The Adams Papers based at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston will host a one-year NHPRC fellowship in documentary editing beginning in the summer of 2010. Since its establishment in 1954 the Adams Papers has published 43 volumes; currently work is underway on three series, Diaries, Adams Family Correspondence, and the Papers of John Adams. The fellowship will provide a unique opportunity to explore the fields of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century diplomatic, political, and social history through the correspondence and writings of one of America’s first families. The editorial fellow will work on each series as well as the ongoing digitization of the edition. Assigned tasks will include transcription of manuscripts, proofreading, research and annotation, indexing, and many facets of book production.
Sabtu, 27 Februari 2010
Public Service Announcement--Editing Fellowship
It strikes me that this might be a very interesting job for one of you. The Massachusetts Historical Society are looking for an American History PhD to oversee a new edited collection of the John Adams' papers.
Public Service Announcement--Editing Fellowship
It strikes me that this might be a very interesting job for one of you. The Massachusetts Historical Society are looking for an American History PhD to oversee a new edited collection of the John Adams' papers.
The Adams Papers based at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston will host a one-year NHPRC fellowship in documentary editing beginning in the summer of 2010. Since its establishment in 1954 the Adams Papers has published 43 volumes; currently work is underway on three series, Diaries, Adams Family Correspondence, and the Papers of John Adams. The fellowship will provide a unique opportunity to explore the fields of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century diplomatic, political, and social history through the correspondence and writings of one of America’s first families. The editorial fellow will work on each series as well as the ongoing digitization of the edition. Assigned tasks will include transcription of manuscripts, proofreading, research and annotation, indexing, and many facets of book production.
Rabu, 24 Februari 2010
Blogging USIH: Only Paradoxes to Offer?
Some time ago one of our own, David Sehat, started a series called "Blogging Academic Knowledge." His series lasted for only a couple of posts, but he covered the general nature of online communities, professional authority, fostering discussion, and the perils of online communication (i.e. mobbing others, comment misinterpretation, anonymity, etc.). Our discussion of David's posts was rather limited---probably a disappointment to him, but also perhaps a consequence of the fact that he echoed our questions and none of us had answers. In any event, I will extend David's discussion in a narrow way to blogging about U.S. intellectual history. In other words, let's talk about what we do here at a meta level---go epistemological on blogging USIH.
After three plus years of posting and observing posts here, when it comes to writing directly about intellectual history I have observed some paradoxes.
All of us---here at least---are generally committed to disseminating knowledge about USIH through paper and electronic media. However, the profession, particularly our subfield, values books most of all. They're the currency of the realm. This works against a professional doing any heavy lifting on either articles (refereed or no) and other shorter pieces. It makes the historian feel guilty for committing too much time and energy to ephemeral(?) media---precisely the kind of media that reaches the most people. That feeling and the book-as-currency issue prevents historians of the intellectual life from disseminating knowledge in reader friendly, affordable formats. This is paradox #1.
I have also come to believe that many intellectual history topics are not conducive to blogging. There are two reasons for this. First, USIH topics often require adequate depth in order to explain nuance. In a blog format this opens one up to the charge of treating complex topics too lightly. No intellectual historian wants to be accused of shallowness. Second, no one wants to read long posts! But USIH topics seem to often require lengthy treatments. So the "topical problem" is paradox #2.
Solutions? I'm not sure I have any for paradox #1. The profession is what it is. No regular USIH blogger will succeed in the profession if blogging is all the historian does. Period. However, an answer to paradox #2 goes some way toward helping with #1.
I believe that more intellectual historians need to see blogs as book and article laboratories. This works in the early stages of drafting because all good writers know that draft #1 never, never, never (yes, I'm partly emphasizing this for myself!) really looks like the final version. Writers who transition straight from drafts to final copies are the exception, not the rule. Because of this no one should fear posting early ideas for an article. And if this blog-as-lab approach applies for articles, it applies to book projects triply. Think of all the things that are cut from chapter drafts. Using the leavings from the cutting room floor for blog posts seems like a fruitful line of thinking.
Over the past year or two I have noticed that many authors are posting early drafts of material in order to solicit comments for revisionary purposes. This is no different than passing around chapter drafts to colleagues. Why not do it on a smaller scale, with chapter sections? And what better audience for revisionary-comment purposes than USIH blog followers?
