Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 79

April 12, 2023: Remembering Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson

[This week marksthe 150th anniversary of thehorrific Colfax Massacre, one of many such Reconstructionsesquicentennials over the next decade. So this week I’ll AmericanStudyfive Reconstruction histories we need to better remember, leading up to aspecial weekend post on a vital new scholarly book.]

On three tellingstages in the life and career of one of our worst presidents.

Maybe it’s justa coincidence that Horatio Alger’s rags-to-riches young adult novels firstbecame bestsellers with 1868’s Ragged Dick,Fame andFortune, and StrugglingUpward, but I don’t think so. In many ways, these works can be seen asReconstruction texts—their protagonists tend to begin their stories at thelowest possible point, after all, and struggle to work their way toward a morestable, successful, and even ideal future. Seen in that light, Andrew Johnsonwas a perfect president for the start of the Reconstruction era, as his life tothat point seemed to mirror an Alger story. Born into abject poverty inRaleigh, North Carolina, where his father died when Andrew was only three yearsold, he began his professional life as a tailor’s apprentice before runningaway to Tennessee, entering politics at the most local level, and working hisway up to Governor and then Senator. And it was his bold and impressive choiceat one crucial turning point, his decision to side with the Union whenTennessee seceded (he was the only Senator not to give up his seat when hisstate seceded), that cemented his national status and led to his appointment asMilitary Governor of Tennessee and then his nomination as Lincoln’s runningmate in the1864 election.

As I wrote in thathyperlinked piece on 1864 and expanded in thisSaturday Evening Post column,however, “impressive” is one of the least likely words that historians wouldapply to Johnson’s term as president, which began when Lincoln was assassinatedonly a month into his second term. It’s not just that Johnson was anovert white supremacist—he had never tried to hide that perspective, whichof course he shared with many of his fellow Southerners and Americans. Nor isit that he advocated for a different form of Reconstruction (Presidential,as it came to be known) than Congressional Republicans—policy disagrements arepart of governance and the separation of powers, and Johnson did seek touphold the Constitution as he understood it. Instead, what truly definesthe awfulness of Johnson’s presidency was how far out of his way he went tooppose even the most basic rights for freed slaves and African Americans, astance exemplified by hisveto of the 1866 bill that would have renewed the Freedmen’s Bureau.Johnson’s concludes that veto by arguing that in taking this action he is“presenting [the] just claims” of the eleven states that are “not, at thistime, represented by either branch of Congress”—yet of course, the veto servedonly the claims of the white supremacists within those states. The questionof whether Johnson deserved to be impeached for actions such as hisveto (and other similar stances taken in opposition to Reconstruction) is athorny one (and was not the actual statedreason for the impeachment trial), but I have no qualms in saying hedeserves our condemnation for it, and all that it illustrates about hispresidency.

Johnson survivedthe impeachment trial (by one Senate vote), and continued his destructivepolicies for the remainder of his presidential term (although he did alsosupport the proclamation that nationalizedthe 8-hour workday, evidence that even the worst presidencies are notwithout their complexities). Yet his life and career did not end with UlyssesGrant’s 1868 election to the presidency, and two 1870s moments reflect how bothsides of Johnson’s American story continued into his later life. In 1873,Johnson both nearly died of cholera and lost $73,000 in thenational Panic, but recovered from both of these traumas to successfullyrun for the Senate once more in 1875, becoming the only past president to servein the Senate and adding one more rags-to-riches moment to his legacy. Yet inhis brief stint as a Senator (the seat was only open for one special session),Johnson’s only significant contribution was a speech attackingPresident Grant for using federal troops as part of Reconstruction inLouisiana; “How far off is military despotism?,” Johnson warned, one finalmythologized and destructive critique of Reconstruction from the man who did asmuch to undermine it as any American.

NextReconstruction remembrance tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do youthink? Other Reconstruction histories you’d highlight?

April 11, 2023: Remembering Reconstruction: African American Legislators

[This week marksthe 150th anniversary of thehorrific Colfax Massacre, one of many such Reconstructionsesquicentennials over the next decade. So this week I’ll AmericanStudyfive Reconstruction histories we need to better remember, leading up to aspecial weekend post on a vital new scholarly book.]

