Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 53

February 6, 2024: AmericanStudying Sports Movies: Hoosiers and Rudy

[For manyyears now, I’ve used the SuperBowl week to blog about sportshistories and stories. This year I wanted to do the same, focusing thistime on sports movies and what they can tell us about American culture andidentity, leading up to my pitch for a new such film. Be a good sport and shareyour thoughts in comments, please!]

On the appeal ofunderdog champions, and the untold sides to their stories.

If yesterday’stwo types (heroic losers like Rocky Balboa and lovable losers like the Bad NewsBears and Costner’s protagonists) occupy two spots along a spectrum of sportsmovie protagonists, then heroic underdog champions occupy a third, even moreinspiring slot. Such characters are as admirable and heroic in their personalqualities as Rocky, but seek something more than just going the distance—theywant to achieve the unlikeliest of victories, to knock off the seemingly unbeatablechampion. Perhaps the most striking such underdog champions in both sports andsports movie history are the Miracleon Ice hockey gold medalists of 1980—but since that group was still anOlympic team for one of the most successful nations in Olympic history, I wouldargue that the midwestern protagonists of Hoosiers (1986) and Rudy (1993), bothfilms directed by David Anspaugh and written by Angelo Pizzo, provide even moreclear examples of this type.

It’d be hard todecide which of those inspired-by-a-true-story underdog victories is moreunlikely and more inspiring. The Hickory high school team in Hoosiers (based loosely on MilanHigh’s 1954 championship season) is coached by two men as collectivelyflawed as Buttermaker in Bad News Bears—GeneHackman’s Norman Dale has been dismissed from his prior job for losing histemper and striking a student; Dennis Hopper’s Shooter Flatch is an alcoholictown outcast—and has barely enough players to field a team, yet goes on to winthe state championship against a vastly more deep and talented South Bend team.Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, whose life and events are portrayed relativelyclose to accurately by Sean Astin and company, is the undersized son of anIllinois factory worker who refuses to give up on his dream of playing footballfor Notre Dame, overcoming numerous challenges and obstacles and finally makinghis way onto the team and into the final game of the season, in which he sacksthe quarterback on the final play and is carried off the field by histeammates. Having critiqued lovable loser films for their merely pyrrhicvictories, it’d be hypocritical of me not to applaud films that depict underdogvictories, and such stories are indeed undeniably appealing and affecting.

Yet in order totell their stories in the way they want, these films also have to leave out agreat deal, elisions that are exemplified by the way racial issues are notaddressed in Hoosiers. For one thing,Hickory’s opponent in the championship game, South Bend, is intimidating in largepart because it features a racially integrated team, which would have been asignificant rarity in 1952 and which would seem to make them a team worth oursupport. And for another, as James Loewen has written in his groundbreakingbook Sundown Towns(2005), southern Indiana in the early 1950s was a hotbed of overt and violentracism; to quote Loewen, “As one Indiana resident relates, ‘All southern Hoosierslaughed at the movie called Hoosiers because the movie depicts blacks playingbasketball and sitting in the stands at games in Jasper. We allagreed no blacks were permitted until probably the '60s and do not feel welcometoday.’ A cheerleader for a predominantly white, but interracial Evansvillehigh school, tells of having rocks thrown at their school bus as they sped outof Jasper after a basketball game in about 1975, more than 20 years after theevents depicted so inaccurately in Hoosiers.”Such histories don’t necessarily contrast with those featured in thesefilms—but it would be important to complement the films with fuller engagementwith their perhaps less triumphant contexts.

NextMovieStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do youthink? Other sports movies you’d highlight?

February 5, 2024: AmericanStudying Sports Movies: Bad News Boys and Bears

[For manyyears now, I’ve used the SuperBowl week to blog about sportshistories and stories. This year I wanted to do the same, focusing thistime on sports movies and what they can tell us about American culture andidentity, leading up to my pitch for a new such film. Be a good sport and shareyour thoughts in comments, please!]