I also think that blogging involves a commitment to professional service on the part of the historian. We must place a higher value on brief discourses and the simple underscoring of ideas in order to popularize the subfield. Indeed, one can ponder without being ponderous or pedantic. Intellectual historians should be content to post shorter pieces and be happy with longer comment sections---and participating in those comment strings. Indeed, posting shorter pieces prevents one from being ponderous on a topic before the audience gets on board. In fact it's probably best to post only 1/4-1/3 of a longer post one has drafted and leave the rest for comments if your audience feels your momentum.
Although this post applies of course to my USIH colleagues immediately as well as broadly, it also adds to the conversation about ~how~ to blog academic knowledge.
What are your blog strategy ideas, for intellectual historians or speaking broadly? Has this post hit near the mark in identifying the problems with blogging on USIH topics? - TL
PS: My title comes with apologies to Joan Wallach Scott. I can't say, however, that my title has much to do with the main thrust of that book.
After three plus years of posting and observing posts here, when it comes to writing directly about intellectual history I have observed some paradoxes.
All of us---here at least---are generally committed to disseminating knowledge about USIH through paper and electronic media. However, the profession, particularly our subfield, values books most of all. They're the currency of the realm. This works against a professional doing any heavy lifting on either articles (refereed or no) and other shorter pieces. It makes the historian feel guilty for committing too much time and energy to ephemeral(?) media---precisely the kind of media that reaches the most people. That feeling and the book-as-currency issue prevents historians of the intellectual life from disseminating knowledge in reader friendly, affordable formats. This is paradox #1.
I have also come to believe that many intellectual history topics are not conducive to blogging. There are two reasons for this. First, USIH topics often require adequate depth in order to explain nuance. In a blog format this opens one up to the charge of treating complex topics too lightly. No intellectual historian wants to be accused of shallowness. Second, no one wants to read long posts! But USIH topics seem to often require lengthy treatments. So the "topical problem" is paradox #2.
Solutions? I'm not sure I have any for paradox #1. The profession is what it is. No regular USIH blogger will succeed in the profession if blogging is all the historian does. Period. However, an answer to paradox #2 goes some way toward helping with #1.
I believe that more intellectual historians need to see blogs as book and article laboratories. This works in the early stages of drafting because all good writers know that draft #1 never, never, never (yes, I'm partly emphasizing this for myself!) really looks like the final version. Writers who transition straight from drafts to final copies are the exception, not the rule. Because of this no one should fear posting early ideas for an article. And if this blog-as-lab approach applies for articles, it applies to book projects triply. Think of all the things that are cut from chapter drafts. Using the leavings from the cutting room floor for blog posts seems like a fruitful line of thinking.
Over the past year or two I have noticed that many authors are posting early drafts of material in order to solicit comments for revisionary purposes. This is no different than passing around chapter drafts to colleagues. Why not do it on a smaller scale, with chapter sections? And what better audience for revisionary-comment purposes than USIH blog followers?
I also think that blogging involves a commitment to professional service on the part of the historian. We must place a higher value on brief discourses and the simple underscoring of ideas in order to popularize the subfield. Indeed, one can ponder without being ponderous or pedantic. Intellectual historians should be content to post shorter pieces and be happy with longer comment sections---and participating in those comment strings. Indeed, posting shorter pieces prevents one from being ponderous on a topic before the audience gets on board. In fact it's probably best to post only 1/4-1/3 of a longer post one has drafted and leave the rest for comments if your audience feels your momentum.
Although this post applies of course to my USIH colleagues immediately as well as broadly, it also adds to the conversation about ~how~ to blog academic knowledge.
What are your blog strategy ideas, for intellectual historians or speaking broadly? Has this post hit near the mark in identifying the problems with blogging on USIH topics? - TL
PS: My title comes with apologies to Joan Wallach Scott. I can't say, however, that my title has much to do with the main thrust of that book.
Blogging USIH: Only Paradoxes to Offer?
