Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 88

December 29, 2022: 2022 in Review: Baseball and Race

[2022 has been a lot. A lot a lot. So for my annual Year in Review series, I wanted to focus mostly on somewhat lighter, pop culture kinds of topics, with just one much more serious exception. Here’s to a better year to come!]

On one inspiring and one frustrating side of baseball’s diversity in 2022.

As I did with the week’s first two posts, in lieu of an opening paragraph here I’m gonna ask you to check out a prior post, this one on Cuban and Japanese players in Major League Baseball. Then come on back for today’s thoughts if you would!

Welcome back! That diversification of the ranks of MLB players has been one of the most striking American sports stories of the last few decades, and has continued apace, with a particular emphasis in recent years on the prominence and to a significant degree the dominance of Latin American (and specifically Afro-Latin) players. No moment has ever exemplified (nor could more powerfully exemplify) that trend than one from this season’s Roberto Clemente Day (September 15th), when the Tampa Bay Rays fielded a lineup in which all nine hitters were born in Latin American countries (Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, y Mexico). Given how difficult and often painful it was for the early generations of Latin American stars like Roberto Clemente to make their way to and become part of the Major Leagues, that groundbreaking moment—apparently a truly accidental one, which reflects quite clearly this central presence of Latin American players—was a genuinely moving and important one, and makes this lifelong baseball fan and DiverseAmericaStudier very happy indeed.

On the other hand, a very different baseball story from less than two months later made that same dude a lot less happy. As the 2022 World Series got underway in early November, we learned that the two contending teams, the Houston Astros and Philadelphia Phillies, had no American-born Black players on their respective rosters. Obviously every individual athlete has to make their own choices about their careers and futures, and of course it’s impossible to separate a baseball story like that one from (among other factors) the amazing breadth and depth of African American athletes in the NBA and NFL. But at the same time, there’s no way to tell the story of baseball (and thus, I would argue, the story of 20thcentury America as a whole) without including both individual, groundbreaking Black players and the overarching community of Black players, and so for both a baseball fan and an AmericanStudier this was a really sad thing to learn about the final two teams in this year’s season. I don’t know what the answers are necessarily, but I know that until and unless Major League Baseball can feature a lot more Black players again, it won’t be nearly as diverse nor as American as it could or should be.

Last 2022 reflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other parts of 2022 you’d reflect on?

December 28, 2022: 2022 in Review: Hot Girl Music

[2022 has been a lot. A lot a lot. So for my annual Year in Review series, I wanted to focus mostly on somewhat lighter, pop culture kinds of topics, with just one much more serious exception. Here’s to a better year to come!]

On the birthday of one of the most badass women I know, the less and more radical layers to a renaissance in badass women artists.

From Adele and Beyoncé to the ever-ubiquitous Taylor Swift (among many others of course), it’s fair to say that for some time now a high percentage of the biggest, most successful, and most influential pop music artists and songwriters have been women. Two of those three artists likewise dominated the pop charts and conversations across much of 2022—with Beyoncé’s Renaissance claiming the summer (make sure to read that awesome hyperlinked Guest Post on the album from my friend Hettie Williams) and T-Swift’s Midnights really really taking over the fall. (And for that matter, Adele had the first #1 song of 2022, so I guess it was a clean trifecta.) But based on my sons’ and my extensive research (listening to SiriusXM’s Hits 1 station in the car all year, that is), I would say that the 2022 pop music dominance of both women overall and badass women in particular went way beyond that longstanding trio of all-time greats, and that any narrative of the year in pop music would likewise have to include (again among others) Lizzo, Latto, Gayle, Leah Kate, Ava Max, Jax, Megan Thee Stallion, and the triumphant return of Nicki Minaj.