On the Americanobsession with lovable losers, and a problem with it.

One of the bestsports movies of all time, Rocky (1976),features a protagonist whom I’d call a heroic loser. That is, even before RockyBalboa went on to win all the climactic fights in his subsequent films, his initiallosing effort against Apollo Creed was a reflection of his heroic qualities:his grit and perseverance, his desire and ability to “go the distance.” Well,that’s not the kind of loser I’m going to focus on in this post. These losersare the drunken coach and his team of misfits and outcasts who lose thechampionship game and then start a brawl with the winners (The Bad NewsBears), the drunken career minor leaguer who ends his career setting arecord that nobody will remember and then quitting (Bull Durham),the drunken washed out golfer who blows his one chance at redemption due to astubborn insistence on perfection over success (Tin Cup).Other than drunkenness, and in the latter couple of cases Kevin Costner as saiddrunken protagonist, what defines this bunch is precisely how anti-heroic theyseem.

But on the otherhand, they are the heroes of their stories, each of which culminates very fullywith a moment that asks us to cheer for the protagonists—often in the precisemoment of their lovable losing (such as TinCup’s catastrophic final hole), and always in triumphs that are framed asfar more important than the actual on-field victories would have been (theBears proving that they’re a team, Costner’s characters getting the girl).Concurrently, their stories’ actual victors are typically framed as eitherunlikable snobs (the Yankeesin Bears, Don Johnson’s rival golferin Cup) or at best clueless jocks whowill never understand what’s most important (Tim Robbins’ star pitcherin Bull). In a nation that wascreated out of a revolution that pitted farmers against the world’s greatestarmy, a nation whose generaland first president pretty much never won a battle in the course of thatrevolution, it’s easy to see where this embrace of losers over snobs, theflawed but lovable everyman against the powerful champion, arises—and easy toembrace it ourselves as well.

I enjoy thosecharacters and their stories as well, and am certainly not advocating rootingfor the Redcoats during the Revolution (you definitely lose yourAmericanStudier card for that one). But I think there’s a subtle butsignificant problem with these lovable loser stories, now more than ever: theymake it much easier to swallow substantial inequalities, to see it assufficient to achieve pyrrhic victories against the powers that be and thusleave those powers ultimately unscathed. That is, whereas Rocky hit theunbeatable champion Apollo hard enough that he famously noted, “There’ll be no rematch,”in these lovable loser stories the champions don’t seem much affected atall—it’s simply about the little guy achieving whatever victory he can reasonablyget, and us all being happy with that. And at the end of the day, that seemslike a recipe for giving up even the idea that either side can win—an ideathat, mythicas it may too often be, is to my mind at the core of the best version ofAmerican identity and community.

NextMovieStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do youthink? Other sports movies you’d highlight?

February 3-4, 2024: January 2024 Recap

[A Recapof the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

January1: 2024 Anniversaries: New Netherland in 1674: A New Year’s series beginswith the 350th anniversary of a handover that changed a lot—but notnearly everything.

January2: 2024 Anniversaries: The First Continental Congress in 1774: The seriescontinues with three lesser-known delegates from the First Continental Congresson its 250th anniversary.

January3: 2024 Anniversaries: The 1874 Midterms: On the importance but not theinevitability of historical turning points, as the series commemorates on.

January4: 2024 Anniversaries: J. Edgar Hoover in 1924: What J. Edgar Hoover immediatelybrought to his new role as the Director of the Bureau of Investigation 100years ago.

January5: 2024 Anniversaries: 1974 Films: The series concludes withAmericanStudies contexts for five of the many great films released 50 yearsago.

January6-7: 2024 Anniversaries: The 1824 Election: But wait, a special weekendpost on the controversial presidential election that might and might notforeshadow our moment.

January8: AmericanStudying Columbia Pictures: Three Origin Points: A series on thestudio’s 100th anniversary kicks off with three pre-1924 startingpoints.

January9: AmericanStudying Columbia Pictures: The Three Stooges and Friends: Theseries continues with why the Stooges were just the tip of the iceberg when itcame to comic shorts.

