Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 429

December 20, 2011: Making My List 2: 30 Rocked

[This week, as Chanukah begins and Christmas and Kwanzaa get ever closer, I'll be blogging about my AmericanStudies holiday list: my requests (to the AmericanStudies Elves, of course) for five changes I'd love to see in our national narratives and conversations. This is the second in that series.]AmericanStudies Elves, I would like to see some of our most talented filmmakers tackle some of our greatest historical stories.In 2009, to celebrate ESPN's thirtieth anniversary, sportswriter Bill Simmons and the network's films division produced a series of thirty documentary films. Entitled 30 for 30 , the series featured thirty talented contemporary filmmakers, with each asked to help create a film focused on one interesting and compelling sports story from over those three decades. As would inevitably be the case, some of the films were more successful than others, both in gaining popular attention and in portraying their focal points and questions (and it's fair to say that the two kinds of success didn't always match up); but throughout its run (which is of course all available on DVD and thus can be a part of sports culture from now on) the series represented a really unique and engaging way to return to and reimagine some very compelling and often largely forgotten stories.When it comes to American histories in general, we've already got a very clear piece of evidence for how film can bring similarly compelling and forgotten stories back into our popular consciousness and narratives: maybe I can't claim that Glory (1989) single-handedly brought the stories of African American soldiers during the Civil War back into our collective memories, but it sure contributed mightily to those efforts (which are ongoing, to be sure). And so, Elves, I propose the concept of a 30 for 30-like American historical series—the History Channel would seem like a logical home, but I'm not picky as long as it stays way away from cable news networks—in which talented American filmmakers focus their creative attentions on particular, compelling, and relatively unremembered or oversimplified events, figures, stories, and the like. The filmmakers and their scholarly advisors would have in each case to decide through what genre and style (and at what length and depth) to tell their stories, among many other open and significant questions; in any case the films would certainly inspire further conversation about and research into these historical subjects.As it happens, we've already got a recent candidate for the first entry in the series: John Sayles' latest film, Amigo (2011), which tells the complex and ultimately tragic story of America's post-Spanish American War imperialist efforts in (and guerrilla warfare with) the Philippines. Fits every part of my proposal for sure: one of our greatest filmmakers tackles one of the histories with which all Americans should be more familiar, and does so (from what I can tell—the film has so far been in very limited release, which only amplifies the need for this kind of series to better distribute and share such works) in the style and voice and perspective that define his cinematic vision. Next up: Scorcese on the Red Scare and the Sacco and Vanzetti case? Ang Lee on the Chinese Exclusion Act and Angel Island? Chris Eyre on the cross-cultural, historically revealing, and inspirational life of Ely Parker? Spike Lee on the Wilmington Coup and Massacre? The possibilities are endless, and endlessly important.A compelling series of films from compelling artists on some of our most compelling American histories? Sound like a pretty great present to me, Elves. An AmericanStudier can dream, anyway. Next wish list item tomorrow,BenPS. Any suggestions for film topics, filmmakers, or the series in other ways? Anybody with Hollywood connections you'd like to utilize to make it happen??12/20 Memory Day nominee: Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers owner whose bold and progressive vision helped make Jackie Robinson the inspiring American figure and story he became.