Some time ago one of our own, David Sehat, started a series called "Blogging Academic Knowledge." His series lasted for only a couple of posts, but he covered the general nature of online communities, professional authority, fostering discussion, and the perils of online communication (i.e. mobbing others, comment misinterpretation, anonymity, etc.). Our discussion of David's posts was rather limited---probably a disappointment to him, but also perhaps a consequence of the fact that he echoed our questions and none of us had answers. In any event, I will extend David's discussion in a narrow way to blogging about U.S. intellectual history. In other words, let's talk about what we do here at a meta level---go epistemological on blogging USIH.
After three plus years of posting and observing posts here, when it comes to writing directly about intellectual history I have observed some paradoxes.
All of us---here at least---are generally committed to disseminating knowledge about USIH through paper and electronic media. However, the profession, particularly our subfield, values books most of all. They're the currency of the realm. This works against a professional doing any heavy lifting on either articles (refereed or no) and other shorter pieces. It makes the historian feel guilty for committing too much time and energy to ephemeral(?) media---precisely the kind of media that reaches the most people. That feeling and the book-as-currency issue prevents historians of the intellectual life from disseminating knowledge in reader friendly, affordable formats. This is paradox #1.
I have also come to believe that many intellectual history topics are not conducive to blogging. There are two reasons for this. First, USIH topics often require adequate depth in order to explain nuance. In a blog format this opens one up to the charge of treating complex topics too lightly. No intellectual historian wants to be accused of shallowness. Second, no one wants to read long posts! But USIH topics seem to often require lengthy treatments. So the "topical problem" is paradox #2.
Solutions? I'm not sure I have any for paradox #1. The profession is what it is. No regular USIH blogger will succeed in the profession if blogging is all the historian does. Period. However, an answer to paradox #2 goes some way toward helping with #1.
I believe that more intellectual historians need to see blogs as book and article laboratories. This works in the early stages of drafting because all good writers know that draft #1 never, never, never (yes, I'm partly emphasizing this for myself!) really looks like the final version. Writers who transition straight from drafts to final copies are the exception, not the rule. Because of this no one should fear posting early ideas for an article. And if this blog-as-lab approach applies for articles, it applies to book projects triply. Think of all the things that are cut from chapter drafts. Using the leavings from the cutting room floor for blog posts seems like a fruitful line of thinking.
Over the past year or two I have noticed that many authors are posting early drafts of material in order to solicit comments for revisionary purposes. This is no different than passing around chapter drafts to colleagues. Why not do it on a smaller scale, with chapter sections? And what better audience for revisionary-comment purposes than USIH blog followers?
I also think that blogging involves a commitment to professional service on the part of the historian. We must place a higher value on brief discourses and the simple underscoring of ideas in order to popularize the subfield. Indeed, one can ponder without being ponderous or pedantic. Intellectual historians should be content to post shorter pieces and be happy with longer comment sections---and participating in those comment strings. Indeed, posting shorter pieces prevents one from being ponderous on a topic before the audience gets on board. In fact it's probably best to post only 1/4-1/3 of a longer post one has drafted and leave the rest for comments if your audience feels your momentum.
Although this post applies of course to my USIH colleagues immediately as well as broadly, it also adds to the conversation about ~how~ to blog academic knowledge.
What are your blog strategy ideas, for intellectual historians or speaking broadly? Has this post hit near the mark in identifying the problems with blogging on USIH topics? - TL
PS: My title comes with apologies to Joan Wallach Scott. I can't say, however, that my title has much to do with the main thrust of that book.
After three plus years of posting and observing posts here, when it comes to writing directly about intellectual history I have observed some paradoxes.
All of us---here at least---are generally committed to disseminating knowledge about USIH through paper and electronic media. However, the profession, particularly our subfield, values books most of all. They're the currency of the realm. This works against a professional doing any heavy lifting on either articles (refereed or no) and other shorter pieces. It makes the historian feel guilty for committing too much time and energy to ephemeral(?) media---precisely the kind of media that reaches the most people. That feeling and the book-as-currency issue prevents historians of the intellectual life from disseminating knowledge in reader friendly, affordable formats. This is paradox #1.
