative perspectives and sources, how the American past does find some form of life in the present. To find, recognize, share, and understand these stories with one another carries an implicit hope that to do so will make for better citizens and a better country to call home.
His work continually illustrates that moment in Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” In addition, we’re asked to consider what T. S. Eliot states in the last part of his poem cycle Four Quartets : “A people without history / Is not redeemed from time. For history is a pattern.”
Another good source to start from for more-recent condition in Pine Ridge and the lives of the Lakota is the photo-essay “Ghosts of Wounded Knee,” Harper’s Magazine, Dec. 2009, Matthew Power and Aaron Huey. Full text with original photographs can be viewed here.”
And in response to Friday’s post, Jeff highlights “the sampan scene from Apocalypse Now.” Rob Gosselin argues that it’s “edelic and chaotic as Hollywood likes to portray it. I know a lot of men who where there, and none
appropriate to mention Apocalypse Now on Howard Zinn Day. That was a movie, in a series of movies, that helped define how people remember The Vietnam War. It was a war with atrocities committed on both sides, but it was not as totally psychedelic and chaotic as Hollywood likes to portray it. I know a lot of men who where there, and none have mentioned anything familiar in Apocalypse Now, The Deerhunter, or Full Metal Jacket. One particular friend, a retired marine, told me that if you want to see Vietnam how he remembers it watch the movie Hamburger Hill. It shows the disorganization, chaos and futility of the war much more accurately than any of the Hollywood blockbusters. Yet when people discuss the war in a historical perspective bombastic popular culture quickly rises to the level of fact. It was a horrible war, and Life magazine had images of soldiers burning villages. And who can forget the photos of children, burned by American napalm running down the street. But as far as I can tell there were no feudal warlords or prison camps where prisoners were forced to play Russian roulette. Hollywood had to add psychotic to the horrific just to make the Vietnam experience more palatable to American audiences convinced that the war was nothing but a series of bizarre drug trips and crazy generals. It wasn't. It was imperialistic war, with all of its horrible consequences. As Americans we never wanted to believe that. The only difference was this time it was televised.” For Jeff and Rob’s further discussion, see this thread.
Next series next week,BenPS. Add your thoughts please!8/25 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two supremely talented and pioneering 20thcentury icons, composer Leonard Bernstein and tennis great Althea Gibson.8/26 Memory Day nominee: Lee DeForest, the scientist and inventor without whose contributions the worlds of radio, television, and film would sound very different—if they sounded at all.
Responding to Monday’s post, two fellow American Studiers suggest Benjamin Ray’s Salem Witch Trials “documentary archive and transcription project.”And Rob Gosselin writes that “When I think of the Salem Witch Trials I think of Giles Corey. An old man crushed to death under a board and pile of stones. His only crime apparently was to defend his wife from a charge of witchcraft. From what I have read he offered no defense at trial. It is not much of an intellectual leap to move forward three hundred years or so to the modern experience of the United States water boarding Muslim prisoners held under military custody. Torture is never acceptable. It is a crime often supported by the desperate and erroneous excuses of people infected with irrational fear.”Responding to Tuesday’s post, Matt Goguen notes that “Aaron Huey gave a TED talk about photographing poverty at the Pine Ridge Reservation and some of his photos are featured in a recent issue of National Geographic. Along with it is a discussion of the AIM's efforts in the past thirty years.” Matt also nominates the Tuskegee syphilis study as another particularly egregious bad American memory.Monica Jackson argues that “People seem to think that because the horrible things that happened were so long ago, everyone should have gotten over everything by now. But, as Lisa Ling pointed out in her documentary Our America: Life on the Rez , no one has considered that the reservations were never really rebuilt. Just like when we go to war in another country, our military must stay there to help rebuild the country because of the damage that we've caused. Unfortunately, although we do this for others to make our country look good, we don't do it for ourselves. Therefore, even though Wounded Knee happened so long ago, the aftermath is still very real. There are many Natives who suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome, the more severe effects of diabetes (gangrene and amputated limbs) and cancer. There are really high numbers of teen suicides each year and it's because a lot of things happen on the reservation that no one ever hears about. There was a magazine called Jane and they once had an article about high profile cases. Two Caucasian girls were kidnapped and there was a huge media frenzy over them. At the exact same time, on one of the reservations, two Native teenage girls were murdered, the family knew who killed them, but the killer only spent 30 days in jail, no media attention was given to them. There is a lot of abuse that happens on the reservation, but the justice system does not work the same at all. It's almost like living in a different country right here in the U.S. The most effective way to bring attention to the Natives is through the media, but it would really be great if Native Americans suddenly had an arts & literature movement (like the Harlem Renaissance) where a lot of writers and artists would suddenly emerge. But, they need teachers to help them with that.”Emily Hegarty writes, “Last year, I was horrified when white students in a Native American literature course argued that the Wounded Knee Massacre was a justifiable act of war. They specifically argued that the 7th Cavalry was not to blame as they must have been suffering from PTSD after fighting so many Indians. Their arguments were based on their belief that it is always wrong to criticize the U.S. military during a time of war. In their minds, this policy applies equally to all wars throughout history. It was a disturbing class discussion.”Jeff Renye adds that “Thunderheart, which I first saw with the author of this blog, pairs very nicely with one of the documentary films in the PBS series We Shall Remain. You can view this film, about the Wounded Knee Occupation of 1973, in its entirety and access its transcript at this site. One of the important values of work like Ben Railton’s is showing in actuality, from a variety of narrative perspectives and sources, how the American past does find some form of life in the present. To find, recognize, share, and understand these stories with one another carries an implicit hope that to do so will make for better citizens and a better country to call home.
His work continually illustrates that moment in Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” In addition, we’re asked to consider what T. S. Eliot states in the last part of his poem cycle Four Quartets : “A people without history / Is not redeemed from time. For history is a pattern.”
Another good source to start from for more-recent condition in Pine Ridge and the lives of the Lakota is the photo-essay “Ghosts of Wounded Knee,” Harper’s Magazine, Dec. 2009, Matthew Power and Aaron Huey. Full text with original photographs can be viewed here.”
And in response to Friday’s post, Jeff highlights “the sampan scene from Apocalypse Now.” Rob Gosselin argues that it’s “edelic and chaotic as Hollywood likes to portray it. I know a lot of men who where there, and none
appropriate to mention Apocalypse Now on Howard Zinn Day. That was a movie, in a series of movies, that helped define how people remember The Vietnam War. It was a war with atrocities committed on both sides, but it was not as totally psychedelic and chaotic as Hollywood likes to portray it. I know a lot of men who where there, and none have mentioned anything familiar in Apocalypse Now, The Deerhunter, or Full Metal Jacket. One particular friend, a retired marine, told me that if you want to see Vietnam how he remembers it watch the movie Hamburger Hill. It shows the disorganization, chaos and futility of the war much more accurately than any of the Hollywood blockbusters. Yet when people discuss the war in a historical perspective bombastic popular culture quickly rises to the level of fact. It was a horrible war, and Life magazine had images of soldiers burning villages. And who can forget the photos of children, burned by American napalm running down the street. But as far as I can tell there were no feudal warlords or prison camps where prisoners were forced to play Russian roulette. Hollywood had to add psychotic to the horrific just to make the Vietnam experience more palatable to American audiences convinced that the war was nothing but a series of bizarre drug trips and crazy generals. It wasn't. It was imperialistic war, with all of its horrible consequences. As Americans we never wanted to believe that. The only difference was this time it was televised.” For Jeff and Rob’s further discussion, see this thread.
Next series next week,BenPS. Add your thoughts please!8/25 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two supremely talented and pioneering 20thcentury icons, composer Leonard Bernstein and tennis great Althea Gibson.8/26 Memory Day nominee: Lee DeForest, the scientist and inventor without whose contributions the worlds of radio, television, and film would sound very different—if they sounded at all.
August 24, 2012
August 24, 2012: Bad Memories, Part Five
[One of this blog’s central premises is that we Americans need to do a better job remembering many of our histories, including, even especially, our most dark and negative histories. But the question of how to do so is a pretty challenging and complicated one. This week I’ll be examining five such dark histories, and highlighting a few distinct options for how we might better remember them. As always, both your responses to these examples and your suggestions for others will be very welcome!]
