April 30-May 1, 2016: April 2016 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]April 4: Remembering Reconstruction: The Freedmen’s Bureau: A Reconstruction series starts with a major reason why the organization failed, and two lasting legacies nonetheless.April 5: Remembering Reconstruction: African American Legislators: The series continues with three distinct, inspiring stories from the period’s thousands of African American elected officials.April 6: Remembering Reconstruction: Massacres: Three horrific and historically telling Reconstruction-era massacres, as the series rolls on.April 7: Remembering Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson: Three telling stages in the life and career of one of our worst presidents.April 8: Remembering Reconstruction: Du Bois’s Vital Revisionism: The series concludes with the book that revised Reconstruction historiography, redefined a profession, and went even further.April 9-10: Remembering Reconstruction: The Civil Rights Act of 1866: On its 150thanniversary, why we don’t remember a controversial law, and a couple reasons why we should.April 11: American Outlaws: Pecos Bill and Joaquin Murrieta: An OutlawStudying series starts with two competing yet complementary frontier folk heroes.April 12: American Outlaws: Billy the Kid: The series continues with two telling layers to the famous outlaw’s mythos, and the context they both tend to miss.April 13: American Outlaws: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: Beautifying ugly men and deeds and why we should resist it, as the series rolls on.April 14: American Outlaws: Bonnie and Clyde: How photos and images can reflect and shape but also distort our histories.April 15: American Outlaws: The Mafia: The series concludes with three telling stages in the evolution of our pop culture obsession with the mob.April 16-17: Tolkien Takeaways: In honor of my younger son’s birthday, a special post on three AmericanStudies takeaways from one of our current obsessions, The Lord of the Rings.April 18: Patriot’s Day Special Post: My annual Patriot’s Day post on the easier and harder forms of patriotism—and why we should try for the latter.April 19: 21st Century Patriots: Alicia Garza: A series on contemporary patriots starts with what’s new, traditional, and perhaps most important about the hashtag activist.April 20: 21st Century Patriots: Deepa Iyer: The series continues with the scholar and wonderful new book that deserve to reference one of the greatest American poems.April 21: 21st Century Patriots: Santana Young Man Afraid of His Horses: A young tribal emissary who embodies 21st century communal activism, as the series rolls on.April 22: 21st Century Patriots: Online Public Scholarship: The series concludes with four places where you can find online public scholarship that embodies my vision of critical patriotism.April 23-24: Crowd-sourced Patriots: My latest crowd-sourced post, in which fellow AmericanStudiers share their nominees for 21st century (and a couple 19th century) patriots!April 25: Short Story Cycles: Love Medicine: A series on short story cycles starts with two roles of the framing story of Louise Erdrich’s devastating, beautiful cycle.April 26: Short Story Cycles: The Joy Luck Club: The series continues with two easily overlooked histories at the heart of Amy Tan’s bestselling cycle.April 27: Short Story Cycles: The House on Mango Street: Two childhood experiences that Sandra Cisneros’ cycle gets perfectly right, as the series continues.April 28: Short Story Cycles: The Things They Carried: The value of reading the individual stories in Tim O’Brien’s cycle on their own terms, and the necessity of not stopping there.April 29: Short Story Cycles: 19th Century Trailblazers: The series concludes with two distinct models for the genre from a century before its rise to prominence.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know!