November 10, 2011: Moments That Remain 4

[The 2011 New England American Studies Association conference has come and gone; but while I’ve come to the inspiring end of that more than year-long road, I can’t quite let go. So each day this week I’ll briefly highlight one powerful and affecting moment from the conference’s full and diverse and profoundly perfect two days. This is the fourth and final post in that series.]

When I tried to figure out the fourth and final (for now!) moment from this past weekend’s conference on which I wanted to focus, the list quickly grew to include way more than one such moment. Jim Loewen’s Saturday keynote address itself already included a number of great moments, particularly in the numerous ways he both modeled and argued for AmericanStudies as a public, practical, applicable, valuable national discipline and set of conversations. But wait, I haven’t even written at length about the plenary, and especially about the transitions—the way in which Joan Tavares Avant’s passionate arguments about contemporary Wampanoag issues and rights segued into Joe Conforti’s personal and scholarly reflections on “encounters with Plymouth,” and the similar transitions and shifts and connections across each of the five rich talks (which ended with Cathy Stanton’s very provocative and inspiring take on the political and social roles of historic sites, in a talk she has now posted online here). And what about all those individual papers and voices that, even though I didn’t get to hear the whole of any one (too busy running around, shockingly), added crucial moments and details and ideas to my memories of the conference conversations and themes?

More than I could possibly say, ultimately—and as with any amazing moment in time, much of it present in that moment and present for those of lucky enough to be part of it in ways that can’t exactly be recaptured in even the most powerful of prose (much less mine). So I wanted to focus here instead on two ways that I very much hope the conference’s conversations will continue, not only in person but in spaces a lot like this one (and thus spaces to which you can contribute, dear reader, wherever you are):

1)      The Blog: The pre-conference blog remains up and will I hope continue to remain active—I have already posted Cathy Stanton’s post-conference thoughts as well as a link to this blog, and have asked all of the prior posters to feel free and encouraged to add their post-conference takes into the mix there. And I hope that as NEASA’s online presence and community continues to grow, the blog will either remain a site for that growth or will at least clearly link to it.

2)      The Colloquium: In May 2012 (exact date TBA) NEASA will hold its second Spring Colloquium, this time at The House of the Seven Gables. Just as was the case with last year’s first Colloquium, part of the day will be devoted to regional AmericanStudies scholars sharing some of their work in progress or recently published works; but this time we’re adding in a set of afternoon conversations, including some on a walking tour, which will focus on issues of public and living history, museums and historic sites, and public AmericanStudies and scholarship in a variety of ways. Stay tuned for more, and join us in Salem if you can!

In other words, let’s create some more moments that will remain, both digitally and in person! More tomorrow, my second annual Veteran’s Day post,

Ben

PS. Any great scholarly experiences that you’d highlight and that we can learn from?

November 9, 2011: Moments That Remain 3

[The 2011 New England American Studies Association conference has come and gone; but while I’ve come to the inspiring end of that more than year-long road, I can’t quite let go. So each day this week I’ll briefly highlight one powerful and affecting moment from the conference’s full and diverse and profoundly perfect two days. This is the third post in that series.]

One of the aspects of the conference that made me the happiest was the diversity of our attendees, including not only academic scholars from virtually every AmericanStudies discipline but also secondary educators, museum and institution directors, librarians and archivists, historical and cultural performers, freelance writers and journalists, and Native American tribal historians, elders, and storytellers. Yet while we might have had a few more such attendees than at past conferences, by far the most striking group of attendees comprised another, and even less common (in my past NEASA experiences, at least), category: undergraduate students. Thanks to the efforts of two main point people at their institutions (professors Laura D’Amore and Julia Lisella respectively), more than 30 students each from Roger Williams University and Regis College attended the Friday morning sessions, took part in Friday’s plenary panel and luncheon, and went out onto the Plimoth grounds that afternoon.

I can’t say for sure what the experience meant to those undergrads, although I know I sensed some definite excitement, and heard the same from those great faculty point people. Certainly they were able to fit a great deal of diverse conference and AmericanStudies experience into their day: from those different possible panels (ones on recreating the Revolution, heroism, the visual arts, and secondary educators’ perspectives in just the first time slot alone); to the five very distinct plenary voices (moving from a Wampanoag elder to a professor of New England Studies to a Wampanoag historian to a cultural archaeologist to an anthropologist who studies historic and heritage tourism); to all that Plimoth has to offer. At the very least, I have to believe that it was a day not like many others in their undergrad experiences—not least because I never had, or perhaps just never took advantage of, the opportunity to spend such a day during my college years.

