January 2, 2026: Year in Review: Dad

[The end of 2025 means another Year in Review blog series, AmericanStudying a handful of the year’s biggest stories. I’d love your 2025 reflections in comments!]

Ten months ago today, I said goodbye to my Dad. I had the chance to say a lot of what I’d most want to say about him in this obituary, this Saturday Evening Post column, and this blog anniversary tribute post, and would ask you all to check out all three of those if you would. But I couldn’t write a Year in Review blog series and not include him, and I want to do so through three relatively quick but very heartfelt points that are quite distinct in both subject and tone:

1)      I’ll start with the saddest. As I wrote in that hyperlinked Post column as well as this prior one on my folks, my Dad both embodied and worked for the best of America throughout his life and his career. It will never not be incredibly frustrating and painful to me that he passed with Donald Motherfucking Trump as president, and indeed that the November 2024 election was one of the last major events he was able to really focus on. I thought I already appreciated all the layers to the Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times,” but losing a loved one in such times—and, again, a loved one who was so potently connected to all things AmericanStudies, including of course every element of this AmericanStudier—comprises another layer still. I don’t generally swear on this blog, but when it’s warranted I will, so I’ll say it once more, with feeling: Fuck Donald Motherfucking Trump.

2)      Now for the happiest (mostly). My Dad passed a month and a bit before his grandson Kyle made his college decision, so he didn’t get to find out that Kyle was headed to the University of Michigan. But he was well aware of and had a significant role in Kyle’s college search, just as he did for his older grandson Aidan’s journey to ending up at Vanderbilt University. My wife Vaughn, who through schedule flexibility but also and especially her incredible generosity and care was able to spend the last couple weeks of my Dad’s life with him and my Mom, has noted many times that he talked about nothing more frequently nor more happily in those difficult times than his grandsons and their incredibly bright futures. I believe it, and the thought has given me great pleasure over these last 10 months.

3)      Finally, the most relevant to this space. Writing this blog day in and day out (well, I now write and schedule in batches as I’ve discussed elsewhere in this space, but you know what I mean) is not always easy, and I’ll admit that there have been moments where I’ve wondered if I should wind it down. But as I noted in that hyperlinked anniversary post, my Dad was this blog’s first and most loyal and responsive reader (yes, even more so than my awesome colleague Irene Martyniuk!). The thoughts he shared in response to so many of my posts consistently inspired me to keep going—and even though I will never quite get used to the idea that he’s not reading each one now, I’m also good with that because that idea makes me even more committed to continuing to do and share this kind of work. See you right here in the (continuing) New Year!

December Recap this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? 2025 stories you’d highlight?

January 1, 2026: Year in Review: Rejuvenated Blockbusters

[The end of 2025 means another Year in Review blog series, AmericanStudying a handful of the year’s biggest stories. I’d love your 2025 reflections in comments!]

On four films that together suggest positive ways forward for the endangered Hollywood blockbuster.

I’ve already dedicated an entire blog series to my favorite film of the year, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. I won’t repeat all that I (and the other awesome folks highlighted in that weekend post) had to say about it, but I’ll just add that the film is as innovative in its financing and production as it is in every other aspect of its filmmaking, and thus (as one of the most profitable movies of the year) certainly can be a model for other films and filmmakers.

I’d be the first to admit that most blockbusters are not like Sinners, though, and I don’t expect that to change significantly going forward (although I hope we do get more like it!). So I think it’s worth noting that three more conventional 2025 blockbusters, all three in the top ten highest grossing films of the year, also represent fresh and thoughtful takes on those conventions. I’ve been on board with the Mission: Impossible films for a long time, but even as a card-carrying fan of the series (other than the John Woo-directed second installment, which is just not very good) I was blown away by Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning. Partly that was how perfectly it wrapped up the entire series, engaging with the past without being beholden to or limited by it (which is a great model for both franchise and action films, I’d say). But partly it was the film’s final messages (delivered by the series’ best character, Ving Rhames’s Luther) of (SPOILERS aplenty here) what we owe to each other in our global world, of why and how not only Ethan Hunt and his compatriots, but also all the rest of us, have to fight for the best of our future—even, indeed especially, when we’re not sure there’s any hope.