December 19, 2011: Making My List 1: Memory Days

[This week, as Chanukah begins and Christmas and Kwanzaa get ever closer, I'll be blogging about my AmericanStudies holiday list: my requests (to the AmericanStudies Elves, of course) for five changes I'd love to see in our national narratives and conversations. This is the first in that series.]AmericanStudies Elves, I would like for every day to memorialize and celebrate an inspiring American.In the Roman Catholic community, almost every day is dedicated to a particular saint, allowing for each of these significant and inspiring figures and lives to be remembered in his or her turn. The saints' lives mean and symbolize many different possible things, of course, and so I'm sure that each Catholic, each family, and each church have their particularly significant saints and days, as well as their unique and contextualized ways of remembering and celebrating. Yet the calendar of saints' days nonetheless serves as a broadly communal connecting thread, a manner of linking all Catholics through this shared set of exemplary historical and cultural figures.I understand why we Americans only currently celebrate the birthdays of a few particularly influential presidents and one very unique and impressive Civil Rights leader, and as I argued in both of those posts I think we can and should keep and build on the meanings of those holidays. But the truth, as I hope this blog has frequently demonstrated, is that there are many other inspiring Americans, and most of them are not as already-prominent in our national memories and narratives as the Washingtons, Lincolns, and Kings. And so, AS Elves, I propose that each day Americans memorialize and celebrate one inspiring fellow citizen who was born on that day—no possible such subject, of course, is a saint, and I don't mean to imply that we should sanctify any of these complex historical figures or the issues and events to which they connect; but I do believe that we can and should focus on their best and most inspiring work and meanings, to remember not only the darker historical realities but how Americans have powerfully built upon and yet transcended them.The man I'd like to nominate for today, December 19th, is a particularly good example of what I mean, on two distinct levels. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) was born to freed slaves working as sharecroppers in Virginia, as Reconstruction ended and the era that came to be known as the nadir of African American life commenced; but his path took him forward to Harvard (where in 1912 he became one of the first African Americans to receive a Harvard PhD, in History) and back into our past (as he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and the Journal of Negro History , among many other efforts). And Woodson's most lasting legacy directly models my goals here: he is known as the "Father of Black History Month," as his multi-decade advocacy for an educational commemoration of African American histories led in 1926 to February's Negro History Week (the direct precursor to our contemporary Black History Month). So Elves, I ask that today henceforth be known as Carter Woodson Day; I'll briefly highlight another inspiring American at the end of each day's post from now on, and when this blog becomes part of an AmericanStudier website (on which look for more in the new year!), I'll try to create a full calendar and ask for the input from all my fellow AmericanStudies Elves' Helpers. Next wish list item tomorrow,BenPS. Any Americans you think we should definitely include on our calendar?

December 17-18, 2011: Anglo, American

The least obviously cross-cultural American community nonetheless represents one of the oldest cross-culturally influenced parts of our culture, and continues to provide new and powerful cross-cultural voices in our national conversations.By far the most difficult chapter of Redefining American Identity for me to write, and for the same reasons the one I saw and see as the most significant, was Chapter 2, on the captivity experiences and narrative of the 17th century Puritan Mary Rowlandson. Each chapter presented its own unique complexities to be sure; but for every other chapter it felt relatively easy to connect my central thread and argument, that the identities and experiences of these exemplary individuals were thoroughly cross-cultural (thus revealing the defining cross-cultural American identity throughout our history and culture), to the specific text and figure and community on which I was focused. Yet I believed, and still believe, that such a definition of American identity can be genuinely valuable if and only if it can be connected to every American and every community—and thus I likewise believe that it was and is particularly important for me to argue that the culture and community at the heart of many of our traditional national narratives, Anglo-Americans, has always been just as cross-culturally influenced and transformed as every other American community.If I succeed in making that case, there are obvious historical benefits: allowing us to see and understand and analyze Anglo-American communities and identities, from the different Puritan arrivals to the Jamestown settlers and then on down the centuries since, as profoundly similar to and interconnected with both the cultures with which they directly interacted (Native Americans, other European arrivals, African slaves, and so on) and the other immigrant communities and cultures that have come to constitute America. Yet there's also a more contemporary and just as meaningful effect, which is to help us to see how 20th and 21st century British immigrants are just as cross-culturally transformed by their American experiences, and just as influential a part of our evolving cross-cultural identity, as their historical counterparts have always been. How much, for example, would a narrative of America's evolving cross-cultural identity and national conversations in the 1960s and 70s be amplified by a clear sense of the role of Anglo-American immigrant John Lennon within them? I have here two specific, contemporary Anglo-American voices and lives in mind: Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan. Hitchens passed away from cancer on Thursday night, and Sullivan's "Daily Dish" blog has throughout the subsequent days hosted a series of tributes (by Sullivan, who was a longtime close friend of Hitchens, and by many others) to Hitchens. The two men are very distinct in a number of ways, and perhaps especially in their respective prose genres—Hitchens made his name through his controversial, combative, and always compelling books and long-form journalistic pieces on dense and difficult topics; while Sullivan is one of our preeminent political and social bloggers, his site featuring dozens of concise but consistently thoughtful pieces and links a day. Yet as my colleague Irene noted in her comment about Hitchens on Friday's post, they are linked by their status as Anglo-American immigrants, bringing to our national conversations an explicitly cross-cultural perspective and an evolving sense of both their own and our national identities. Those conversations, and our nation, are more complicated and richer and, above all, stronger and more American for their Anglo-American voices and presences.More next week,BenPS. Any Anglo-American immigrants or influences you'd highlight?