I’m quite surethat every one of the morethan 1500 African Americans who held elected office during Reconstructionhas an amazing story we should better remember. (And that each of them wouldfully counteract the awful stereotyping created by “historical” texts like Birth of a Nation.) Here are threedistinct but equally important and inspiring such individuals and stories:

1)     Benjamin Turner: Borninto slavery in 1825 North Carolina, sold down river to Alabama with his motherwhen he was only five, and freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, Turnerbecame a self-made businessman and farmer in Selma while the war was stillraging. By 1865, he had enough local clout to found one of the areas firstfreedmen’s schools; two years later he attended the state RepublicanConvention, launching his political career with an appointment as the county’stax collector. In 1870 he ran successfully for the U.S. House ofRepresentatives; although he only served one term, it was a productive two years,including authoring private pension bills for Civil War veterans and opposing acotton tax that he saw as disproportionately affecting African Americans. Afterhis 1872 defeat he mostly returned to farming, although he did attend the 1880Republican National Convention in Chicago—one more reflection of hispolitical and communal prominence.

2)     HiramRevels: Born in 1827 to free African Americans in Fayetteville, NorthCarolina, educated for the ministry in Northern seminaries, an itinerantminister for the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church throughout the 1850sand the chaplain for one of the first African American regiments in the CivilWar, Revels’ story differs from Turner’s in just about every way. Yet he tooopened one of the earliest freedmen’s schools (this one in St. Louis, where hehad been a pastor before the war) and he too became one of the first AfricanAmericans in Congress when he was appointed to the Senate by the Mississippistate legislature in January 1870. Like Turner, Revels served only one term (orin his case, only part of one), as he declined a number of appointments afterhis Senate term ended in March 1871; yet in that brief time, Revels managedboth to fight for the education and rights of freed people and to advocate foruniversal amnesty for former Confederate soldiers. And in his post-Senate lifehe continued along both paths, serving as president of Alcorn A&M College(now Alcorn State University) and writing a famous 1875 letter toPresident Grant denouncing “carpetbaggers”—a duality that illustrates the breadthof perspectives found among these Reconstruction legislators.

3)     P.B.S.Pinchback: Subject of some of the most interesting sections in AllysonHobbs’ wonderful A Chosen Exile, Pinchback was the mixed-raceson of a freed slave and her former master (some of his siblings were bornwhile she was still a slave, but Pinchback was born in 1837, a year after shewas freed). Like Revels, he moved north to attend school and stayed there untilthe outbreak of the war; during the war he moved to New Orleans and worked toraise companies of African American soldiers for the Union army, becoming acaptain in one such company. After the war he became active in the GeorgiaRepublican Party, was elected to the State Senate in 1868, and succeeded Oscar Dunn(the first elected African American Lieutenant Governor of any state) as thestate’s Lieutenant Governor upon Dunn’s death in 1871. A year later, GovernorHenry Clay Warmouth was tried for impeachment; state law required Warmouth tostep down while on trial, and for the final six weeks of his term Pinchbackserved as Georgia’s governor, becoming the first African American governor inthe process. The moment reveals the chaotic histories unfolding in everySouthern state during Reconstruction—but Pinchback’s readiness and ability tostep into the governor’s role are one more reminder of how many impressive andinspiring African American leaders made their mark throughout the period.

NextReconstruction remembrance tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do youthink? Other Reconstruction histories you’d highlight?

April 10, 2023: Remembering Reconstruction: The Freedmen’s Bureau

[This week marksthe 150th anniversary of thehorrific Colfax Massacre, one of many such Reconstruction sesquicentennialsover the next decade. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five Reconstructionhistories we need to better remember, leading up to a special weekend post on avital new scholarly book.]

On a major andtelling reason why the Bureau failed, and two lasting legacies nonetheless.

The March 3, 1865 legislationwhich established the federal Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands(better known as the Freedmen’s Bureau)includes a stunning detail that reflects just how ill prepared the nation wasfor the realities of Reconstruction: the Bureau was initially intended to existfor only one year. As a result, when the Congressional Republicans supportingReconstruction passed a bill to renew the Bureau’s charter one year later, inFebruary 1866, PresidentAndrew Johnson vetoed the bill (one more example in the long list of “Whatif Lincoln had lived?” hypotheticals), and over the subsequent few yearsthe Bureau became increasingly under-funded, -staffed, and –supported. By 1869the Bureau was operating only a skeleton staff; by 1872 the Bureau’s director, formerUnion General Oliver Howard, had been transferred to the West to handle NativeAmerican policy, and the Bureau ceased operations entirely. Yet in truth, thisseemingly essential Reconstruction program only experienced one year of fullsupport, a telling representation of how significantly hamstrung Reconstructionefforts were from their very outset.