I know not everyone is as big a fan of the MI films, but I don’t think any filmgoer would disagree with the argument that the most tired genre of blockbusters in recent years has been the superhero film (or texts in general, as there’s been a plethora of TV shows too of course). So no one was more surprised than me when my second favorite cinematic experience of the year was Superman, and pretty high on the list as well was The Fantastic Four: First Steps. I could go into lots of specifics why the first was so great (a balance of heart and humor, a serious dose of political and social commentary delivered with a deft touch, a damned adorable dog) and the second much better than I expected (the creation and exploration of a fully-realized retrofuturistic world in particular), but at the end of the day, I’d boil it down to this: both films felt that they were made because the creators had a vision for what they hoped to do, not because these were existing Ips that would make a quick buck from audiences. If films are gonna keep leaning into such IPs (and it seems clear that they are), these two represent great models for how that can still result in enjoyable and successful movies.

Last reflections tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? 2025 stories you’d highlight?

December 31, 2025: Year in Review: AI

[The end of 2025 means another Year in Review blog series, AmericanStudying a handful of the year’s biggest stories. I’d love your 2025 reflections in comments!]

I wrote about ChatGPT and other generative AI programs as part of last year’s Year in Review series, and would say that every experience I’ve had with AI in the year since has only deepened every part of what I said there about its worst elements and effects. We’ve also learned a great deal more over this last year about AI’s horrifically destructive potential, from what data centers do to communities and the environment to what chatbots do to individuals to what AI is doing to education (to cite just four specific stories about just a few of the many issues I could highlight). And yet just about every day I see or hear or read or encounter folks—most of them folks I know and trust and often love—talking about using ChatGPT and other AI programs in casual and consistent (if not indeed constant) ways. So unfortunately I think I need to include AI in this year’s Year in Review series as well, as we desperately need a full and honest conversation about what this new technology is doing, and whether and how we can (at the very least) stop its further growth.

Next reflections tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? 2025 stories you’d highlight?

December 30, 2025: Year in Review: Higher Ed

[The end of 2025 means another Year in Review blog series, AmericanStudying a handful of the year’s biggest stories. I’d love your 2025 reflections in comments!]

How three university presidents embody three distinct responses to ongoing attacks on higher education.

Those of us who teach and work at American colleges and universities outside of the nation’s most elite such institutions—which is to say, the vast majority of college educators and employees—have long been aware that our media conversations focus far too fully on that small handful of unis. We’ve certainly seen that trend play out once again in 2025, as the Trump administration’s attacks on elite institutions like Columbia and Harvard have dominated our narratives. But outsized as that attention may be, those institutions have indeed been under attack, and so it’s been particularly disheartening to see the obedient response from leaders like the University of Chicago’s President Paul Alivasatos, who together with that institution’s Board of Trustees froze and cut a good deal of the humanities at Chicago, including all programs that involve foreign language study, to cite just one especially egregious response to narratives that universities have become too “woke” or wasteful. Virtually none of the nation’s elite universities have covered themselves in glory in this crucial moment, and that has only aided and abetted the administration’s attacks.

At the exact opposite end of the spectrum is Michael Roth, the President of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Wesleyan is a small liberal arts college with far more limited resources and clout (and presence in our national media and conversations) than places like Chicago and Columbia, but Roth has consistently punched above his weight class and pushed back on the Trump administration, and especially on its blatantly false narratives (really excuses) of both “woke”-ism and antisemitism at the nation’s institutions of higher education. If you’re not inspired by reading through this official list, on Wesleyan’s own website, of Roth’s Bylines over the last year—to say nothing of reading the pieces themselves, each and every one of which I highly recommend—then we’re not anywhere near the same page when it comes to what higher education can and should offer to our collective conversations, all the time and in moments of crisis most of all.

