a poem from e.e. cummings

self-portrait, oil painting. cummings in the 1950s. source: Modern American Poets

american poet e.e. cummings wrote this elegiac poem about william cody:

Buffalo Bill's

Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus

he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death


i've always liked this poem because of its layered tone. it's as if cummings is celebrating and mocking buffalo bill (and, by extension, american mythology) at the same time. (in this way, it resembles another cummings poem, "next to of course god america i.")

plus he's mocking death. can death handle buffalo bill?

President Obama's Health Care Speech Invokes Frederick Jackson Turner

Did anyone listen to President Obama's speech last night to the joint session of Congress?

Don't worry, I'm not inviting us to debate health care reform. I'm fascinated by something else.

If you listened until the end, you may have noticed the president's subtle reference to Frederick Jackson Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History." He was talking about the "American character," and he said:

I've thought about that phrase quite a bit in recent days — the character of our country. One of the unique and wonderful things about America has always been our self-reliance, our rugged individualism, our fierce defense of freedom and our healthy skepticism of government. And figuring out the appropriate size and role of government has always been a source of rigorous and, yes, sometimes angry debate. That's our history.

How Turnerian is that?!

A Visit from Chinese Students

Hi everyone!

I hope you all had a fabulous long weekend. I wanted to let you know that I've invited Miami Hamilton's visiting Chinese students to visit our class for 30 minutes or so on September 19. I am still working out the details, but my thinking is that I'll talk to them earlier that week about "the idea of American Studies," then they can talk to you guys that Saturday and get a sense of what we're actually studying and doing in class.

How does that sound? As always, I'm open to your suggestions for what to do that morning. I'd love to show them your blogs, for one thing. What else?

Inquiringly,
Dr. K.

Prompts and Links for thinking about Davis, Anzaldúa, & Mora

¿Qué tal?

Some of you have been indicating a desire to connect our class readings to political news and issues in the "real world." I think this week is a fine opportunity to do some of that. So I'll kick us off with some discussion-starters, and you can add to this list in your own blogs (or respond to these) (or not, if you prefer).

Our readings this week address the issue of borders and belonging in the United States. Unlike last week's readings by Turner and Limerick, these readings are about contemporary American life, so they're much more concrete. They're about Latinos and Chicanos in America, how they came here, and how their presence is affecting American culture and experience. These are fascinating questions, but they can lead to heated debates too.

For example: Consider that according to 2008 census data, white Americans will constitute a minority by the year 2042. This projection comes from an article in a recent issue of The Atlantic about the election of Barack Obama, titled "The End of White America?" (Side note: the article opens with a discussion of The Great Gatsby. See how it all ties together?) In Magical Urbanism, Mike Davis draws on the 2000 census to make a similar point: "Shortly after 2050, non-Hispanic whites (25 percent of whom will be 65 or older) will become a minority group" (8). And as Davis points out in his book, many of the new "majority" of nonwhite Americans will be Latino. Moreover, this discussion extends back to the 1990s, the heyday of Patricia Limerick's multicultural American Studies movement: way back in 1993, Time magazine released a special issue on immigration, with a cover digitally created to reflect the precise multiracial character of the U.S. (click on the photo, below, to see how much of each ethnicity is in the composite and to link to the issue's contents).

What are the consequences of these demographic shifts? Certainly, public discussion and debate about immigration, border security, and cultural difference is easy to find. In Butler County, Sherriff Richard Jones' 2006 campaign against illegal immigration caused controversy. More recently, "Wise Latina" became a popular buzzword in midsummer, when Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court led to a debate about how her ethnicity might affect her judgment. (Sotomayor claimed that a "wise Latina" would likely have experience that a white man wouldn't have, and that this experience would prove useful in some cases.) President Obama is planning future immigration reforms. The New York Times has two whole pages devoted to news items related to immigration and the border patrol.

I wonder how the readings by Davis, Anzaldúa, and Mora add to, or otherwise alter, your perspective on these debates. Are we nearing the "end of white America," and what does that mean? Ought we to welcome newcomers, or are we obligated to protect our borders? What does it mean to imagine the United States as a mestiza country?

Thanks for a great class! :)

Hi everyone,

Thanks for a great class this morning!

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Prompts for Thinking about Turner & Limerick

Here are some prompts to get you thinking about Frederick Jackson Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" and Patricia Limerick's "Adventures of the Frontier in the 20th Century."

Where did the idea of the frontier come from, and to what extent is the concept still useful today? This is this week's "key question."

While we are used to thinking about the U.S. as a "frontier culture" and Western expansion as the most important story of America, this idea wasn't invented until the end of the 19th century. Turner's "frontier thesis" developed the idea of the frontier and its importance that we still hold today. More recently, historians like Patrica Limerick have criticized Turner's frontier thesis, arguing that it is one-sided and does not take the story of other "frontiers"--such as the U.S.-Mexico border, or Asian Americans' movement from East to West--into account. In other words, Limerick is writing with a contemporary perspective, shaped by multiculturalism, while Turner is the more "traditional" historian.

These are difficult readings, and you may find yourself stuck when you sit down to write this week's blog post. If this happens to you, think smaller. Take a short section of the Limerick essay, for example, and respond to that. What is her main point? Why does she think it's so important to revise Turner's thesis? What do you think about her arguments?

Don't forget: your 500-word post is due FRIDAY by 3:00 pm!! Make sure you give yourself enough time to finish the readings and reflect so that you can post by then.

New American Studies Journal

I received an e-mail today about a new periodical: Journal of American Studies. It might be a good resource for AMS 205. Here's a description:

Journal of American Studies seeks to critique and interrogate the notion of "America", pursuing this through international perspectives on the history, literature, politics and culture of the United States. [...] The journal is intended not only for students and scholars, but also for general readers with an interest in the United States.

You can see their homepage here and the full-text contents of their most recent issue here. My favorite article so far? "Benjamin Franklin and the Leather-Apron Men: The Politics of Class in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia."