Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 431

October 15-16, 2011: Information, Please

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, one of my main ongoing gigs these days is as a scholar-advisor to the American Writers Museum, and specifically to the museum's NEH proposal for a traveling exhibition; that means that one of my main jobs for the next month or so is to produce a revised narrative for that proposal and exhibition, which are now focused on contemporary/21st century immigrant American writers. Of course I have some ideas about writers on whom we could focus, and I've been able to recruit a number of exceptional scholars who are likely to have even better and more interesting such ideas. But since I believe writing and thinking go best, especially at the early stages, when they're as communal as possible, and since my readers here are clearly among the most discerning AmericanStudiers out there, I wanted to ask for your input as well.

So I ask you: are there contemporary (read: 1990s to the present) immigrant writers—which doesn't have to mean first generation necessarily, but probably first or second generation, meaning either the writer or his or her parents immigrated; although somebody whose immigrant roots go back further but who writes about questions of immigration and identity in central ways could work too—you think are worth our collective awareness, attention, response? I'd love to hear your thoughts on folks whose works or styles, themes or voices, or for other reasons stand out for you, and would be great possible focal points for this traveling exhibition and the audiences we hope to bring to it (in at least a handful of cities around the country, from mainstays like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles to newer urban hubs like Austin and Miami). Feel free to mention writers in comments here, or if you'd prefer you can email me suggestions at brailton@fitchburgstate.edu. I promise we'll seriously consider any and all suggestions! Thanks, more next week,
Ben

October 14, 2011: Gilded Age Addendum

In calling the robber baron image and the Gospel of Wealth concept the two most prominent narratives attached to Gilded Age magnates, I left out a third, equally significant such narrative: the self-made man. While the narrative had been present in American culture since at least Ben Franklin's self-definitions and national image, and had gained a great deal of steam with the narratives about both Andrew Jackson and Abe Lincoln in the mid-19th century, there's no question that it was in the Gilded Age that its status as one of our defining American narratives was truly cemented; that cementing was due in significant measure to the phenomenally popular novels of Horatio Alger, whose nearly identical protagonists were all variations of the self-made man narrative, but likewise found consistent validation in the accounts (both autobiographical and from outside views/stories) of the self-making through which the Gilded Age magnates had risen to their high status.

There's a lot of AmericanStudies work to be done (and that has been done) on the self-made man narrative, but I mention it here because of one of its principal roles: in making extreme wealth palatable, and even attractive and noble, to the mass of Americans who do not and are likely never going to possess it. It often mystifies me how a reprehensible, sleazy, multiple-bankruptcy-suffering fool like Donald Trump can become an icon and idol; but my mystification is due in part to my knowledge of how Trump gained the vast majority of his fortune: the way many of the wealthiest Americans (such as current presidential candidate Mitt Romney) do, by inheriting it. The national narratives about men like Trump and Romney, on the other hand, emphasize their resumes, their business savvy, their self-making—thus making these obscenely wealthy figures into both impressive models and, at least implicitly, examples that could be followed in our own paths to obscene wealth.Journalist and political writer Thomas Frank famously asked, in regard to the question of why working class Americans so often seem to vote against their own self-interest and in favor of the interests of the wealthy, What's the Matter with Kansas? I read today a daily email from the TeaParty.org official site—a New England ASA email account receives those daily emails, and the AmericanStudier in me is obligated to read them, even at the risk of nausea and vomiting—in which that ostensibly working-class, populist organization similarly went to great lengths to defend the nation's richest 1% against the Occupy Wall Street movement. My first reaction in reading the email was quite similar to Frank's; my second was to remember the big money groups and individuals (like the Koch Brothers) that have funded many of the Tea Party's efforts. But my third was to recall the role of the self-made man narrative in the Gilded Age, and down to our contemporary moment—to make us admire and aspire to be precisely those Americans who are, in many ways, making the national dreams of financial success or even stability more difficult for many of their fellow countrymen to attain.

More this weekend,Ben

PS. Three links to start with:1)      The Gilded Age's only two-term president, Grover Cleveland, does his part to build the self-made man narrative: http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/news/cleveland.html

2)       Info on Frank's book: http://tcfrank.com/books/whats-the-matter-with-kansas/

3)      OPEN: What do you think?