January10: AmericanStudying Columbia Pictures: Technicolor: Three films throughwhich Columbia finally entered the technicolor age, as the series screens on.

January11: AmericanStudying Columbia Pictures: Jungle Jim: A longstanding B-movieseries that reflects Hollywood’s multimedia influences in all directions.

January12: AmericanStudying Columbia Pictures: Matt Helm and Casino Royale: Theseries concludes with a pair of ways that the studio tried to make up forlosing out on Bond.

January13-14: Vaughn Joy’s Hollywood Histories: I couldn’t share a Hollywood historiesseries without paying tribute to the best public scholar working on those histories.

January15: Spring Semester Previews: First-Year Writing II: A Spring semester seriesfocused on why we teach & study the humanities kicks off with the skills atthe heart of first-year writing.

January16: Spring Semester Previews: American Literature II: The series continues withthe many core American reasons to teach our literary histories.

January17: Spring Semester Previews: Intro to Sci Fi/Fantasy: The crucial importanceof diversifying speculative fiction syllabi, as the series learns on.

January18: Spring Semester Previews: The Short Story Online: How all-online courseshelp us share the humanities with broader and more varied audiences.

January 19: Spring Semester Previews: Grad HistoricalFiction: The series concludes with my latest grad course and a request forconnections to our grad programs!

January20: MLK Day and the Humanities: The first of two weekend follow-ups, an MLKDay tribute to his many connections to the humanities.

January20-21: Ava DePasquale’s Guest Post on Grey Dog: And the second, my latestgreat Guest Post from an awesome FSU English Studies alum!

January22: AmericanStudying Groundbreaking Women: Judith Sargent Murray: A seriesfor the 175th anniversary of Elizabeth Blackwell’s MD kicks off withthe Gloucester home that was both prison and liberation for Judith SargentMurray.

January23: AmericanStudying Groundbreaking Women: Elizabeth Blackwell: The series continueswith three institutions that help tell the story of the groundbreakingphysician on her 175th anniversary.

January24: AmericanStudying Groundbreaking Women: Nelly Bly: A rightly famous workof groundbreaking investigative journalism and one that should be, as theseries trailblazes on.

January25: AmericanStudying Groundbreaking Women: Pauli Murray and Black Women in theLaw: Linking to a Saturday EveningPost column of mine on the latest in a long line of groundbreaking AfricanAmerican women and the law.

January26: AmericanStudying Groundbreaking Women: Shirley Chisholm: The seriesconcludes with two telling political efforts beyond Chisholm’s groundbreakingpresidential campaign.

January27-28: AmericanStudying Groundbreaking Women: 21st Century Icons:But the groundbreaking continues, so here are six 21st century womencarrying on the legacy.

January29: Quirky American Traditions: Pumpkin Chunkin: A Groundhog Day series onquirky traditions kicks off with the very American balance between the localand the national.

January30: Quirky American Traditions: National Hollerin’ Contest: The seriescontinues with the challenges of preserving traditions, and how the intertubescan help.

January31: Quirky American Traditions: Ostrich Racing: Three ways to contextualizea very strange “sports” tradition, as the series celebrates on.

February1: Quirky American Traditions: Nenana Ice Classic: What a unique Alaskantradition can tell us about both Alaska and traditions.

February2: Quirky American Traditions: Groundhog Day: And the series concludes withtwo ways to explain why we celebrate this quirkiest of American holidays.

Super Bowlseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Topicsyou’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

February 2, 2024: Quirky American Traditions: Groundhog Day

[In honorof the very strange ritual that is Groundhog Day, this week I’ll AmericanStudya handful of such quirky and fun traditions, including Phil himself on Friday. I’d love to hear aboutquirky traditions you’d highlight in comments!]

On twoways to try to make sense of the most famous and one of the strangest of ourquirky traditions.