I have also come to believe that many intellectual history topics are not conducive to blogging. There are two reasons for this. First, USIH topics often require adequate depth in order to explain nuance. In a blog format this opens one up to the charge of treating complex topics too lightly. No intellectual historian wants to be accused of shallowness. Second, no one wants to read long posts! But USIH topics seem to often require lengthy treatments. So the "topical problem" is paradox #2.
Solutions? I'm not sure I have any for paradox #1. The profession is what it is. No regular USIH blogger will succeed in the profession if blogging is all the historian does. Period. However, an answer to paradox #2 goes some way toward helping with #1.
I believe that more intellectual historians need to see blogs as book and article laboratories. This works in the early stages of drafting because all good writers know that draft #1 never, never, never (yes, I'm partly emphasizing this for myself!) really looks like the final version. Writers who transition straight from drafts to final copies are the exception, not the rule. Because of this no one should fear posting early ideas for an article. And if this blog-as-lab approach applies for articles, it applies to book projects triply. Think of all the things that are cut from chapter drafts. Using the leavings from the cutting room floor for blog posts seems like a fruitful line of thinking.
Over the past year or two I have noticed that many authors are posting early drafts of material in order to solicit comments for revisionary purposes. This is no different than passing around chapter drafts to colleagues. Why not do it on a smaller scale, with chapter sections? And what better audience for revisionary-comment purposes than USIH blog followers?
I also think that blogging involves a commitment to professional service on the part of the historian. We must place a higher value on brief discourses and the simple underscoring of ideas in order to popularize the subfield. Indeed, one can ponder without being ponderous or pedantic. Intellectual historians should be content to post shorter pieces and be happy with longer comment sections---and participating in those comment strings. Indeed, posting shorter pieces prevents one from being ponderous on a topic before the audience gets on board. In fact it's probably best to post only 1/4-1/3 of a longer post one has drafted and leave the rest for comments if your audience feels your momentum.
Although this post applies of course to my USIH colleagues immediately as well as broadly, it also adds to the conversation about ~how~ to blog academic knowledge.
What are your blog strategy ideas, for intellectual historians or speaking broadly? Has this post hit near the mark in identifying the problems with blogging on USIH topics? - TL
PS: My title comes with apologies to Joan Wallach Scott. I can't say, however, that my title has much to do with the main thrust of that book.
Senin, 22 Februari 2010
One of Our Own is an L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist
Congratulations to one of our recent additions to this blog, Amy Wood, for being one of five finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History. Her book, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940, is up against some pretty steep competition. But what an honor!
One of Our Own is an L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist
Congratulations to one of our recent additions to this blog, Amy Wood, for being one of five finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History. Her book, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940, is up against some pretty steep competition. But what an honor!
Jumat, 19 Februari 2010
What is Going on in Haiti?
I’ve been receiving two incredibly different strains of news on Haiti. One, from NPR, the NY Times, and other American media sources tell me about the devastation, the corruption of the Haitian government, the attempts of Americans and ngos to help, and in particular about some stupid missionaries. I remember one NPR sign off talking about how the military presence would soon be reduced, but a promise that the US would not forget Haiti. It emphasizes Haitians who desire more control by international groups, giving voice to a few who even offer the country to the US or the UN to take over because the Haitian government is no longer functioning. Diane Sawyer reported on an American doctor desperate to get children out of Haiti and to his American hospital, but he was prevented by the Haitian government’s response to the Baptist missionaries trying to take children out of the country. It was presented in that “isn’t it obvious that everyone wants to come to the US” vein that is fairly common in US media.
The other stream is coming through listserves and is utterly different. It likens the US military presence an invasion, in the same vein as the repeated US military interventions throughout the twentieth century and again in 2004. It describes the US military preventing aid from reaching earthquake sufferers, letting food rot, and preventing the generosity of the world from being distributed. One email described this as a further attempt on the part of wealthy western nations to take over Haitian resources. Today there was an email about a huge protest in Port-au-Prince on February 17 greeting Nicola Sarkozy–the first French PM to ever visit Haiti. Surprisingly, it was not about immediate needs, but about politics. I’ll quote a bit:
Sarkozy’s visit came amid steps to transform Haiti into a military dictatorship jointly run with foreign occupation forces and aid agencies. Haiti?s legislative elections, previously scheduled for February 28-March 3, have been indefinitely postponed.
