September 8, 2014: More Cville Stories: Mr. Jefferson’s University?

[Back in March, I featured a week’s worth of Charlottesville stories in anticipation of a book talk there. Well, Cville is just an AmericanStudier’s kind of town, because during my August visit with the boys I found myself thinking about another handful of local histories and stories from this Central Virginia city. So here they are!]

On the instructive early struggles of an educational pioneer.

I’ve been pretty hard in this space on Cville’s favorite son and the namesake of my childhood street (among 2,832 other things in town), Thomas Jefferson, and I stand by those analytical critiques. But TJ also did a lot of great things in his long and influential life, and I agree with his tombstone’s argument that the founding of the University of Virginia was among his most impressive achievements. While the narrative that UVa was the nation’s first state university is an inaccurate one, it was something even more significant: America’s first non-sectarian university, one created and designed with no denominational affiliation or sponsorship. Whether that made it entirely secular is a matter for debate, but absent such affiliation (and with, for example, no requirement for chapel attendance for its students), the university represented a significant shift in American higher education in any case.

As is often the case when such norms are challenged, Jefferson’s university faced pushback and critique from religious leaders and other adversaries (such as its in-state rival and Jefferson’s alma mater, the overtly Anglican William and Mary College) in its early years. But as journalists Rex Bowman and Carlos Santos document in their recent book Rot, Riot, and Rebellion: Mr. Jefferson’s Struggle to Save the University That Changed America (2013), the far more extreme early struggles were those presented by the students themselves, a group of (mostly) spoiled plantation aristocrats who spent more time partying and dueling than studying, who (as that linked review quotes) “randomly [shot] as passersby” and “whip[ped] professors,” and a masked one of whom even murdered the popular law professor John A.G. Davis in 1840. Jefferson did (spoiler alert!) help the university change course, as did others including some of the students (who designed the famous Honor Code after the Davis killing), but in its early years UVa was seemingly as far from Jefferson’s ideal “academical village” as it could be.

Fun stories to be sure (although slightly chilling ones for any professor to read!), but do they have a broader significance, beyond simply (if importantly) revising our perspective on this one university? I would argue that they do, on at least two levels. For one thing, anyone who finds him or herself critiquing 21^st century college students for their excessive partying or lack of focus on their studies or the like should probably stop and realize a) college students have always been thus and b) things were far worse in certain places and moments than they are now! And for another, it’s worth considering one reason why UVa students could and did get away with these crazy and violent behaviors for so long with few if any reprisals: their privileged status, class, gender, and race. Mike Brown, the African American teenager killed by a police offer in Ferguson, Missouri, a few weeks ago, was about to start his college career as well—and whatever Brown did or did not do on the day of his death, it’s fair to say that it wasn’t nearly as bad as much of what went on in the early days of Mr. Jefferson’s University.

Next Cville story tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Stories from your town(s) you’d share?

September 6-7, 2014: Crowd-sourced Fall Plans

[As I did a couple years back, I wanted to start the fall semester by highlighting a few of the things I’m working on and looking forward to this fall. For this crowd-sourced post, I’m sharing some of the fall plans of fellow scholars and friends—I’d love to hear about what you’ve got going on for the final few months of 2014 in comments!]

First, one more plan of mine: in mid-October, I’ll have the opportunity to be one of the social media chroniclers of the Delange Conference IX at Rice University. You’ll be able to read my live responses to that important event and conversation on Twitter, but I’ll be following it up with a mid-October series in this space as well.

My colleague and friend Kisha Tracy follows up Thursday’s post on FSU’s strategic planning with her own thoughts on the process: “One of the major takeaways so far is the idea of what the ‘student of the future’ is going to look like, particularly here at FSU (interesting read). As Technology Working Group Chair, this has been on our minds, as has the concept of what we want our culture here to be like (re: online courses of varying kinds in particular). I've been collecting useful quotations from readings here.”

Paul Beaudoin follows up Kisha’s thoughts, adding, “I have lots of ideas about the ‘Student of the Future,’ and in many places of the world, that student has already arrived.”