On three complex, flawed, and powerful engagements with one of our more recent and more troubling dark histories.While only one of my week’s focal histories, the Japanese internment, has produced an official governmental apology (and accompanying financial settlement), it’s fair to say that remorse and regret are two of the central emotions which all of these memories elicit (or would elicit if they were better remembered) from most Americans. Yet it’s still pretty rare for one of the principal actors in a dark and destructive event to offer his own public apology for that history, and thus to force us to engage communally with such emotions and perspectives. And that’s exactly what Lieutenant William Calley did in August of 2009, during a speech at a Columbus, GA Kiwanis club: apologize for his role more than forty-one years earlier in the Vietnam War’s controversial and infamous My Lai Massacre. The apology, which seems (particularly given the setting) to have been impromptu and thus entirely genuine, no more erases the massacre than the reparations did the Japanese internment—as the My Lai prosecutor put it upon hearing the news, “It’s hard to apologize for murdering so many people”—but it does provide a belated yet still meaningful model for an open engagement with the worst of what American history includes.For the last few decades, long before Calley’s apology, prominent American artists have created their own such engagements with My Lai, or at least with fictionalized versions of such massacres. Two very different 1980s films offer interestingly parallel portrayals: Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986) makes a My Lai-like village massacre the center of the conflict between its pair of deeply symbolic leaders, Willem Defoe’s angelic Elias and Tom Berenger’s devilish Barnes, with Charlie Sheen’s Chris Taylor nearly giving into Berenger’s demands to participate in the massacre but ultimately siding with Elias’s resistance to it; while Brian DePalma’s Casualties of War (1989) focuses on a much more intimate yet similar moral conflict, between Michael J. Fox’s idealistic Eriksson and Sean Penn’s cynical Meserve over whether they should rape and murder a captured Vietnamese woman. There’s at least one significant difference, however: in Stone’s film the massacre becomes one scene among many charting the men’s conflict and Taylor’s trajectory, and could thus be forgotten or minimized by an audience; whereas in DePalma’s film the debate over the Vietnamese prisoners forms the movie’s heart, and lingers into and beyond the complex final homecoming scene. Given the controversial and uncertain nature of both My Lai itself and the Vietnam War in general, it’s fair to say that each effect has its place in our engagement with them.And then there’s Tim O’Brien. The Vietnam War’s undisputed chief literary chronicler literature locates a My Lai-like massacre, or rather his protagonist’s post-war relationship to and memories of that event, at the ambiguous center of his most mysterious (in every sense) novel, In the Lake of the Woods (1994). It’s possible to argue that those ambiguities and mysteries make the massacre similarly uncertain, reflecting that side of My Lai’s presence in our national narratives; it’s also possible to argue that the massacre represents the novel’s sole and central certainty, reflecting how much My Lai has come to define Vietnam and its aftermath. The strongest analysis of O’Brien’s novel would probably argue for both sides—his book, after all, is both a mystery novel (which demands a certain answer to key questions of death, causation, and so on) and a postmodern novel (which resists any such certainty and portrays the many sides and versions of any story and history). And so it is with our darkest histories as well, of course—their existence and presence and role are unquestionable and vital; but how we remember them, what stories we tell of them, what they continue to mean for our future identity and community, are open and evolving and contested and crucial questions. Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So last chance to add your thoughts for that post—responses to the week’s posts, other bad memories to highlight, different perspectives on these questions, and more.8/24 Memory Day nominee: Howard Zinn, who embodied many of America’s ideals in his lifeand identity just as much as in his ground-breaking and game-changing public scholarly works.
On three complex, flawed, and powerful engagements with one of our more recent and more troubling dark histories.While only one of my week’s focal histories, the Japanese internment, has produced an official governmental apology (and accompanying financial settlement), it’s fair to say that remorse and regret are two of the central emotions which all of these memories elicit (or would elicit if they were better remembered) from most Americans. Yet it’s still pretty rare for one of the principal actors in a dark and destructive event to offer his own public apology for that history, and thus to force us to engage communally with such emotions and perspectives. And that’s exactly what Lieutenant William Calley did in August of 2009, during a speech at a Columbus, GA Kiwanis club: apologize for his role more than forty-one years earlier in the Vietnam War’s controversial and infamous My Lai Massacre. The apology, which seems (particularly given the setting) to have been impromptu and thus entirely genuine, no more erases the massacre than the reparations did the Japanese internment—as the My Lai prosecutor put it upon hearing the news, “It’s hard to apologize for murdering so many people”—but it does provide a belated yet still meaningful model for an open engagement with the worst of what American history includes.For the last few decades, long before Calley’s apology, prominent American artists have created their own such engagements with My Lai, or at least with fictionalized versions of such massacres. Two very different 1980s films offer interestingly parallel portrayals: Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986) makes a My Lai-like village massacre the center of the conflict between its pair of deeply symbolic leaders, Willem Defoe’s angelic Elias and Tom Berenger’s devilish Barnes, with Charlie Sheen’s Chris Taylor nearly giving into Berenger’s demands to participate in the massacre but ultimately siding with Elias’s resistance to it; while Brian DePalma’s Casualties of War (1989) focuses on a much more intimate yet similar moral conflict, between Michael J. Fox’s idealistic Eriksson and Sean Penn’s cynical Meserve over whether they should rape and murder a captured Vietnamese woman. There’s at least one significant difference, however: in Stone’s film the massacre becomes one scene among many charting the men’s conflict and Taylor’s trajectory, and could thus be forgotten or minimized by an audience; whereas in DePalma’s film the debate over the Vietnamese prisoners forms the movie’s heart, and lingers into and beyond the complex final homecoming scene. Given the controversial and uncertain nature of both My Lai itself and the Vietnam War in general, it’s fair to say that each effect has its place in our engagement with them.And then there’s Tim O’Brien. The Vietnam War’s undisputed chief literary chronicler literature locates a My Lai-like massacre, or rather his protagonist’s post-war relationship to and memories of that event, at the ambiguous center of his most mysterious (in every sense) novel, In the Lake of the Woods (1994). It’s possible to argue that those ambiguities and mysteries make the massacre similarly uncertain, reflecting that side of My Lai’s presence in our national narratives; it’s also possible to argue that the massacre represents the novel’s sole and central certainty, reflecting how much My Lai has come to define Vietnam and its aftermath. The strongest analysis of O’Brien’s novel would probably argue for both sides—his book, after all, is both a mystery novel (which demands a certain answer to key questions of death, causation, and so on) and a postmodern novel (which resists any such certainty and portrays the many sides and versions of any story and history). And so it is with our darkest histories as well, of course—their existence and presence and role are unquestionable and vital; but how we remember them, what stories we tell of them, what they continue to mean for our future identity and community, are open and evolving and contested and crucial questions. Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So last chance to add your thoughts for that post—responses to the week’s posts, other bad memories to highlight, different perspectives on these questions, and more.8/24 Memory Day nominee: Howard Zinn, who embodied many of America’s ideals in his lifeand identity just as much as in his ground-breaking and game-changing public scholarly works.
August 23, 2012
August 23, 2012: Bad Memories, Part Four
[One of this blog’s central premises is that we Americans need to do a better job remembering many of our histories, including, even especially, our most dark and negative histories. But the question of how to do so is a pretty challenging and complicated one. This week I’ll be examining five such dark histories, and highlighting a few distinct options for how we might better remember them. As always, both your responses to these examples and your suggestions for others will be very welcome!]
How works from three different genres can help us remember a shameful period in our history.Compared to the other bad memories I’ve highlighted in this space, it might seem like we’ve done all right as a nation by the World War II history of anti-Japanese discrimination and internment. After all, at the urging of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC), the federal government agreed in the late 1980s to pay out $20,000 in reparations to each survivor of the internment, an explicit and striking attempt to right an acknowledged wrong. Yet reparations don’t necessarily equate with remembrance, and I believe we still have a long way to go in remembering, engaging with, and including in our national narratives the experiences of those interned Japanese Americans. The most direct way to do so, of course, is to hear their voices and perspectives, such as by reading Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s memoir (co-authored with her husband James D. Houston) Farewell to Manzanar (1973). In direct and unsparing prose, Houston documents just what the internment experience meant for a nine year old girl and her family; such personal perspectives are vital if we’re to get inside the internment experience, I would argue.Houston published her memoir thirty years after the internment, however, and so the text, important and compelling as it is, can’t be accurately described as immediate; as with any autobiographical work, it’s a constructed reflection on the experiences it portrays. Fortunately, it can be complemented very directly by another set of works connected to Manzanar—pioneering photographer Ansel Adams’s more than 200 photographs taken at the camp in 1943. As that Library of Congress exhibition powerfully illustrates, Adams’s photographs covered a huge range of internment details: from the identities of individuals and families to work, leisure, and other activities, and with (unsurprisingly for Adams, best known for his nature photographs) plenty of representations of the place, setting, and community itself in the mix as well. Photographs, especially ones taken by a talented artist like Adams, are not direct reflections of reality either, of course—but these 1943 shots certainly provide a window into that moment and place, the setting for Houston’s memories and a representative internment space to be sure.If the photographs are in at least some key ways pretty close to the internment moment, at the other end of the spectrum we’d find David Guterson’s 1994 novel Snow Falling on Cedars. Written by a European American born more than a decade after the end of World War II, narrated by another (fictional) European American man (and a veteran of the war’s Pacific battles at that), and focusing at least as much on a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and a love triangle as on flashbacks to two pivotal characters’ internment experiences, Snow can certainly not be placed on the short list of vital internment documents. Yet I would argue (somewhat vaguely, so as not to spoil the novel’s resolutions) that Guterson locates those internment experiences, and their immediate and lingering, individual and communal effects and meanings, at the heart of each of his novel’s plotlines, making his book a historical novel in the truest sense of the phrase: a fiction about history’s power and presence, about the worst of what it can include and (again, trying not to spoil!) some of the best ways we can remember and respond to those memories.All texts that can help us better remember the internment! Final post of mine in the series tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post? Suggestions for other bad American memories?8/23 Memory Day nominee: Clifford Geertz, the pioneering cultural anthropologist who brought literary, psychological, and sociological insights to the field, and profoundly influenced our understandings of society, religion, community, and ourselves.