Despite thosesignificant limitations, however, and despite the intense opposition it facedduring and after 1865-66 from discriminatory BlackCodes, the terrors of the KuKlux Klan, and so many other aspects of postbellum Southern society, theBureau achieved a number of impressive, lasting results. The most prominentsuch effects were those related to education, and they took hold very quicklyand potently: by the end of 1865, nearly 100,000former slaves were enrolled in public schools run by or in conjunction withthe Bureau, and despite all the obstacles confronting those students attendancerates apparently remained steady around 80%. When the post-1866 cuts in fundingand staffing made it nearly impossible to run all these schools (church groupsand other communities fortunately stepped in to keep many running), the Bureaushifted its focus to creatinginstitutions of higher education: nearly 25 such colleges were createdbetween 1865 and 1872, and many of them (such as Howard University, FiskUniversity, and Tougaloo College) remain in service today as historically blackcolleges and universities (HBCUs). In and of themselves those colleges anduniversities represent a potent legacy of the Bureau’s educational efforts.

Far moreintimate and thus more difficult to quantify, but at least as significant, werethe Bureau’s efforts to assist freed people’s families, including working toreunite separate family members and performing marriages. Marriagesduring slavery were neither legal nor binding, and that reality both madefamily reunification that much more difficult and presented a host of otherlegal and social problems in the postbellum world. By not only performingbut legalizing marriages between former slaves, then, the Bureau was ableto fundamentally alter the legal and social as well as familial realities forthese freed men and women, and for their families, descendents, andcommunities. Charles Chesnutt’s stunning short story “TheWife of His Youth” (1898) highlights how complicated but also how crucialwere ideas of marriage and family for those who had experienced the fragilityand absence of those core human experiences under slavery. In helping counterthose horrific past realities and offer freed men and women a much differentset of marital and family possibilities, the Bureau performed both a human andhistorical service whose legacies cannot be overstated.

NextReconstruction remembrance tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do youthink? Other Reconstruction histories you’d highlight?

April 8-9, 2023: The Limits and Potential of Scholarly Organizations

[A coupleweekends back I was in Niagara Falls for the 54th annualNortheast Modern Language Association Convention. Longtime readers willknow well how much Ilove NeMLA, the organization and the convention alike, and this year was noexception. So this week I’ve shared a handful of reflections on a great NeMLAconvention, leading up to this post on scholarly organizations more broadly.]

On whatscholarly organizations can’t really do, what they definitely shouldn’t do, andtwo related things they absolutely should.

As thepost hyperlinked above under “I love NeMLA” reflects, I served on the NeMLABoard for nearly a decade, including a stint as the organization’s President(itself a five-year process that includes a couple levels of VP and a year asPast President). Throughout that time, and most especially for my Presidentialyear and its 2016Convention in Hartford, I had very clear and high hopes for how theorganization could make a difference in a number of ways: advocating foradjunct and contingent faculty and challenging attacks on higher ed; connectingwith secondary and primary schools and educators for cross-network alliancesand efforts; expressing an organizational perspective on relevant national andworld issues in an attempt to help shape our conversations around them. At theend of the day, what I can say is that we definitely talked about all thesethings as a community, including in a number of greatpanels and sessionsat that 2016 convention. But beyond talking, we took just one tangible action:bringing some Convention attendees to aHartford public high school to connect with educators and students. Thatwas very nice, but it was also very specific compared to my lofty goals.

