Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 57

December 23, 2023: Spring Semester Previews

[For myannual Fall semester reflections series, I wanted to share some of the newtexts and ideas I encountered this semester. Leading up to this preview postfeaturing a few of the things I’m excited for in Spring 2024!]

On threeSpring 2024 courses for which I’m particularly excited (even if I’m really notready yet for it to be 2024).

1)     Introto Sci Fi and Fantasy: Usually I get to teach this course every few years,but as that Spring 2023 reflections poet indicates, this will be the secondstraight Spring semester in which I’ve taught Sci Fi/Fantasy. As a result Iwanted to make sure to keep it fresh by including at least one book I haven’ttaught before (alongside the one I added in Spring 2023 and wrote about in thatpost, Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch),and so chose a new work for the contemporary sci fi novel: Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, AngryPlanet (2014). Chambers’ novel should make for a really interestingpairing with our foundational sci fi text, Ray Bradbury’s TheMartian Chronicles, but is also just a quirky and funny and thoughtfulexample of where sci fi storytelling has gone in recent years. Can’t wait toshare it with students!

2)     TheShort Story Online: As that post illustrates, I first taught an acceleratedonline course in the Spring 2019 semester, and this Spring will do so for the fifthtime with another section of the same class, The Short Story. It would be veryeasy to simply teach the same syllabus and readings I’ve done in those priorsections, and I’m not going to pretend I’m entirely reinventing the wheel (andit does still roll quite smoothly, I’d say). But this time around I did want tofind ways to bring in even more stories that feel relevant to our currentmoment, and so I’ll be slotting in one of my couple favorite American shortstories, Sui Sin Far’s “Inthe Land of the Free” (1912). I don’t know of any literary work that bettercaptures the human stakes of things like elections and lawsthan does Far’s, and as ever I know it will draw out thoughtful andimpressive student responses.

3)     GradHistorical Fiction: As you can see from that Fall 2023 preview post, Ioriginally thought I’d be teaching my Graduate American Historical Fictioncourse this semester; it got pushed back to Spring 2024, and so everything Isaid in that post still applies to this preview! But to reiterate what I saidin number 2, I’m now particularly excited to be reading and discussing theseworks in an election year, where the stakes of these histories and issues andAmerican ideas have never been clearer. That’s especially true for my favorite Americannovel, Charles Chesnutt’s TheMarrow of Tradition (1901); but every book we read in this class has agreat deal to tell us about not only historical fiction and history, but aboutcollective memory and contemporary debates and more. Can’t wait to see how our awesomegrad students respond to them!

Holidayseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatare you looking forward to in 2024?

December 22, 2023: Fall Semester Finds: Douglas Stuart from an MA Thesis

[For myannual Fall semester reflections series, I wanted to share some of the newtexts and ideas I encountered this semester. I’d love to hear things youdiscovered or rediscovered this Fall in comments!]

Two yearsago, at the start of the Fall 2021 semester, I took over as the Chair of our GraduateEnglish Program at Fitchburg State, in the midst of the crises ofenrollment and sustainability about which I wrote inthis post. We’ve worked throughout those two years to address those issuesand grow our program and continue to do so this Fall, and I’d certainly lovefor you all to help spread the word to anyone who might be interested incompleting an online English Studies MA (and/or our newly created CreativeWriting Certificate). I have lots of selfless reasons for wanting theprogram to survive and grow, but also selfishly I learn so much from our gradstudents, and perhaps especially from the many with whom I’ve been able to workon their MA Thesis. I’m advising one such Thesis this semester, from thephenomenal student and teacher Heather Ferguson who’s working onrepresentations of LGBTQ+ identities in the works of William Shakespeare and Douglas Stuart. I had never heard ofStuart before Heather began this work, and have greatly appreciated the chanceto connect with his two novels, which do indeed portray LGBTQ+ identities inthoughtful ways but are also and especially just great 21st centuryliterary works. Want to explore such works in your own graduate studies, or knowsomeone who does? Maybe FSU’s Graduate English program is the spot for you!

Springpreview post this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Fall finds you’d share?

