Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 54

January 25, 2024: AmericanStudying Groundbreaking Women: Pauli Murray and Black Women in the Law

[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!]

Back inMarch 2022, I used the occasion of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the SupremeCourt to write a piece for my SaturdayEvening Post Considering History columnon the amazing Pauli Murray and the long history of groundbreaking Black womenand the legal profession in America. I couldn’t create this week’s series andnot included them all, so in lieu of a full post today would ask you to checkout that column, please!

Lastgroundbreaking woman tomorrow,

Ben

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

January 24, 2024: AmericanStudying Groundbreaking Women: Nelly Bly

[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 arightly famous work of groundbreaking investigative journalism, and anotherthat should also be.

As I tracedin this post, the great journalist and author Fanny Fern arrived at thewomen’s prison on New York’s Blackwell’s Island (literally and as a subject forher journalism) long after she was well-established as a successful columnist—asI argued in that post, that timing only adds to the series’ impressiveness, butit does also mean that Fern was by no means an investigative journalist in hercareer overall (and never would have defined herself as such). Whereas when Nellie Bly (the pseudonym for Elizabeth JaneCochran; 1864-1922) published her own sensational (in every sense) 1887series about the Island, she had already been producing substantiveinvestigative journalism for many years, since she was just a hugely precociousyoung writer submitting columns to the Pittsburgh Dispatch on controversial topics like the needfor divorce reform. Bly published her groundbreaking first column for the Dispatch, “The GirlPuzzle” (1885), when she was just 20 years old, launching a career inprovocative and investigative journalism that would change the industry andAmerica alike.

When the Dispatch tried to limit Bly’s columns tomore conventionally “women’s” subjects like theater and the arts, she left thenewspaper and the city, moving to New York and talking her way into ajob with JosephPulitzer’s New York World. She didso by making the case for the truly groundbreaking investigative assignmentthat would become her justifiably famous series onthe Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island (which had been renamedRoosevelt Island). Fern visited Blackwell’s and wrote thoughtfully about whatshe saw there, but Bly found a way to truly live the experience: goingundercover, first in a boarding house where she convinced the authoritiesshe was insane, then for a ten-dayimprisonment at the asylum (before the World reached out to identify her and request her release). Shepublished her reporting first in the Worldin October 1887 and shortly thereafter as the book Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887),and in both forms her investigations and journalism alike truly altered the wayAmerica thought about mental illness, public health, and women’s rights—as wellas about the possibilities for women journalists and all journalists.

If Bly’sasylum work was her only investigative journalism, it would be more than enoughto establish her as a titan in that field—but it wasn’t, and indeed despite heryouth it wasn’t her first extended such assignment. Shortly after she beganwriting for the Dispatch herpublished a series of investigative reports on womenfactory workers in the city; they were significant enough that factory ownerscomplained to the paper and Bly was reassigned. She then embarked on anextended investigation that, to my mind, was at least as impressive as theasylum one: the 21 year-old Bly traveled to Mexico and spentsix months embedded with locals, producing in-depth reporting on theircommunities as well as the dictatorial government of Porfirio Díaz. The latterreports angered the government sufficiently that Bly was forced to leave, butnot before she had accumulated enough investigative journalism to publish in thesubsequent book Six Months in Mexico (1888). I’mnot in any way trying to downplay the asylum work by suggesting that thisMexican project was just as impressive—quite the opposite, I would argue thatboth represented the best of investigative journalism, of a courageous writerpushing into settings and stories that many of her colleagues and audiencesalike never would, and changing our collective conversations in the process.

Nextgroundbreaking woman tomorrow,

Ben

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

January 23, 2024: AmericanStudying Groundbreaking Women: Elizabeth Blackwell

[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 threeinstitutions that together help tell the story of this groundbreaking physician.