Yet whatever the experience meant to those attendees, what I can say for sure is that their presence meant a great deal for the conference’s energy and atmosphere, particularly on its crucial first day. In the past few years, the Friday morning panels had tended to be extremely small, with most conference participants not having arrived yet; similarly, the past few plenary panels, which were scheduled on Friday evening, had likewise drawn far smaller audiences than their excellent speakers and topics deserved. The undergrads were far from the only attendees present at our Friday events—our four panel rooms sat 30-40 people each and were nearly full from the first time slots on; the plenary luncheon had at least 100 registrants in addition to the 65 or so undergrads—but they represented a huge and energetic part of those events, bringing energy and enthusiasm and, yeah, youth to the mix in really affecting ways. If NEASA is going to get more public, more a part of broad as well as academic conversations and communities, it can’t just connect outside of universities—it also has to make clear to the people who comprise the bulk of every university why AmericanStudies matters to them. This weekend was a great start!

More tomorrow, the last in this series of reflections,

Ben

PS. Any undergrad experiences that were as unique and (I hope) interesting as this one?

November 8, 2011: Moments That Remain 2

[The 2011 New England American Studies Association conference has come and gone; but while I’ve come to the inspiring end of that more than year-long road, I can’t quite let go. So each day this week I’ll briefly highlight one powerful and affecting moment from the conference’s full and diverse and profoundly perfect two days. This is the second post in that series.]

If the Friday evening creative reading at Pilgrim Hall, about which I blogged yesterday, represents one way in which we 21^st century Americans can engage with the multiple but interconnected communities and cross-cultural conversations that originated in and around Plymouth, Saturday evening’s walking tour of the town represents a complementary but very different and even more visceral way. The tour was run by Native Plymouth Tours, an organization founded by two twin brothers (Tim and Tom Turner) who are also directors of the Wampanoag Homesite at Plimoth Plantation and who are as well-versed in the histories of both the Pilgrim and Native communities in Plymouth as anybody in the area. Yet while Tim’s tour for us NEASA folks on Saturday evening certainly added some knowledge and perspectives to what I already knew or thought about Plymouth, its real effects were, again, more viscerally than intellectually affecting.

The tour began at 5:30, with the sun already mostly set, and so by a few minutes into the 90-minute walk the town was dark. While at first we were walking near the waterfront and well-lit town streets, by about the halfway point we were back closer to woods and then the old burial ground, areas with no artificial lighting; we did have small flashlights, but they certainly didn’t make much of a dent in the night. So as we made our way up the side of Town Brook, the waterway up which the Pilgrims had steered their shallop as they found the water sources that convinced them to build their town nearby, it was easy to imagine that we were there with them on an equally cold December day; as we stood at the bottom of the hill where Hobbamock, an emissary to the Pilgrim town (or possibly a spy) from the Wampanoag chief Massasoit, had made his home, it was equally possible to imagine that we were there with Hobbamock, returning to a small hut after a day of dealing carefully with these strange and potentially hostile new arrivals to the land.

Historical work, whether done by scholars or museums or other AmericanStudiers, has many purposes, but certainly chief among them is a recapturing of the past, a connection of our present perspectives and identities to those of a distant but still relevant moment and world. It would be naïve to argue that those of us on the tour were transported in any genuine way back to the 1620s—our warm coats and flashlights, our waiting cars and restaurant dinners, to say nothing of our 21^st century perspectives and experiences, would belie such an argument. But for a time the tour did help recreate some sense of that distant past, or at least make it possible for us to bridge those four centuries and imagine the Plymouth or Patuxet (as the Wampanoags knew it) that those first American communities had inhabited. And, at least for me, such recreations make it far more possible to likewise imagine both the reasons for hostility and division between those communities and yet the interconnection and interdependence that could be fostered in a New England winter.

More tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Any moments or ways in which you’ve felt closely connected to a distant past?

November 7, 2011: Moments That Remain 1

[The 2011 New England American Studies Association conference has come and gone; but while I’ve come to the inspiring end of that more than year-long road, I can’t quite let go. So each day this week I’ll briefly highlight one powerful and affecting moment from the conference’s full and diverse and profoundly perfect two days.]