Firstthings first: I bloggedabout the film Groundhog Day (1993)as part of a weeklong BillMurrayStudyingseries two years ago this week, and if you thought I wouldn’t take thischance to ask you to check out a freaking BillMurrayStudying blog series, wellyou thought wrong. Plus, I do think that excellent film is very much about boththe Groundhog Day tradition and the community of Punxsutawney that hosts it, socheck out that post if you would and then come on back for moreGroundhogStudying.

Welcomeback! It’s important to note that there are at least a half-dozen otherweather-predicting groundhogs (or woodchucks, as the same animal is knownin much of the rest of the country) out there in these quirky United States,and yet there’s no doubt that it is PunxsutawneyPhil who embodies the tradition and the holiday for most of us (including thisAmericanStudier). Part of that is the influence of the film itself, I believe;I don’t remember for sure how much attention was paid to Groundhog Day when Iwas growing up in the 1980s, but it seems clear that since the 1993 film the attention(like the annualevent and gathering on this day) has grown significantly. But I’d arguethat another factor, as again the film knows well, is the community of Punxsutawneyitself—from its unique name to its GroundhogClub to many other layersto the tradition and how it is commemorated and celebrated every February 2nd,this small Pennsylvania town exemplifies both the randomness and the appeal of quirkylocal traditions. As with all of the week’s subjects, I’d love the chance to takepart in that tradition at least once if it worked out.

At thesame time, there’s something distinct about Groundhog Day from all of the otherquirky traditions I’ve focused on this week: it is as an actual holiday, onewith a longstanding tradition dating back hundreds of years in both the U.S.and Canada. To be clear, in many ways that only makes the whole thing that muchquirkier still, that the PennsylvaniaDutch folk belief that groundhogs can predict the seasons based on whetherthey see their shadow on a particular midwinter day has evolved into a full-onholiday that is celebrated by communities far beyond that particular culture orheritage. Yet at the same time, many of our most prominent holidays likewisebegan with folk traditions and stories that evolved into the widespread and farmore universal celebrations they now entail, with Christmasat the very top of that list of course. And I’d take this line of thoughtone step further, and argue that almost all holidays are themselves an exampleof not just a tradition but a quirky one, a collection of random details andpractices that gradually get cemented into what seem to be inevitable andessential shared experiences. In that way, Groundhog Day offers a great way tofurther contextualize the week’s overall topic and how it works in our society.

JanuaryRecap this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other traditions you’d highlight?

February 1, 2024: Quirky American Traditions: Nenana Ice Classic

[In honorof the very strange ritual that is Groundhog Day, this week I’ll AmericanStudya handful of such quirky and fun traditions, including Phil himself on Friday. I’d love to hear aboutquirky traditions you’d highlight in comments!]

On what aunique Alaskan tradition tells us about both Alaska and tradition.

The annual contest in whichparticipants bet on the exact day and time that ice will break up on the TananaRiver near the small community of Nenana,Alaska developed in a fewdistinct stages. It started very informally in 1906, with six localsforming a betting pool and the winner getting treated to a couple drinks at thelocal bar. It was revived a decade later in 1916 on a larger but still local scale,with railroad workers and other Nenana residents buying tickets at Jimmy Duke’sRoadhouse. And when the word was spread by railroad workers across the region,the 1917 contest was opened to all residents of both the Alaska and Yukonterritories. That 1917 contest is the one that the official website highlights asthe contest’s genuine origin point, and it has been run every year since, withthe original betting pool of $800 reaching nearly half a million dollars in somerecent years (and over $200,000 in the2023 edition). The technology involved in determining the precise momentwhen the ice breaks up has also evolved significantly over that century, asthis localnews story details.