How works from three different genres can help us remember a shameful period in our history.Compared to the other bad memories I’ve highlighted in this space, it might seem like we’ve done all right as a nation by the World War II history of anti-Japanese discrimination and internment. After all, at the urging of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC), the federal government agreed in the late 1980s to pay out $20,000 in reparations to each survivor of the internment, an explicit and striking attempt to right an acknowledged wrong. Yet reparations don’t necessarily equate with remembrance, and I believe we still have a long way to go in remembering, engaging with, and including in our national narratives the experiences of those interned Japanese Americans. The most direct way to do so, of course, is to hear their voices and perspectives, such as by reading Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s memoir (co-authored with her husband James D. Houston) Farewell to Manzanar (1973). In direct and unsparing prose, Houston documents just what the internment experience meant for a nine year old girl and her family; such personal perspectives are vital if we’re to get inside the internment experience, I would argue.Houston published her memoir thirty years after the internment, however, and so the text, important and compelling as it is, can’t be accurately described as immediate; as with any autobiographical work, it’s a constructed reflection on the experiences it portrays. Fortunately, it can be complemented very directly by another set of works connected to Manzanar—pioneering photographer Ansel Adams’s more than 200 photographs taken at the camp in 1943. As that Library of Congress exhibition powerfully illustrates, Adams’s photographs covered a huge range of internment details: from the identities of individuals and families to work, leisure, and other activities, and with (unsurprisingly for Adams, best known for his nature photographs) plenty of representations of the place, setting, and community itself in the mix as well. Photographs, especially ones taken by a talented artist like Adams, are not direct reflections of reality either, of course—but these 1943 shots certainly provide a window into that moment and place, the setting for Houston’s memories and a representative internment space to be sure.If the photographs are in at least some key ways pretty close to the internment moment, at the other end of the spectrum we’d find David Guterson’s 1994 novel Snow Falling on Cedars. Written by a European American born more than a decade after the end of World War II, narrated by another (fictional) European American man (and a veteran of the war’s Pacific battles at that), and focusing at least as much on a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and a love triangle as on flashbacks to two pivotal characters’ internment experiences, Snow can certainly not be placed on the short list of vital internment documents. Yet I would argue (somewhat vaguely, so as not to spoil the novel’s resolutions) that Guterson locates those internment experiences, and their immediate and lingering, individual and communal effects and meanings, at the heart of each of his novel’s plotlines, making his book a historical novel in the truest sense of the phrase: a fiction about history’s power and presence, about the worst of what it can include and (again, trying not to spoil!) some of the best ways we can remember and respond to those memories.All texts that can help us better remember the internment! Final post of mine in the series tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post? Suggestions for other bad American memories?8/23 Memory Day nominee: Clifford Geertz, the pioneering cultural anthropologist who brought literary, psychological, and sociological insights to the field, and profoundly influenced our understandings of society, religion, community, and ourselves.
August 22, 2012
August 22, 2012: Bad Memories, Part Three
[One of this blog’s central premises is that we Americans need to do a better job remembering many of our histories, including, even especially, our most dark and negative histories. But the question of how to do so is a pretty challenging and complicated one. This week I’ll be examining five such dark histories, and highlighting a few distinct options for how we might better remember them. As always, both your responses to these examples and your suggestions for others will be very welcome!]
On the innovative and impressive lengths to which writers will go to capture one of our most horrific histories.I know this is a strange way to start a post, but I can still remember how impressed I was when Alex Haley stripped down to his underwear. Toward the end of Haley’s Roots(1976), the author details his painstakingly thorough research into the life of his slave ancestors, and particularly into the book’s main protagonist, Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped into slavery in Africa and brought to the Americas as part of the Middle Passage. In an effort to get slightly closer to the experience of that horrific journey, Haley stripped down and climbed into the crowded hold of a freight ship, imagining himself in his tiny space surrounded by a sea of enchained, enfeebled, sick and death-ridden and terrified fellow slaves, not knowing whether he would survive nor where he was headed if he did. As Haley freely admits, the act might seem silly, both literally and in its distance from the Middle Passage itself—but it also symbolizes nicely Haley’s willingness to do whatever he could to imagine himself back into his family’s, people’s, and our national past; a willingness that certainly resulted in a highly detailed and hugely compelling work of autobiographical and historical fiction.It’s difficult to imagine getting any closer to the details and specifics of the Middle Passage than did Haley, in his own action and in the resulting section of the book. But details and specifics are only part of a historical event, of course, and not necessarily the most evocative or significant part. And other American authors have made equally interesting stylistic choices in an attempt to capture other, more ephemeral but no less meaningful sides to the Middle Passage. Robert Hayden’s dense and demanding poem “Middle Passage” (1962), for example, utilizes numerous and varied formal elements to capture the passage’s many voices and identities: direct quotes from journals and letters (written by not only slaves but also slavers, other sailors, and more); the Biblical names of slave ships juxtaposed with passages from Scripture; an extended quote from Shakespeare that echoes many of the passage’s themes; Hayden’s own highly poetic and evocative language and descriptions. The poem does not, to my mind, capture much at all (nor does Hayden intend to) the experience or emotions for any one slave—but it portrays the whole communal experience with deep and real power, and contextualizes it in a longer literary, cultural, and human history at the same time. Certainly both of those effects are likewise key to remembering the Middle Passage.Yet so too is that individual side, and while Haley’s book does a great job conveying all the details of what an individual slave might have experienced, I don’t know that his journalistic style is quite able to capture the emotions and effects of those experiences. For that, I’d highlight a brief but crucial section of one of the most prominent American historical novels: Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). Beloved is about the whole of slavery, among many other weighty American themes, but in one particularly complex, dazzling, and important passage Morrison makes it very specifically about the Middle Passage; the passage, which represents the only section in which Morrison uses her stream of consciousness style to portray the perspective of the ghostly title character during her experiences after being killed and before coming back to life (spoilers, sorry!), locates that character on the Middle Passage, even though neither she nor any of the novel’s other characters actually experienced the journey. There are thematic and historical effects to that choice, making clear how much the passage served as a formative and foundational experience for—a ghost that haunted, if you will—all that followed in slavery, for African Americans, for America, and so on. Yet Morrison’s hugely compelling stream of consciousness style also simply capturesthe passage, the feel and emotions and moments of it, in a way that neither of those other talented authors quite accomplishes for me.Individually, three very significant works; taken together, a great start to imagining our way into this horrific and vital American history. Next one tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post? Suggestions for other bad American memories?8/22 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two very different but equally unique, talented, and just plain entertaining20th centurywriters, Dorothy Parker and Ray Bradbury.
On the innovative and impressive lengths to which writers will go to capture one of our most horrific histories.I know this is a strange way to start a post, but I can still remember how impressed I was when Alex Haley stripped down to his underwear. Toward the end of Haley’s Roots(1976), the author details his painstakingly thorough research into the life of his slave ancestors, and particularly into the book’s main protagonist, Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped into slavery in Africa and brought to the Americas as part of the Middle Passage. In an effort to get slightly closer to the experience of that horrific journey, Haley stripped down and climbed into the crowded hold of a freight ship, imagining himself in his tiny space surrounded by a sea of enchained, enfeebled, sick and death-ridden and terrified fellow slaves, not knowing whether he would survive nor where he was headed if he did. As Haley freely admits, the act might seem silly, both literally and in its distance from the Middle Passage itself—but it also symbolizes nicely Haley’s willingness to do whatever he could to imagine himself back into his family’s, people’s, and our national past; a willingness that certainly resulted in a highly detailed and hugely compelling work of autobiographical and historical fiction.It’s difficult to imagine getting any closer to the details and specifics of the Middle Passage than did Haley, in his own action and in the resulting section of the book. But details and specifics are only part of a historical event, of course, and not necessarily the most evocative or significant part. And other American authors have made equally interesting stylistic choices in an attempt to capture other, more ephemeral but no less meaningful sides to the Middle Passage. Robert Hayden’s dense and demanding poem “Middle Passage” (1962), for example, utilizes numerous and varied formal elements to capture the passage’s many voices and identities: direct quotes from journals and letters (written by not only slaves but also slavers, other sailors, and more); the Biblical names of slave ships juxtaposed with passages from Scripture; an extended quote from Shakespeare that echoes many of the passage’s themes; Hayden’s own highly poetic and evocative language and descriptions. The poem does not, to my mind, capture much at all (nor does Hayden intend to) the experience or emotions for any one slave—but it portrays the whole communal experience with deep and real power, and contextualizes it in a longer literary, cultural, and human history at the same time. Certainly both of those effects are likewise key to remembering the Middle Passage.Yet so too is that individual side, and while Haley’s book does a great job conveying all the details of what an individual slave might have experienced, I don’t know that his journalistic style is quite able to capture the emotions and effects of those experiences. For that, I’d highlight a brief but crucial section of one of the most prominent American historical novels: Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). Beloved is about the whole of slavery, among many other weighty American themes, but in one particularly complex, dazzling, and important passage Morrison makes it very specifically about the Middle Passage; the passage, which represents the only section in which Morrison uses her stream of consciousness style to portray the perspective of the ghostly title character during her experiences after being killed and before coming back to life (spoilers, sorry!), locates that character on the Middle Passage, even though neither she nor any of the novel’s other characters actually experienced the journey. There are thematic and historical effects to that choice, making clear how much the passage served as a formative and foundational experience for—a ghost that haunted, if you will—all that followed in slavery, for African Americans, for America, and so on. Yet Morrison’s hugely compelling stream of consciousness style also simply capturesthe passage, the feel and emotions and moments of it, in a way that neither of those other talented authors quite accomplishes for me.Individually, three very significant works; taken together, a great start to imagining our way into this horrific and vital American history. Next one tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post? Suggestions for other bad American memories?8/22 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two very different but equally unique, talented, and just plain entertaining20th centurywriters, Dorothy Parker and Ray Bradbury.