AnneMarie Donahue follows up my arguments for multilingualism in that post, noting, “Multilingualism is a not only an asset to the student but is a core 21st Century Skill (a term I'm slowly growing to loath as this is often just equated to technology based education, but at core is a decent term). However, I would argue that attempting to educate a student in an additional language at 18, 19, or 25 (which is the average age of the FSU student) is like closing the barn door after the horse escaped. Multilingualism needs to start at a childhood endeavor. If you are hoping to inspire a love of another culture, great multi-cultural tolerance (another word that I just despise...if the best you can offer your fellow man is tolerance, you aren't doing a good job at being human) or if FSU's goal is simply to introduce students into a multicultural view of America then there are better way than asking someone to sit through Spanish I & II. I worry that I'm coming across a belligerently ignorant in this love to not educate. I would have loved to learn another language, but I'm learning disabled and learning languages is really difficult. Colleges and universities by and large do not have plans in place for students who, while determined and hard working, still have difficulties with processing. Trust me, I know. This comes from a lifetime of working twice as hard just to be a C+ student. Language courses could be a great way to start a student looking at America as a non-English primacy world. But there are other ways to do this without compromising their curriculum or alienating processing deficient students. Perhaps, if the goal is multi-culturalism and not multi-lingualism then a new class or series of classes could be created to satisfy this.”

The great Ian Williams follows up my discussion of blogs as scholarship in that same post, saying of this blog that it “exemplifies thoughtful, timely scholarship—the delight of seeing a mind unfolding, not already unfolded” (which may be the most pro-Ben thing I’ve ever posted here, and I apologize, but I wanted to share it as a perspective on why blogs should be treated and evaluated as such).

Another colleague and friend, Heather Urbanski, shares some of her fall plans: she’s “working on editing a new collection for McFarland on Memory and Popular Culture (drafts are due in November) and presenting a paper on The Hunger Games and collective memory at the Northeast PCA/ACA conference at the end of October.”

Jay Shaw notes, “My daughter is auditioning for The Nutcracker this Saturday. First ballet audition for her, big day for both of us.” That’s today, Saturday 9/6, so make sure to send some good thoughts her way if you would!

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. So one more time: what’s on your autumn agenda?

September 5, 2014: Fall Forward: A New Teaching Challenge

[As I did a couple years back, I wanted to start the fall semester by highlighting a few of the things I’m working on and looking forward to this fall. I’d love to hear about what you’ve got going on for the final few months of 2014 as well!]

On the class that puts me in an unfamiliar and beneficial position.

Only one of the four undergraduate courses I’m teaching this fall is entirely in my wheelhouse: the American Novel to 1950 (any class that includes Hawthorne, Chopin, Cather, and Faulkner pretty much has this AmericanStudier written all over it). The others are definitely more uncertain: the senior departmental Capstone because it depends entirely on the specific group of students within it; and our gateway course Approaches to English Studies (which I’m teaching two sections of) because it includes a good bit of literary theory, a topic with which I don’t think I’ll ever feel entirely comfortable. But they’re still undergraduate English courses, and at the end of the day, as I enter my tenth (!) year at FSU, I feel pretty comfortable moving into all such courses.

On the other hand, the new course I’ve had the opportunity to pick up as an overload represents something entirely unfamiliar for me. Partly that’s the case because of the program through which I’ll be teaching for the first time: the Massachusetts Assocation of Vocational Administrators (MAVA), which brings together secondary educators and administrators from the state’s public high schools pursuing advanced studies and graduate degrees. But I’ve long taught fellow educators and adult learners in our Master’s and Adult Learning in the Fitchburg Area (ALFA) programs, respectively, so I know such communities of learners pretty well (and respect them tremendously). So the unfamiliarity really lies in the specific content I’ll likewise be teaching for the first time in this course: Introduction to Speech Communication.

I try to include at least one oral presentation in every class I teach, seeing such public communication as an important part of both undergraduate education and critical thinking. But those presentations have always been driven by the content of the particular class (in literature courses) or assignment (in first-year writing ones), and thus graded as such (ie, in terms of their inclusion and analysis of the course or assignment content), and so I’ve never, as I see it, taught speech or communication. So I’m feeling the kind of uncertainty and nervousness I haven’t felt since, probably, my first teaching experiences, as a grad student at Temple University in 2001 and 2002. Which are, I believe, very good things to feel—because they’ll force me to figure things out (including by consulting colleagues who regularly teach Speech, most especially our departmental expert Angela Nastasee-Carter); and because too much comfort, in teaching as in life, is never ideal. As with all these fall plans, I welcome any thoughts of yours, and I’ll keep you posted on how it goes!

Crowd-sourced fall plans this weekend,

Ben

PS. So one more time: what's on your autumn agenda?