1)     GenevaMedical College: Elizabeth Blackwell(1821-1910)’s first jobs were as a teacher, in conjunction with her educatorsister Anna and to help support her financially struggling family. But she hadbeen drawn to medicine from a young age, and in her mid-20s decided to pursuethat profession despite the significant obstacles for a woman doing so in 1840sAmerica. The one medical school that responded to her inquiries was GenevaMedical College, a department of New York’s Geneva College; apparently theunanimous October 1847 vote of the 150 current (male) students to acceptBlackwell’s application was a joke, but if so the joke was on them, asBlackwell succeeded admirably at her medical studies (despite consistent sexistprejudice and treatment) and graduatedon January 23rd, 1849 as that first American woman to receive anMD. Whatever the origins of Blackwell’s Geneva story, the endpoint was a hugelyimpressive and influential moment.

2)     TheNew York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children: Blackwell beganpracticing medicine in New York City not long after that graduation, while alsogoing on speaking tours and publishing her first textbook, TheLaws of Life with Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls(1852). But it was when she partnered with two other groundbreaking women, hersister Dr.Emily Blackwell (who became the second American woman to receive an MD whenshe graduated from Case Western Reserve University in 1854) and Dr. MarieZakrzewska (a Polish immigrant who likewise graduate from CWRU, in 1856),that Blackwell really took the next step in her career: together thetrio expanded Blackwell’s medical practice and dispensary into the New YorkInfirmary for Indigent Women and Children. In an era when (as anothergroundbreaking 1850s woman, FannyFern, could attest from both personal and professional experience) poorwomen were treated quite terribly, this impressive institution modeled a verydifferent approach and perspective.

3)     TheLondon School of Medicine for Women: Blackwell wasn’t done co-foundingimpressive institutions, either. In the late 1860s she decided to immigrate toEngland (where she had traveled many times in her evolving professional career)and help develop women’s medical education there, and once there she partneredwith the English physician and former New York Infirmary student Dr.Sophia Jex-Blake. Together the two of them (along with other alliesincluding Emily Blackwell) co-founded the London School of Medicine for Women,which openedin 1874 as the country’s first medical school that would train femalephysicians. While Blackwell would separate from the school a few years laterdue to disagreements with Jex-Blake, this institution she helped establishwould endure for the next century and a half, merging in the 21stcentury with the University College Hospital Medical School to become the RoyalFree and University College Medical School. In London, New York, andeverywhere, Elizabeth Blackwell’s groundbreaking legacy lives on.

Nextgroundbreaking woman tomorrow,

Ben

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

January 22, 2024: AmericanStudying Groundbreaking Women: Judith Sargent Murray

[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 the relatively nondescript home that served as both prison andliberation for the amazing Judith Sargent Murray.

I’ve often thought that to be far ahead of one’s time, especially when itcomes to one’s own rights and freedoms, likely feels both confining andliberating—a combination of recognizing things which one is frustratinglydenied and yet seeing a broader and more open world beyond them. Certainly wecan feel both sides to that coin in “On the Equality of the Sexes” (1790), the poem and essay written by Gloucester’s own Judith Sargent Murray. Like her close contemporary (English) feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, Murray wasextremely intelligent, and she ironically but crucially opens “Equality” withan argument for why people are notequal—for why, indeed, certain minds are far more destined for greatness thanothers. Seeing herself in that light (as she seems to have, and deservedly so)would, again, have likely made Murray feel both good and bad—like part of a Talented Tenth of sorts, but one arbitrarily held back due solely tothe biological accident of gender.

The (at the time; over the next century the waterfront was significantly shifted) waterfront Gloucester home built in 1782 for Sargent and her first husband, Captain John Stevens,served first as a direct remainder of such arbitrary and frustratinglimitations. Stevens was at the time enjoying a brief period of prosperity as alocal merchant, but his fortunes would shortly and permanently decline (thanksin part to the Revolution and in part to his own shortcomings as abusinessman); by 1785 Stevens was so deeply in debt that the house was turnedinto a debtor’s prison, one in which both Stevens and Judith (who was of courseliterally married to his debt and legally powerless to control her own financesin any way) were held as collateral for those debts. A year later Stevens fledthe city and tried to start fresh in the West Indies, but he ended up similarlyindebted and imprisoned there, and died in prison. It was during these sameyears that Judith began to write her articles and essays (under the pseudonym “Constantia”), and such efforts reflect quite literally the only way that she couldescape the prison into which her husband’s failures had cast her.