The US in particular is preparing to take over the Haitian government. On February 11 the Miami Herald reported that the US State Department had presented top Haitian officials with plans for an Interim Haiti Recovery Commission in early February. The Herald, which had seen a copy of the plan, noted the commission’s “top priority” is to “create a Haitian Development Authority to plan and coordinate billions in foreign assistance for at least 10 years.”
…
Sarkozy continued, “As for rivalries between the countries that are friends of Haiti … there will be none. The Americans have done good work. They have a million Haitian [immigrants] and they are 900 km away, and I will not reproach anyone for not doing enough. Afterwards, in any emergency situation one can do things more or less well, provoke small tensions. It’s not serious compared to the essential, which is that Americans, Englishmen, Brazilians, Canadians, and everyone else, we continue to work hand-in-hand to help you.”
This statement repudiates widespread criticism from aid officials of the US military occupation’s callous indifference towards Haitian lives. The US military seized the Port-au-Prince airport and blocked the arrival of humanitarian flights, costing the lives of thousands of Haitians dying from infected wounds and lack of antibiotics and other basic supplies. It also refused to admit wounded Haitians to the large sick bay of the USS Carl Vinson, a US aircraft carrier steaming off Haiti, and temporarily blocked rescue flights to Florida.
"Mass protests greet Sarkozy visit to Haiti"
By Alex Lantier
19 February 2010World Socialist Web Site
I've read of so many different episodes in US history where the "average" American had no idea what was going on (US involvement in Latin America, the Scottsboro Case, Reconstruction). Is this happening again? Who do we believe?
What is Going on in Haiti?
I’ve been receiving two incredibly different strains of news on Haiti. One, from NPR, the NY Times, and other American media sources tell me about the devastation, the corruption of the Haitian government, the attempts of Americans and ngos to help, and in particular about some stupid missionaries. I remember one NPR sign off talking about how the military presence would soon be reduced, but a promise that the US would not forget Haiti. It emphasizes Haitians who desire more control by international groups, giving voice to a few who even offer the country to the US or the UN to take over because the Haitian government is no longer functioning. Diane Sawyer reported on an American doctor desperate to get children out of Haiti and to his American hospital, but he was prevented by the Haitian government’s response to the Baptist missionaries trying to take children out of the country. It was presented in that “isn’t it obvious that everyone wants to come to the US” vein that is fairly common in US media.
The other stream is coming through listserves and is utterly different. It likens the US military presence an invasion, in the same vein as the repeated US military interventions throughout the twentieth century and again in 2004. It describes the US military preventing aid from reaching earthquake sufferers, letting food rot, and preventing the generosity of the world from being distributed. One email described this as a further attempt on the part of wealthy western nations to take over Haitian resources. Today there was an email about a huge protest in Port-au-Prince on February 17 greeting Nicola Sarkozy–the first French PM to ever visit Haiti. Surprisingly, it was not about immediate needs, but about politics. I’ll quote a bit:
Sarkozy’s visit came amid steps to transform Haiti into a military dictatorship jointly run with foreign occupation forces and aid agencies. Haiti?s legislative elections, previously scheduled for February 28-March 3, have been indefinitely postponed.
The US in particular is preparing to take over the Haitian government. On February 11 the Miami Herald reported that the US State Department had presented top Haitian officials with plans for an Interim Haiti Recovery Commission in early February. The Herald, which had seen a copy of the plan, noted the commission’s “top priority” is to “create a Haitian Development Authority to plan and coordinate billions in foreign assistance for at least 10 years.”
…
Sarkozy continued, “As for rivalries between the countries that are friends of Haiti … there will be none. The Americans have done good work. They have a million Haitian [immigrants] and they are 900 km away, and I will not reproach anyone for not doing enough. Afterwards, in any emergency situation one can do things more or less well, provoke small tensions. It’s not serious compared to the essential, which is that Americans, Englishmen, Brazilians, Canadians, and everyone else, we continue to work hand-in-hand to help you.”