December 16, 2011: Cross-Culture 5: Not to Mention…

[To follow up and complement last week's posts on how our understanding of historical periods and communities looks very different through a cross-cultural lens, this week I'll focus on five seminal moments in American popular culture for which the same is true. This is the fifth in that series.] A few more quick hits on dominant American cultural icons that also happen to be thoroughly cross-cultural:1)      We probably wouldn't have a Constitution at all, and it and all the other founding documents definitely wouldn't exist in their current form, without the French;2)      The Transcendentalist movement, long defined as the first genuinely American philosophy, was centrally influenced by Eastern (or at least Orientalist) thought and spiritually;3)      Some of the most innovative and important 20th century American artists, including Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, and Roy Lichtenstein, were directly inspired—not only overall, but in the creation of many of their individual works—by their obsession with Pablo Picasso;4)      The only apples that were native to the Americas were crabapples, so the first English settlers brought their own apples; while apple pie's immigrant status might indeed make it "as American as" anything in this nation, it's pumpkin pie that more uniquely originated here;5)      THIS SPACE FOR RENT: What part of American popular culture has cross-cultural origins or influences or identities that you think we should better appreciate? More this weekend,BenPS. See #5 above!

December 15, 2011: Cross-Culture 4: Seeing the Light

[To follow up and complement last week's posts on how our understanding of historical periods and communities looks very different through a cross-cultural lens, this week I'll focus on five seminal moments in American popular culture for which the same is true. This is the fourth in that series.] [Also: In response to a couple of reader comments, I'm going to be trying out a new style for this week's posts, one with mostly shorter paragraphs for potentially less difficult online reading. If it works—and feel free to weigh in!—I'll try to utilize it for at least some of my posts going forward.]Two of the most significant American inventions—perhaps ever, certainly of the late 19th century renaissance in technological innovation—exist in no small measure thanks to the cross-cultural contributions of one of America's most inspiring men.I understand why we like to think of our inventors as iconoclastic geniuses, understood by few if any of their peers, pursuing their passions in messy labs, and revealing their great accomplishments to an astonished world—it's a compelling narrative, and one that certainly does connect to the genuinely innovative and impressive minds (and often inspiring stories) of American inventors like Alexander Graham Bell (himself a cross-cultural, multi-national immigrant Scottish-Canadian-American) and Thomas Edison (the son of a Canadian immigrant father). Yet one significant meaning of Edison's famous quote about genius being "5 percent inspiration and 95 percent perspiration" is that however individual the inspiration might be, the perspiration is almost always shared by a community working together to achieve particular ends; it was to that end, for example, that Edison designated as "the muckers" the core group of young men who constituted his company's Engineering Division and helped advance (and often, it seems, originate) every one of his inventions and projects. Every one of those muckers has a pretty interesting and compelling American story of his own, but I have to admit being most inspired by Lewis Latimer (1848-1928). Latimer was born in Massachusetts to a pair of runaway slaves, with his father barely escaping a return to slavery and having to hide for many years as a result; he forged a birth certificate at the age of 15 in order to enlist in the Union Navy during the Civil War; and after the war he went to work for patent lawyers in Boston. He quickly worked his way up to the role of head draftsman, and in that capacity worked closely with Bell to draft his successful 1876 patent application for the telephone. When he went to work with Edison eight years later, it was officially to serve as the company's first draftsman; but in the interim Latimer had worked for Hiram Maxim and had in 1881 invented and patented a process for making carbon filaments for the hugely innovative Maxim electric lamp, and so Edison was really hiring Latimer not only for his patent and drafting skills but also for his creative inspirations. Without those inspirations, it's certainly safe to say that Edison's innovations in electricity might have been much less successful; that position is greatly amplified by a reading of Latimer's 1890 treatise Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description of the Edison System . Perhaps Bell and Edison would have come up with and patented their inventions, perhaps the histories of the phone and electricity would be largely the same, without Latimer. But as it turns out, the history and story of these crucial material and popular culture innovations did include this inspiring American, are much more cross-cultural than we might realize—and it doesn't take a genius to recognize the importance of engaging with that history. Last moment tomorrow,BenPS. Any inventions or innovations whose stories we should better know or remember?