“Super Freaky Girl,” the first new single in many many years from that last artist, Nicki Minaj, reflects what I’d call the significantly less radical side of this focus on fierce females. To be as clear as I possibly can be (thanks for nothing as always, Ben Shapiro), I don’t have the slightest problem with highly, graphically sexual songs, of which Minaj’s is a particularly overt example (maybe even more so than the current leader in the clubhouse, “WAP”). And I get why women making such songs about themselves represents a step toward greater musical and artistic (and perhaps even social) equality, compared to the long history of male artists making songs that similarly sexualized women (something Minaj herself is at least partly commenting on by sampling Rick James’ “Superfreak” for her own song). But at the end of the day, Minaj’s song, like “WAP” and many others in this sub-genre, still defines badass largely through the lens of the effects that the speaker can have on men, and to my mind that’s a relatively limited and certainly more traditional vision of what it means to be a badass woman.

That’s one of a number of reasons why I’d join the chorus celebrating Lizzo and her particular brand of badassery (the fact that she can whip out and then rock out on a 200 year old flute in concert is another big reason). While it hadn’t been nearly as long since she had released new music, Lizzo did have a comeback album of her own this year; and the first single, the mega-hit “About Damn Time,” nicely reflects this distinct and more radical sub-genre. The song’s first two lines set that stage perfectly: “It’s bad bitch o’clock, yeah it’s thick-thirty/I’ve been through a lot but I’m still flirty.” Of course flirtation is part of this identity, as it is for just about any of us—but it’s one layer to a more overarching sense of hard-earned self-esteem, one for which the speaker continues to fight even in the face of the kinds of challenges that can temper even the most badass of us. Another repeated part of the song extends those ideas beautifully: “I’ve been so down and under pressure/I’m way too fine to be this stressed, yeah/I’m not the girl I was or used to be/Uh, bitch, I might be better.” I’m pretty sure in that final line Lizzo is calling out both herself and, y’know, every single damn thing in 2022, and modeling in the process what it means to be a badass artist, woman, and human. Now that’s a renaissance worth celebrating!

Next 2022 reflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other parts of 2022 you’d reflect on?

December 27, 2022: 2022 in Review: “Woke” Marvel

[2022 has been a lot. A lot a lot. So for my annual Year in Review series, I wanted to focus mostly on somewhat lighter, pop culture kinds of topics, with just one much more serious exception. Here’s to a better year to come!]

On why the complaints about Marvel’s new phase are silly, and why they’re a lot worse than that.

As was the case with yesterday’s post, a good bit of what I’d want to say about the question of whether Marvel shows and films have become too “woke” was addressed in a prior post, this one from last year’s Year in Review series, on the TV show The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. So check that out if you would and then come on back.

Welcome back! As I hope that post made clear, I think the idea that Marvels shows or films can’t be simultaneously entertaining as hell and engaged with social and political issues is profoundly silly, and not at all borne out by the actual evidence provided by works like Falcon. Indeed, I would go further—if you go back to the film that launched this entire run of Marvel stories, Iron Man(2008), you find a film about a weapons manufacturer and arms dealer coming to grips with the global as well as personal realities and effects of his work and life, and doing so first and foremost in one of the most conflicted global hotspots (Afghanistan) to boot. Obviously Marvel films and shows haven’t always been so directly tied to social and political issues—but I would argue that most of them (and certainly the best of them) have dealt with complex themes alongside the entertaining superhero storytelling, and those themes have included such contemporary issues alongside lots of other (and interconnected) questions of identity, heroism, community, and more. Folks are certainly entitled to their own opinions about the current slate of Marvel stories, but to criticize them as suddenly “woke” is to reveal at least a limited perspective on the entire series to date.

I say “at least a limited perspective” to give those folks the benefit of the doubt. But the truth is, when someone uses “woke” as a criticism of an individual cultural work, they’re playing into a much broader and more destructive political narrative (whether they realize or like it or not). I haven’t yet performed the scientific research on this phenomenon, so this is simply an estimate at the moment (if an educated one to be sure), but I believe something like 97.4% of the time, the descriptor “woke” means “featuring main characters and storylines that aren’t predominantly white and male.” (This is quite similar to what “politically correct” meant in an earlier iteration of these arguments; plus ça change and all that.) Of course diverse characters and stories aren’t immune from criticism, any more than any artistic choices are or should be—but when the diversity itself is the basis (or at least the starting point) for that criticism, that reveals a great deal more about the perspective of the critic than it does about the text being criticized. For a long time, the powers that be at studios like Marvel genuinely doubted whether characters like Black Panther or Black Widow could carry their own film—if it’s “woke” that we’ve learned not only that they can do so, but that diversification leads to infinitely more enjoyable storytelling, then let’s never go back to sleep.

