[On August 15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 47th birthday. So as I do each year, here’s a series sharing some of my favorite posts from each year on the blog, leading up to a new post with 47 favorites from the last year. And as ever, you couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi and tell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyed here, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]
In honor of this AmericanStudier’s 34th
birthday in 2011, here (from oldest to most recent) were 34 of my favorite
posts from the blog’s first year:
1) The
Wilmington Massacre and The Marrow of Tradition: My first
full post, but also my first stab at two of this blog’s central purposes:
narrating largely forgotten histories; and recommending texts we should all
read.
2) Pine
Ridge, the American Indian Movement, and Apted’s Films: Ditto to
those purposes, but also a post in which I interwove history, politics,
identity, and different media in, I hope, a pretty exemplary American Studies
way.
3) The Shaw
Memorial: I’ll freely admit that my first handful of posts were also just
dedicated to texts and figures and moments and histories that I love—but the
Memorial, like Chesnutt’s novel and Thunderheart
in those first two links, is also a deeply inspiring work of American art.
4) The
Chinese Exclusion Act and the Most Amazing Baseball Game Ever: Probably
my favorite post to date, maybe because it tells my favorite American story.
5) Ely Parker: The post
in which I came up with my idea for Ben’s American Hall of Inspiration; I know
many of my posts can be pretty depressing, but hopefully the Hall can be a way
for me to keep coming back to Americans whose stories and legacies are anything
but.
6) My
Colleague Ian Williams’ Work with Incarcerated Americans: The
first post where I made clear that we don’t need to look into our national
history to find truly inspiring Americans and efforts.
7) Rush
Limbaugh’s Thanksgiving Nonsense: My first request, and the first post
to engage directly with the kinds of false American histories being advanced by
the contemporary right.
8) The Pledge
of Allegiance: Another central purpose for this blog is to complicate, and at
times directly challenge and seek to change, some of our most accepted national
and historical narratives. This is one of the most important such challenges.
9) Public
Enemy, N.W.A., and Rap: If you’re going to be an AmericanStudier,
you have to be willing to analyze even those media and genres on which you’re
far from an expert, and hopefully find interesting and valuable things to say
in the process.
10) Chinatown
and the History of LA: At the same time, the best AmericanStudiers
likewise have to be able to analyze their very favorite things (like this 1974
film, for me), and find ways to link them to broader American narratives and
histories.
11) The Statue
of Liberty: Our national narratives about Lady Liberty are at least as
ingrained as those about the Pledge of Allegiance—and just about as inaccurate.
12) Tillie
Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” and Parenting: Maybe the first post in which I
really admitted my personal and intimate stakes in the topics I’m discussing
here, and another of those texts everybody should read to boot.
13) Dorothea
Dix and Mental Health Reform: When it comes to a number of the people on
whom I’ve focused here, I didn’t know nearly enough myself at the start of my
research—making the posts as valuable for me as I could hope them to be for any
other reader. This is one of those.
14) Ben
Franklin and Anti-Immigrant Sentiments: As with many dominant narratives,
those Americans who argue most loudy in favor of limiting immigration usually
do so in large part through false, or at best greatly oversimplified and
partial, versions of our past.
15) Divorce in
American History: Some of our narratives about the past and
present seem so obvious as to be beyond dispute: such as the idea that divorce
has become more common and more accepted in our contemporary society. Maybe,
but as with every topic I’ve discussed here, the reality is a good bit more
complicated.
16) My Mom’s
Guest Post on Margaret Wise Brown: The first of the many great guest
posts I’ve been fortunate enough to feature here; I won’t link to the others,
as you can and should find them by clicking the “Guest Posts” category on the
right. And please—whether I’ve asked you specifically or not—feel free to
contribute your own guest post down the road!
17) JFK,
Tucson, and the Rhetoric and Reality of Political Violence: The
first post in which I deviated from my planned schedule to respond directly to
a current event—something I’ve incorporated very fully into this blog in the
months since.
18) Tribute
Post to Professor Alan Heimert: I’d say the same about the tribute
posts that I did for the guest posts—both that they exemplify how fortunate
I’ve been (in this case in the many amazing people and influences I’ve known)
and that you should read them all (at the “Tribute Posts” category on the
right).
19) Martin
Luther King: How do we remember the real, hugely complicated, and to my mind
even more inspiring man, rather than the mythic ideal we’ve created of him? A
pretty key AmericanStudies question, one worth asking of every truly inspiring
American.
20) Angel
Island and Sui Sin Far’s “In the Land of the Free”:
Immigration has been, I believe, my first frequent theme here, perhaps because,
as this post illustrates, it can connect us so fully to so many of the darkest,
richest, most powerful and significant national places and events, texts and
histories.
21) Dresden
and Slaughterhouse Five: One of the events we Americans have worked
most hard to forget, and one of the novels that most beautifully and compelling
argues for the need to remember and retell every story.
22) Valentine’s
Day Lessons: Maybe my least analytical post, and also one of my favorites. It
ain’t all academic, y’know.
23) Tori Amos,
Lara Logan, and Stories of Rape: One of the greatest songs I’ve ever
heard helps me respond to one of the year’s most horrific stories.
24) Peter
Gomes and Faith: A tribute to one of the most inspiring Americans I’ve ever met,
and some thoughts on the particularly complicated and important American theme
he embodies for me.
25) The Treaty
of Tripoli and the Founders on Church and State:
Sometimes our historical narratives are a lot more complicated than we think.
And sometimes they’re just a lot simpler. Sorry, David Barton and Glenn Beck,
but there’s literally no doubt of what the Founders felt about the separation
of church and state the idea of America as a “Christian nation.”
26) Newt
Gingrich, Definitions of America, and Why We’re Here: The
first of many posts (such as all those included in the “Book Posts” category on
the right) in which I bring the ideas at the heart of my second book into my
responses to AmericanStudies narratives and myths.
27) Du Bois,
Affirmative Action, and Obama: Donald Trump quickly and thoroughly revealed
himself to be a racist jackass, but the core reasons for much of the opposition
to affirmative action are both more widespread and more worth responding to
than Trump’s buffoonery.
28) Illegal
Immigrants, Our Current Deportation Policies, and Empathy: What
does deportation really mean and entail, who is affected, and at what human
cost?
29) Tribute to
My Grandfather Art Railton: The saddest Railton event of the year leads
me to reflect on the many inspiring qualities of my grandfather’s life,
identity, and especially perspective.
30) My
Clearest Immigration Post: Cutting through some of the complexities and
stating things as plainly as possible, in response to Sarah Palin’s historical
falsehoods. Repeated and renamed with even more force here.
31) Paul
Revere, Longfellow, and Wikipedia: Another Sarah Palin-inspired post,
this time on her revisions to the Paul Revere story and the question of what is
“common knowledge” and what purposes it serves in our communal conversations.
32) “Us vs.
them” narratives, Muslim Americans, and Illegal Immigrants: The
first of a couple posts to consider these particularly frustrating and divisive
national narratives. The second, which also followed up my Norwegian terrorism
response (linked below), is here.
33) Abraham
Cahan: The many impressive genres and writings of this turn of the
century Jewish American, and why AmericanStudiers should work to push down
boundaries between disciplines as much as possible.
34)
Terrorism,
Norway, and Rhetoric: One of the latest and most important
iterations of my using a current event to drive some American analyses—and
likewise an illustration of just how fully interconnected international and
American events and histories are.
Next
birthday best post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. You
know what to do!
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