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Oct 6 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Happy Fannie Lou Hamer Day! One of the most impressive & inspiring figures on the Memory Day list to be sure. #CivilRights #twitterstorians

memorydaycalendar.blogspot.com/p/october-nomi…
No better way to celebrate Hamer's birthday than ordering @KeishaBlain's vital book if you haven't already:

google.com/books/edition/…
& I'll share 'em all in the Sunday thread, but make sure to read all the pieces in the ongoing, great @BlkPerspectives Forum on Hamer:
aaihs.org/black-perspect…
PS. Giving a lightning talk later today for @Fitchburg_State's Faculty Scholarship Week on critical patriotism as "The Patriotism America Desperately Needs in 2022," & who better to exemplify both layers to that crucial concept than Hamer?
s-usih.org/2020/10/were-s…

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More from @AmericanStudier

Ben Railton Profile picture
Oct 5
Happy 60th to #DrNo & the James Bond film franchise! We all have those pop culture things for which we mostly turn off our brain, & for me the Bond films are definitely atop that list. I'm able to analyze & criticize them for sure, but I also get great pleasure from the series.
But I also greatly value those folks & works helping contextualize & analyze the films & character, including @DrLisaFunnell, YouTube channels like @calvindyson's, books like James Chapman's License to Thrill, & much more.
google.com/books/edition/…
I've blogged about Bond twice so far, both in relationship to AmericanStudies topics:

This one on the most thoroughly (& at times frustratingly) American & Western Hemispheric film, Live & Let Die:

americanstudier.blogspot.com/2011/11/novemb…
Read 5 tweets
Ben Railton Profile picture
Oct 3
Taught my favorite poet, Sarah Piatt, last week in online Am Lit II & this week in Honors Lit Seminar on the Gilded Age, & have been thinking a lot in the process about two layers to why we should all read & talk about poetry. (Cf. this @AWMuseum post.)
americanwritersmuseum.org/why-we-should-…
First & foremost, like all our greatest poets, Piatt uses the form & genre to open up familiar questions & themes in profoundly new & illuminating ways. Take "A Pique at Parting," for example, which we're talking about this week in Honors Lit:

poetrynook.com/poem/pique-par…
Courtship & relationship dynamics in the late 19C, women's perspectives on their own identities & possibilities/limits as well as on men & the world, domesticity & work, religion--it's all there, & so much more, in a stanza & rhyme structure that moves us through Piatt's ideas.
Read 9 tweets
Ben Railton Profile picture
Oct 3
One of the central ideas underlying my new project is the question of historical inevitability, & more exactly challenging our understandable sense that things had to play out how they did. Every moment was contingent, & changeable based on individual & collective actions alike.
Some of the most influential such actors in American history specifically, of course, have been our presidents. & those influences have often been, well, pretty bad. So this week, in honor of Rutherford B. Hayes' 200th birthday, I'm blogging about a handful of Bad Presidents.
Starting today with James Buchanan, & how his badness helps us challenge the idea that the #CivilWar was inevitable by the 1850s. #twitterstorians

americanstudier.blogspot.com/2022/10/octobe…
Read 7 tweets
Ben Railton Profile picture
Sep 18
Here it is, my 93rd #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast eps & convos, new & forthcoming books from the last week. Share more below & enjoy, all! #twitterstorians
Starting with two thoughtful pieces for #September11, including @lutzfernandez for @Medium on teaching (on) such days:
medium.com/@lutzfernandez…
& here’s @TenuredRadical for her newsletter on collective memories & forgettings:
clairepotter.substack.com/p/will-it-alwa…
Read 48 tweets
Ben Railton Profile picture
Sep 17
On this #ConstitutionDay, it's certainly worth remembering some of the truly radical ideas in that complicated & flawed document, with the separation of church & state at the top of the list for me.
saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/10/consid…
& of course it's vital to remember the flaws & failures, as well as the foundational battles to make the Constitution truly work for all Americans. See for example Gordon Barker's masterful book:
google.com/books/edition/…
If, as Eric Foner & others have so convincingly argued, Reconstruction was a Second Founding, I'd say that this is a moment we could consider a Third. A moment to either extend our ideals to all Americans or give in further to white supremacist exclusion.
google.com/books/edition/…
Read 5 tweets
Ben Railton Profile picture
Sep 16
Getting set to teach (virtually) the first week of my next 5-week @WISEinWorcester adult ed class, my most controversial yet as the course title alone makes clear: "Our boasted civilization is but a thin veneer": How White Supremacy Erodes the American Ideals It Claims to Love.
That title is quoting my favorite single line in American literature, from Charles Chesnutt's Marrow of Tradition:
werehistory.org/tulsa-riots/
& the provocative topic of today's first class will be how white supremacy has consistently undermined the American ideal of religious freedom, as I argued in this column:
saturdayeveningpost.com/2022/08/consid…
Read 4 tweets

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