Next 2022 reflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other parts of 2022 you’d reflect on?

December 26, 2022: 2022 in Review: Top Gun and Sequels

[2022 has been a lot. A lot a lot. So for my annual Year in Review series, I wanted to focus mostly on somewhat lighter, pop culture kinds of topics, with just one much more serious exception. Here’s to a better year to come!]

On a problem and a possibility with our cultural moment of ubiquitous sequels.

A good bit of the frame for today’s post is parallel to write I wrote in this prior post about The Force Awakens(2015), nostalgia, and multi-generational storytelling. So if you don’t mind checking out that post and then coming back here, I’d appreciate it!

Welcome back! I haven’t had a chance to see the biggest blockbuster film of the year, Top Gun: Maverick, and I don’t know that I will as I believe the original Top Gun (1986) is one of the worst blockbuster films ever made. That’s a personal opinion, of course (although as that hyperlinked article reflects, I’m not alone in holding it), but I do think it illustrates a larger problem with the genuinely ubiquitous presence of sequels, prequels, reboots, and other uses of existing intellectual properties in our current pop culture zeitgeist. The more this kind of cultural product dominates the landscape, the more of these existing/prior works filmmakers and creators will have to return to—and there quite simply aren’t that many 1980s films (or works from any decade/moment) that have enough going on to make a sequel or reboot worthwhile or meaningful. I don’t think it’s my Star Wars fandom alone that distinguishes that film franchise, and its truly imaginative and culture-changing storytelling across so many decades and so many different media (into all of which a sequel like The Force Awakens slotted thoughtfully, as I argued in that prior post), from a simplistic and vapid individual blockbuster film like Top Gun.

So no, I don’t think we needed another Top Gunfilm. But from what I can tell (and again, haven’t seen it, so as always I welcome responses and challenges in comments!), Maverick does do one really interesting thing that is a positive possibility when it comes to these ubiquitous sequels (and that does link it to Force Awakens and the entire recent Star Wars trilogy): it actively thinks about time. That is, despite star Tom Cruise’s seeming agelessness, he is of course three and a half decades older than he was in the original film, and thus his character Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is likewise. Much like the smash hit TV show Cobra Kai (which I also haven’t seen, outside of clips here and there, but when does that stop an AmericanStudier?!), Maverick is thus able to not just continue the original story, but to reflect actively on the passage of time, on themes of continuity and change, on the relationships (limiting and enriching alike) between the past and the present. Maybe I’m biased because those are the kinds of questions that define every part of my work and career, but I believe we all can benefit from asking them, of our pop culture stories and our own identities and everything in between. If even silly blockbusters can help us do so, then count me in!

Next 2022 reflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other parts of 2022 you’d reflect on?

December 19-25, 2022: A Defining Wish

[Every year since 2011 I’ve shared wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves in a holiday series. This year, I’ve really got just one wish that I want to highlight in a single, weeklong post, but I’d say it’s a pretty darn important one.]

On two things I very much hope to help us do, and the one defining reason why.

For a long time now, including I’m sure many times in this space (that’s just one example I found at random), I’ve defined my career goals as “expanding our collective memories.” I still believe there is so much of American history that we collectively don’t remember well (if at all), and that so, so much of it is both painful in ways we need to engage and yet inspiring we ways we need to feel (often, if not always, at exactly the same time). Day in and day out, I’d say that goal of expanding our collective memories continues to motivate what I write about on this blog and in my online pieces such as my Saturday Evening Post Considering Historycolumns (which turns five this coming January!), what I teach about at FSU and for adult learning programs, what I choose to focus on in book projects, what I bend the ears of my sons with, and more, and I can’t really imagine that changing.