October 13, 2011: Gospel Musings

The obscenely wealthy magnates whose industries, fortunes, and identities so dominated and defined the Gilded Age in America may have come to be known as robber barons—particularly after the publication of journalist and historian Matthew Josephson's 1934 The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists—but in their own era, and with a great deal of help from their own narrative- and myth-making efforts, men like Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt were consistently linked to a much more positive phrase: the Gospel of Wealth. Carnegie himself first coined the phrase in his 1889 North American Review article "Wealth" (linked below), and his culminating paragraph there still serves as the concept's most succinct definition: the opening image of the "millionaire" as "a trustee for the poor, entrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself"; and the closing critique of those wealthy Americans who choose not to use their wealth charitably: "The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced."

Certainly we AmericanStudiers have to be very careful about accepting any narrative produced directly by those most implicated by it; but as with so many of the topics about which I've written here, the truths of this historical community and period likely lie in some complex combination of these different images. That is, there's very little question that the fortunes of these Gilded Age magnates were indeed achieved with the help of a variety of shady means for which the term "robbery" does not feel inappropriate—a process that in many ways began with the eight year reign of one of our nation's most corrupt presidential administrations, that of Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877); was facilitated by one of the most suspect Supreme Court decisions of all time (1886's Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, in which the majority ruled that corporations were "people" and so protected by the 14th Amendment); and remained almost entirely unchecked until Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive movement's early 20th century trust-busting efforts. Yet there's also no question that many of these magnates did indeed use at least a good bit of their extreme wealth for a variety of very worthy causes: founding universities (Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt, Stanford), starting libraries (a favorite activity of Carnegie's in particular), endowing grants and aid programs of all kinds (central to Rockefeller's legacy), and so on. None of them died poor, nor did they leave their descendents bereft; but, to honor Carnegie's terms, it's fair to say that they didn't necessarily die "thus rich" either.When it comes to our contemporary, 21st century beneficiaries of what many commentators have described as a new Gilded Age (see link two for an example), the dividing line seems a bit clearer. The Wall Street uber-rich and the CEOs with billion-dollar bonuses and golden parachutes seem often to revel in the robber baron image and to reject the slightest intimation that they should be doing anything with their money other than, well, taking baths in it; the group of Wall Streeters drinking champagne and laughing on a balcony above the Occupy Wall St. marchers earlier this month would exemplify this side to our modern Gilded Age. On the other hand there's the case of Bill Gates, one of the richest people in human history and yet someone whose philanthropic and charitable efforts and organizations seem almost literally boundless; Oprah Winfrey would be another prominent current example of a strikingly wealthy American who at the same time very publicly embodies a Gospel of Wealth philosophy. And then, in a significantly grayer area that reveals the complexities behind any such black-and-white division, would be the impetus for this post, Steve Jobs: Jobs famously limited his own opportunities for extreme wealth, taking only a $1 salary for his last few years with Apple (although he certainly didn't have to go begging); yet he also did not, at least in any public or prominent way, use his or his company's wealth for philanthropic purposes (although as I wrote yesterday the company itself performed significant social roles to be sure).

The point, as ever here, is multiple and ambiguous. Extreme wealth, and especially the resulting and inevitable gaps and inequalities it brings with it, is, to this AmericanStudier's mind, a very dangerous and destructive force in our society. But since no individual can change such a force, it's certainly better for the wealthy to practice, as fully and genuinely as possible, something like the Gospel of Wealth, right? Or does the Gospel serve more to mask their own continued enrichment, as an opiate for the masses of sorts? Is the Jobs version—of working to create a company that in some key ways enriches society, and limiting his own paychecks at the same time, but not necessarily doing charitable work per se—preferable? Inquiring, AmericanStudying minds want to know what you think! More tomorrow,Ben

PS. Three links to start with:1)      The Carnegie "Gospel" essay: http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1/AIH19th/Carnegie.html

2)      An article by economist Brad DeLong linking the robber baron image to our contemporary wealth inequalities: http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/econ_articles/carnegie/delong_moscow_paper2.html

3)      OPEN: What do you think?