The walls of the main exhibition space in Pilgrim Hall are covered with huge paintings of key moments in the Pilgrim narrative: the arrival of the Mayflower, scenes from the devastating first winter, the “First Thanksgiving” in the following year, and so on. Given that the Hall’s purpose is to serve as a collection of Pilgrim artifacts and a commemoration of Pilgrim history, those artistic images are hardly surprising, and perhaps not even striking (although their size and grandeur are certainly impressive no matter what). Yet in the early evening of Friday November 4^th, as the first day of the NEASA conference ended with a fun and engaging set of creative readings and performances by four regional writers, the space and its walls and images felt without question striking, brought into the present and into conversation in visceral and powerful ways.

You see, those four writers are all Native Americans, indigenous New England voices. The first, Larry Spotted Crown Mann, began his reading with a Nipmuc prayer and a welcoming song (both sung and performed on the drum); and while Mann and his fellow readers Mihku Paul, Melissa Zobel, and Joan Tavares Avant read pieces that utilized distinct literary genres and engaged with a wide and rich variety of themes and identities and experiences, they all consistently circled back to indigenous identities and perspectives. Given both the explicit and implicit images of Native identities represented on the walls—the lone Wampanoag virtually bowing before fearful Pilgrim arrivals in the room’s largest picture, for example; the absence of Massasoit and his more than 60 warriors from the “Thanksgiving” picture, for another—the event could with a good deal of justice be said to have exemplified the third action in our conference subtitle: resisting national narratives.

Yet it will as no surprise to any readers of this blog that the moment resonated differently for me. After all, our national narratives are as much the Wampanoag’s as the Pilgrims’—perhaps not the most prominent or mythologized such narratives, but the most accurate and genuine ones. And even more significantly, I would argue that as soon as those two communities encountered one another on the shores of Cape Cod in November 1620, the most genuine ensuing communal narratives were strikingly like those embodied by the readers and walls on Friday evening in Pilgrim Hall—conflicted but connected, challenging but conversational, incomplete but inspiring. Mann also talked in his performance about how much the land under us, like the histories and stories he shared, belongs to, and indeed defines, all of us, of every American community and culture; and of the central national community and culture that exists only through and between all of ours.

I felt that on Friday evening, as powerfully as I ever have. More tomorrow,

Ben

PS. If you were at the conference, please feel very free to add your thoughts or responses here!

November 4-6, 2011: It’s Here!

Early Friday I morning I drive down to Plymouth, and Plimoth Plantation, where the New England American Studies Association conference will unfold over the next two days. I’ve blogged about the conference many times over the past half-year or so, and if you can’t join us at Plimoth you can catch up on those posts under the “New England ASA” category on the right. There are many, many specific moments which I’m looking forward to, but I suppose what I’m most excited about is just the opportunity to finally meet and talk to the literally hundreds (well, 167 current registrants, plus 65 undergraduates from two universities) of fellow AmericanStudies I’ve met through this process. AmericanStudies is nothing if it’s not a community, as I hope this blog has expressed in a variety of ways throughout its existence—and I’ve never felt more connected to any scholarly community than I already do to the one that’s about to gather at Plimoth Plantation.

There’s one other main thing that I’d say AmericanStudies is, though, and that’s an interdiscipline, an interconnected web of texts and medias, methodologies and approaches, ideas and interests. And of the many things about the conference that make me very proud to be connected to it, certainly at the top of that list is our diversity and range of conversations—from historical and literary panels to ones on the visual arts and pop culture and film and archaeology and anthropology; a plenary panel featuring a scholar of New England Studies, an archaeologist, a scholar of cultural tourism and heritage sites, a Native American historian and museum director, and a Native American tribal elder and storyteller; a creative event featuring readings by four Native American writers who work in four different genres; a keynote address by James Loewen, one of the most prominent and successful public scholars and historians of the last few decades; a post-conference tour of Plymouth with the award-winning Native Plymouth Tours; special sessions geared toward and even featuring presentations by Massachusetts secondary educators; special sessions led by members of the Plimoth Plantation Education, Interpretation, and Library/Collections Departments; and more.

I could go on—obviously—but I’ll stop there. If you’re not able to come down to Plimoth, and want to hear more voices than just mine (which I would understand), remember that all the pre-conference blog posts remain up, and represent a significant and impressive collection of AmericanStudies ideas and conversations in their own right. A NEASA colleague of mine might live-blog some of the conference there, but no matter what I am committed to maintaining an online and evolving NEASA presence, and will of course keep you posted on that in this space as well. If you’re here, the odds are good that you’ll find plenty to interest you there as well—and the odds are even better that your voice will be entirely and gladly welcomed there if and when you want to add it into the mix.