Speaking of my sons, earlier this year they were performing a parody of their Dad (something they’ve gotten better and better at in recent years), and kept returning to a single phrase that they claim is my most commonly spoken one: “Let’s keep the conversation going!” I knew it was a frequent AmericanStudier utterance, but since they called me out on it I’ve caught myself saying it again and again and again, so yeah, they nailed it. Every one of those times I’ve mentally paused for a moment and wondered if I was becoming a self-parody, but then I’ve realized that the phrase captured exactly what I was trying to say and request, so have just leaned into it. Because here’s the thing: collective memories exist in lots of places and spaces, including history books and pop culture and government documents and historic sites and many more; but I don’t think they get created and contested and expanded anywhere more regularly or importantly than they do in our conversations. If I can through all areas of my career help us keep such conversations going, I’ll feel that I’ve done quite a bit indeed.

I suppose that might already seem like two wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves, and fair enough; they are large and can receive multitudes of wishes. But what I want to focus on in this final paragraph is at the very least the wish at the heart of those other two, the most defining content that I’ve gradually discovered I want to add to our collective memories and conversations alike. Despite so much that has happened in our educational and historical and cultural and social communities over the last half-century, I believe that we still, far too often and too fully, use “American” as a short-hand for white, English-speaking, Christian, and other components of one particular culture on the American landscape (and of course not even close to everyone who is part of that one particular culture either, says this atheist and multi-ethnic white dude). So if I could make one wish for the AmericanStudies Elves, it would be that in the year and years to come we get better at using “American” to mean both all the cultures that are centrally and essentially part of this place and, especially, the complex and crucial community we have always created and continue to create out of the combination of all of them. As I always say, once more (and not for the last time) with feeling, ain’t that America?

Year in review series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Happy holidays! Wishes you’d share?

December 17-18, 2022: Signs of Spring (Semester)

[This semester went fast, felt slightly more familiar than the very strange last couple years, and featured some wonderful individual moments that exemplified why I do what I do. So this week I’ve highlighted one such moment from each class—leading up to this weekend post on a few things I’m looking forward to in Spring 2023!]

Winter’s just getting started, but here are a few signs of Spring (semester) I’m still excited about:

1)      Sci Fi/Fantasy: I get to teach the Intro to Science Fiction and Fantasy course I created back in 2007 about every three years, so every section of it feels like the welcome return of an old friend. But that rotation means that the last time I taught it was the semester that turned into SPRING FREAKING 2020, so let’s just say it didn’t end up being everything it could have been (and/or felt like as the semester went along we descended directly into one of the dystopias about which we were reading). So I’m even more stoked for my Spring semester section of this class, one for which I’ve added a contemporary novel I haven’t had the chance to read and am thus equally excited to read and teach: Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch (2011)!

2)      The American Novel to 1950: I believe the Spring 2017 section about which I wrote in that hyperlinked post was the last time I got to teach this upper-level American literature seminar, so this Spring’s section will offer an even more overdue and welcome return to an old friend (which I taught in my very first Spring semester at FSU). It’s a class where I get to teach some of my all-time favorite American novels, from The House of the Seven Gables to The Marrow of Tradition to My Ántonia. And it’s a class that ends with the most challenging book I teach in any FSU class, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. Can’t beat that with a golf club!

3)      A New (to Me) Grad Class: For the last year and a bit I’ve had the chance to serve as the Chair of our Graduate English Studies program, which has been its own super fun way to get more connected to our amazing grad students. But nothing beats teaching a Grad class, which is why I try to do one every year; sometimes in our condensed Summer sessions, but sometimes, as this coming Spring, during regular semesters. For this Spring’s, I get to teach for the first time something that’s been on the books but (I believe) not taught for a while, Multiethnic American Literatures. I haven’t finalized what I want to teach in there yet, but I’m leaning toward voices and stories of individuals who are themselves multiethnic, representing that cross-cultural identity and community I’ve been thinking about since at least my second book. That means I have plenty of starting points for texts we might read, but as always I’m very open to and appreciative of suggestions for more!

