January 6, 2012: American Studiers Needed

[This week I’ve been highlighting some of the benefits of an American Studies methodology. This is the fifth and final entry in that series.]

How an American Studies approach works best when it’s as diverse, multivocal, and communally interconnected and inspiring as America itself.

I could provide another American Studies analytical example here, and will of course continue to do so in this space in the days and weeks to come. But I know I speak for both myself and Graham Beckwith when I say that this new site’s most profound goal is to be driven not by my voice (that’s what this blog is for) nor by his (although his designs and vision are creating the space where this will all happen) but by the voices and perspectives, the ideas and needs, of as many American Studiers as possible. And so on this last day of my first week blogging at the new site, I have a request for you.

The short version is this: I want to hear what American thing—a text (in any genre and media), a event, a figure, an issue or debate, an idea, a period, a question, whatever you’ve got—you’ve got an American Studies analytical take on. Maybe you’ve already articulated that take pretty fully somewhere, and we can link to it or otherwise include it here. Maybe you’d like the chance to articulate it more fully, and you can contribute a guest post to the blog or a thread to the Forum or share it in some other form that works for you. Or maybe it’s more something that could become part of our pages or content here in an overarching and evolving way.

Whatever the case may be—and I’d love to have starting points and suggestions of all those types, and plenty of them—all I’m asking for right now is that you let me know that you’re interested. A comment on this post works fine for that, as would an email (brailton@fitchburgstate.edu) or tweet (@AmericanStudier) if you prefer. This site will grow and succeed in direct proportion to how much it becomes a community of voices, so let’s get started building that conversation!

More this weekend,

Ben

PS. You know what to do!

1/6 Memory Day nominee: Carl Sandburg, the son of Swedish American immigrants and a Spanish American War vet who became one of the 20^th century’s most multi-talented and prolific writers: of poems that define a city and era, of a Pulitzer-winning multi-volume biography of Lincoln, and of a huge and very underrated historical novel.