But such contributions to our national conversations aren’t the only thing higher ed can and should do, of course. And when it comes to the even more consistent and central goals of serving our students and communities, I’ve been very impressed by Donna Hodge, the new President (and first woman President) at my own institution, Fitchburg State University. That’s due to many different moments and actions of Hodge’s throughout her first year-plus in office, but I would point specifically to this podcast interview from the spring. It’s under twenty minutes and well worth your time, especially for the ways that Hodge talks about growing and supporting the diversity of FSU’s student body, including in the university’s now-official capacity as a Hispanic Serving Institution. In their own ways, these statements and actions represent just as crucial a response to current attacks as do Roth’s, and are certainly another example of the best of higher education, in 2025 and overall.

Next reflections tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? 2025 stories you’d highlight?

PPS. Since I drafted this piece, President Hodge proposed one of the most impressive ideas for higher ed I've encountered in a long time: all students at the local Fitchburg-area high schools with a minimum GPA of 2.25 will have automatic admission to FSU, and can attend tuition-free. President Hodge was a first-generation college student and sees this as a path to college for folks in that community in particular, and I really, really love this proposal and wanted to add it to today's post. 

December 29, 2025: Year in Review: Fascism

[The end of 2025 means another Year in Review blog series, AmericanStudying a handful of the year’s biggest stories. I’d love your 2025 reflections in comments!]

On overt and insidious ways that Trump 2.0 parallels the worst leaders in world history.

Because the United States has had such longstanding relationships with so many of them, especially in the Western Hemisphere but also everydamnwhere else, I’ve written about dictators quite a bit in this space. For the most part, those relationships have formed after the dictators have taken power, and indeed have reflected America’s realpolitik perspective on what these established authoritarian figures can do to help advance our own national interests (whether foreign policy or economic or both). But there have certainly also been times when the U.S. has actively helped those authoritarian leaders both come to power in the first place and then cement their fascist dictatorial regimes, as was the case for example with Fulgencio Batista in 1930s Cuba. Which gives those of us with historical awareness an unquestionably ironic but also quite well-informed perspective on how the first authoritarian dictator in American history (at least at the presidential level) is seeking to cement his own fascist regime.

Many of the ways Trump and his cronies are doing so are strikingly overt. That includes the story that has understandably dominated the headlines throughout the second half of 2025, starting with Los Angeles in June: Trump’s use of the military to invade (a word I’m using very deliberately) and occupy (ditto) a number of American cities, especially those led by Democratic and/or African American Mayors. But there are plenty of other such striking parallels to world fascisms past and present as well, including nationalizing corporations and industries, using law enforcement to target political enemies, attacking and seeking to shut down critical media, purging “non-loyal” employees from all areas of the government, falsifying basic science and facts to align with the leader’s vision, and much, much, much more. Just writing those sentences and adding those hyperlinks really drives home how widespread and how blatant this descent into fascism has been, and I hope any reader of this blog will know that I don’t use such phrases or framings lightly.

I think there’s an even more insidious layer to the rise of this first fascist regime in American history, though. We’ve obviously had presidents around whom cults of personality formed, especially in the 20^th and 21^st centuries and even more especially in the media age; from Teddy Roosevelt’s faux-machismo to JFK’s Camelot, Ronald Reagan’s adoring acolytes to Barack Obama’s cheering crowds, these leaders have inspired popular adoration to be sure. But I’ve lived through two of those presidencies, and studied and written extensively about the other two (and every other presidential administration in our history), and I can say definitively that none of them were anything close to the cultish figures that Donald Trump is for so damn many people, from those serving him in his administration to those supporting him around the country. “The state, it is me” is a phrase associated with monarchs like Louis XIV, and of course monarchy was in many ways the original form of authoritarian regime. And it’s no coincidence that Trump loves to share images of himself as a King, nor that his actions align with so many of the criticisms leveled at King George in the Declaration of Independence. An American monarch would be even more ironic than an American dictator, but that’s about where we are in late 2025.