August 21, 2012
August 21, 2012: Bad Memories, Part Two
[One of this blog’s central premises is that we Americans need to do a better job remembering many of our histories, including, even especially, our most dark and negative histories. But the question of how to do so is a pretty challenging and complicated one. This week I’ll be examining five such dark histories, and highlighting a few distinct options for how we might better remember them. As always, both your responses to these examples and your suggestions for others will be very welcome!]
On three distinct attempts to raise our national awareness of a horrific event.It’s nothing short of a national travesty that we don’t better remember the 1890 massacre at South Dakota’s Wounded Knee Creek, perhaps the most egregious and symbolic violence committed against Native Americans by the US military (although that’s a long and tragically competitive list). That’s my take, but it’s also one of the central arguments of Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (1970), among the truly pioneering works of Native American history and studies, multiculturalism, and ethnic studies. As its subtitle suggests, Brown’s book covers much more than just Wounded Knee—but throughout, his overt and impassioned purpose is to force such events into our collective memories and histories, to use his recovered sources and scholarly analysis to change Americans’ awareness and perspectives.Obviously I’m on board with such a project, and Brown’s book was a best-seller for more than a year, suggesting that his message reached far more readers than do most scholarly works. But it’s also possible to imagine that most of those readers were already sympathetic to Native American experiences and voices, and thus that while his book might have enriched and enlarged such perspectives, it didn’t necessarily change them. Genuine and sweeping change, this argument might go, requires more aggressive actions, ones that demand national attention and response on both political and social levels—actions like those undertaken by members of the American Indian Movement, including their 1973 “occupation” of Wounded Knee. That 71-day occupation, the resulting federal “siege,” and the accompanying and subsequent threats and even acts of violence, eerily mirrored certain aspects of the original Wounded Knee massacre—but that, as much as anything, was precisely AIM’s point: that so long as we don’t engage with histories and communities such as those connected to Wounded Knee, we will simply continue to replicate and reinforce those histories and further destroy those communities. I couldn’t agree more, and despite the legal and controversial challenges that significantly derailed AIM’s efforts later in the decade, the group most definitely brought such awareness to Native American voices and histories. Yet as the Wounded Knee occupation illustrates, they did so in an explicitly confrontational manner, one likely to create as much anger as empathy in broader American audiences; while such activism is entirely appropriate and even necessary, it’s worth considering whether and how it can be complemented by efforts to entertain as well as educate those broader audiences. To that end, I would point to Michael Apted’s film Thunderheart (1992), a murder mystery and thriller that stars Val Kilmer and Sam Shepard, features a great deal of humor and suspense, and is in many ways a Hollywood movie. Yet at its heart, the film centers on, and connects the spiritual and psychological awakening of Kilmer’s protagonist to, two historical events: a fictionalized representation of AIM’s efforts; and an accurate engagement with the Wounded Knee Massacre. Thunderheart’s broad American audiences wouldn’t necessarily know they were learning about Wounded Knee and its related histories and contexts—but there’s no question that they, like Kilmer’s character, would come away with significantly strengthened perspectives on those questions.The answer, of course, is d) All of the above! Next post in the series tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post? Suggestions for other bad American memories?8/21 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two game-changing performers who jazzed up American culture and scored hugely influential legacies, William “Count” Basie and Wilt Chamberlain.[image error]
On three distinct attempts to raise our national awareness of a horrific event.It’s nothing short of a national travesty that we don’t better remember the 1890 massacre at South Dakota’s Wounded Knee Creek, perhaps the most egregious and symbolic violence committed against Native Americans by the US military (although that’s a long and tragically competitive list). That’s my take, but it’s also one of the central arguments of Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (1970), among the truly pioneering works of Native American history and studies, multiculturalism, and ethnic studies. As its subtitle suggests, Brown’s book covers much more than just Wounded Knee—but throughout, his overt and impassioned purpose is to force such events into our collective memories and histories, to use his recovered sources and scholarly analysis to change Americans’ awareness and perspectives.Obviously I’m on board with such a project, and Brown’s book was a best-seller for more than a year, suggesting that his message reached far more readers than do most scholarly works. But it’s also possible to imagine that most of those readers were already sympathetic to Native American experiences and voices, and thus that while his book might have enriched and enlarged such perspectives, it didn’t necessarily change them. Genuine and sweeping change, this argument might go, requires more aggressive actions, ones that demand national attention and response on both political and social levels—actions like those undertaken by members of the American Indian Movement, including their 1973 “occupation” of Wounded Knee. That 71-day occupation, the resulting federal “siege,” and the accompanying and subsequent threats and even acts of violence, eerily mirrored certain aspects of the original Wounded Knee massacre—but that, as much as anything, was precisely AIM’s point: that so long as we don’t engage with histories and communities such as those connected to Wounded Knee, we will simply continue to replicate and reinforce those histories and further destroy those communities. I couldn’t agree more, and despite the legal and controversial challenges that significantly derailed AIM’s efforts later in the decade, the group most definitely brought such awareness to Native American voices and histories. Yet as the Wounded Knee occupation illustrates, they did so in an explicitly confrontational manner, one likely to create as much anger as empathy in broader American audiences; while such activism is entirely appropriate and even necessary, it’s worth considering whether and how it can be complemented by efforts to entertain as well as educate those broader audiences. To that end, I would point to Michael Apted’s film Thunderheart (1992), a murder mystery and thriller that stars Val Kilmer and Sam Shepard, features a great deal of humor and suspense, and is in many ways a Hollywood movie. Yet at its heart, the film centers on, and connects the spiritual and psychological awakening of Kilmer’s protagonist to, two historical events: a fictionalized representation of AIM’s efforts; and an accurate engagement with the Wounded Knee Massacre. Thunderheart’s broad American audiences wouldn’t necessarily know they were learning about Wounded Knee and its related histories and contexts—but there’s no question that they, like Kilmer’s character, would come away with significantly strengthened perspectives on those questions.The answer, of course, is d) All of the above! Next post in the series tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post? Suggestions for other bad American memories?8/21 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two game-changing performers who jazzed up American culture and scored hugely influential legacies, William “Count” Basie and Wilt Chamberlain.[image error]
August 20, 2012
August 20, 2012: Bad Memories, Part One
[One of this blog’s central premises is that we Americans need to do a better job remembering many of our histories, including, even especially, our most dark and negative histories. But the question of how to do so is a pretty challenging and complicated one. This week I’ll be examining five such dark histories, and highlighting a few distinct options for how we might better remember them. As always, both your responses to these examples and your suggestions for others will be very welcome!]
