[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 150th
anniversary, 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,
Ben
PS. Topics you’d
like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know!
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