Holiday series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What are you looking forward to?

December 16, 2022: Fall Semester Moments: Adult Ed Challenges

[This semester went fast, felt slightly more familiar than the very strange last couple years, and featured some wonderful individual moments that exemplified why I do what I do. So this week I’ll highlight one such moment from each class—share your own Fall moments in comments, please!]

On two important types of challenging questions that will help push my ideas forward.

There are lots of reasons why I love teaching in adult learning programs—so much so that I’ve remained connected to four such programs over the last decade, teaching consistently in two (ALFAand WISE) and always looking for further opportunities to work with the other two (BOLLIand Beacon Hill Seminars)—but if I had to boil it down, I would definitely emphasize the incredible perspectives, experiences, voices, knowledge and ideas that adult ed students bring to our conversations together. That includes them offering something I understandably don’t get quite as often from undergraduate students but always appreciate whenever and however I get it: direct, probing challenges to my own ideas, and even to the frames for the classes themselves. As I wrote in this Fall semester preview post, I decided to focus my WISE and ALFA classes this semester on a preliminary idea for a future book project; and as a result, the students’ challenging questions will be even more helpful as I continue to think through these ideas and that potential future project.

As I wrote in that preview post, the basic (but somewhat complicated) idea for this project is that while white supremacist voices and forces have consistently claimed to love and uphold various American ideals, in truth they have worked to undermine those ideals, not only for other American communities but ultimately for all of us and the nation as a whole. Some of the challenging questions I got in these courses came from those who disagreed with my ideas, including for example the self-identified “one conservative plant” in my WISE course who made the case both for the American ideals themselves and for my arguments as comprising the true underminings of those ideals; those perspectives are very important for me to recognize and engage, not least as potential future readers and audiences. But to my mind the most important challenging questions I got were those which offered complications to my overarching frame, such as the students who questioned whether the American ideals are worth working to uphold at all (or, alternatively, if they have always been limiting and/or exclusionary). If I’m going to keep developing my critical patriotism and critical optimism, I’ll have to do so in direct conversation with perspectives like that one, and as ever these adult learning classes will be a vital resource as I work to complicate, refine, and strengthen my own ideas and voice.

Weekend post on what’s next drops tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Fall moments you’d share?

December 15, 2022: Fall Semester Moments: Hughes and the Blues

[This semester went fast, felt slightly more familiar than the very strange last couple years, and featured some wonderful individual moments that exemplified why I do what I do. So this week I’ll highlight one such moment from each class—share your own Fall moments in comments, please!]

On a student paper that quite simply blues me away (sorrynotsorry).

As part of this same semester recaps series four years ago, I wrote about a particularly excellent student paper produced in that semester’s section of American Literature II online. I’d like to think that I’ve gotten a lot better as an online teacher over the years and sections since (I teach one online class every semester, alternating between that survey and The Short Story), but the bottom line has remained roughly the same: a great deal of my goal in these online courses, more so than in in-person classes where collective discussions are far more possible, is to help the students produce the best individual work they can. That means every student and every assignment, to be sure, but if I can get even one paper a semester that rivals the Sui Sin Far one about which I wrote in that 2018 post, I’ll feel pretty darn good. And I’m happy to say that in this semester’s section of American Lit II online I got one of the very best student papers I’ve received, a stunning close reading of Langston Hughes’ “The Weary Blues” as an expression of 1920s African American community.

Honestly, I don’t have too much more to say about that, so in lieu of a second paragraph I’ll ask you to check out this amazing video of Hughes reciting his poem accompanied by a blues band. The enjoyment that video provides parallels quite closely how much I loved reading this student paper—if I can get that feeling just once in every online course, you best believe I’ll keep volunteering to be one of our department faculty who teach them.

Last semester moment tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Fall moments you’d share?