On two very different but not disconnected ways to remember the Salem Witch Trials.The Salem Witch Trials comprise one of America’s lowest points, a moment when the kinds of discrimination, hatred, and over-zealous self-righteousness that can characterize any human community (especially a self-defined “city on a hill”) congealed into a period of frenzy and terror which left a score of innocent people dead. The question of how 21st century Americans reconnect with that extreme period, with indeed whether it’s even possible for us to recognize and analyze the kinds of individual and communal attitudes and perspectives that can lead to such madness, is to my mind a profoundly important one, not only for our understandings of American history but also for our ability to analyze our own identities and communities. Few questions are more serious and significant.So of course the primary way Salem has chosen to remember the Witch Trials is deeply, deeply silly. The so-called “witch city” has entirely embraced that designation, from semi-highbrow institutions like the Salem Witch Museum to thoroughly lowbrow ones like the numerous occult shops and t-shirt vendors and the like. For the entire month of October the city becomes America’s unofficial but undisputed Halloween headquarters. One of its prominent squares even features a statue of Bewitched’s Samantha (donated by the cable network TV Land), for crying out loud. For American Studiers like this one, the city’s embrace of the occult can seem irritatingly trivial at best, and downright offensive to the victims and memories of the Trials at worst. Yet it’s also possible to argue that the Witch City moniker has brought much more attention and tourism to Salem than would otherwise be the case—and, this argument might proceed, once that awareness and those visitors are present, it’s entirely possible for them to gain additional and more complex perspectives on the city’s history.Without doubt, at least to my mind, the city’s best opportunity for such shifts and strengthenings of perspectives lies in the Witch Trials Memorial. As I wrote in this post, I think the Memorial represents the very best of what public art can be and do; and like all such public art, it depends on your presence to achieve those effects (so nothing I write here, nor even the photo at the first link, can do it justice). Moreover, unlike another complex and powerful work that seeks to remember the Trials, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1952), the Memorial does not in any way link the Trials to 20th or 21stcentury events, nor make any other concessions to a contemporary audience; instead, its great success lies in its ability to transport its visitors into a combination of emotions (holiness and horror, peace and pain, calm and chaos, injustice and inspiration) that capture both the heart of the Trials and their continued presence and effects in our collective consciousness. But of course it can’t achieve that success if folks don’t visit it—and maybe the Witch City narratives, silly as they can seem, can bring a lot more such visitors to the Memorial.Next bad memories tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses and/or suggestions of other hard-to-remember events for the weekend’s post?8/20 Memory Day nominee: H.P. Lovecraft, one of the true masters of horror, fantasy, “weird tales,”and other supernatural and fantastic literatures, and a figure whose creations and imagination have influenced countless sidesto 20th and 21stcentury American and world culture.[image error]
On two very different but not disconnected ways to remember the Salem Witch Trials.The Salem Witch Trials comprise one of America’s lowest points, a moment when the kinds of discrimination, hatred, and over-zealous self-righteousness that can characterize any human community (especially a self-defined “city on a hill”) congealed into a period of frenzy and terror which left a score of innocent people dead. The question of how 21st century Americans reconnect with that extreme period, with indeed whether it’s even possible for us to recognize and analyze the kinds of individual and communal attitudes and perspectives that can lead to such madness, is to my mind a profoundly important one, not only for our understandings of American history but also for our ability to analyze our own identities and communities. Few questions are more serious and significant.So of course the primary way Salem has chosen to remember the Witch Trials is deeply, deeply silly. The so-called “witch city” has entirely embraced that designation, from semi-highbrow institutions like the Salem Witch Museum to thoroughly lowbrow ones like the numerous occult shops and t-shirt vendors and the like. For the entire month of October the city becomes America’s unofficial but undisputed Halloween headquarters. One of its prominent squares even features a statue of Bewitched’s Samantha (donated by the cable network TV Land), for crying out loud. For American Studiers like this one, the city’s embrace of the occult can seem irritatingly trivial at best, and downright offensive to the victims and memories of the Trials at worst. Yet it’s also possible to argue that the Witch City moniker has brought much more attention and tourism to Salem than would otherwise be the case—and, this argument might proceed, once that awareness and those visitors are present, it’s entirely possible for them to gain additional and more complex perspectives on the city’s history.Without doubt, at least to my mind, the city’s best opportunity for such shifts and strengthenings of perspectives lies in the Witch Trials Memorial. As I wrote in this post, I think the Memorial represents the very best of what public art can be and do; and like all such public art, it depends on your presence to achieve those effects (so nothing I write here, nor even the photo at the first link, can do it justice). Moreover, unlike another complex and powerful work that seeks to remember the Trials, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1952), the Memorial does not in any way link the Trials to 20th or 21stcentury events, nor make any other concessions to a contemporary audience; instead, its great success lies in its ability to transport its visitors into a combination of emotions (holiness and horror, peace and pain, calm and chaos, injustice and inspiration) that capture both the heart of the Trials and their continued presence and effects in our collective consciousness. But of course it can’t achieve that success if folks don’t visit it—and maybe the Witch City narratives, silly as they can seem, can bring a lot more such visitors to the Memorial.Next bad memories tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses and/or suggestions of other hard-to-remember events for the weekend’s post?8/20 Memory Day nominee: H.P. Lovecraft, one of the true masters of horror, fantasy, “weird tales,”and other supernatural and fantastic literatures, and a figure whose creations and imagination have influenced countless sidesto 20th and 21stcentury American and world culture.[image error]
August 18, 2012
August 18-19, 2012: Crowd-sourcing American Dads
[To honor a week that began with my Dad’s birthday and includes my own, I’ve featured a series on fatherhood in American culture, history, and literature. This is the next crowd-sourced post, drawn from responses and suggestions from readers and other American Studiers. Add yours below!]
Steve Railton writes that “I feel pretty good about all the various roles I've played in my life, but the one I loved the most, felt most fulfilled by, was ‘dad’ to you and your sister. I don't think my father could have seen that as an option. ‘Dad’ in his generation meant: go out of the house early every workday, come home late, and bring that paycheck back with you. Conversely, my mom (even though she was Phi Beta Kappa, B.A., and worked until her first pregnancy) never had many options either. It's gotta be good that the boxes in which our culture, like every other, wants us to climb are a lot more elastic these days -- at least for the middle class. Of course, that group is being shrunk even faster, probably, than the boxes are growing. When two incomes are necessary to keep making credit card payments, no one gets to be ‘Mr. or Ms. Mom.’”Travel writer Nicole Fanning responds to the Washington and Lincoln post by sending along this article on the Mary Todd Lincoln historic house.And Rob Gosselin sends along the following piece on his own experiences as a Dad:“A Simple DecisionAs a divorced father I think the best decision I made raising my two young sons was to make them share a bedroom when they were finally allowed to spend time with me.When I was still living a married life I owned a large house. My wife was quite insistent on our sons having their own rooms just as soon as they were old enough to peacefully sleep through the night. Since she was a stay-at-home mom, and responsible for all things children, I considered this issue part of her realm. I sheepishly conceded to her the authority to make this bold decision.Not long after my sons moved into their own rooms I was forced to move out of that home of ten years when friends and lawyers, approached by a frightened and frustrated now ex-wife, concurred that I was deep in the throws of severe mental illness and unfit to be a father. Almost everyone involved, with me being the only exception, decided that for the good of the family changes had to be made. And the primary change was I had to go.Fortunately I did get professional help, and one very long year later my life changed from having supervised day visits to being allowed to spend entire alternate weekends with my sons. I was still living in a men’s homeless shelter at the time, so I had to start taking my sons to my parent’s house to spend my custodial weekends with them in a more suitable environment. My parent’s house has two spare bedrooms. That’s where I had a choice. My sons could share a room, or they could both get their own room and I could sleep on the couch. I chose the first of these two options. When I was a boy my older brother and I shared a bedroom. That’s where, late at night, we would talk in the dark. I can’t remember most of what we discussed, but I do know that was our time to just say what we were feeling. We owned that room, and in it we were allowed to start being the men we would eventually grow up to be. When my sons and I spent our weekends at my parent’s house I would tuck them into bed for the night and go next door to my own room. If I was quiet I could hear them through the wall. At first they would be silent, but then they would start to talk. I could not, nor did I ever try to, make out what they were saying. I didn’t care. All I knew was that they were being brothers on their own terms and in their own safe place. That was nine years ago. Today, because of a lot of hard work on my part, I am emotionally closer to my sons than I ever was to my own father, and he was a traditional live-at-home dad. This close relationship was recently tested when my nephew, a young man just a few years older than my sons, died under very tragic circumstances. My sons were very close to their cousin. It was a very traumatic experience for them.During this difficult time I talked to my sons, no holds barred, about all of the issues surrounding this young man’s untimely death. I was completely honest with them in explaining all the difficult details of his passing. I was humbled when my sons were then able to talk to me about what they were experiencing as they said goodbye to their much loved cousin.Not long after the memorial service for my nephew my sons and I went back to my parent’s house for our weekend together. In the dark of their shared room I’m sure they talked about their cousin’s death very differently than when they talked about it with me.As close as I am to my sons, and as much as I try and always answer even their hardest of questions, I am grateful they have that small, shared room for a retreat. It gives them a place to try and sort out, in their own way, what can sometimes be a very confusing and frightening world.”Next series next week!BenPS. Any takes or thoughts of yours on fatherhood in American culture, literature, society, history, or your own experiences? Add ‘em below!8/18 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two pioneering Americans, in very different ways, Virginia Dare and Meriwether Lewis.8/19 Memory Day nominees: Another tie, this time between two men without whom the history of television and popular culturewould be very different, Philo Farnsworth and Gene Roddenberry.[image error]