Off to Plimoth! More next week,

Ben

PS. That means you’ve got three days to make suggestions for future posts or focal points here! Have at it!

November 3, 2011: Happily Ever After

For the third and final entry in this wife-inspired series of posts, I wanted to highlight four examples of strong, even exemplary, marriages in American texts. Tolstoy was certainly not wrong about the relative audience interest levels in happy and unhappy families, but these four couples prove that you a happy family can contribute to great art too:

1)      The Carterets from Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (1901): Philip and Olivia Carteret are not good people—he’s a proud white supremacist who helps orchestrate a racial massacre; she’s spent her whole life denying the existence and rights of her mixed race half-sister (that hottie Janet Miller from yesterday’s post). But Chesnutt’s novel is nothing if not complex and nuanced, particularly in its creation of multiple perspectives; and what the Carterets are very good at is caring deeply and powerfully about each other and then fragile young son. Hard to argue with those emotions, or any actions that are influenced by them.

2)      Ántonia Shimerda and Anton Cuzak from Willa Cather’s My Ántonia (1918): It’s difficult to read Cather’s novel and not root for Jim Burden to end up with Ántonia. He doesn’t (spoiler alert), but it’s equally difficult not to be very happy when we meet Ántonia’s husband Anton in the novel’s closing Book. He complements Ántonia perfectly, and helps her create a family and home that finally do justice to her own strengths and character.

3)      Sybil and Kelly Stone from The Family Stone (2005): There’s a lot to like about this zany family comedy, including great performances from a ton of impressive actors and actresses, but ultimately the movie works because at the heart of the chaos and conflict is a genuinely loving and committed couple, played to perfection by Diane Keaton and (surprisingly, at least to me) Craig T. Nelson. We have to believe that all their kids would want to come back to their home for Christmas every year, chaos notwithstanding—and we most definitely do.

4)      Jin and Sun Kwon from Lost (2004-2010; that linked scene is a serious mini-spoiler for the show’s final episode): Unlike the other couples listed here, Jin and Sun had plenty of relationship problems—when we first met them she had been learning English behind his back in order to facilitate her leaving him, at least in part because he had been (without her knowledge) working as a hired killer for her gangster father. But over the course of the show’s six seasons, their bond and mutual dependence only deepened—ultimately bridging time and space in multiple, genuinely inspiring ways.

Some strong models to live up to, fictional as they may be! More tomorrow, a special post as the NEASA conference finally gets under way,

Ben

PS. Links in the entries again—so any fictional couples you’d add to this list?

November 2, 2011: Storybook Weddings

Perhaps these posts reveal more about my psyche than you’d like to know, but I had to follow up yesterday’s with five more American women to whom I’d say “I do”—this time, five particularly impressive fictional characters:

1)      Phoebe Pyncheon, from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables (1851): Country cousin Phoebe has a bit of the “too good to be true” thing going on, but not entirely—she does grow darker and more complex as the novel progresses, and becomes in the process a heroine who can both embody and yet transcend some her family’s and the novel’s most powerful histories and identities.

2)      Janet Miller, from Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (1901): A mixed-race beauty whose understanding and forgiveness are linchpins of this amazing novel’s plot and themes, Janet is also a great mother and can deliver a devastating verbal takedown when the situation calls for it.

3)      Ántonia Shimerda, from Willa Cather’s My Ántonia (1918): Jim Burden, Cather’s novelist-narrator, admits that what he writes is his version of Ántonia, and later adds that she’s pretty much his ideal woman. So sure, he’s biased. But if you can read through this text and not fall in love with Ántonia in your own right, well, to quote Monica Geller (a somewhat less impressive but funny fictional character), you’re dead inside.

4)      Anne Stanton, from Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men (1946): Jack Burden (no relation to Jim) does just about everything a man can do to escape Anne, and the histories and truths she might force him to recognize, confront, and incorporate into his own identity. That he fails so completely, and ends up (spoiler alert) married both to Anne and to “the awful responsibility of time,” makes for one of American literature’s hardest-earnest and most genuinely happy endings.

5)      Ts’eh, from Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977): It’s possible that this woman is just a dream, or a mythological apparition, or a spirit guide. She’s also married to a hunter who is himself either such a spiritual figure or, y’know, is her husband. Doesn’t matter at all—I love her just as much as Silko’s Tayo does. And since that love is a profoundly cleansing and healing one, that’s fine by me.

More tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Once again, links within those entries. So any fictional characters you’d commit to for life?