So maybescholarly organizations can’t really intervene in our public conversations(although more on that question below). But I’ll tell you what they definitelyshouldn’t do, as recent events have illustrated all too potently: attack fellowscholars for trying to make their own such interventions. I’m thinkingspecifically about the August2022 American Historical Association (AHA) president’s letter in which thatorganization’s current leader James Sweet expressly criticized historians whoseek to produce public-facing scholarship, to be part of public conversations,calling out their “presentism” as a problem in the profession. It’s not just thatI believe Sweet was deeply wrong, although I most definitely do (and I’m farfrom alone in feeling that way). It’s also and especially that Sweet wasusing his position and public pulpit—during, I believe, the one year in whichhe had access to them—to criticize fellow scholars, to participate in the kindof circular firing squad about which I griped in my non-favorites series backin February. To level such attacks at all, much less to do so in our currentmoment (he said present-ly), seems to me a genuine dereliction of duty for ascholarly organization’s president.

To quote Will Hunting whenhe takes that pretentious Hahvahd grad student down a few pegs: “Don’t do that.”And reading Sweet’s letter and all thethoughtful responses to it did make me recommit (now that I’m no longer anorganizational president, of course; but I’m certainly still part of thesecommunities) to a couple things that scholarly organizations should still betrying to do. One, directly contra Sweet’s arguments, is to be part of ourpresent—whether individual scholars choose to do that in their work (whichagain I support but is an individual choice), it seems to me a crucial role fororganizations like these is to try to help make all relevant collectiveconversations more informed and more meaningful. And the other, directly contraSweet’s tone and even more important than the first, is to show genuinesolidarity with all those in the profession, to genuinely advocate for allscholars and educators (and most especially those being attacked by outsideforces, which is the vast majority of us here in 2023). How we do those thingsremains a complex question and one we need to keep figuring out together—but whetherit’s the AHA, NeMLA, or any other scholarly organization, we most definitelyneed to keep trying to do them.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Ways we can make scholarly organizations more relevant and meaningfulin our current moment?

April 7, 2023: NeMLA Reflections: Elise Takehana on Making Meaning of Maps

[A coupleweekends back I was in Niagara Falls for the 54th annual NortheastModern Language Association Convention. Longtime readers will know well howmuch I loveNeMLA, the organization and the convention alike, and this year was noexception. So as usual, here are a handful of reflections on a great NeMLAconvention!]

Somebody’sgot to present on Sunday morning at a multi-day conference like NeMLA, but itsure is a tough time slot (especially at NeMLA, where it runs right up againstthe Sunday Member Brunch that is a conference highlight); and apparently one onwhich my FSU English Studies colleague and friend EliseTakehana has found herself multiple years in a row. So I was very glad tobe able to get to the Sunday morning roundtable on Women “Writing” Beyond thePage that featured Elise’s talk on a pair of experimental, compelling shortbooks about/using maps. As she did again with her FSU Harrod Lecture last weekon “Database and Algorithm as Literary Infrastructure,” Elise’s NeMLA talkchallenged me to rethink what I consider literature, as well as how literaryand cultural works work. I go to NeMLA every year for all sorts of reasons, asI hope these posts (like all my NeMLA reflections over the years) have madeclear—but thinking and rethinking are always among them, and I’m neverdisappointed!

Specialpost on scholarly organizations this weekend,

Ben

PS. If youwere at NeMLA, I’d love to hear your reflections too!

April 6, 2023: NeMLA Reflections: Robin Field on Postpartum Depression

[A coupleweekends back I was in Niagara Falls for the 54th annual NortheastModern Language Association Convention. Longtime readers will know well howmuch I loveNeMLA, the organization and the convention alike, and this year was noexception. So as usual, here are a handful of reflections on a great NeMLAconvention!]

I hopethat all those folks whose work and voice I’ve been fortunate enough to sharein a Guest Post need no elaborate introduction, and high on that list wouldhave to be my friend Robin Field, both for her ownGuest Post and for thethree that have beencontributed (so far) by her awesome King’sCollege students! I’ve had the chance to hear Robin speak at multiple NeMLAconferences, including on a2021 panel I organized and chaired. But if you think that means I wouldn’tjump at the chance to hear another presentation of Robin’s, you’ve got anotherthink coming—I was very excited to hear her talk about HelenDunmore’s Talking to the Dead ona roundtable about Narratives of Pregnancy, Birth, and Postpartum, and as alwaysRobin delivered (pun intended, sorry), with a thoughtful take on a complex bookthat also offered vital lessons for how we collectively navigate some of themost difficult health and wellness challenges.

Lastreflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. If youwere at NeMLA, I’d love to hear your reflections too!

April 5, 2023: NeMLA Reflections: Jennie Snow on Eric Nguyen and Homelands

[A coupleweekends back I was in Niagara Falls for the 54th annual NortheastModern Language Association Convention. Longtime readers will know well howmuch I loveNeMLA, the organization and the convention alike, and this year was noexception. So as usual, here are a handful of reflections on a great NeMLAconvention!]

One of thebest parts of the last year has been working with my newest Fitchburg State EnglishStudies colleague, JennieSnow (whom I helped hire last year, and yes I am patting myself on the backfor that excellent choice). I’ve thus heard Jennie talk about her work in manycontexts, but hadn’t had the chance to hear a scholarly paper/talk of hers—untilNeMLA, that is, where she chaired the panel that featured Toshiaki Komura’spaper (about which I wrote yesterday) but on which she also presented her ownwork. And a phenomenal presentation it was, linking Eric Nguyen’s novel ThingsWe Lost to the Water (2021) to the evolving mission of the Departmentof Homeland Security and the many fraught layers to how we define “homelands”(and to the concept of resilience, on which the whole NeMLA conference wasfocused). Jennie’s presentation made me put Nguyen’s novel on one of my Fallsemester syllabi (as the Literature concentration reading in my EnglishStudies Capstone course), and if that isn’t high praise for an academictalk, I don’t know what is!

Nextreflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. If youwere at NeMLA, I’d love to hear your reflections too!

April 4, 2023: NeMLA Reflections: Toshiaki Komura on the Poetry of Internment

[A coupleweekends back I was in Niagara Falls for the 54th annual NortheastModern Language Association Convention. Longtime readers will know well howmuch I loveNeMLA, the organization and the convention alike, and this year was noexception. So as usual, here are a handful of reflections on a great NeMLAconvention!]

As I’vewritten many times in this space, my favorite thing about NeMLA is the people,not only the people I’ve gotten to work with on the Board (on which see thehyperlinked post above), but also all those with whom I’ve connected in my 15+years of attending the conference. In many cases those folks have become notjust recurring presences in my life but true friends, and I would certainly saythat of Toshiaki Komura.I had a small part in helping Toshiaki publish his award-winning book LostLoss in American Elegiac Poetry, and I always look forward to theopportunity to learn more from his scholarship and voice. His NeMLApresentation was no exception, as he traced three generations of JapaneseAmerican poetic responses to WWII internment/incarceration, linking them in theprocess to Dickinson & Whitman and the broader legacies of American lyric& pastoral poetry. I never fail to come away from NeMLA with a long list ofnew authors and works to read, and I can’t imagine a more inspiring effect!

Nextreflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. If youwere at NeMLA, I’d love to hear your reflections too!

April 3, 2023: NeMLA Reflections: My Panel on Niagara Falls

[A coupleweekends back I was in Niagara Falls for the 54th annual NortheastModern Language Association Convention. Longtime readers will know well howmuch I loveNeMLA, the organization and the convention alike, and this year was noexception. So as usual, here are a handful of reflections on a great NeMLAconvention!]

On takeawaysfrom the two great papers (and, yes, mine too) from my session on Niagara Fallsin American pop culture.

1)     VaughnJoy on honeymoon films: University College London History PhD candidateVaughn Joy has become one of our most prominent and prolific public scholarsfor her Twitter threads & thoughtson all things Hollywood, and she brought that veritable expertise to this panelwith a great talk on Niagara honeymoons on the silver screen between 1940 and1980 (Superman II,natch!). She also historicized those cinematic representations with analysis ofchanging views and realities of marriage, premarital sex, and gender roles overthese mid-20th century decades. Really productive and powerful blendof Film and American Studies, and one that helped us all think further aboutthe place where we were, literally and figuratively, geographically andsymbolically.

2)     Jamie Carr onshort stories: While Vaughn crossed an ocean to join our conversation, Dr. JamieCarr came just down the road from Niagara University, where she’s Professor andChair of English. Her scholarly work has focused both on place and identityoverall and on writersand Niagara Falls in particular, and for this panel she linked thosesubjects to a pair of evocative stories from a particular contemporary andlocal writer, StephanieVaughn. Everything about Vaughn’s stories sounds well worth our time, but Iwas especially struck by the way they and she evoke the histories and legaciesof the region’s nuclear sites (operating and then wastedisposal), which I had never thought of as a very distinct frame for thearea’s waterways, the Falls, and the ground itself.