Steve Railton writes that “I feel pretty good about all the various roles I've played in my life, but the one I loved the most, felt most fulfilled by, was ‘dad’ to you and your sister. I don't think my father could have seen that as an option. ‘Dad’ in his generation meant: go out of the house early every workday, come home late, and bring that paycheck back with you. Conversely, my mom (even though she was Phi Beta Kappa, B.A., and worked until her first pregnancy) never had many options either. It's gotta be good that the boxes in which our culture, like every other, wants us to climb are a lot more elastic these days -- at least for the middle class. Of course, that group is being shrunk even faster, probably, than the boxes are growing. When two incomes are necessary to keep making credit card payments, no one gets to be ‘Mr. or Ms. Mom.’”Travel writer Nicole Fanning responds to the Washington and Lincoln post by sending along this article on the Mary Todd Lincoln historic house.And Rob Gosselin sends along the following piece on his own experiences as a Dad:“A Simple DecisionAs a divorced father I think the best decision I made raising my two young sons was to make them share a bedroom when they were finally allowed to spend time with me.When I was still living a married life I owned a large house. My wife was quite insistent on our sons having their own rooms just as soon as they were old enough to peacefully sleep through the night. Since she was a stay-at-home mom, and responsible for all things children, I considered this issue part of her realm. I sheepishly conceded to her the authority to make this bold decision.Not long after my sons moved into their own rooms I was forced to move out of that home of ten years when friends and lawyers, approached by a frightened and frustrated now ex-wife, concurred that I was deep in the throws of severe mental illness and unfit to be a father. Almost everyone involved, with me being the only exception, decided that for the good of the family changes had to be made. And the primary change was I had to go.Fortunately I did get professional help, and one very long year later my life changed from having supervised day visits to being allowed to spend entire alternate weekends with my sons. I was still living in a men’s homeless shelter at the time, so I had to start taking my sons to my parent’s house to spend my custodial weekends with them in a more suitable environment. My parent’s house has two spare bedrooms. That’s where I had a choice. My sons could share a room, or they could both get their own room and I could sleep on the couch. I chose the first of these two options. When I was a boy my older brother and I shared a bedroom. That’s where, late at night, we would talk in the dark. I can’t remember most of what we discussed, but I do know that was our time to just say what we were feeling. We owned that room, and in it we were allowed to start being the men we would eventually grow up to be. When my sons and I spent our weekends at my parent’s house I would tuck them into bed for the night and go next door to my own room. If I was quiet I could hear them through the wall. At first they would be silent, but then they would start to talk. I could not, nor did I ever try to, make out what they were saying. I didn’t care. All I knew was that they were being brothers on their own terms and in their own safe place. That was nine years ago. Today, because of a lot of hard work on my part, I am emotionally closer to my sons than I ever was to my own father, and he was a traditional live-at-home dad. This close relationship was recently tested when my nephew, a young man just a few years older than my sons, died under very tragic circumstances. My sons were very close to their cousin. It was a very traumatic experience for them.During this difficult time I talked to my sons, no holds barred, about all of the issues surrounding this young man’s untimely death. I was completely honest with them in explaining all the difficult details of his passing. I was humbled when my sons were then able to talk to me about what they were experiencing as they said goodbye to their much loved cousin.Not long after the memorial service for my nephew my sons and I went back to my parent’s house for our weekend together. In the dark of their shared room I’m sure they talked about their cousin’s death very differently than when they talked about it with me.As close as I am to my sons, and as much as I try and always answer even their hardest of questions, I am grateful they have that small, shared room for a retreat. It gives them a place to try and sort out, in their own way, what can sometimes be a very confusing and frightening world.”Next series next week!BenPS. Any takes or thoughts of yours on fatherhood in American culture, literature, society, history, or your own experiences? Add ‘em below!8/18 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two pioneering Americans, in very different ways, Virginia Dare and Meriwether Lewis.8/19 Memory Day nominees: Another tie, this time between two men without whom the history of television and popular culturewould be very different, Philo Farnsworth and Gene Roddenberry.[image error]
August 17, 2012
August 17, 2012: Missing Fathers
[To honor a week that began with my Dad’s birthday and includes my own, I’m featuring a series on fatherhood in American culture, history, and literature. This is the fourth and final post in that series. Once again, the weekend’s post will be a crowd-sourced one, so please share your responses, ideas, thoughts, suggestions, and perspectives for that post!]
On social and political, literary, and cultural engagements with a vexing and crucial late 20th century American issue.Few, if any, governmental publications have in our long national history achieved the kinds of controversial, galvanizing, long-lasting significance and effect as The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (1965). Written for President Lyndon Johnson by Assistant Secretary of Labor (and future Senator) Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and thus known forever after as The Moynihan Report, the document began as a simple statistical analysis of African American poverty and related issues, but as the subtitle suggests turned into a set of warnings and recommendations in response to those issues. By far the most famous, controversial, and to both Moynihan and his readers (critical and supportive) central of those warnings had to do with single-parent households, and more exactly with single mothers and missing fathers; it was that heavily present family dynamic, to Moynihan, that explained—even better than historic and broader contexts and causes, although he made clear that it was related to and in part caused by them—much of the worst of what impoverished African American families and children (particularly in the period’s disintegrating cities) were experiencing.In the nearly fifty years since the Report’s release, that particular argument has, along with the rest of the Report’s findings and analyses, been subject to numerous critiques, addenda, agreements, revisions, and so on. But whatever we make of Moynihan’s ideas on the topic, there’s no question that the theme of missing black fathers has been an important and ongoing one in late 20thand early 21st century American society and culture. That theme, and more exactly what the missing fathers mean for their families and especially their sons, is at the heart of two of the greatest African American novels of the decades following Moynihan (or any time period for that matter): Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977) and David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident(1981). Without spoiling either of these mysterious and complex works, I’ll just note that Morrison’s Milkman Dead and Bradley’s John Washington are (in different but not unrelated ways) obsessively searching for the truths left behind by their missing fathers, and that both their quests and their culminating discoveries and choices represent profoundly powerful and symbolic narratives for late 20th century African American men and for the society in which they face these challenges.About a decade later, one of the period’s most original and important films, John Singleton’s Boyz in the Hood (1991), would extend and add further layers to these narratives. On the one hand, Singleton’s most famous character, Laurence Fishburne’s absolutely compelling Furious Styles, is for most of the film a single father to his son Tre (Cuba Gooding), and one determined to perform his fatherly roles to the utmost (no matter how much Tre tries to resist). And on the other, the complex and tragic arcs and fates (spoiler alert!) of Tre’s friends Ricky (Morris Chestnut) and Doughboy (Ice Cube) seem entirely connected to the absence of a father in their lives, although the college-bound football star Ricky and the gang-banger Doughboy have prior to the film’s main events clearly responded to that absence in profoundly different ways. In its own ways, Singleton’s film is still grappling with precisely the same questions as Moynihan’s report—Doughboy’s final speech suggests a broad national culpability for its characters’ setting and experiences, while Furious might agree with Moynihan that more African American fathers need to take on their responsibilities as he has. The debate continues—and literary and cultural texts, as these great ones illustrate, have their place in that debate to be sure.Crowd-sourced post on fatherhood in America this weekend! Add your responses to any of the week’s posts, or your thoughts on any other aspects of that complex issue, please!BenPS. You know what to do!8/17 Memory Day nominee: Davy Crockett, whose identity has been a complicated combination of myth, legend, and reality since his multi-part life, his death, and the many culturalrepresentations of them both.[image error]
On social and political, literary, and cultural engagements with a vexing and crucial late 20th century American issue.Few, if any, governmental publications have in our long national history achieved the kinds of controversial, galvanizing, long-lasting significance and effect as The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (1965). Written for President Lyndon Johnson by Assistant Secretary of Labor (and future Senator) Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and thus known forever after as The Moynihan Report, the document began as a simple statistical analysis of African American poverty and related issues, but as the subtitle suggests turned into a set of warnings and recommendations in response to those issues. By far the most famous, controversial, and to both Moynihan and his readers (critical and supportive) central of those warnings had to do with single-parent households, and more exactly with single mothers and missing fathers; it was that heavily present family dynamic, to Moynihan, that explained—even better than historic and broader contexts and causes, although he made clear that it was related to and in part caused by them—much of the worst of what impoverished African American families and children (particularly in the period’s disintegrating cities) were experiencing.In the nearly fifty years since the Report’s release, that particular argument has, along with the rest of the Report’s findings and analyses, been subject to numerous critiques, addenda, agreements, revisions, and so on. But whatever we make of Moynihan’s ideas on the topic, there’s no question that the theme of missing black fathers has been an important and ongoing one in late 20thand early 21st century American society and culture. That theme, and more exactly what the missing fathers mean for their families and especially their sons, is at the heart of two of the greatest African American novels of the decades following Moynihan (or any time period for that matter): Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977) and David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident(1981). Without spoiling either of these mysterious and complex works, I’ll just note that Morrison’s Milkman Dead and Bradley’s John Washington are (in different but not unrelated ways) obsessively searching for the truths left behind by their missing fathers, and that both their quests and their culminating discoveries and choices represent profoundly powerful and symbolic narratives for late 20th century African American men and for the society in which they face these challenges.About a decade later, one of the period’s most original and important films, John Singleton’s Boyz in the Hood (1991), would extend and add further layers to these narratives. On the one hand, Singleton’s most famous character, Laurence Fishburne’s absolutely compelling Furious Styles, is for most of the film a single father to his son Tre (Cuba Gooding), and one determined to perform his fatherly roles to the utmost (no matter how much Tre tries to resist). And on the other, the complex and tragic arcs and fates (spoiler alert!) of Tre’s friends Ricky (Morris Chestnut) and Doughboy (Ice Cube) seem entirely connected to the absence of a father in their lives, although the college-bound football star Ricky and the gang-banger Doughboy have prior to the film’s main events clearly responded to that absence in profoundly different ways. In its own ways, Singleton’s film is still grappling with precisely the same questions as Moynihan’s report—Doughboy’s final speech suggests a broad national culpability for its characters’ setting and experiences, while Furious might agree with Moynihan that more African American fathers need to take on their responsibilities as he has. The debate continues—and literary and cultural texts, as these great ones illustrate, have their place in that debate to be sure.Crowd-sourced post on fatherhood in America this weekend! Add your responses to any of the week’s posts, or your thoughts on any other aspects of that complex issue, please!BenPS. You know what to do!8/17 Memory Day nominee: Davy Crockett, whose identity has been a complicated combination of myth, legend, and reality since his multi-part life, his death, and the many culturalrepresentations of them both.[image error]
August 16, 2012
August 16, 2012: Fathers of Their Country
[To honor a week that began with my Dad’s birthday and includes my own, I’m featuring a series on fatherhood in American culture, history, and literature. This is the third in that series. Once again, the weekend’s post will be a crowd-sourced one, so please share your responses, ideas, thoughts, suggestions, and perspectives for that post!]