December 21, 2023: Fall Semester Finds: A New Take on Hughes in Am Lit II

[For myannual Fall semester reflections series, I wanted to share some of the newtexts and ideas I encountered this semester. I’d love to hear things youdiscovered or rediscovered this Fall in comments!]

Unlike withTuesday’s subject Martín Espada, I unfortunately don’t think I’m likely todiscover poems by Langston Hughes that I’ve never read—I teach Hughes’ mammothand magisterial CollectedPoems in my Major American Authors of the 20th Centurycourse, and so have read every published poem of his at least once. But thatdoesn’t mean that I can’t rediscover even his most familiar works in compellingnew ways, and as I’ve been saying throughout the week’s series a main way thatI can and will do so with any texts is through student perspectives and classdiscussions. I had a wonderful example of that possibility this semester in myonline section of American Literature II, where students read and responded to threeHughes poems including “The WearyBlues.” I’ve taught “Weary” literally dozens of distinct times, but in oneof those responses this semester a student who is himself a Blues musiciananalyzed the poem through that perspective, really getting inside layers ofBlues composition and songwriting to consider how the poem both parallels andcomments on the genre. (As a relevant aside, I also loved the chance to share aGuestPost on the Blues from another student this semester!) As long as I canhave such moments every semester, teaching will never get the slightest bitstale for me!

Last Fallfind tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Fall finds you’d share?

December 20, 2023: Fall Semester Finds: New Music in Writing I

[For myannual Fall semester reflections series, I wanted to share some of the newtexts and ideas I encountered this semester. I’d love to hear things youdiscovered or rediscovered this Fall in comments!]

The textsI highlighted in the week’s first two posts were ones I assigned in my classes,if as I said yesterday ones for which in each case it was our collectivediscussions that truly opened them up to me. But over the years I have likewisefound ways to get student-chosen texts into many of my courses, andparticularly into my First-Year Writing courses where the papers and units tendto be especially individualized. That’s especially true of the short third unitin First-Year Writing I, where students practice the skills of structured closereading through work with a song of their choice. I hope and believe thatassignment offers benefits for their skills and ideas and writing, but I knowfor a fact it has the ancillary benefit of consistently introducing me to newmusic! This semester, as usual, that meant two different and equally excitingkinds of discoveries: new songs by artists I already know, like Billy Joel’smoving “Vienna”; andsongs by artists who were entirely new to me, like Sleepy Hallow’s “Self Control.” My sonsdo what they can to keep me aware of new music and artists, and with greatresults to be sure; but this assignment gives me access to so many moreperspectives and possibilities, and helps keep my own perspective and knowledgefresh in ways I really cherish.

Next Fallfind tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Fall finds you’d share?

December 19, 2023: Fall Semester Finds: Espada’s Poem in Ethnic American Lit

[For myannual Fall semester reflections series, I wanted to share some of the newtexts and ideas I encountered this semester. I’d love to hear things youdiscovered or rediscovered this Fall in comments!]

As was thecase with the subject of yesterday’s post, I first discovered the poems of MartínEspada through assigning them for a class, in this case my redesignedEthnic American Literature course. Over the years since he’s become one ofmy favorite American poets, for all the reasons I tracedin this post among others. But that doesn’t mean there still aren’t newworks of his to discover (and I don’t just mean newly published ones, althoughhe does continue to producenew work), and this semester in Ethnic Lit one such poem of Espada’s jumpedout at me anew: “Heart of Hunger” (it doesn’t seem to be online in full anymore, but is well worth seeking out!). As we talked about during those classdiscussions (and I hope this goes without saying, but every discovery I’mhighlighting in this week’s series was due much more to our collective workthan my own individual ideas), what makes “Heart” particularly striking is the wayEspada moves back and forth between elaborate extended metaphors and painfullyconcrete imagery to create a truly multilayered poetic portrayal of theimmigrant experience in America, past, present, and future. I’ve been thinking andwriting about that experience for decades, and this powerful poem was stillable to open up new lenses on it for me, and I believe for everyone in ourclass.

Next Fallfind tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Fall finds you’d share?

December 18, 2023: Fall Semester Finds: Nguyen’s Novel in Capstone

[For myannual Fall semester reflections series, I wanted to share some of the newtexts and ideas I encountered this semester. I’d love to hear things youdiscovered or rediscovered this Fall in comments!]