September 4, 2014: Fall Forward: FSU Strategic Planning

[As I did a couple years back, I wanted to start the fall semester by highlighting a few of the things I’m working on and looking forward to this fall. I’d love to hear about what you’ve got going on for the final few months of 2014 as well!]

On the university service work that presents a pair of meaningful opportunities.

Every five years, Fitchburg State University, like every institution in the Massachusetts state system, has to create and submit to the state a new five-year Strategic Plan. The first step in that process is to break into subcommittees (working groups) that develop particular portions of the plan (which will then be reworked by the Steering Committee into a cohesive overall plan), and in the spring I volunteered to be a member of the Academic Values working group. We’ve begun our conversations over the summer, and those conversations have already yielded significant insights on two topics that extend far beyond FSU’s individual needs:

1)      We began our discussions by focusing on one meaning of Academic Values: how we, as an institution, define and value the criteria by which we evaluate faculty (teaching, advising, research/scholarship, and service). While the basics of those criteria are determined by our contract, there is lots of room within those definitions for an evolving sense of what each element comprises and how we evaluate them. To cite one example that’s obviously salient to my own work: should and how do we include and assess online scholarship and writing, work that’s likely not peer reviewed, as part of the research category? I believe that we should certainly include such work, but that would only be a first step toward defining and evaluating it in clear and consistent ways, and I’d love to hear any thoughts you might have on any aspect of those questions (or any other elements of faculty evaluations and performance).

2)      While I very much hope those discussions continue, in and outside of this working group, as the summer progressed our specific working group charge shifted, to a focus on the university’s Liberal Arts & Sciences curriculum and how it does or does not reflect what we see as our academic values (and what we can do to revise and improve it moving forward). Having served as our LA&S Council Chair for a couple of years, and having helped us develop and deploy our first assessments to measure the new LA&S program’s effects, I likewise feel a strong connection to this new charge, and to doing everything we can to define and strengthen the liberal arts component of an FSU education. To cite one issue about which I’m particularly passionate: our current LA&S curriculum does not include any language requirement, which means that many of our students graduate with a BS rather than a BA (which includes at least two semesters of a language). I believe that multilingualism and all it brings with it should be part of our core academic values, and look forward for the chance to make that case. And again, I’d love to hear what you would emphasize about an LA&S curriculum and the values it communicates.

Last fall plan tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What's on your autumn agenda?

September 3, 2014: Fall Forward: Toronto Talks

[As I did a couple years back, I wanted to start the fall semester by highlighting a few of the things I’m working on and looking forward to this fall. I’d love to hear about what you’ve got going on for the final few months of 2014 as well!]

On a pair of book talks that should push my AmericanStudying in important new directions.

My year of book talks for The Chinese Exclusion Act, about which you’ve heard plenty in this space, has mostly wound down, and I’m certainly focusing a lot of my scholarly attention on my next couple of book projects (about which I’m sure you’ll hear plenty more too!). But right at the end of October I’ll have the opportunity to deliver two more talks in Canada, and both present challenging but great opportunities for me to think about the book and my ongoing work in new ways:

1)      The first talk will be on Monday 10/27, at the University of Toronto’s Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library. The same pressure I felt to do right by Chinese American histories and communities at the San Francisco Public Library’s Chinatown branch certainly applies to this talk, in a space located quite close to Toronto’s own sizeable and longstanding Chinatown. But while there are parallels between those Chinese American and Chinese Canadian histories, including a Canadian Chinese Exclusion Act, there are also of course distinctions to be made—and I’ll be very glad to have the chance to think through such transnational comparisons and contrasts. If you’re in the Toronto area, keep an eye out for the talk’s exact time, and I’d love to see you there!

2)      The following morning, Tuesday 10/28, I’ll travel down to Waterloo to share my thoughts with Professor Debra Nash-Chambers’ course on North American Transborder Regions, part of Wilfrid Laurier University’s revamped North American Studies program (a connection I owe to Professor Kevin Spooner.) In many ways the two talks will parallel and complement each other, allowing (forcing) me to think in a theoretical as well as a practical way about such transnational comparisons and analyses. But with this talk and setting I’m even more interested to hear what scholars like Nash-Chambers and Spooner, as well as their students, have to say in response to my thoughts—it’s fair to say that all of them will have perspectives and knowledge that I don’t, and that I can’t imagine yet all the ways they’ll push and shift my thinking. I’ll keep you posted!

Next fall plan tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What’s on your autumn agenda?