One of themost important but complicated things for any AmericanStudier to try to wraptheir head around is just how big and multi-part this nation of ours is, withevery state featuring some pretty distinct layers and contexts that have helpedshape its identity and community and that it contributes to the whole of theU.S. as a result. I believe that’s genuinely true for every state, but as Idiscovered during my one visit to Alaska in the summer of 2005, I’d say Alaskais one of the most distinct and unique of all 50 states (perhaps onlyrivalled by the one territory which gainedstatehood later, Hawai’i). Part of Alaska’s uniqueness is unquestionablydue to its natural landscapes, an environment utterly different from anywhereelse in the United States and one primarily defined by ice (although I’m sad tothink about how muchthat has changed in recent years). And part is due to the way in which agreat deal of the territory and state have been constituted by migratory communities,both individuals and broader cohorts like railroad workers (all, of course,alongside Alaska’sindigenous communities). We can see all those layers to Alaska’s story andidentity in the Nenana Ice Classic, both its existence and how it evolved tobecome the annual tradition it remains.

This wholeblog series has focused on such distinctive local traditions, but I hope hasalso offered windows to consider the overarching concept of tradition and howit is created, how it evolves, and how it works in a society (all topics aboutwhich I learned a great deal from one of my favorite scholarly books, MichaelKammen’s Mystic Chords of Memory).In the case of the Nenana Ice Classic in particular, I’d say that we can seehow a tradition can be at once quite genuinely connected to key aspects of itslocal community (as I argued above) and yet thoroughly constructed over time,constructions driven as likely always by a combination of more cynical factorslike tourism and capitalism and more sentimental ones like fun and communitypride. One thing I try really hard not to be is the kind of scholar who leansso far into the cynicism or even the analysis that I lose sight of those latterfactors, and so I’ll end this post with something I’d say for each and everyentry in the series: I’d love the chance to be at an event like the Nenana IceClassic, preferably with my sons and other loved ones, and to enjoy this uniquetradition for all that it is.

Lastquirky tradition tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other traditions you’d highlight?

January 31, 2024: Quirky American Traditions: Ostrich Racing

[In honorof the very strange ritual that is Groundhog Day, this week I’ll AmericanStudya handful of such quirky and fun traditions, including Phil himself on Friday. I’d love to hear aboutquirky traditions you’d highlight in comments!]

On threeways to contextualize a very strange “sports” tradition.

1)     Exotic Animals: As the father to two sons whoare quite obsessed with alpacas and make an annual pilgrimage to a wonderful alpaca farm (which is in factgoing to be part of my wedding in a few months!), I’m certainly not here tocritique the longstanding American and probably universal human tradition offalling in love with random exotic animals. But it is pretty darn random, asillustrated by the evolution of Chandler, Arizona—a small town that became homeinthe early 20th century to a number of ostrich farms (for reasonsthat I can’t seem to suss out from any of the write-ups, so if anyone out thereknows why or how this got started please add your thoughts in comments!) andthat now more than a century later hosts an annual Ostrich Festival featuring not justracing (on which as an overall practice more in a moment) but it seems allthings ostriches.

2)     A Silly Rivalry: There’s raising exoticanimals and then there’s racing them, and when it comes to ostriches thedevelopment of the latter practice in particular seems to have been even morerandom still. In 1959, the editor of the Virginia City, Nevada Territorial Enterprise newspaper printeda fake story aboutcamel racing in the community; the SanFrancisco Chronicle believed the story was real and reprinted it. The nextyear, to get back at the Nevada paper for having been duped, the Chronicle borrowed camels from the SanFrancisco Zoo and brought them to Virginia City for an actual race. This eventhas evolved into anannual tradition, one that features not only camels but also zebras, emus,and, natch, ostriches and that will run for the 64th time thiscoming September. Virginia City isn’t America’s only site for annual ostrichraces—Minnesota’s Canterbury Park features them at its annualEXTREME DAY, for example—but I’m willing to bet that the practice evolvedjust as randomly in each case, and yet has become an iconic tradition in eachas well. America!