It’spretty rare, here in my 19th year at Fitchburg State (and 24thof college teaching overall), to get to teach a text I’ve never taught before.It’s even rarer to teach one that I haven’t had the chance to read in fullprior to teaching it—and maybe that’s not recommended pedagogical practice, butit’s also a way to guarantee that I will get to read books I’ve been wanting to!That’s exactly what I was able to do in my EnglishStudies Capstone course this semester, assigning as the Literature work (Idivided the readings in that class up into the different concentrations in ourEnglish Studies Major) Eric Nguyen’s novel ThingsWe Lost to the Water (2021). I loved Nguyen’s book, particularly theway he weaves together its two distinct yet interconnected settings of Vietnamand New Orleans (not entirely unlike one of my favorite songs, Springsteen’s “GalvestonBay”). But what I loved even more was that when we came up with a handfulof questions as a class that we wanted to ask Nguyen, he responded thoughtfullyand at great length, offering these graduating English Studies students (manyof them professional writers in training) a vital perspective as well as amodel for remaining approachable and engaging at every stage of our careers.

Next Fallfind tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Fall finds you’d share?

December 16-17, 2023: A Tribute to BostonStudiers

[Thiscoming weekend marks the 250thanniversary of one of the most significant events in Colonial America, the Boston Tea Party. So thisweek I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of layers to that important moment, leadingup to this special weekend tribute to some of the many BostonStudiers from whomI’ve learned a great deal!]

On ahandful of the many BostonStudiers from whom I’ve learned a lot and we shouldall keep learning more, for this commemoration and beyond.

1)     TheTea Merchant: I have to start this tribute post with a voice who has focusedon collective memories and stories of the Boston Tea Party. Economic and authorLeena Bhatagar’s historicalnovel links that event to others in London and Calcutta, and like allhistorical fiction blends imagined characters and storytelling with thehistories and contexts. But Leena’s November webinar for theBoston Tea Party Ships organization makes clear that she has historicalanalysis to contribute alongside the novel’s storytelling, and all of thatmakes her a voice well worth including in this weekend post.

2)     J.L.Bell: If Leena is an authority on the specific occasion for this week’sblog series, J.L. Bell is to my mind the unquestioned expert on its broadcontexts: all things Bostonand New England in and around the Revolutionary era. He’s also been writinga public scholarly blog on blogspot (the first hyperlink above) for even longerthan me, and is thus a model for all of us out here in the blogging game. Ifyou don’t believe me, just check out his morethan 200 posts with the “Boston Tea Party” tag!

3)     BenEdwards: One of the best ways to learn about history in Boston is to walkit, as I argued for example in my SaturdayEvening Post Considering History columnon the Black Heritage Trail (a vital complement to the city’s more famousFreedom Trail). And one of the best ways to do that is in the company of Walking Boston founder and tour guide(and children’s book author!)Ben Edwards. Now get out there and retrace the route from the Old South MeetingHouse to the Harbor!

4)     NathanielSheidley: I first met Nat Sheidely when our kids were in preschooltogether, longer ago than I care to remember. At that time he was professinghistory at Wellesley College, but in the years since he’s become an integralfigure in the Boston public history scene through his role as the President andCEO of Revolutionary Spaces.This weekend they’re hosting a 250thanniversary commemoration of the Tea Party, which reflects how much they’reinterconnected with my topics throughout the week. But there’s a lot more toboth the organization and its President, and I look forward to continuing tolearn from both of them!

5)     MHS Folks:Speaking of learning, I don’t think there’s any community in Boston from whom I’velearned as much as the Massachusetts Historical Society. (Full disclosure: I’vealso beenhonored to give twobook talks through MHS.) There are lots of layers to that community andthat learning, but it boils down to phenomenal folks like SaraGeorgini, Kanisorn“Kid” Wongsrichanalai, PeterDrummey, and many many more. Can’t pay tribute to BostonStudiers withouthighlighting my MHS peeps!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? BostonStudiers you’d highlight, or Tea Party takes you’d share?