December 14, 2022: Fall Semester Moments: Crane, Activism, and the American Dream

[This semester went fast, felt slightly more familiar than the very strange last couple years, and featured some wonderful individual moments that exemplified why I do what I do. So this week I’ll highlight one such moment from each class—share your own Fall moments in comments, please!]

On truly, inspiringly multi-layered and multi-vocal class discussions.

There are lots of reasons why I keep using the same America in the Gilded Age syllabus for my annual section of our Honors Literature Seminar (I might not always get to teach this course and work with these amazing community of students every Fall, but as long as I have the chance I’ll most definitely keep taking it!), including the presence of favorite individual texts as I discussed in that hyperlinked post. But high on the list is how much this syllabus, especially as I’ve gradually honed it over nearly ten iterations by now, allows us to do multiple AmericanStudies things (maybe the trio of Most AmericanStudies Things, even) at once: discussing and close reading complex literary texts and other genres of primary sources at length; considering through them and those conversations broader questions about the relationships between literature, culture, society, and history; and, when appropriate and always thoughtfully, connecting those various discussions and threads to issues in our contemporary moment and world.

Generally those multiple layers happen gradually and across the semester as a whole; but sometimes, when things are really cooking, they are featured simultaneously in individual, inspiringly multi-vocal class discussions. This semester we had one such amazing class conversation on the last day of Unit 3, the Unit focused on themes of work, class, and wealth/poverty and in which our main readings are four texts by the great Stephen Crane. With the table having been set pitch-perfectly by a couple excellent student panel presentations, we moved into a class-wide discussion that truly balanced close readings of Crane’s works, debates over whether and how such literary texts can be activist when it comes to issues like poverty and homelessness, and connections to economic and social inequalities and injustices and the possibilities and limits of the American Dream in our present moment and society. My voice was part of the mix for sure, but mostly in the “following up great student comments, framing some of their main ideas, and helping get us to the next voice and idea” kind of way. Quite simply, discussions and days like that are why I do what I do.

Next semester moment tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Fall moments you’d share?

December 13, 2022: Fall Semester Moments: J. Cole and Me

[This semester went fast, felt slightly more familiar than the very strange last couple years, and featured some wonderful individual moments that exemplified why I do what I do. So this week I’ll highlight one such moment from each class—share your own Fall moments in comments, please!]

On the lifelong learning that happens at the front of the room as well.

First-Year Writing I was one of the classes I taught in my very first semester at Fitchburg State, back in Fall 2005 (two sections of it that semester, in fact!), and I’ve taught at least one section of it every year since. A great deal of the syllabus has of course changed and evolved over those years and sections, but one thing that has stayed the same across them all is the 4thpaper, an assignment I stole (like all good teachers do) from a favorite teacher of mine, my 8th grade English teacher Mr. Hickerson: close reading the lyrics to a song of their choice to practice that literary and textual analysis skill. But even those aspects of my classes and teaching that have remained more constant throughout my career have nonetheless greatly changed over time, thanks to how much I continue learning not only from the experiences themselves, but also and especially from my students and their perspectives, voices, ideas, and work.

I had a wonderful moment of such professorial learning as we moved into that Paper 4 work in one of my Writing I sections this semester. I start by sharing three sample songs of mine so we can practice the paper’s skills together; the first has always been the same song I worked with for Mr. Hickerson, Bruce’s “The River,” but the second and third have shifted over time. For the last few years the third sample song has been J. Cole’s “A Tale of 2 Citiez,” and one of the areas we’ve discussed in every section are the striking shifts in that song’s final verse. As part of those discussions I’ve always said what I believed to be the case, that that final verse was sung by a different performer, a youthful singer; but this semester, two thoughtful students (and, I believe, longtime J. Cole fans) remarked that they believe the change is one of production rather than performer, that the singer is still Cole but with his voice changed to sound more like his younger self. The more I’ve thought about it the more I’m convinced by their analysis, and that idea has significantly shifted my perspective on that last verse and thus on the song as a whole (which, again, I had discussed and analyzed with at least 6-7 prior sections by this point). Lifelong learning for the win!

Next semester moment tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Fall moments you’d share?