This statement repudiates widespread criticism from aid officials of the US military occupation’s callous indifference towards Haitian lives. The US military seized the Port-au-Prince airport and blocked the arrival of humanitarian flights, costing the lives of thousands of Haitians dying from infected wounds and lack of antibiotics and other basic supplies. It also refused to admit wounded Haitians to the large sick bay of the USS Carl Vinson, a US aircraft carrier steaming off Haiti, and temporarily blocked rescue flights to Florida.
"Mass protests greet Sarkozy visit to Haiti"
By Alex Lantier
19 February 2010World Socialist Web Site
I've read of so many different episodes in US history where the "average" American had no idea what was going on (US involvement in Latin America, the Scottsboro Case, Reconstruction). Is this happening again? Who do we believe?
Tim's Light Reading (2/19/2010)
1. Historians As Activists---Against Bad History: The History Channel is at it again---meaning irritating professional historians. InsideHigherEd has relayed that a group of political historians are protesting an upcoming series on the Kennedy family. The show's script writer, however, retorts that their complaints are premature---that the show isn't finished yet. Saying that the show is "not a documentary [but] a dramatization," Steve Kronish actually underscores other important issues in history---popularization versus nuance, public history versus traditional practice, the role of money in distorting exchanges about history, and political families who protect their legacies via manipulating archival access and lording over the work of historians (e.g. Kennedy family protectors fearing the work of Joel Surnow, a friend of Rush Limbaugh). Overall of these fears is the forgetfulness by everyone involved (historians ~and~ their subjects) that history is perspectival, subjective, and has always been a field of competing accounts. But it is also true that the free flow of truth---whether by storytelling or in conversation---is often overwhelmed by unequal concentrations of wealth in the hands of political partisans. In other words, propaganda fed by money can make the truth difficult to discern. In this particular case, it looks like there is enough blame to go around.
2. The State of Academe: Sadly, William Pannapacker gets closer and closer to some truths about academe and the life of the mind today with every column he writes. It's hard for some of us (no matter your position or security within the academy) to distance ourselves from the job situation out there, but there can be no question that a future intellectual historian will have to deal with downside of credentialism in the intellectual life, particularly in humanities graduate studies.
3. Another Important Subfield With Identity Issues: Kevin Schultz and Paul Harvey authored a piece for InsideHigherEd that documents an "everywhere and nowhere" identity problem in the history of religion in America. The title of their article mimics precisely a line from Wilfred McClay's assessment of USIH that appeared in Historically Speaking last fall. Here's the Schultz-Harvey thesis:
Religion is everywhere around us, and religious historians have written about it in compelling and exciting ways, but within mainstream historiography it has been basically left behind. In a sense, religion is everywhere in modern American history, but nowhere in modern American historiography.
4. The Myth and Reality of Christianity's Role in America's Founding: Continuing somewhat the theme from point #3, the historical question of the Christian origins of America was recently addressed in the NY Times. Presented in the context of textbook adoption and revision discussions for Texas schools, here's the article's thesis:
[Christian conservative activists] hold that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts. This belief provides what they consider not only a theological but also, ultimately, a judicial grounding to their positions on social questions. When they proclaim that the United States is a “Christian nation,” they are not referring to the percentage of the population that ticks a certain box in a survey or census but to the country’s roots and the intent of the founders. The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Recently, however — perhaps out of ire at what they see as an aggressive, secular, liberal agenda in Washington and perhaps also because they sense an opening in the battle, a sudden weakness in the lines of the secularists — some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society.
2. The State of Academe: Sadly, William Pannapacker gets closer and closer to some truths about academe and the life of the mind today with every column he writes. It's hard for some of us (no matter your position or security within the academy) to distance ourselves from the job situation out there, but there can be no question that a future intellectual historian will have to deal with downside of credentialism in the intellectual life, particularly in humanities graduate studies.
3. Another Important Subfield With Identity Issues: Kevin Schultz and Paul Harvey authored a piece for InsideHigherEd that documents an "everywhere and nowhere" identity problem in the history of religion in America. The title of their article mimics precisely a line from Wilfred McClay's assessment of USIH that appeared in Historically Speaking last fall. Here's the Schultz-Harvey thesis:
Religion is everywhere around us, and religious historians have written about it in compelling and exciting ways, but within mainstream historiography it has been basically left behind. In a sense, religion is everywhere in modern American history, but nowhere in modern American historiography.