December 15, 2023: Boston Tea Party Studying: The Shoemaker

[Thiscoming weekend marks the 250thanniversary of one of the most significant events in Colonial America, the Boston Tea Party. So thisweek I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of layers to that important moment, leadingup to a special weekend tribute to some of the many BostonStudiers from whomI’ve learned a great deal!]

[NB. Ioriginally wrote this post for my 2012 Beach Reads series, but I still highlyrecommend Young’s book as a key part of Boston Tea Party collective memory.]

Why youshould read about a shoemaker on the beach this summer [BEN: or this December,with summer on your mind!].

For thoseof us who are interested in writing works of AmericanStudies scholarship thatwill be engaging for a broad public audience, it can be particularly difficultto find great models of that style. There are plenty of hugely popular works onAmerican history, but I would argue that most of them—such as DavidMcCullough’s books about theRevolutionary era, or Erik Larson’s The Devilin the White City—are explicitly written as narratives, focusedon telling their interesting and important stories. There’s nothing at allwrong with that, but once an author makes that choice, I would argue that it’svery tough for him or her to also include the kinds of analytical questions andthemes with which AmericanStudies scholarship engages. So when we can find abook that does address such questions while still creating a page-turningnarrative—well, that’s a good AmericanStudies beach read!

Near thetop of that list, for me, is Alfred F. Young’s The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory andthe American Revolution (2000). Young’sbook definitely highlights a compelling story, that of Boston shoemaker George Robert Twelves Hewes, a manwho both took part in the city’s pre-Revolutionary 1770s events (the BostonMassacre, the Boston Tea Party) and later led some of the 1820s efforts tocommemorate those events. Yet while telling the multiple stages of Hewes’story, Young likewise—and just as engagingly, for this reader atleast—highlights and engages with some pretty crucial American questions, ofhistorical and communal memory, of contested commemorations, of the origins ofthe Founding Father narrative and other Revolutionary images, and of howAmerican stories and histories developed in the Early Republic period. Needlessto say, such questions remain pretty salient today, not only with the rise ofour 21st century Tea Party but in a moment when how we remember andtell the stories of our past is so crucially tied to where we go in the future.

But I’mmaking Young’s book sound more appropriate for the classroom than the beach. Solet me be clear—this is a great story, and Young tells it very effectively;when he uses that story to address his AmericanStudies questions, he movesbetween those levels smoothly and successfully, and never loses sight of whatmakes the story engaging and meaningful for a broad American audience. Youngbegins his book by asking “How does an ordinary person win a place inhistory?”, and he not only answers that question (and many others) verythoroughly, but exemplifies a parallel idea: that history can and should bewritten for audiences well beyond those trained in academic historiography. Thoseare key lessons for any public AmericanStudiers, but they also make for a bookthat you’ll be entirely comfortable reading while sunbathing, drink in hand.

Special postthis weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Tea Party takes you’d share?

December 14, 2023: Boston Tea Party Studying: The Peggy Stewart

[Thiscoming weekend marks the 250thanniversary of one of the most significant events in Colonial America, the Boston Tea Party. So thisweek I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of layers to that important moment, leadingup to a special weekend tribute to some of the many BostonStudiers from whomI’ve learned a great deal!]

On whatdifferentiates the “AnnapolisTea Party,” and what it adds to the Boston story.

Less thana year after the Boston Tea Party, an even more dramatic attack on a tea-ladenship took place in Annapolis, Maryland. Neither the general taxes imposed bythe Townshend Actsof 1767 nor the specific ones enacted by the Tea Act of 1773, againstboth of which as I wrote in Monday’s post the Boston crowd was protesting, had changedin any substantive way in the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party. As a result,many of the colonists were taking part in another form of protest, ongoingtea boycotts, which were making things difficult for merchants hoping totrade in the popular commodity. And in the summer of 1774, a London merchantnamed ThomasCharles Williams decided to respond by secretly loading up a ship named the Peggy Stewart (after the daughter ofits co-owner Anthony Stewart) with roughly a ton of tea and hoping to get itinto America and pay the tax on it without attracting attention. He did notsucceed.