December 14, 2011: Cross-Culture 3: A Transnational Force

[To follow up and complement last week's posts on how our understanding of historical periods and communities looks very different through a cross-cultural lens, this week I'll focus on five seminal moments in American popular culture for which the same is true. This is the third in that series.] [Also: In response to a couple of reader comments, I'm going to be trying out a new style for this week's posts, one with mostly shorter paragraphs for potentially less difficult online reading. If it works—and feel free to weigh in!—I'll try to utilize it for at least some of my posts going forward.]One of the most popular and influential American movies (and movies period) was very directly influenced by a Japanese film—and, critiques of the American director notwithstanding, that influence is a very positive thing.Few cultural texts have had a more significant and ongoing presence over the last three decades than George Lucas's Star Wars (1977) and its many sequels, prequels, novelizations, television spinoffs, parodies, merchandising and marketing and material culture connections, animated versions, Wookie-centric Christmas specials, and the like. Because of that lasting presence, and perhaps especially because a whole generation of students and scholars has grown up alongside Luke Skywalker and friends, Lucas's prominent debt to Joseph Campbell's analyses of heroism and mythologies has likewise been very well established and documented; which is to say, this is a pop culture text and artist whose multigenerational and cross-cultural (at least in the sense of Campbell's ideas linking myths from multiple cultures) connections and influences seem already well known.Far be it for me to disagree with that longstanding and very thoroughly developed assessment—did you note the ridiculously comprehensive Lucas-Campbell chart at that link?—but there's another, also very influential and much less broadly known, source for Lucas's first film. As this website conversation highlights, Lucas's initial story outline for Star Wars (particularly in the story's initial events and exposition) closely parallels Akira Kurosawa's 1958 film The Hidden Fortress; Lucas would change certain events and details between that outline and the film's screenplay, but many of the Kurosawa echoes remained very much present in the finished film, as mashups of the two movies such as this one cleverly highlight. Such mashups could be used as exhibits in a plagiarism case against Lucas, and indeed many who have noted the similarities to Fortress have done so in a critical way, arguing that at least Lucas owed Kurosawa a more overt acknowledgment of the influence as Star Wars gained in popularity and Lucas became one of the most famous and wealthiest filmmakers of all time.Certainly I believe that Kurosawa's film should be better known, not only because of its clear influence on Lucas's early ideas for his own series, but also because it seems (from, admittedly, the handful of clips I have seen and the descriptions I have read) to be an interesting if minor work from one of cinema's most prolific and talented artists. Yet far from serving as an indictment of Lucas or his film, this additional influence highlights, to my mind, just how genuinely and impressively American Star Wars really is: inspired in equal measure by centuries of cross-cultural mythology and a Japanese film, with the seminal fantasy series by a British author thrown in for good measure; starring young American actors and some of England's most established screen veterans; shamelessly cribbing from the styles and stunts of early serials and pop culture classics like Buck Rogers; with all those elements thrown into a space opera blender and turned into a hugely unique and engaging entertainments. Lucas had called his first, much more grounded and local and historically nostalgic, film American Graffiti (1973)—but it's Star Wars that really exemplifies the cross-cultural, multi-genre, intertextual, inspiring mélange that is American culture and art.Now's that a Force to be reckoned with! Another moment tomorrow,BenPS. Any cross-culturally influenced or influential films you'd highlight?