3)     Sports Betting: Unfortunately (to my mind,anyway) another longstanding American tradition, and one that is only becomingmore ubiquitous in our current moment, is taking advantage of every possibleopportunity to gamble. I didn’t know for a fact when I planned this post thatfolks out there bet on ostrich races, but I was willing to, well, bet that thatwas the case; and lo and behold, one of the first results when I Googled “ostrichracing” was this shortvideo of a race from Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course inGrantville, PA. I have overall problems with gambling, in terms of what it too oftenmeans for the individuals and families (and communities) affected by it; but Ihave even more problems with gambling on animal racing, as it seems very likelyto me that it can lead to the animals being mistreated or at least treated as asource of income rather than living creatures. So this is one quirky traditionI’d love to see end, or at least evolve.

Nextquirky tradition tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other traditions you’d highlight?

January 30, 2024: Quirky American Traditions: National Hollerin’ Contest

[In honorof the very strange ritual that is Groundhog Day, this week I’ll AmericanStudya handful of such quirky and fun traditions, including Phil himself on Friday. I’d love to hear aboutquirky traditions you’d highlight in comments!]

On thedifficulty of remembering the past and preserving traditions, and how theintertubes can help.

As muchtime as I spend thinking, talking, and writing about history—and that is a verysignificant percentage of my time, natch—I have to admit that it remainsdifficult to truly imagine what it was like to live in distant past periods.For example, I grew up in the pre-internet and even pre-cell phone era (yes,children, there was such a thing), so I do have memories of what communicationwas like prior to all the instantaneous methods we now possess—but nonetheless,telephones were ubiquitous in my childhood, as they had been in America sinceat least theearly 20th century, and so communicating with distant contactswas relatively straightforward and easy. But of course that wasn’t always thecase, and so in the more genuinely distant past communities communicated inquite different ways—as illustrated by “hollering,”the method by which residents of rural communities in places like NorthCarolina communicated both everyday greeting and urgent news with each otheracross long distances.

For muchof the second half of the 20th century, one such extremely ruralNorth Carolina community, Spivey’sCorner (population 49 according to that article), sought to preserve thattradition of hollering through the National Hollerin’ Contest.Beginning with the first such contest in June 1969, forthe next half-century or so this annual event brought thousands of visitorsand a good bit of media attention to Spivey’s Corner, to witness masters ofthis traditional form of communication demonstrating their craft and to supportthis community in a variety of ways. By the 2010s the event was havingdifficulty sustaining interest, however, and the Spivey’sCorner Volunteer Fire Department announced that the June 2016 contest wouldbe the last one. In November of that year a pair of former contest winners (IrisTurner and Robby Goodman) sought to revitalize things by organizing a WorldWide Hollerin’ Festival in nearby Hope Mills. Yet that festival took placeonly once, and from what I can tell the annual hollerin’ contest is no more.

And yet herewe are, me writing about the contest and hollering, you (hopefully) reading andlearning about them. A mainpoint of the contest was that technology (like telephones) had madetraditions like hollering obsolete and risked doing away with them, and Isympathize with that perspective and agree that things have to be done purposefullyand consistently if we are to keep the past alive in an ever-changing present. ButI also believe—perhaps obviously enough, as I share these thoughts, like I doso much of my work these days, in an online writing setting, but it still needssaying clearly—that technology has the ability to contribute to that work of preservationand memory, and indeed can do so for much broader audiences than even the mostwell-attended in-person event. To cite just one example, check out the many YouTubevideos of both the contest and hollering in general, a veritable databaseof the practice, the tradition, and this now-concluded yet still fortunatelyavailable quirky festival of celebration.

Nextquirky tradition tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other traditions you’d highlight?

January 29, 2024: Quirky American Traditions: Pumpkin Chunkin

[In honor ofthe very strange ritual that is Groundhog Day, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handfulof such quirky and fun traditions, including Phil himself on Friday. I’d love to hearabout quirky traditions you’d highlight in comments!]

On the veryAmerican balance between the local and the national.