Yet the same period, and the same house, also contained a man who would, onmultiple levels, help Judith achieve a far freer and happier existence. Johnand Judith were among America’s earliest supporters of UnitarianUniversalism, the controversial newreligion that represented a direct challenge to New England’s rulingPuritanism; they expressed that support by, among other things, providing ahome for John Murray, the founder of thereligion’s American church and its most prominent preacher. Murray and Judithdeveloped a close friendship and relationship, and by the time of her husband’sdeath it was clearly something more; a few years later they were married andbegan a new life together, in the same Gloucester home. Judith’s final yearswere marked by a series of tragedies, culminating in the 1820 deaths of Judith,her daughter, and her grandson; but for the thirty years prior to thosetragedies she had lived in a home and marriage—and philosophy—that were farcloser to the social, political, and human ideals she espoused in her writings.Gloucester’s Sargent House contains and --interprets all those sides to herlife—and also includes some paintings and pictures donated by her most famousdescendent, John Singer Sargent!

Nextgroundbreaking woman tomorrow,

Ben

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

January 20-21, 2024: Ava DePasquale’s Guest Post on Grey Dog

[I’mreally excited to share my thirdGuest Post in recent months by a FitchburgState English Studies alum! Ava DePasquale graduated in December, aftercontributing immeasurably to as well as many otheraspects of English Studies and FSU. She’s got a great career ahead as a professionalwriter, as illustrated by her excellent bookreviews blog. I’m very honored to share one of her reviews here!]

Grey Dog: A Gothic Horror Steeped in GreyImagery and Irrepressible Female Rage

A book review of GreyDog by Elliot Gish, expected publication: April 2024.

At the tail end of the Victorian era Ada Byrd accepts ateaching post in the claustrophobic farm town of Lowry Bridge. Following thedeath of her beloved sister and a shameful incident with her previous hostfamily, Ada is welcomed by the Griers. She is offered a second chance in anisolated town where no one is aware of her tarnished reputation. The one roomschoolhouse in which Ada is to teach happens to be on what the Griers refer toas “the wrong side of the bridge” and Ada soon finds herself confronted bydisturbing visions whenever she ventures across. As Ada begins to lose her gripon reality, her new friends and neighbors begin to turn on her. As a voicebeckons from the wrong side of the bridge, how long will Ada be able to resistits call?

A true slow burn, this gothic horror has much to offer. Asuccinct look at grief and what it does to the mind, coupled with the horrorsof being a woman in Ada’s time, this historical horror transcends the earlytwentieth century to reach into our own and will truly disturb any reader willingto hold on through the slow build and slightly tedious setup.

This debut novel by Elliot Gish is a stunning gothic horrorsteeped in grey imagery, which melds into an explosive display of female rageand a return to nature.

This story is told via unreliable narrator through Ada’s ownjournal entries, and while this style sets the story up for a lack ofbelievability in a technical way, I was quickly immersed in the story and couldnot have cared less about the formidable amount of dialogue in Ada’s diary. Iwas impressed by Gish’s use of language and embodiment of early twentiethcentury vocabulary and style. I can’t say how accurate it is for 1901, in whichthis story takes place, but it sounded authentic to me.

In the first 1/3 or so of my reading I was struggling tobelieve that Grey Dog truly was ahorror, and worried that it had been mislabeled. I was quickly proved wrong, asthe horror slowly ramped up starting with small disturbances and continued todevelop into a full fledged maelstrom of some of the most disturbing gothichorror I’ve read in a while.

Elliot Gish has a gift for writing unsettling scenes, andcertain ones had me feeling like I needed to throw down the book and run forthe shower. This book was disturbing in very literal ways, as there are plentyof animal corpses and detached body parts, there are detailed descriptions ofwhat happens when you don’t bathe for weeks at a time, and there aredescriptions of what birth and violence does to the female body.