To thatpoint, the story seems like it could have unfolded very similarly to thelead-up to the Boston Tea Party. But what transpired over the five days betweenthe Peggy Stewart’s October 14th,1774 arrival in Annapolis and the burningof the ship and all its cargo on October 19th is quite differentfrom, and far more organized and planned than, the events in Boston. There wasan existing committee in the city that was in charge of the tea boycott, and whennews of the Peggy Stewart began tospread that body convened for two separate, extended meetings and negotiationswith Anthony Stewart, Williams’ two brothers and partners, and many others todecide what actions to take. Those steps included the businessmen publishinga formal apology in the MarylandGazette and, most strikingly, a formal ceremony to burn the ship and itscontents. On the evening of October 19th, in the aftermath of thesecond committee meeting, Stewart and the Williams brothers set the Peggy Stewart ablaze, and (as the Gazettereported it the next day) “inthe presence of a great number of spectators” the ship and its cargo weredestroyed.

It’sinteresting to think about a Tea Party where most of the merchants were fullyon board with the protest and even the destruction of their goods, although it’sworth adding that Anthony Stewart became an ardent Loyalistduring the Revolution and went on to found the proto-British community of NewEdinburgh in Nova Scotia. But I would also say that we should put theBoston and Annapolis Tea Parties on a continuum, and indeed that we can see thelatter event as having evolved directly out of the former. That is, theAnnapolis Tea Party reflects Revolutionary protesters who were learning fromthe past and becoming more intentional and sophisticated in their efforts tochallenge the taxes, to thwart the English, and to maintain their community’s overarchinggoals in the face of different needs and actions from individual businessmanlike Williams. Too often history is boiled down to individual events ormoments, but big changes develop out of multiple, interconnected such events,no two the same but no one occurring in a vacuum. As we commemorate the BostonTea Party, let’s make sure to include Annapolis in the conversation as well.

Last TeaParty post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Tea Party takes you’d share?

December 13, 2023: Boston Tea Party Studying: Playing Indian

[This comingweekend marks the 250thanniversary of one of the most significant events in Colonial America, the Boston Tea Party. So thisweek I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of layers to that important moment, leadingup to a special weekend tribute to some of the many BostonStudiers from whomI’ve learned a great deal!]

On how theTea Party connects to a frustrating American tradition, and one other (if stillfraught) layer.

In thispost as part of a June 2014 series on summer camp contexts, I highlightedan influential work of AmericanStudies scholarship that I first encountered ingrad school and to which I’ve returned quite a bit since: Philip Deloria’s PlayingIndian (1998). I’ll be following up on many of that post’s ideas today,so in lieu of a full first paragraph here will ask you to check out that one(at the first hyperlink above) and then come on back.

Welcomeback! It’s impossible to know for sure when the first European Americans“played Indian,” dressed up as Native Americans, but there’s no doubt that arelatively early example was the many Boston Tea Party participants who donnedMohawk or Narragansett costumes before taking part in the protest. In thesummer camp examples of playing Indian that I considered in that prior post,one consistent and main motivation behind this deeply troubling collectiveaction seems to be to tap into something more primal or natural than one’severyday identity, a concept which at the very least stereotypes NativeAmericans as those things if it doesn’t directly reflect images of “savages”(as it far too often does, of course). And it seems quite clear to me that theBoston Tea Party participants who dressed up were likewise expressing thatstereotyping perspective, linking themselves to what foundational MassachusettsPuritan WilliamBradford called “wild lands and wild men.”

On theother hand, historical actions and events always have multiple contexts, and inthis case it is important to note that the Sons of Liberty hadbeen donning Native American costumers for nearly a decade by the time ofthe Tea Party. That post cites a chapter from Exemplar ofLiberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy (1991) byhistorians Donald Grinde and Bruce Johansen in which the authors argue that theSons used these costumes to represent their authentically American identity, inovert opposition to that of the English colonial power against which they wererebelling. That’s a convincing take, and one that of course reflects anevolving Revolutionary-era argument that the Tea Party both embodied and helpedfurther. Yet even then, I would say that this example of playing Indian connectsto a concept like the “noblesavage,” a more flattering stereotype of Native Americans that nonethelessconsistently imagines them as part of a vanished past rather than a coexistingand complex present. A present itself embodied by a famous participant at anotherBoston protest: CrispusAttucks.

Next TeaParty post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Tea Party takes you’d share?