October 12, 2011: The Messy, Troubling, Democratizing Machine

It's not at all hyperbolic to note that one of the founding AmericanStudies questions and themes is the complex, conflicted opposition and yet interrelationship between nature and technology in our national identity and culture. After all, by almost any reckoning Leo Marx was one of the founding and most significant early AmericanStudiers, and Marx's masterpiece was his 1964 The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. As Marx noted, many of our defining national ideals and narratives, from Jefferson's yeoman farmer and mythologized heroes like Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett down to the genre of the Western and the creation of the National Park System, emphasized the positive qualities and influences of a pastoral, natural world and space, one outside of our cities and (as Natty Bumppo and Huck Finn would have put it) civilizin' forces. Yet at the same time, as Marx likewise argued, every stage of our national development has been heavily influenced, if not owes its existence to, technological developments: from the printing press in the Revolutionary era to the railroad in the 19th century's national moves westward, and up to the crucial early 20th century unifying possibilities created by (among other innovations) the automobile, radio, telephone, and air travel.

Despite those necessary and even critical technological contributions, though, Marx rightly noted a criticism thread of anti-technological critique among many of our most prominent national narratives and voices, a sense that our American garden was continually being invaded and corrupted (if not destroyed) by these machines. No single voice or text captures that perspective better than Henry David Thoreau's Walden, or, Life in the Woods (1854), and no moment within that text better exemplifies Thoreau's critique of technology than his Chapter IV ("Sounds") discussion of the Fitchburg railroad line's invasion of his Walden world and of the ideal American identity and culture he has moved there in an effort to find and narrate. "The whistle of the locomotive," he writes, "penetrates my woods summer and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over some farmer's yard." And while he recognizes the realities of transportation and commerce that the railroad represents and has in fact made possible, he nonetheless focuses in the section on the gap he sees between the heroic images of the trains and their much bleaker realities—"If the enterprise were as heroic and commanding as it is protracted and unwearied!"—and on the negative cultural influences of this new technology: "To do things 'railroad fashion' is now the byword; and it is worth the while to be warned so often and so sincerely by any power to get off its track."No one who has (for example) both walked in the woods and been stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on 95 can fail to hear and sympathize with Thoreau's perspective here; no one who has seen (for another example) large numbers of people in the stands at a baseball game focused not on the game nor on each other but instead on their phones and devices doesn't share this sense of the dangers or downsides of technological progress. Yet Thoreau also admits, in one of the passage's only genuinely positive lines, how many of his neighbors have been able to travel to Boston on the railroad who otherwise (he believes) would never have made the journey; and the simple reality of technological development in America is that, whatever its other effects and meanings, it has consistently served as a vehicle for democratization, for opening up our nation's worlds and possibilities to a greater number of our fellow citizens. Nature can and should be democratically accessible and meaningful too, of course; that was Olmstead's explicit goal in creating Central Park, after all, and was likewise a key goal of the National Park movement. Yet nature's benefits, real and vital as they are, are also at their heart individual and spiritual (broadly defined); while technology, despite those dangers and downsides, offers communal and social opportunities that we must be careful not to elide or understate. Thoreau's life and choices offered him the chance to spend a year in Walden, to travel to Fitchburg on foot, and so on; but for most of his fellow Americans, then and now, the opportunities afforded them by technological advancements were much more vital to their own lives and needs, their goals and families, their success and dreams. And we can always still take the inexpensive commuter rail out to Concord and then walk to Walden Pond as well!

I'm thinking about these questions today as the first of two ways in which I'll try to link Steve Jobs to AmericanStudies conversations. After all, whatever else Jobs did and meant, he consistently and with great innovation brought some of our newest technologies—the personal computer, the internet, digital music, the cell phone—to his fellow Americans and around the world; even Pixar's use of computer technologies and animation in the service of profoundly powerful filmmaking and storytelling can be described in that way. Jobs' commencement speech advice to all his fellow men and women to follow their hearts might well lead many individuals into the woods—but it might lead at least as many to their IPods and computers, their cars and phones. And that's as American a choice as it gets. More tomorrow, the second part of these AmericanStudies responses to Jobs,Ben

PS. Three links to start with:1)      Google books version of 35th anniversary edition of Marx's book: http://books.google.com/books?id=aJ3SfJyseSoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

2)      E-text of Walden's Chapter IV: http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden04.html

3)      OPEN: What do you think?