First, it’simportant to note that I’m not nearly enough of an American Exceptionalist notto recognize that people all over the world throw/toss/hurl strange things inquirky communal traditions, and, as this ParisReview essay traces, have longdone so. That essay does a good job thinking through why this might be such acommon human activity, although because it focuses on the admittedly numerous examplesthat directly involve throwing animals and/or people (and/or throwing things atanimals and/or people), it’s a bit more interested in the meanness factor thanI would say is the case for today’s American quirky tradition: pumpkin chunkin(or chuckin, but who can resist a rhyme?!). Unless you want to argue thatpumpkins have feelings (in which case Halloween is quite the horrific traditionas well), nobody is hurt when we gather together in the sacred ritual of seeingwho can hurl a pumpkin the furthest solely by mechanical means.

I don’thave a lot to say about the specifics of that tradition, although the Crossbows& Catapults fan in me is excited to note that many pumpkin chunkers use catapults or similardevices such as trebuchets. But in any case, my goal in this week’s series isto use these particular traditions to raise and think through some broaderAmericanStudies topics, and when it comes to pumpkin chunkin I think aninteresting such topic is the balance between the local and the national. Asyou might expect, most pumpkin chunkin contests are connected to specificplaces and their local traditions, such as the ongoing annual contests in placesas disparate as LakeCounty, California and Bald EagleState Park, Pennsylvania (among literally countlessothers). But at the same time, almost every year since 1986 the US hashosted the World Championship PunkinChunkin (WCPC) contest the weekend after Halloween—for many years it tookplace in Delaware, and after a hiatus in the late 2010s this Fall the eventtriumphantly returned and was heldin Oklahoma.

While Ivery much do not believe the Civil War had anything to do with “states’ rights,”there’s no question that the debatebetween state sovereignty and the US Federal Government has been a definingand ongoing one in American history. I get that that debate has real stakes,and that the10th Amendment is frustratingly ambiguous enough to make forseriously conflicting opinions on what is and is not state and federal power. Butat the same time, one of the things I like most about the United States is thatit is this huge place (one of the biggest nations in the world, both in sizeand population), with so many distinct settings and spaces, communities andcultures contained within it; and yet at the same time they are all linked toone another, part of a federalist system in which in various important ways andmoments they come together. That is, there’s not just room here for pumpkinchunkin at a small state fair and punkin chunkin at a world championship—the presenceof both events is the essence of American community and identity.

Nextquirky tradition tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other traditions you’d highlight?

January 27-28, 2024: AmericanStudying Groundbreaking Women: 21st Century Icons

[175 yearsago Tuesday, Elizabeth Blackwell became Dr.Blackwell, the first woman to graduate from a US medical school. So thisweek I’ve AmericanStudied Blackwell and four other groundbreaking women fromAmerican history, leading up to this special weekend post on folks from our ownmoment!]

On five 21stcentury American women (and one global icon) who exemplify continued,impressive groundbreaking achievements.

1)     JessicaMeir and Christina Koch: I’m not gonna say too much for these entries,preferring to let the stories and the amazing women highlighted in them do thetalking. So please make sure to click on these hyperlinks and learn more about,for example, the first all-woman spacewalk and their plans to be the firstwomen on the moon!

2)     Linda Lee Singh:Both NASA and the US military have for far too long been boys’ clubs (andgenerally white boys at that), so what I especially love about these first twoentries is the direct challenge and alternative they offer to that artificiallyhomogeneous vision of American communities and society. What the current attackson diversity, equity, and inclusion programs miss is that there is no more vitalwork still to be done than to make sure every part of our society mirrors thosefundamental realities of who and what America is.

3)     KathrynBigelow: Representation matters in that process too, and that doesn’t justmean who we see in our cultural works—it also (and relatedly) means who iscreating them, and how we recognize and celebrate those creators and artists.Bigelow becoming the first woman to win a Best Director Oscar was painfullybelated, but we’ve got to start somewhere, and that was a truly groundbreaking culturalmoment to be sure.