December 13, 2011: Cross-Culture 2: A Striking Voice

[To follow up and complement last week's posts on how our understanding of historical periods and communities looks very different through a cross-cultural lens, this week I'll focus on five seminal moments in American popular culture for which the same is true. This is the second in that series.] [Also: In response to a couple of reader comments, I'm going to be trying out a new style for this week's posts, one with mostly shorter paragraphs for potentially less difficult online reading. If it works—and feel free to weigh in!—I'll try to utilize it for at least some of my posts going forward.]The most famous voice in American literature, that of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, was quite possibly inspired by, and at the very least is cross-culturally connected to, African American voices.Ernest Hemingway famously wrote, in Green Hills of Africa (1935; a character expresses the sentiment in dialogue on page 23 of that Google book), that "all modern American literature comes from" Twain's novel, that "all American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." While public and critical responses to the novel's themes and representations of (and of course words for) race and identity have of course varied dramatically, both over the years and in contemporary debates, it's fair to say that perspectives on Twain's style in the novel have been much more consistent: that the novel's narration, and more exactly Twain's creation of the vernacular narrating voice of its title character, is a watershed moment in American literary and cultural history. While it's important to reiterate clearly that the most famous single word included (frequently) in Huck's narration is "nigger," one prominent Twain scholar, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, has nonetheless made an extended and provocative case that Huck's identity, and especially his voice, is strikingly connected to African Americans in both Twain's life and in American culture more generally. Fishkin's book, Was Huck Black?: Mark Twain and African-American Voices (1994), marshals a range of evidence, both from the novel and from biographical, rhetorical, and historical contexts for Twain's work and period, in support of that perspective. Many other scholars have pushed back on Fishkin's arguments, including (I note both for full disclosure and to be able to link this great website) a certain AmericanStudier's  Dad, but the fact remains that a core value of literary interpretation is its ability to balance multiple convincing (or at least sophisticated) readings of a work, and Fishkin's book has to my mind added the possibility of African American influences for Huck's voice and identity as one such reading to the roster.In any case, I don't think we need to go as far as Fishkin to note one strikingly cross-cultural attribute of Huck's voice (as Twain creates it). Twain's novel, like much of his early writing, rests comfortably in the post-Civil War sensation that was local color writing (now usually known as regionalism), and thus it might seem no surprise that he works to create authentic dialect voices for his local characters (even though he also makes fun of that practice in the "Explanatory" note that precedes his novel). Yet in my pretty extensive reading of local color literature, I have very rarely encountered another Southern white character who speaks in an uneducated dialect voice; perhaps in order to contrast Southern whites with African Americans, local color writers who focused on this region (most of them in the genre known as the plantation tradition; but I would likewise say this of those like Albion Tourgée and Charles Chesnutt who certainly rejected that genre's nostalgia) tended to represent the speech of their white characters in standard English and that of black characters with dialect. While Huck's dialect is of course not identical to Jim's, its presence at all signals a cross-cultural connection between the two characters and their worlds that is itself striking and (especially for readers of the time) provocative.None of this of course is a substitute for what Fishkin, Railton Pére, and me would all agree you should do: read the book! But it's pretty neat to think that one of the voices with which all modern American literature originated was cross-cultural in core and crucial ways. Another moment tomorrow,BenPS. Any cross-cultural literary characters or works you'd highlight?

December 12, 2011: Cross-Culture 1: It's Not Only Rock and Roll

[To follow up and complement last week's posts on how our understanding of historical periods and communities looks very different through a cross-cultural lens, this week I'll focus on five seminal moments in American popular culture for which the same is true. This is the first in that series.] [Also: In response to a couple of reader comments, I'm going to be trying out a new style for this week's posts, one with mostly shorter paragraphs for potentially less difficult online reading. If it works—and feel free to weigh in!—I'll try to utilize it for at least some of my posts going forward.]The origins of rock and roll in America are significantly more cross-cultural, and most crucially more multi-directional in their influences, than our dominant narratives of it recognize.To be sure, it's virtually a truism that early white rock pioneers like Elvis learned—often, the narrative goes, stole—many of their most popular songs and sounds from black artists; rapper Eminem's self-definition (from the song "Without Me") as "the worst thing since Elvis Presley / To do black music so selfishly / And use it to get myself wealthy" exemplifies the widespread acceptance of this narrative. And there's no doubt that one of the moments that most explicitly established Elvis as a pop cultural force, his 1956 performance of "Hound Dog" on the Milton Berle Show, fits this narrative very fully: the song had originally been recorded by blues artist Big Mama Thornton in 1952, yet it was Elvis's cover, accompanied by his controversial pelvic gyrations on the show, that catapulted both the song and Presley into the big time.That's already a sort of cross-cultural influence, of course, although a mostly one-sided and thus less than ideally communal one. But the specific details of "Hound Dog" reveal a much more complicated and (to my mind) inspiring cross-cultural origin: the song was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, a Jewish-American songwriting team that also produced some of the decade's biggest hits for African American artists, including The Coasters' 1958 #1 record "Yakety Yak," Wilbert Harrison's 1959 #1 "Kansas City," and Ben E. King's 1960 #1 "Stand By Me" (which King co-wrote).  By any measure, Leiber and Stoller's songs, as sung by these African American artists, helped establish rock and roll as a central cultural presence—and in their mentoring of a young (also Jewish-American) Phil Spector, they likewise directly contributed to rock's expanding success over the subsequent decades.There were of course many other late 1950s artists and moments that likewise contributed to the explosion of rock and roll, and I would similarly stress the multi- and often cross-cultural aspects of the period: from African American pioneers such as Little Richard (who came out of the Southern gospel tradition), Chuck Berry (who grew up playing the Missouri blues), and Bo Diddley (a Chicago bluesman) to the three artists killed in the tragic 1959 plane crash (Mexican American teen sensation Ritchie Valens and Texans Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper), from the Detroit "singing cowboy" Bill Haley (most famously of The Comets) to the Louisiana rockabilly of Jerry Lee Lewis, these early rockers came out of every region and tradition and profoundly influenced both each other's work and the history of American music and culture.Rock and roll has often been called a genuinely American form of music, and I would most certainly agree: its cross-cultural origins exemplify the best of our national community and conversations. Another cross-cultural moment tomorrow!BenPS. Any rock and roll origin points, songs, or artists you'd highlight?