October 11, 2011: Remembering An Iconoclastic Genius

I've had a request to write a post on or related to or inspired by Steve Jobs, and am still figuring out what I want to do with that but should have it done for one of the next few days. But just as I was thinking about Jobs, I came upon a story about another, and I guess I would say even more impressive and pioneering, American who passed away this past week: Derrick Bell. I emphasize the "more impressive and pioneering" point not to tear down Jobs in any way, but rather because, I am ashamed to admit, I knew nearly nothing about Professor Bell; perhaps I had come across his name at one point or another, but certainly without the kind of emphasis that this amazing life clearly deserves. Check out these biographies (or at least the first and fullest of 'em) and an obituary, and I'll be here on the other side:

--A couple different biographies of Bell: http://www.answers.com/topic/derrick-bell?cat=biz-fin--The New York Times obituary: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/us/derrick-bell-pioneering-harvard-law-professor-dies-at-80.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1318209858-b9X+JpSoMSSH3C9tHJ8mmg

I'm not sure I've encountered a more consistently exemplary and significant American life, and it makes me sad that his passing garnered no national attention. I understand full well how many more people were directly impacted by Jobs' life and work, a subject that will be part of my in-development take on the man; I likewise understand why some of Bell's most significant impacts could be seen as more explicitly focused on (if not limited to) scholarly conversations and communities. But on the other hand, Jobs' choices, whatever else their impacts and meanings, were always made in service of business, of marketing, of profit—whereas Bell was a man who, as the bios and obituary note, quit one of the most sought-after and high-paying (as these things go) scholarly jobs out of a sense of social and ethical obligation. Jobs' oft-repeated commencement address advice about only following the dictates of your heart, while certainly worth heeding, is a lot less complicated to take when it's coming from somebody whose choices made his company and himself enormously successful; but when we apply it to a man whose choices cost him a great deal, in every sense, the advice becomes significantly more complex and, perhaps, more inspiring as well.But leaving all of that aside, Bell's life still exemplifies what I could call the two most salient American trends of the second half of the 20th (and still the early 21st) century. For one thing, he spent his life as a pioneer in integrating American society—from his very young, single-handed integration of an Alabama church, as retold at the start of the first biography's narrative, through his lifelong efforts to integrate the faculty and tenure process at Harvard, and in many other ways besides, Bell not only advocated for but in his life and choices embodied the integration of a wide variety of our national and local communities. But at the same time, and despite his consistent arguments for persistent discrimination and racism in American society, Bell's ideas and ideals reflect a sense of America that includes, from its points of origin on to its present conflicts and possibilities, all races and communities—a vision of a nation that, however much it has tried to deny and exclude many citizens, has instead been fundamentally defined by their presences and perspectives, by both the darkest and yet most potentially inspiring sides of our histories and identities. That is, precisely by working so fully for integration, among his many other lifelong efforts, Bell made plain how fully our nation has always been, in hesitant and partial and incomplete and evolving but still crucial ways, inseparably integrated.

Obviously there's no limit to how many people we remember, either in their passings or in their lives, and I'll have more to say about the significance of Steve Jobs' life and legacy soon. But to my mind the most impressive and inspiring famous American whom we lost last week was Derrick Bell—and the most tragic aspect of his loss is just how little most of us (myself included) knew about him. More tomorrow,Ben

PS. The links are already above, so here I'll just ask, as usual, what do you think?

October 10, 2011: Columbus Days

In honor of … well, I've never been quite sure what we're meant to honor today: the brave but delusional Italian-born Spanish explorer who thought (until the end, apparently) that he'd found China and ended his days having been thoroughly disgraced and dishonored, not to mention imprisoned and driven mad? The centuries of disease and slavery and genocide and strife that followed his voyages? Good sales at department stores? The long weekend? I dunno. But on the occasion, at least, of Columbus Day, here are six posts in which I tried to engage with the complex realities of the exploration and settlement era:

November 9: Mi Casas Should Be Everybody's Casas: On Bartolome de las Casas, the Spanish Priest who devoted his life to fighting against the abuse and enslavement of Native Americans.November 22: Very Different Pictures: On the first truly brutal conflict between the Massachusetts Puritans and the local Native American nations, the Pequot War—and the 1820s novel that reimagined the conflict through Pequot eyes.