September 2, 2014: Fall Forward: Scholars Strategy Network

[As I did a couple years back, I wanted to start the fall semester by highlighting a few of the things I’m working on and looking forward to this fall. I’d love to hear about what you’ve got going on for the final few months of 2014 as well!]

On the community that’s working to advance a vital goal.

I’ve written a great deal in this space—including this week-long series—on the ideals, challenges, and complex realities of public scholarship. Producing such scholarship, becoming a public scholar, has become a central, lifelong goal of mine, but I recognize full well the obstacles and pitfalls that come with such a goal. And I don’t mean only the frightening kinds of attacks and punishments that have come the way of public scholars such as William Cronin and Steven Salaita in recent years, although those are worst-case scenarios to be sure. But there are also more mundane frustrations inherent to public scholarship, starting (and maybe ending) with this one: it’s incredibly difficult to know what, if anything, an individual can do to move toward such a goal.

I’m not going to pretend like I have any definite answers to that frustration, but I do believe this: as with most anything, a supportive community working together toward that goal goes a long way toward helping any individual get there. And I’m very proud and excited to say that I have recently joined precisely such a community of public scholars: the Scholars Strategy Network. SSN comprises nearly 500 scholars, spread out across a huge range of universities and institutions, all working toward the shared goal of “Research to Improve Policy and Enhance Democracy.” We do so through a similarly wide range of mechanisms: two-page Briefs, such as my first on diversity in American history; op-eds, placed in newspapers and other media; and panel discussions, workshops, and many other forms of conversation hosted by SSN’s regional networks.

I’ve just begun to get involved with SSN, through the Boston regional network, and look forward to a number of fall events and opportunities that will help me further develop both that communal connection and my individual work and voice. And that’s the key to an effort like SSN, I would argue: that there’s no distinction between the communal and individual goals, that instead the advancement of the former entails and depends on successes in the latter (and vice versa). Too much of the time, in academia as in every other facet of 21^st century American life, individual success is framed as a competition with other individuals, as a zero-sum game. Of course realities like the job market contribute to such narratives, and I don’t mean to dismiss such realities or their effects. But on a larger scale, SSN embodies the Bruce Springsteen philosophy to which I still hold: “Remember, in the end, nobody wins unless everybody wins.”

Next fall plan tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What's on your autumn agenda?

September 1, 2014: Fall Forward: 2014 NEASA Conference

[As I did a couple years back, I wanted to start the fall semester by highlighting a few of the things I’m working on and looking forward to this fall. I’d love to hear about what you’ve got going on for the final few months of 2014 as well!]

Anticipating the next gathering of New England AmericanStudiers.

I’ve been blogging about NEASA for about as long as I’ve been blogging, and for good reason: no organization or community has contributed as much to my sense of what AmericanStudies means, is, and can be at its best than the New England American Studies Assocation. My year as NEASA President, including the first annual Spring Colloquium and culminating in the 2011 conference at Plimoth Plantation, amplified immeasurably not only my sense of the field and scholarly community, but also my own goals for my work, career, and life. In short, NEASA is one of my very favorite things, and I look forward to any chance to highlight and advocate for it.

This fall offers the next such chance, in the upcoming (October 17-18) NEASA Conference at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. NEASA President Jeffrey Meriwether, Vice President Gretchen Sinnett, and the entire conference committee and NEASA Council have come up with a wonderful conference theme and focus: Emancipations: Lineages, Legacies, and Limits. Inspired by an RWU exhibit on Abraham Lincoln and the 150^th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the conference program has, as NEASA conferences always do, expanded to include numerous other histories, themes, disciplines, perspectives, and voices. While that program is finalized, you can and should still consider joining us in Bristol next month: we offer a discountedregistration rate for Attendees, and it promises to be a wonderful AmericanStudies weekend!

Moreover, if you’re an AmericanStudier living in the greater New England region (ie, not just the New England states, but the upper Mid-Atlantic as well; and for that matter, anyone anywhere in the country can stay connected and contribute to NEASA online and through email), I urge you to connect to NEASA—perhaps by running for the Council (we have an election every December to fill a number of seats), in any case by connecting with Gretchen (who will be next year’s President) and staying informed about the organization’s ongoing work and plans. Can I promise that your NEASA experiences will be as inspiring and career-changing as mine have been? Maybe not—but I do guarantee that you’ll experience a wonderful community of scholars that represents the best of what this discipline has to offer.

Next fall plan tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What’s on your autumn agenda?