December 10-11, 2011: So What Now?

In the past week's posts, I have tried first to lay out some of my fundamental ideas about American diversity and identity, and then to consider (with help from some exemplary scholars) what those ideas might mean for revised histories and understandings of the arrival and exploration, Puritan, Revolutionary, and Civil War eras and communities. I certainly don't feel any need to argue in this space, or more exactly for readers who are interested in the conversations to which this space connects, for the value of those kinds of historical implications; we all, I believe, would agree that they are in of and themselves important and worthwhile. Yet I know that, pat cliché about "those who do not understand the past" notwithstanding, it is not nor should it be a given that new historical narratives or understandings necessarily change things for us in the present and future; that is, while I most definitely believe that they do lead to such changes, I likewise believe that it is incumbent on us A`mericanStudies scholars to make that case consistently, explicitly, and clearly.I would go about making that case in a variety of ways, but here will focus on two, one more of a corrective to and the other more of an inspiration for our current and future conversations and community. For the former, I believe that many of the usages to which we put our past, especially the over-simplified, mythologized, and too often propagandistic usages in political contexts, would be greatly complicated, if not overtly refuted, by these different historical narratives and understandings. To take only one example, many political usages of the Founding Fathers and their ideas and writings (including the most prominent contemporary such usage, by the Tea Party) tend to connect those Revolutionary voices to critiques of government activism and programs, arguments for individual liberty in contrast with (and potentially threatened by) state authority, and so on. Yet if we define the Revolutionary era in significant measure through those African American slaves who used the Declaration and its ideas to argue for their own freedom, and even more crucially did so by appealing to the new post-1776 state legislatures and so to the power of their own governments to protect them from an unjust tyrannical social system (a power for which James Madison argued at length in Federalist 51), then our perspective on what the Revolution and its core ideas might mean for a contemporary understanding of the state's role in protecting and extending rights to all Americans would, to my mind, look very different indeed.While I think such historical correctives are definitely important—and are in fact a main reason why I moved into public scholarship at all, to try to push back on the mythologizing historical narratives being advanced by "historians" at Glenn Beck University and the like—it's fair to say that their main effect is likely not going to be a unifying one, that they do not offer clearly shared histories for an already divided national community. Fortunately, I believe that my particular brand of historical revisionism does have precisely such unifying potential. On the broad level, a main reason why I developed my cross-cultural transformation definition of American identity is that it represents what I see as a shared national experience, one that is a key, connective part of the heritage and identity of all Americans (rather than, for example, a multicultural historical narrative, which emphasizes a number of distinct cultural heritages and identities). And more specifically, these revisions of historical periods can provide similarly unifying and, often, inspiring national histories and stories—narratives that neither privilege one group at the expense of others (ie, the idealizing of the Puritans) nor emphasize division and discord (ie, the Revolution's hypocrisies related to slavery), but that instead highlight cross-cultural efforts and successes that illustrate the best of an era's national meanings. Such successes were never absolute and did not—and thus in our narratives would not—elide the more divided sides to our national community, but they offer inspiring glimpses of an alternative, much more genuinely ideal America for which we can certainly continue to strive.That's the goal, at least! More next week, but (while I hope this goes without saying) I'd sure love to hear your takes on the histories and images of different time periods, or American communities and identities in general, in comments. BenPS. What I just said!

December 9, 2011: So What 4

I was going to focus in this fourth and final post on reimagining moments in our history through a cross-cultural lens on the Civil War, and specifically on African American soldiers and civilians during and after it—but one of our greatest bloggers, both on the Civil War and on issues of race in American identity, beat me to it. So here's Ta-Nehisi Coates' story on African Americans and the Civil War, published in the latest issue of The Atlantic:http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/02/why-do-so-few-blacks-study-the-civil-war/8831/I'm going to try to pull these different threads together for a week-culminating post on a new vision of our history overall, so look for that this weekend! BenPS. Any thoughts of yours on historical periods we can or should reimagine? Any responses to any of this week's posts?