November 25: A Thanksgiving Turkey: On Rush Limbaugh's version of the First Thanksgiving, William Bradford's account of the same event, and the propaganda of history.August 25: Not Just Any John Smith and August 26: The Indian Princess: A complementary pair of posts on the narratives, images, and (as best as we can tell) realities of two of the most important early Virginians.

September 27: Accent-uate the Positive: My argument about the true American language is grounded in my desire to define a series of 16th and 17th century moments, and more exactly encounters and conversations between distinct cultures in those periods, as the origin points for the first truly American identities.Now get out there, wander into your neighbor's yard, insist that you've really discovered the lost city of Atlantis, and enslave him and his family; it's the least you can do today. More tomorrow,

BenPS. Any explorers, early arrivals or settlers, or stories from America's first centuries you find particularly interesting?

October 7-9, 2011 [Link-tastic Post 3]: NEASA Conference

Rounding out the week of NEASA-focused blogging by providing, one more time, a handful of the links through which you can connect to the conference and all of the AmericanStudies voices and conversations it will highlight:

1)      www.neasa.org: Our official site includes, at the Conference tab, all the info you can want about the conference, including the most updated program.
2)      www.regonline.com/2011neasaconference: Want to register for the conference? This is the direct link to do so. I'd sure love to see you in Plimoth!
3)      http://neasaconference.blogspot.com: Live halfway around the world from Massachusetts? Then take part in our conference conversations virtually at the pre-conference blog!
4)      www.plimoth.org: Our amazing conference site, Plimoth Plantation.
5)      http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu: Official site for our great keynote speaker, James Loewen.I know I've already asked a lot of you when it comes to this conference and the blog and etc. But if I can make one more request: if you take part in any list-servs or other online conversations with an interest in AmericanStudies, belong to any relevant institutions or organizations, have colleagues and friends who might be interested, and otherwise have any possible places and ways to publicize the conference, I'll ask you to please consider doing so, even just by sharing this post. Public scholarship works best when it's engaging with a broad and diverse public, and that's my number one goal for this conference, and for NEASA more broadly, by far. Thanks! More next week, a special Columbus Day post,

BenPS. Since I've done so much publicizing this week, anything you'd like to publicize here? Feel free to use the comments to toot your own horn, it'd be only fair.

October 6, 2011: Native Voices

I learned a lot in the process of researching and writing my dissertation/first book—which is about as logical and unnecessary a clause as I could write, I suppose, but nonetheless profoundly true—but nothing took me more by surprise, nor on some level bothered me more deeply, than part of what I learned while researching my chapter on the "Indian question," on Gilded Age national narratives and historical literary texts about Native Americans and the many complex issues and identities to which that community connects. (I say "part" because I also and much more happily during that chapter's work learned, for example, of powerful and significant texts by William Justin Harsha and Sarah Winnemucca.) As I read through as much of the relevant scholarship—on my specific authors and texts, on the time period and historical contexts, and on Native American literature and identity more generally—as I could find, I discovered that many of the scholars distinguished, explicitly and consistently, between "Native scholars" and "non-Native scholars"; when engaging with the work of their peers and colleagues, that is, these scholars (and I didn't keep count but I would say it was at least a sizeable minority and perhaps the majority of those I read) made the effort not only to find out the ethnic/racial identities of their peers, but then foregrounded those identities in their own responses to other scholars.