Next reflections tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? 2025 stories you’d highlight?

December 27-28, 2025: Wishes for my Wife’s Book

[Many, many, many times over the last year, I’ve wished that more Americans would have the chance to read my writing and learn even a few of the many lessons I believe it offers for us in 2025. So for my annual Wishes for the Holiday Elves series, I wanted to revisit my six books, highlighting something specific from each that I think we could takeaway today. Leading up to this special post on my awesome wife’s Christmastastic new book!]

I wrote back in September about my wife Vaughn Joy’s then-forthcoming and now-released first book, Selling Out Santa: Hollywood Christmas Films in the Age of McCarthy; I’ll write more about it as part of a late-March series on her many book talks across a number of different media and formats. But I couldn’t share a blog series on my own books without highlighting Vaughn’s, and I do have a few specific wishes for the Holiday Elves related to Selling Out Santa specifically:

1)      Redefining American Christmas: One of the most consistent and most striking responses that we’ve seen to Vaughn’s book is from folks who see Christmas as an overtly and centrally Christian holiday, and thus for example take issue with Vaughn’s claim (the center of her main book talk) that Christmas = America. But Vaughn’s argument, and it’s both incredibly convincing and hugely important, is that American Christmas has always been an amalgamated, multicultural, secular and civic holiday—while of course Christians can celebrate their version of the holiday, that’s just one of countless layers to American Christmas, and one that came along much later in the historical development of our holiday than (for example) Santa imagery. Vaughn seems to be fighting an uphill battle to remind people of these vital histories and realities, but it’s a fight well worth fighting, and one that I wish all Americans could really take to heart.

2)      Cultural and Media Literacies: Learning that lesson requires folks to engage thoughtfully and meaningfully with not only histories, but also and perhaps especially with the cultural and media texts that have created our Christmas and holiday imagery, narratives, and myths across the centuries—a list that includes but is in no way limited to Vaughn’s focus on Hollywood Christmas films. As Vaughn developed her book talks she realized that one of the most central throughlines of her scholarly work has been a focus on enhancing our literacy when it comes to such cultural imagery—whether of classical mythologies (her first MA), comic books (her second), films (her PhD that became this book), or other genres and media. I wholeheartedly agree with her assertion that no skills are more important for all Americans and people to practice and strengthen in late 2025, and I wish all Americans would have the chance to do so by reading Vaughn’s book.

3)      Sharing My Joy: Ultimately, though, my wish for the Holiday Elves is simpler than that—I wish every single person could have the chance to see just how excellent this book is—how engagingly written while offering nuanced ideas, how attentive to close readings of tons of classic films while making overarching historical arguments, how exemplary of interdisciplinary public scholarship at its best. If you want to share my Joy and aren’t sure how to get your hands on a copy of the book, feel free to leave a comment or to check out our website or to shoot me an email, and thanks in advance!

Year in Review series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. You know what to do!

December 26, 2025: Revisiting My Books: We the People & Of Thee I Sing

[Many, many, many times over the last year, I’ve wished that more Americans would have the chance to read my writing and learn even a few of the many lessons I believe it offers for us in 2025. So for my annual Wishes for the Holiday Elves series, I wanted to revisit my six books, highlighting something specific from each that I think we could takeaway today. Leading up to a special post on my awesome wife’s Christmastastic new book!]

Back in July, I concluded my 4^th of July series with an offer and a request: an offer to send an e-copy of my sixth book Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotism (2021) to anyone interested; and a request for any and all opportunities where I might talk about that project and its ever-more-relevant resonances. I would make exactly the same offer and request for my fifth book (a direct complement to my sixth, from the same American Ways series): We the People: The 500-Year Battle over Who is American (2019). So as I conclude this series of Wishes for the Holiday Elves, I’ll make that multilayered offer and request into a wish as well: that every American have the chance to check out these two short, accessible, and damn relevant books; and that I have the chance to talk about them far and wide as well. You know what to do!

Special post this weekend,

Ben

PS. I say again: you know what to do, here or by email!