This book is disturbing in a psychological and societal modeas well, as Ada faces the horror of concealing her true self for society'ssake, there is the very real and disturbing commentary on a woman’s role andworth according to the early twentieth century norms and then there is thehorror that I think we all harbor a bit of, which is our confined existencewithin a manmade society vs. our instinctual inclination to merely exist innature. All things that when viewed carefully through the right lens are darklydisturbing and enough to drive anyone completely mad.

Ada’s spiral into madness and untethered feminine rage isspectacular. While on the one hand, our first inclination is a desire for herto find her way back to society and the acceptance of her friends andneighbors, it quickly becomes clear that there is no place for Ada within theconfines of the societal norms of her day, there is no way back and this is awholly uncomfortable realization for the reader. Throughout the course of thenovel, she transforms from a meek and guarded spinster, to a wild andirrepressible woman who longs to be consumed by nature.

“I am not a place where nature can be tamed andweeded and kept in order. I am tree roots – and dark hollows – and ancient moss– and the cry of owls. I am not a thing that you can shape, not anymore. I amno garden, but the woods, and if you ever come near me again, every bit ofwildness in me will rise up to bite you. I will tear your throat out with myteeth.”

Grey Dogby Elliot Gish

The supernatural aspect of this novel made me think of Slewfoot (my favorite book). Grey Dog is much less gory andconsiderably less violent than Slewfoot,and while it does not possess quite the same level of bewitching magicalongside its darkness, it is still absolutely exhilarating to watch Ada, muchlike Abatha, harness that same feminine rage to become just the kind of womanthat society fears most.

Grey Dog considersmuch about what it means to be a woman. In the novel we meet several types:school girls preparing for marriage, wives, spinsters and a widow. Ada’sexistence in Lowry Bridge, a small and old fashioned farm town, is challengingbecause as a spinster, and a secretly queer one at that, she does not fit thesocietal norm of wife and mother, which the girls of Lowry Bridge are groomedfor from a young age.

Yet she quickly befriends the pastor's wife, Agatha, whoseemingly is the picture perfect Lowry Bridge “woman.” Ada first meets Agathaas she tends her garden, symbolizing the taming and shaping of nature, an ideaalso embodied by Agatha as a character. Across the bridge, Ada befriends theoutcast widow Norah, a woman rumored to be a witch. For the majority of thenovel, Ada is stuck in a limbo between the two women, somewhere in betweenbeing the right and the wrong type of woman.

“A good woman. How odd that the phrase has such aparticular meaning. One might say “a good man” and mean anything – there are asmany ways as being a good man, it seems, as there are of being a man at all.But there is only one way of being a good woman.”

Grey Dogby Elliot Gish

As spectacular as Ada’s transformation is, it is also adarkly disturbing and often uncomfortable scene to bear witness to. As the besthorror does, Grey Dog leaves youwondering whether you have witnessed a supernatural experience or a totalpsychological breakdown.

Grey Dog is one ofthose novels that is going to stick with me for a long time. In part because itis truly unsettling and disturbing (I have a whole new fear of wolf spiders)but also because it is a visceral dissection of grief pertaining to loss, notonly in the traditional sense, but one that is exclusive to womanhood. There isan inherent feeling of loss that comes from what society denies women. In Ada'scase this grief completely breaks, and then remakes her. We are left in the endwith a swift close of the curtains, there is no closure to be had, there is noclear view of the grey dog, all we know is that there is no going back for AdaByrd.

“The God of outside waits for you. The grey dog. TheGod of outside. They are one and the same.”

Grey Dog by ElliotGish

[Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What doyou think?]

January 20, 2024: MLK Day and the Humanities

[As thisnew semester gets underway, it does so amidst a particularly fraught moment forteaching & learning the Humanities. So for this week’s Semester Previewsseries I’ve highlighted one thing from each of my courses that embodies thevalue of the Humanities for us all—leading up to this special weekend post onMLK Day and the Humanities!]

On threeways I’d connect the iconic Martin Luther King Jr. to the value of theHumanities.

