Last week my friends @PedagogyAmLitSt shared a tweet about how #ScholarSunday threads tend to highlight the same, often already established & prominent voices. I hope my Sunday threads have been varied, but I totally get how that can happen even when unintended. So+
For this week’s brief #ScholarSunday thread I wanted to do something a bit different: highlighting a few of the many grad students & NTT folks from whom I’ve learned so much & whom we should all be following. In no particular order:
Gotta start with those awesome @PedagogyAmLitSt folks, which includes @GregSpecter, @CaitlinLeeKelly, @SilasLapham, & Brianna Jacquette (who might not be on twitter any more). Always amazing AmericanStudying & teaching content!
Obviously those lists are just a tiny fraction of the folks we should all follow. My whole Following list would be a great place to start! But they give a #ScholarSunday sense of the community & conversation that make public scholarly twitter one of my fav things in the world.
PS. If you’re so inclined, please share more public scholarly folks (esp. grad student & NTT voices) whom we should all be following!
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I'm finishing my 16th year at FSU & 21st of teaching overall, so I've had the full spectrum of experiences w/classes, including some where the whole group has for one reason or another (incl my own failures) struggled. But I've never had anything like my Am Lit II this semester.+
~3-4 of 29 students have done the short (1-2 sentence) reading responses each week. Paper 1 was due 2 weeks ago (& ungraded, so turning it in = full credit), & 11 of 29 have turned it in. This past week we paused all work to allow for catching up, & I got no responses or papers.
Obviously I get it, & I know there's nothing I can do about much of what's happening. ~15-20 of the 29 are generally on the weekly synchronous Google Meet convo, so maybe it has to be enough to think that they're taking something away from our texts & convos. But man.
Looking for reading material to help you stay comfy & warm on this frigid January day? Well, it’s easy as another #ScholarSunday morning thread of public scholarly work from the last week! #twitterstorians
So as my fellow #twitterstorians have documented quite potently, the #1776Commission report is propagandistic white supremacist nonsense. But I might be most offended by its depiction of education & educators, at this moment in our history no less. A quick thread:
For nearly a year now, educators—especially at the secondary & primary levels, but we higher ed folks as well—have been doing everything possible to take care of our young people amidst these horrific times & help them respond to all that's in our society & world.
That means fundamental emphases of care & community amidst a deepening global health crisis. But it also means responding to both the year’s protests & activisms & to white supremacist sedition & insurrection, to the worst & best of our history & society.
Don’t want to spend the day reading polls but can’t quit the intertubes? Me neither on both counts—so here’s another #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing from the past week to check out instead. #twitterstorians
Those issues will continue past Tuesday of course, so make sure to check out Th’s @SchomburgCenter event feat @rdunbaro, Johanna Fernández, and Paul Ortiz.
#OnThisDay 134 years ago, the Statue of Liberty was formally dedicated in New York Harbor. The moment reflects two frustrating layers to American mythmaking, but nonetheless still embodies some of the best of our ideals & community. A thread:
The 1st layer of frustrating mythmaking is the thoroughgoing erasure of the Statue’s original focus on slavery and abolition. Only the broken chains around Liberty’s feet (tellingly invisible to nearly all visitors to the island) reflect those origins.
By 1886 the US was fully in the throes of Lost Cause narratives of Civil War, race, & nation, & this erasure of Edouard Laboulaye’s original vision for the Statue reflects those broader collective elisions & myths.
We’re a week out from not just #ElectionDay, but also the 100th anniversary of the Ocoee Massacre. & for this month’s @SatEvePost Considering History column, I delve into the foundational ties bt voter suppression & racial terrorism. #twitterstorians
Even as we’ve started to better remember histories of white supremacist violence, from the Red Summer of 1919 and Tulsa to the lynching epidemic, I think we still too often see such horrors as spontaneous explosions of mob hate, reflective of deeper prejudices but impromptu.
But in truth, white supremacist violence in America has consistently been carefully planned & orchestrated, w/voter suppression as one of its chief goals. My column traces that legacy through New Orleans, the 1874 massacres, Wilmington, Ocoee, & the 1968 Mississippi murders.