March
4: Popular Fiction: Cultural Work: A series on popular fiction begins with
Jane Tompkins, Twilight, Oprah, and
the question of how and why we analyze popular art.
March
5: Popular Fiction: Christian Novels: The series continues with one of the
most under-narrated yet most consistently popular genres in American literature.
March
6: Popular Fiction: Small-Town Soaps: The genre that links seemingly
contrasting authors Sinclair Lewis and Grace Metalious, as the series rolls on.
March
7: Popular Fiction: Guilty Pleasures: Thinking about the popular fiction
we’re ashamed to love—yet love and read nonetheless!
March
8: Popular Fiction: Paradigm Shift: The series concludes with the complex
question of how and why we disparage or value best-sellers.
March
9-10: Crowd-sourced Popular Fiction: Other AmericanStudiers weigh in on the
week’s posts and topics.
March
11: Supreme Contexts: Marbury and Balance: A series on key 19th
century Supreme Court decisions starts with the one that established the
Court’s role and power.
March
12: Supreme Courts: Georgia and Sovereignty: The series continues with the
cases that illustrate both the limitations and the possibilities of how the
Court can respond to national issues.
March
13: Supreme Contexts: Dred Scott and Definitions: The case that represents
a low point for the Court’s social role—but the height of its defining powers.
March
14: Supreme Contexts: Santa Clara County and Revision: The case that
reimagined both the role of American businesses and one of our landmark laws,
as the series rolls on.
March
15: Supreme Contexts: Plessy and Activism: The historical portion of the
series concludes with a case that can and perhaps should shift our sense of
“judicial activism.”
March
16-17: Supreme Contexts: The Cases Before Us: My take on a few of the
lessons that such historical analyses of the Court can hold for very
significant contemporary cases.
March
18: Spring in America: Williams and Eliot: Snowstorms be damned, a series
on spring in America starts with two distinct but perhaps parallel poetic
visions of the season.
March
19: Spring in America: “Appalachian Spring”: The series continues with the
composer and work that helped bring America and classical music together.
March
20: Spring in America: “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”: The song that
exemplifies why simple and symbolic can work just fine for social and political
protest music.
March
21: Spring in America: Children’s Stories: Frog and Toad, Abdul Gasazi, and
children’s stories of spring explorations, as the series rolls on.
March
22: Spring in America: The Mayflower and the Maypole: The series concludes
with two very different sides to the Pilgrims/Puritans, as revealed by two
spring images.
March
23-24: Crowd-sourced Spring: Responses and other spring thoughts from many
fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours please!
March
25: National Big Read Recaps, Part 1: A follow up series to my roundtable
on nominations for the Even Bigger Read, starting with Mary Rowlandson’s
narrative.
March
26: National Big Read Recaps, Part 2: The series continues with a
nomination of Letters from an American
Farmer.
March
27: National Big Read Recaps, Part 3: The
Day of the Locust, as the Even Bigger Read series rolls on.
March
28: National Big Read Recaps, Part 4: Why we should all read Invisible Man.
March
29: National Big Read Recaps, Part 5: James Welch’s Fool’s Crow, another nominee for a national Big Read.
March
30: National Big Read Recaps, Part 6: The series concludes with the case
for Sebastian Junger’s War.
Next series
starts tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Responses to
any of these posts or series? Things you’d like to see on the blog? Guest post
ideas? Share, please!
No comments:
Post a Comment