3)     Me on the famous sketch: In my Septemberblog series on APUSH I wrote about the famous “Niagara Falls” comedy sketch,and specifically there the Three Stoogesversion. I had a vague sense at that time that the sketch went far beyondthat one version, but it was only when researching this talk that I reallylearned both the breadth of those versions and how fully they connect to the 20thcentury history of comedy and culture in America. From contested Vaudevilleorigins to competing 1944 sketches from Abbott and Costello andthe aforementioned Stooges to TV adaptations from Lucille Ball and DannyThomas to meta-commentaries from M.A.S.H.and Steve Martin to a discosong from Divine, “Niagara Falls” is just about everywhere in Americanculture—a fitting conclusion for a great conversation about its many tendrils!

Nextreflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. If youwere at NeMLA, I’d love to hear your reflections too!

April 1-2, 2023: March 2023 Recap

[A Recapof the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

March6: American Cars: Oldsmobile, Ford, and Dodge: As my younger son gets readyto become a teenage driver, a CarStudying series starts with the practical andmythical details to the origins of American automobiles.

March7: American Cars: Crime Cars: The series continues with AmericanStudiescontexts for three infamous crime cars.

March8: American Cars: Rebel Without a Cause: A few reasons why the film’sfamous “chicken run” scene is so significant, as the series races on.

March9: American Cars: Smart Cars: From KITT to Christine to Herbie the LoveBug, lessons from three cars with minds of their own.

March10: American Cars: The Fast and the Furious: The series concludes with twoways to contextualize the hugely successful car racing franchise.

March13: Wild West Stories: Gunfighter Nation: For Wyatt’s Earp’s 175thbirthday, a Wild West series kicks off with a groundbreaking AmericanStudiesbook on violence.  

March14: Wild West Stories: Billy the Kid: The series continues with two tellinglayers to the famous young outlaw’s mythos, and the context they both mostlymiss.

March15: Wild West Stories: Walt Longmire: A great contemporary character whostraddles the line between classic and revised clichés, as the series drawson. 

March16: Wild West Stories: Annie Oakley: Three figures who each and togetherhelp us see the human realities behind the mythic sharpshooter.  

March17: Wild West Stories: True Grit The series concludes with how a classicWild West novel both uses and challenges elements of the mythos.

March18-19: Wild West Stories: Wyatt Earp: For Earp’s birthday, on myths,realities, and how to split the difference.

March20: Bruce on the Blog: Executioner Songs: For the amazing occasion offinally seeing Springsteen with my sons, I wanted to share a handful of the manytimes I’ve BruceStudied, starting with Bruce and Norman Mailer.

March21: Bruce on the Blog: “State Trooper”: The series continues with two verydifferent ways to AmericanStudy one of Bruce’s most ambiguous songs.

March22: Bruce on the Blog: Wrecking Ball and High Hopes: Two entirely differentand equally inspiring recent albums from an evolving artist, as the seriesrocks on.

March23: Bruce on the Blog: “American Skin (41 Shots)”: Two more reasons why Ihave come to love my all-time favorite song.

March24: Bruce on the Blog: Born in the U.S.A.: The series concludes with twoways to argue for the patriotic possibilities of an easily misunderstood songand album.

March25-26: Bruce in 2023: A special weekend reflection on that amazing 2023concert and how it both reflects on the past and helps us fight for the future.

March27: 19th Century Humor: Irving’s Knickerbocker: My annual AprilFool’s series focused this year on 19th century humorists, startingwith Irving’s ahead of its time creation.

March28: 19th Century Humor: Fanny Fern: The series continues withthe very serious side to one of our most talented humorists.

March29: 19th Century Humor: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: A writer andstory that are funny, wise, and anything but narrow, as the series laughs on.

March30: 19th Century Humor: Melville’s Chimney: The deeply strangestory that proves that allegory can be funny.

March31: 19th Century Humor: Ah Sin: The series concludes with thefine line between satire and stereotypes.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

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