1)     TheReal King: I’ve shared that hyperlinked MLK Day post for most of this blog’s14 (!) Januarys now, and so I wanted to make sure to include it in this year’sMLK post as well (and would ask you to check it out if you haven’t before andthen come on back). But I would also say that the need to understand a subjectlike King in all (or at least a lot of) its breadth and depth, to get at nuanceas well as essential elements, to hold complexity in our minds while stillmaking the case for crucial takeaways, quite simply all the perspectives andideas I argue for in that post, are at the heart of why we teach and learn theHumanities.

2)     The Written Word: For my 2021MLK Day series, I wrote about a series of important King texts beyond theMarch on Washington speech (on which that Real King post focuses in part). Someof them were speeches, some essays, some books, and I didn’t come close tohighlighting all or even most of his work with any of those genres. I know asan English Professor I might focus on the written word more than otherhistorically minded types, but I don’t believe any historical figure betterexemplifies the importance of the written word to American activism, social andcultural progress, and our collective story than does King. And where else yougonna get better equipped to connect with the written word than in Humanitiescourses?!

3)     The Task Ahead: In mid-December, the contrarianprofessor TylerAustin Harper (who teaches Literature and Environmental Studies at BatesCollege) went viral for a combination of an AtlanticMonthly article and an accompanyingTwitter thread critiquing the academic Humanities (at least at elite IvyLeague institutions) for emphases on things like DEI, public engagement, andactivism instead of learning, sharing, and creating knowledge. I agree withHarper that the latter goals remain paramount, and I hope in fact that my firsttwo items in this post reflect layers to those goals. But I entirely disagreethat these emphases are in any way either/or, and would indeed stress that oneof our most significant goals is to help our students be publicly engagedactivists, not for any particular issue (and certainly not with the sameperspective as us), but in their own lives as citizens. No one in Americanhistory modeled that work better than did King, and so sharing him with ourstudents, in all the ways I’m talking about in this post and many more besides,is one great example of helping them get to that point as well.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 19, 2024: Spring Semester Previews: Grad Historical Fiction

[As thisnew semester gets underway, it does so amidst a particularly fraught moment forteaching & learning the Humanities. So for this week’s Semester Previewsseries I’ll highlight one thing from each of my courses that embodies the valueof the Humanities for us all—leading up to a special weekend post on MLK Dayand the Humanities!]

The firstGraduate course I taught at Fitchburg State, in the summer after my first yearthere (Summer 2006), was my newly created AmericanHistorical Fiction: Theory and Practice course, and 19 students took it. It’sbeen quite a few years now since any of our Graduate English Studies courseshave reached 10 students, the official number of a course to be considered sufficientlyenrolled; I’m teaching my American Historical Fiction course again this Spring,and there’s literally no way it will get to 10 (5 is the likely maximum, and asof this writing it’s not there yet). When I took over as our Graduate ProgramChair two and a half years ago, I wrotein this space about the serious enrollment crisis facing our program (andjust about every MA program), and suffice to say those challenges have not inany way abated. We continue to pursue a variety of strategies for growing theprogram; for example, if you know anyone interested in the possibility of an MAin Literature or a Creative Writing Certificate, I would ask you to sendthem my way, and/or to encourage them to check out our upcoming webinarfeaturing past and present Graduate English Studies students that will be heldon January 31st from 5-6pm and also recorded for folks to watch anytime (for more, you or they can emailme!). A significant percentage of our Graduate students (past and present)are secondary educators, and I don’t think I need to say anything else aboutwhat that community illustrates about the value of the Humanities. But thebroader truth is, a society in which folks can’t afford to think deeply aboutthe kinds of questions that literary and cultural works ask us to engage is asociety that will fall prey far more easily to the kinds of authoritarianimpulses we’ve seen over the last decade. No higher stakes than that!

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 18, 2024: Spring Semester Previews: The Short Story Online

[As thisnew semester gets underway, it does so amidst a particularly fraught moment forteaching & learning the Humanities. So for this week’s Semester Previewsseries I’ll highlight one thing from each of my courses that embodies the valueof the Humanities for us all—leading up to a special weekend post on MLK Dayand the Humanities!]