4)     KamalaHarris: As I wrote in that SaturdayEvening Post Considering History column, Harris’ heritage and identity arecomplicated, which of course makes her all the more symbolically andimportantly American. What isn’t complicated at all, though, is that she’s thefirst woman Vice President of the US, and that’s a fact that reflectseverything I’ve said in the prior entries in this list—breaking into andchallenging a boys’ club (and an overwhelmingly white one at that),representation and diversity that better reflects our culture and community,all of it.

5)     MalalaYousafzai: Malala is both deeply linked to her native Pakistan and aninspiringly global icon, and I don’t want to elide either of those layers ofidentity by highlighting her in an AmericanStudies post. But at the same time,one of the best things about the 21st century is the way we cantruly connect to and be inspired by the whole world, and a case in point isthat our FitchburgState Community Read book a few years back was I Am Malala. Groundbreaking Women without Borders!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other groundbreaking women, past or present, you’d highlight?

January 26, 2024: AmericanStudying Groundbreaking Women: Shirley Chisholm

[175years ago Tuesday, Elizabeth Blackwell became Dr.Blackwell, the first woman to graduate from a US medical school. So thisweek I’ll AmericanStudy Blackwell and four other groundbreaking women fromAmerican history, leading up to a special weekend post on folks from our ownmoment!]

On twotelling political efforts beyond Chisholm’s groundbreaking presidentialcampaign.

Here inthis election year, it’s only appropriate to end a series on groundbreaking womenwith the first America woman to run forthe Democratic presidential nomination (and the second woman to seek a majorparty nomination, after RepublicanSenator Margaret Chase Smith in 1964), and the first African American presidentialcandidate to boot: New York CongresswomanShirley Chisholm. Chisholm’s 1972 campaign was groundbreakingfor both of those reasons, and was also quite successful, with the candidateachieving significant results (sometimes classified as wins, although each caseis complicated) in the NewJersey, Louisiana, and Mississippi primaries, and eventually garnering152 delegates (some symbolically released by the nominee George McGovern, butall real nonetheless) at the DemocraticNational Convention in Miami. Everything I said in Monday’s post about thesymbolic significance of Victoria Woodhull’s 1872 campaign holds true forChisholm’s campaign a century later, and I’d say Chisholm’s represented asignificantly more serious contention for the nomination as well.

If thatwere Chisholm’s only contribution to national politics it would be more thanenough to deserve collective memory—but it’s not, and her participation in acouple specific efforts helps us better remember the full scope of her half-centurycareer in politics. Chisholm’s first political work took place in 1953, thesame year that the 29-year-old Chisholm began directing a couple New York City childcare centers (putting her MA inElementary Education from Columbia’s Teachers College to workin the process). In that year she joined prominent local Democraticpolitician and power broker Wesley “Mac” Holder’ssuccessful campaign to elect LewisFlagg Jr. as the first African American judge in Brooklyn. That campaignbecame the basis for a more overarching organization, the Bedford-StuyvesantPolitical League (BPSL), which fought for civil rights,economic equality, and fairness in housing throughout the 1950s. While boththose efforts were partly local in emphasis, they were also part of theburgeoning national civil rights movement—and that combination of local andnational, targeted and broader political goals, is at the heart of allCongressional work, particularly in the House in which Chisholm would serve forseven groundbreaking terms between 1969 and 1983.

One ofChisholm’s many important efforts during those 14 years in Congress took placejust a year before her presidential run. In 1971, she once again utilized hereducation and experience in early childhood education and care, teaming withfellow New YorkCongresswoman Bella Abzug to co-sponsora historic bill that would allocate $10 billion toward child care services. SenatorWalter Mondale came on board for the Senate version of the bill, which passedboth houses in December 1971 as the ComprehensiveChild Development Act. Unfortunately PresidentRichard Nixon vetoed the bill, arguing not only that it was too costly butalso that it would implement a “communal approach to child-rearing” and thusthat it was “the most radical piece of legislation” to have crossed hispresidential desk. The fight for federal support for child care has continuedinto this year, one of many arenas in which we still have a great deal to learnfrom the lessons and model of Shirley Chisholm.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other groundbreaking women, past or present, you’d highlight?