On the clear and relatively consistent but also complex images of our two most beloved leaders.By a variety of measures, from the educated opinions of historians and political scientists to broader popular polls and rankings, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln have long been our two most popular presidents; given the contemporary partisan attitudes that heavily influence not only current politics but also assessments of every 20th century president, these two much less controversial leaders are likely to remain at the top of the list. Moreover, while of course scholars and historians try to engage with the complex realities of each man and his leadership, our popular narratives and images of them tend to connect to more personal and mythic traits: specific characteristics, such as each man’s famous honesty; and overall symbolic roles, such as Washington’s image as “The Father of Our Country” and Lincoln’s as “Father Abraham.”It’s important to note that those kinds of symbolic and often paternal images aren’t just subsequent additions to the men’s legacies, nor simply the province of children’s books. In a 1799 eulogy to Washington, Richard Henry Lee, one of Washington’s co-framers and one of the era’s most prominent politicians, famously described him as "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” and Parson Weems’ 1800 biography likewise embraced, and indeed helped popularize, all of the mythic narratives and images; with Lincolin, similarly, the phrase “Father Abraham” was apparently coined by Union troops and used frequently in their letters and writings to describe their attitudes toward the president, and Walt Whitman’s 1865 “O Captain! My Captain!” reveals just how fully the mythic images of Lincoln had come to define the man for many Americans by the time of his assassination. Which is to say, whatever communal and psychological reasons we might have to turn these military and political leaders into familial and paternal figures, they (or at least some of them) were present in the men’s own moments, and have only continued and grown in the centuries since.So why have we so consistently paternalized these two presidents? Obviously there are specific circumstances and contexts for each, but I would point to one pretty shared context: that of a nation torn apart internally. The images of the Civil War as pitting brother against brother are well known (and often accurate), and it was Lincoln himself who characterized the moment with the familial phrase “a house divided against itself.” And the Revolutionary era similarly split Americans and families—Ben Franklin, for example, famously split from his beloved son William when the young Franklin remained loyal to England. While of course both Washington and Lincoln chose and led one side in those internal battles (and it’s fair to say that neither the English nor the Confederates bought into the paternal images as a result), it’s nonetheless true that both men came to embody, during and even more so after their respective wars, the possibility of a once-more united nation, of an American family that could move forward rather than dwell on the past divisions and antagonisms. That’s perhaps especially true for Lincoln, since his assassination meant that his images and legacies could exist outside of the continuing bitterness and hostility of Reconstruction. But in both cases, these fatherly images greatly oversimplify and mythologize both the men’s own perspectives and roles, and the national community in and after their eras.Final fatherhood post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses, ideas, or suggestions about fatherhood in America?8/16 Memory Day nominee: William Keepers Maxwell, Jr., who managed to write some of the 20th century’s most interesting novels and short stories (as well as a memoir) while editing many of the century’s other best writers in his 40 years as fiction editor at The New Yorker.
On the clear and relatively consistent but also complex images of our two most beloved leaders.By a variety of measures, from the educated opinions of historians and political scientists to broader popular polls and rankings, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln have long been our two most popular presidents; given the contemporary partisan attitudes that heavily influence not only current politics but also assessments of every 20th century president, these two much less controversial leaders are likely to remain at the top of the list. Moreover, while of course scholars and historians try to engage with the complex realities of each man and his leadership, our popular narratives and images of them tend to connect to more personal and mythic traits: specific characteristics, such as each man’s famous honesty; and overall symbolic roles, such as Washington’s image as “The Father of Our Country” and Lincoln’s as “Father Abraham.”It’s important to note that those kinds of symbolic and often paternal images aren’t just subsequent additions to the men’s legacies, nor simply the province of children’s books. In a 1799 eulogy to Washington, Richard Henry Lee, one of Washington’s co-framers and one of the era’s most prominent politicians, famously described him as "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” and Parson Weems’ 1800 biography likewise embraced, and indeed helped popularize, all of the mythic narratives and images; with Lincolin, similarly, the phrase “Father Abraham” was apparently coined by Union troops and used frequently in their letters and writings to describe their attitudes toward the president, and Walt Whitman’s 1865 “O Captain! My Captain!” reveals just how fully the mythic images of Lincoln had come to define the man for many Americans by the time of his assassination. Which is to say, whatever communal and psychological reasons we might have to turn these military and political leaders into familial and paternal figures, they (or at least some of them) were present in the men’s own moments, and have only continued and grown in the centuries since.So why have we so consistently paternalized these two presidents? Obviously there are specific circumstances and contexts for each, but I would point to one pretty shared context: that of a nation torn apart internally. The images of the Civil War as pitting brother against brother are well known (and often accurate), and it was Lincoln himself who characterized the moment with the familial phrase “a house divided against itself.” And the Revolutionary era similarly split Americans and families—Ben Franklin, for example, famously split from his beloved son William when the young Franklin remained loyal to England. While of course both Washington and Lincoln chose and led one side in those internal battles (and it’s fair to say that neither the English nor the Confederates bought into the paternal images as a result), it’s nonetheless true that both men came to embody, during and even more so after their respective wars, the possibility of a once-more united nation, of an American family that could move forward rather than dwell on the past divisions and antagonisms. That’s perhaps especially true for Lincoln, since his assassination meant that his images and legacies could exist outside of the continuing bitterness and hostility of Reconstruction. But in both cases, these fatherly images greatly oversimplify and mythologize both the men’s own perspectives and roles, and the national community in and after their eras.Final fatherhood post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses, ideas, or suggestions about fatherhood in America?8/16 Memory Day nominee: William Keepers Maxwell, Jr., who managed to write some of the 20th century’s most interesting novels and short stories (as well as a memoir) while editing many of the century’s other best writers in his 40 years as fiction editor at The New Yorker.
August 15, 2012
August 15, 2012: Birthday Best Redux
[Last year on my birthday, I highlighted 34 of my favorite posts from the blog’s first nine months. It was a fun way to look back on where I’d been, and also to highlight some past contributions for new readers. So with your indulgence, here are 35 of my favorites from the year since then! The series on fatherhood in America resumes tomorrow.]