There are, I know (or have a sense of), hugely significant issues and stakes to the question of who is and is not a Native American, or more exactly who is and is not accepted as part of a particular nation and tribe. There are also broader and somewhat more cross-cultural but certainly just as fundamental and meaningful conversations about authenticity and cultural sovereignty to which that question likewise connects. Yet at the risk of becoming a parody of a self-centered academic, I would quote my own response to some of those questions at the end of that chapter's introductory section, since I still believe this very fully (if anything, even more strongly than I did then): "While I no more wish to subsume Native readers in my own (Amer-European [a phrase from an earlier scholar from whose ideas I was pivoting here]) perspective than I want to replace Native writers with non-Native ones, it seems to me that a central job of American literary criticism—and all American literature, for that matter—is to include multiple writers and multiple readers in its purview, to allow seemingly disparate groups to illuminate and enrich each other. That so much criticism and literature has failed to do so, has canonized non-Native authors who ignored or stereotyped Natives, only highlights the need for breadth and inclusion as the work of recovery and rereading moves forward." I would now add AmericanStudies as a central focus in that quote, and in fact would argue that those ideas are even more relevant to conversations about American identity and community than they are for literary history and criticism.I'm thinking about that earlier discovery and response of mine today in the context of this week's blog focus on the upcoming New England American Studies Association conference. One of my most central goals in planning the conference—second only to my desire to get as many people to attend and be part of it as possible, to which I say, one more time (well, maybe not one more, but another time), join us!—has been to include, in a central and highlighted way, as many Native American voices and perspectives as possible. That's particularly true of the two late afternoon/early evening events: the Friday evening reading by four prominent regional Native American authors; and the Saturday evening tour with Native Plymouth Tours. But it's perhaps even more true, in terms of the ideals of my book quote and perspective, of Friday's plenary panel: the panel focuses on images and narratives of Plimoth, and two of the five featured speakers are a Wampanoag historian and author (Joan Avant Tavares) and an Aquinnah historian and author (Linda Coombs); both women have worked directly with Plimoth Plantation on various projects, but both are also just powerful and inspiring authors and voices in any conversation. Yet I will admit that I'm most excited not just at the thought of their presence and presentations, but also at hearing how their ideas converse with the three others on the panel (Joe Conforti, a scholar of New England and American Studies; Cathy Stanton, a scholar of cultural and heritage tourism and sties; and Kevin McBride, a cultural and archaeological anthropologist) and how the collected audience responds and engages with them as well.

As with most anything about which I've written here, this isn't ultimately an either/or dichotomy—we can and should find ways to hear Native American voices on their own terms, as I hope the conference will exemplify; but we can, I firmly and fully believe, also strive to create conversations in which no individual ethnic or cultural voices quite stand out, but rather many of them blend and interconnect and influence each other and form a cross-cultural dialogue that is, quite simply, American. More tomorrow,

BenPS. Three links to start with:

1)      A late 20th century philosophical take on the question of authenticity and identity: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/#Aut

2)      An interesting take on ethnicity, authenticity, and autobiographical life writing: http://www.has.vcu.edu/eng/symp/p_o.htm

3)      OPEN: What do you think?

October 5, 2011: Of Plimoth Plantation

The museum and historic site at Plimoth Plantation is a hugely interesting and significant AmericanStudies space for at least three distinct, if interconnected, reasons. For one thing, since the Plantation's origins in the late 1940s, it has worked to create what is usually known as a living history museum, a site in which highly trained and educated "interpreters" reenact the identities and voices and perspectives of early 17th century Pilgrims. The work done by such living history museums has become an increasing subject for scholarly research and analysis; it's not unrelated to Civil War reenactments, but with an explicit and central emphasis on education, with the reenactors not so much fulfilling their own interests or passions (as do Civil War reenactors) as seeking to connect audiences to the people and period they're recreating. The performers are exceptionally good at what they do, almost disconcertingly so; for an AmericanStudier like me, it's difficult to talk to them without trying constantly to break the fourth wall and discuss their own choices and goals. But we'll get the chance to have some of those conversations, with a good deal less awkwardness, in Special Sessions at the NEASA conference next month!

If those living history components to Plimoth go back many decades, the second AmericanStudies element is significantly more recent. Just a few hundred yards from the Plantation recreation is the Wampanoag Homesite, a very different kind of living history: while the Homesite's spaces and places, its tools and cooking processes and the like, are indeed recreations of their 17th century equivalents, the staff of Native Americans (many Wampanoag, but others from various other nations) exist entirely in our 21st century moment, providing their own perspectives on the historical, cultural, and national questions to which the site connects. More broadly, the Homesite illustrates just how fully and to my mind successfully Plimoth has worked in the last few decades to provide a historical and educational experience that does full justice to the Wampanoag community and stories. Certainly it's possible to experience the Homesite and Plantation as two very distinct and separate spaces, an effect that could be called a component to multicultural American history and identity more generally; but at least in part the job of the Plantation is to tell each part of the story, and then to allow its audiences to consider for themselves how those parts and communities interconnect.Yet the Plantation's third AmericanStudies element exemplifies the site's most complex but, I would (unsurprisingly) argue, its most crucial goal: highlighting the ultimately and fundamentally interconnected stories and identities of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag. This element, the orientation film, is one that at many museums would likely be the least interesting or innovative feature; but at Plimoth the current film, entitled "Two Peoples: One Story," was produced by the History Channel and is, despite its relatively straightforward basic agenda (to introduce arriving audiences to what they'll find out at the Plantation and Homesite), a complex and very impressive work. For example, the Wampanoag characters/actors in the film speak in the Wampanoag language, a small detail that is anything but when we recognize the long history of Native American languages being silenced or even actively repressed in favor of English. Yet it's really the film's title that reflects its most impressive quality, its consistent insistence on cross-cultural story- and history-telling, on narrating the stories of these two communities as, from those first 1620 moments down to the present museum experience, entirely and crucially intertwined. That doesn't meant that the film elides the more destructive results of contact for the Wampanoag nation—far from it—but it does give every arriving visitor a clear reminder that the story of Plimoth Plantation is a story of multiple cultures coexisting and conversing and influencing one another in every way, from the most negative to the most potentially inspiring.