I couldeasily reiterate much of what I said in Tuesday’s post about my Am Lit IIcourse in this post, as my Short Story syllabus includes some of the greatestAmerican stories (from some of our most important authors) and all of them havea great deal to tell us about us and our world—perhaps most especiallycontemporary gems like Danielle Evans’ “BoysGo to Jupiter” and Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s “ControlNegro,” but certainly also enduring classics like James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues“ andToni Morrison’s “Recitatif.”But in this post I want to talk instead about the mode of instruction for thiscourse, which is the latest example of something I’ve done at least once everysemester since 2017: teaching anall-online course (this one is also accelerated,something I do roughly half the time with these online courses). My many postshere about teaching online, including the two hyperlinked in that lastsentence, make clear the challenges that this mode presents when it comes toliterature courses (and probably any courses, but those are the ones that I’vehad experience with), challenges in response to which I continue to work onstrategies. But at the same time, what I’ve seen time and time again in theseonline courses, at least at Fitchburg State, is that many of the folks taking themquite simply would not be able to take in-person Day classes—they workfull-time, they have families, they are in the military, they havecircumstances of all kinds that make these courses not just the best but reallythe only option. One of the reasons I love teachingat a public university is the chance to help every American who wants acollege education to get one—and what could be more vital to the Humanities andto America than finding ways to help even more folks do so?

Lastpreview tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 17, 2024: Spring Semester Previews: Intro to Sci Fi/Fantasy

[As thisnew semester gets underway, it does so amidst a particularly fraught moment forteaching & learning the Humanities. So for this week’s Semester Previewsseries I’ll highlight one thing from each of my courses that embodies the valueof the Humanities for us all—leading up to a special weekend post on MLK Dayand the Humanities!]

For lastyear’s Spring Previews series, Iwrote about my excitement to teach a new (to my syllabus) 21stcentury fantasy novel in this course, Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch (2011); for the first time ever I’m teaching Intro toSci Fi/Fantasy in back-to-back years, and am just as excited to teach Okorafor’sbook now that I’ve seen how well students respond to it. It’s also a great exampleof thepower of representation, of what it means to read a fantasy novel (a genrethat for too long was dominated, at least stereotypically, by Anglo charactersand authors alike) whose main characters are Nigerian and author is NigerianAmerican. That’s a crucial value of the Humanities, full stop. But I would addthat Okorafor’s novel likewise illustrates another and just as important stakeof both fantasy storytelling and a class like this—the power of theimagination. Her main character Sunny learns throughout the book just how muchthere is to the world beyond what she knew, and how much becoming part of allof it is necessary for her and the world’s future alike. I’d say the same forall of us, and reading and engaging speculative storytelling is one excitingand effective way to do just that.

Nextpreview tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 16, 2024: Spring Semester Previews: American Literature II

[As thisnew semester gets underway, it does so amidst a particularly fraught moment forteaching & learning the Humanities. So for this week’s Semester Previewsseries I’ll highlight one thing from each of my courses that embodies the valueof the Humanities for us all—leading up to a special weekend post on MLK Dayand the Humanities!]

I’ve hadthe chance to teach a wide variety of courses in my 19 years at FSU (and have writtenabout most of them at one time or another in this space, especially in semesterpreviews and reflections series), but by far the most frequent have been thetwo American Literature surveys: Am Lit I: Origins to Civil War, recently renamedSlavery and Freedom) and Am Lit II (Civil War to Present, recently renamedMaking and Remaking America). I love each and every chance to teach thesecourses, and while some of that unquestionably has to do with the fact thatnearly all of my favorite authors and texts make an appearance in them, evenmore has to do with a deeper and more communal fact: that there’s no way to bean informed and engaged American citizen, something that every one of us (andcertainly every young person) needs to be if we’re going to make it, without anawareness of and engagement with our history and culture, our literature and community,our national story in all its complexities. To repeat what I said in yesterday’spost, I don’t imagine I need to convince anyone reading this blog of that fact,and indeed would say making the case for those stakes of this work has been oneof the most central goals of the blog. But it’s also one of the mostsignificant desired outcomes of my teaching—not to get students to see any ofthose topics how I do, but to get them to see them at all, and then to see whatthey see and say about them themselves. La lucha continua in Am Lit II thissemester!

Nextpreview tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?