August 16: Me Too: In which I follow up the birthday favorites by highlighting five posts that make clear just how much I too continue to learn about America.August 23: Virginia, Cradle of American Studies: The first post in what I believe was my first series (now of course the blog’s central format), on a few of Virginia’s American Studies connections.September 1: First Questions: A back to school post, highlighting both the role that teaching plays in my American Studying and my (continued!) desire for your input on my topics here.September 2: Not Tortured Enough: On torture, American ideals and realities, and how contemporary politics and overarching American questions intersect.September 12: The Neverending Story: Perhaps the most vital American Studies response I can imagine to September 11th and its decade-long aftermath.October 6: Native Voices: Linking the NEASA conference at Plimoth Plantation, the hardest part of my dissertation and first book, and a key American question.October 11: Remembering an Iconoclastic Genius: One of my most important jobs here, I think, is to help us better remember important (and often inspiring) people and histories and stories that we’ve forgotten; Derreck Bell is one such person.October 19: The Importance of Reading Ernest: Making the case for an under-read American great, and remembering to keep my literary interests present in this space at the same time.November 7: Moments That Remain 1: The fall’s NEASA conference was one of the best weekends of my life, and it was very exciting to be able to bring a bit of it to the blog.November 14: Kids Say the Darnedest Things 1: Of the few different ways I’ve tried to grapple with the Penn State scandal in this space, I think this series, using student voices and ideas to remember the best of what college should be, is my favorite.November 28: Bond, Racist Bond?: It’s not easy to analyze something we love—but I tried that here, with one of my favorite films in my favorite series.December 5: Defining Diversity: Transitioning from a topical post (one responding to other American commentators) to the continued development of my own ideas about American culture and identity.December 12: Cross-Culture 1: It’s Not Only Rock and Roll: And then extending those ideas to one of the many different media, genres, and disciplines that American Studies helps us analyze.December 19: Making My List 1: Memory Days: The Memory Days have become a separate and ongoing project and page here, but this is where they began.December 29: Year in Review 4: School for Scandal: Another stab at Penn State—not searching for answers so much as highlighting some of the key American Studies questions.January 4: Gaga for American Studies: What American Studies can help us see in and say about Lady Gaga. Enough said.January 21: American Studies for Lifelong Learning: A series that helped me plan the spring semester, connect my teaching to this blog, and, in this case, move me toward both a new experience and what would turn out to be my third book.January 23: Mexican American Studies: I’m maybe most proud of this series out of all that I’ve done in this space this year, and this is where it started.February 2: The Three Acts of John Rocker: Trying to do complex justice to a figure and story that are both close to my heart (or at least the Atlanta Braves are) and easily over-simplified.February 16: Remembering Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Another far-too forgotten figure, and a post inspired by an idea from a friend (which was the origin for the now-frequent crowd-sourced posts).February 24: Detroit Connections: I think it’s fair to say that I hadn’t thought about this topic at all prior to coming up with the series and writing the post. That’s part of what a blog allows us to do, and while the results have to speak for themselves, I love the opportunity.March 6: Celebrating Zitkala-Sa: The whole Women’s History series was a lot of fun, but any time I get the chance to recommend this unique and amazing author, I take it.March 21: Balboa Park: Family vacations will never be the same, now that they’re part of my American Studying and blogging too. That’s fine by me.March 27: Race and Danny Chen: Like the prior day’s subject, Trayvon Martin, Chen is a tragically killed American whose story we should all know and with which we have to engage.April 4: Melville’s Confidence Man: A good reminder that both literature and laughter have their place on the blog too.April 19: How Would a Patriot Act? Part Three: This post on the amazing and inspiring Yung Wing helped me continue developing book three.April 26: Great American Stories, Part Four: One of the very best American short stories, by one of my very favorite authors. May 10: Maurice Sendak: Sometimes I feel locked into a week’s series, but Sendak’s death reminded me that sometimes I need to shift gears and write about a topical and important subject.May 29: Remembering Pat Tillman: I hope I did justice to the complexities and ambiguities in this American life and death; this remains by far my most-read post on the Open Salon version of this blog, so it seems like it struck a chord with folks.June 2-3: Remembering or Commemorating War: Michael Kammen, Kurt Vonnegut and Clint Eastwood, and big American questions—if that’s not American Studying, what is?June 12: Playing with America, Part 2: But this is American Studying too—analyzing some of the cultural and historical causes behind the hula hoop fad.June 16-17: Crowd-sourced Post on Material Culture: My first crowd-sourced post, now one of my favorite aspects of the blog. Add your thoughts for this week’s!July 6: Newton’s Histories, Part 5: To come full circle to the August 16thpost, Jonathan Walker reminds me of how much I still have to learn about American history and culture.July 27: Jennings on the Long Haul: And the inspiring life and career of Frances Jennings reminds me of why continuing to learn, study, analyze, teach, and write about America is so important and so rewarding.Here’s to another year of American Studying! The fatherhood series resumes tomorrow,BenPS. What would you like to see in this space in the year to come?8/15 Memory Day nominee (reader suggestion!): Julia Child, without whose unique and charismatic voice and presence American cooking, culture, and society would have been left significantly more hungry and less fun.
August 16: Me Too: In which I follow up the birthday favorites by highlighting five posts that make clear just how much I too continue to learn about America.August 23: Virginia, Cradle of American Studies: The first post in what I believe was my first series (now of course the blog’s central format), on a few of Virginia’s American Studies connections.September 1: First Questions: A back to school post, highlighting both the role that teaching plays in my American Studying and my (continued!) desire for your input on my topics here.September 2: Not Tortured Enough: On torture, American ideals and realities, and how contemporary politics and overarching American questions intersect.September 12: The Neverending Story: Perhaps the most vital American Studies response I can imagine to September 11th and its decade-long aftermath.October 6: Native Voices: Linking the NEASA conference at Plimoth Plantation, the hardest part of my dissertation and first book, and a key American question.October 11: Remembering an Iconoclastic Genius: One of my most important jobs here, I think, is to help us better remember important (and often inspiring) people and histories and stories that we’ve forgotten; Derreck Bell is one such person.October 19: The Importance of Reading Ernest: Making the case for an under-read American great, and remembering to keep my literary interests present in this space at the same time.November 7: Moments That Remain 1: The fall’s NEASA conference was one of the best weekends of my life, and it was very exciting to be able to bring a bit of it to the blog.November 14: Kids Say the Darnedest Things 1: Of the few different ways I’ve tried to grapple with the Penn State scandal in this space, I think this series, using student voices and ideas to remember the best of what college should be, is my favorite.November 28: Bond, Racist Bond?: It’s not easy to analyze something we love—but I tried that here, with one of my favorite films in my favorite series.December 5: Defining Diversity: Transitioning from a topical post (one responding to other American commentators) to the continued development of my own ideas about American culture and identity.December 12: Cross-Culture 1: It’s Not Only Rock and Roll: And then extending those ideas to one of the many different media, genres, and disciplines that American Studies helps us analyze.December 19: Making My List 1: Memory Days: The Memory Days have become a separate and ongoing project and page here, but this is where they began.December 29: Year in Review 4: School for Scandal: Another stab at Penn State—not searching for answers so much as highlighting some of the key American Studies questions.January 4: Gaga for American Studies: What American Studies can help us see in and say about Lady Gaga. Enough said.January 21: American Studies for Lifelong Learning: A series that helped me plan the spring semester, connect my teaching to this blog, and, in this case, move me toward both a new experience and what would turn out to be my third book.January 23: Mexican American Studies: I’m maybe most proud of this series out of all that I’ve done in this space this year, and this is where it started.February 2: The Three Acts of John Rocker: Trying to do complex justice to a figure and story that are both close to my heart (or at least the Atlanta Braves are) and easily over-simplified.February 16: Remembering Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Another far-too forgotten figure, and a post inspired by an idea from a friend (which was the origin for the now-frequent crowd-sourced posts).February 24: Detroit Connections: I think it’s fair to say that I hadn’t thought about this topic at all prior to coming up with the series and writing the post. That’s part of what a blog allows us to do, and while the results have to speak for themselves, I love the opportunity.March 6: Celebrating Zitkala-Sa: The whole Women’s History series was a lot of fun, but any time I get the chance to recommend this unique and amazing author, I take it.March 21: Balboa Park: Family vacations will never be the same, now that they’re part of my American Studying and blogging too. That’s fine by me.March 27: Race and Danny Chen: Like the prior day’s subject, Trayvon Martin, Chen is a tragically killed American whose story we should all know and with which we have to engage.April 4: Melville’s Confidence Man: A good reminder that both literature and laughter have their place on the blog too.April 19: How Would a Patriot Act? Part Three: This post on the amazing and inspiring Yung Wing helped me continue developing book three.April 26: Great American Stories, Part Four: One of the very best American short stories, by one of my very favorite authors. May 10: Maurice Sendak: Sometimes I feel locked into a week’s series, but Sendak’s death reminded me that sometimes I need to shift gears and write about a topical and important subject.May 29: Remembering Pat Tillman: I hope I did justice to the complexities and ambiguities in this American life and death; this remains by far my most-read post on the Open Salon version of this blog, so it seems like it struck a chord with folks.June 2-3: Remembering or Commemorating War: Michael Kammen, Kurt Vonnegut and Clint Eastwood, and big American questions—if that’s not American Studying, what is?June 12: Playing with America, Part 2: But this is American Studying too—analyzing some of the cultural and historical causes behind the hula hoop fad.June 16-17: Crowd-sourced Post on Material Culture: My first crowd-sourced post, now one of my favorite aspects of the blog. Add your thoughts for this week’s!July 6: Newton’s Histories, Part 5: To come full circle to the August 16thpost, Jonathan Walker reminds me of how much I still have to learn about American history and culture.July 27: Jennings on the Long Haul: And the inspiring life and career of Frances Jennings reminds me of why continuing to learn, study, analyze, teach, and write about America is so important and so rewarding.Here’s to another year of American Studying! The fatherhood series resumes tomorrow,BenPS. What would you like to see in this space in the year to come?8/15 Memory Day nominee (reader suggestion!): Julia Child, without whose unique and charismatic voice and presence American cooking, culture, and society would have been left significantly more hungry and less fun.
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