All three elements will in fact be focal points at the conference—at those Friday and Saturday special sessions (and at Friday's featured plenary panel as well, for that matter), but also throughout the conference in other, informal but important ways. I haven't ever attended a conference where the site was as much a conference subject as any panel conversation, but there are few sites that are better equipped to serve that role than Plimoth Plantation. More tomorrow, as the NEASA-focused week rolls on,Ben

PS. Four links to start with:1)      Google books version of one of the best scholarly analyses of Plimoth's living history performances, by former interpreter turned professor Stephen Eddy Snow: http://books.google.com/books?id=RbHQq37ydHsC&pg=PR11&lpg=PR11&dq=stephen+eddy+snow+performing+pilgrims&source=bl&ots=LPjBxQ5rRD&sig=IWQzEYK_cVw6uSsznoWzVTr2QLc&hl=en&ei=qKqLTpzkNseFhQePhsjUAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

2)      Some official info on the Wampanoag Homesite: http://www.plimoth.org/what-see-do/wampanoag-homesite

3)      Story on the Wampanoag Homesite that includes some relevant info on the film: http://www.wampspeaker.com/press.php

4)      OPEN:  Any museums or historic sites that you'd highlight?

October 4, 2011: NEASA Follow Ups

Just a few follow ups to yesterday's post about the New England American Studies Association conference and blog:

I've gone back and added a "New England ASA" label to all of the earlier posts that focused on NEASA activities and the conference; those six posts, with this as the seventh, can give you a lot more information about the conference and sense of my goals and perspective for it and NEASA more generally. I see it as a great place to put many of my ideals for public scholarly connections and conversations into practice, and would love as always to get perspectives and responses from as many of my readers here as are at all interested.For the blog, seriously, please check it out (http://neasaconference.blogspot.com). As much as I like my own blog here, the posts over there have videos (including, among many others, a Bugs Bunny cartoon and a telephone company instructional video from the 1950s!) and works of art, songs and cartoons, and so much more. They're as diverse and multimedia and engaging and challenging as AmericanStudies itself, and they really, really deserve some more feedback and responses. Since I can already tell you are readers of discerning and sophisticated AmericanStudies tastes, I will just ask one more time that you bring those tastes over to the blog and, well, feast.

Finally, here are some quick links to sites and info for some—and I emphasize some—of the amazing people whose voices and work we'll feature at the conference; I've chosen just one link for each person, but there are many more where these come from:1)      (Saturday) Keynote speaker James Loewen
2)      (Friday) Plenary panelist and Friday evening reader Joan Avant Tavares
3)      Plenary panelist Linda Coombs
4)      Plenary panelist Joe Conforti
5)      Plenary panelist Cathy Stanton
6)      Plenary panelist Kevin McBride
7)      Friday evening reader Melissa Zobel
8)      Friday evening reader Larry Spotted Crow Mann
9)      Friday evening reader Mihku Paul
10)   Saturday Special Session presenter and Plimoth Plantation Curator Karin Goldstein
11)   Saturday late afternoon tour guides Native Plymouth Tours

Can you tell that I'm excited for this conference? Remember to check out the full program draft at http://www.neasa.org (the Conference tab), and please consider joining us at Plimoth! (And check out at the blog in any case!) More tomorrow,Ben