4. The Myth and Reality of Christianity's Role in America's Founding: Continuing somewhat the theme from point #3, the historical question of the Christian origins of America was recently addressed in the NY Times. Presented in the context of textbook adoption and revision discussions for Texas schools, here's the article's thesis:
[Christian conservative activists] hold that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts. This belief provides what they consider not only a theological but also, ultimately, a judicial grounding to their positions on social questions. When they proclaim that the United States is a “Christian nation,” they are not referring to the percentage of the population that ticks a certain box in a survey or census but to the country’s roots and the intent of the founders. The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Recently, however — perhaps out of ire at what they see as an aggressive, secular, liberal agenda in Washington and perhaps also because they sense an opening in the battle, a sudden weakness in the lines of the secularists — some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society.
Tim's Light Reading (2/19/2010)
1. Historians As Activists---Against Bad History: The History Channel is at it again---meaning irritating professional historians. InsideHigherEd has relayed that a group of political historians are protesting an upcoming series on the Kennedy family. The show's script writer, however, retorts that their complaints are premature---that the show isn't finished yet. Saying that the show is "not a documentary [but] a dramatization," Steve Kronish actually underscores other important issues in history---popularization versus nuance, public history versus traditional practice, the role of money in distorting exchanges about history, and political families who protect their legacies via manipulating archival access and lording over the work of historians (e.g. Kennedy family protectors fearing the work of Joel Surnow, a friend of Rush Limbaugh). Overall of these fears is the forgetfulness by everyone involved (historians ~and~ their subjects) that history is perspectival, subjective, and has always been a field of competing accounts. But it is also true that the free flow of truth---whether by storytelling or in conversation---is often overwhelmed by unequal concentrations of wealth in the hands of political partisans. In other words, propaganda fed by money can make the truth difficult to discern. In this particular case, it looks like there is enough blame to go around.
2. The State of Academe: Sadly, William Pannapacker gets closer and closer to some truths about academe and the life of the mind today with every column he writes. It's hard for some of us (no matter your position or security within the academy) to distance ourselves from the job situation out there, but there can be no question that a future intellectual historian will have to deal with downside of credentialism in the intellectual life, particularly in humanities graduate studies.
3. Another Important Subfield With Identity Issues: Kevin Schultz and Paul Harvey authored a piece for InsideHigherEd that documents an "everywhere and nowhere" identity problem in the history of religion in America. The title of their article mimics precisely a line from Wilfred McClay's assessment of USIH that appeared in Historically Speaking last fall. Here's the Schultz-Harvey thesis:
Religion is everywhere around us, and religious historians have written about it in compelling and exciting ways, but within mainstream historiography it has been basically left behind. In a sense, religion is everywhere in modern American history, but nowhere in modern American historiography.
4. The Myth and Reality of Christianity's Role in America's Founding: Continuing somewhat the theme from point #3, the historical question of the Christian origins of America was recently addressed in the NY Times. Presented in the context of textbook adoption and revision discussions for Texas schools, here's the article's thesis:
[Christian conservative activists] hold that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts. This belief provides what they consider not only a theological but also, ultimately, a judicial grounding to their positions on social questions. When they proclaim that the United States is a “Christian nation,” they are not referring to the percentage of the population that ticks a certain box in a survey or census but to the country’s roots and the intent of the founders. The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Recently, however — perhaps out of ire at what they see as an aggressive, secular, liberal agenda in Washington and perhaps also because they sense an opening in the battle, a sudden weakness in the lines of the secularists — some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society.
2. The State of Academe: Sadly, William Pannapacker gets closer and closer to some truths about academe and the life of the mind today with every column he writes. It's hard for some of us (no matter your position or security within the academy) to distance ourselves from the job situation out there, but there can be no question that a future intellectual historian will have to deal with downside of credentialism in the intellectual life, particularly in humanities graduate studies.
3. Another Important Subfield With Identity Issues: Kevin Schultz and Paul Harvey authored a piece for InsideHigherEd that documents an "everywhere and nowhere" identity problem in the history of religion in America. The title of their article mimics precisely a line from Wilfred McClay's assessment of USIH that appeared in Historically Speaking last fall. Here's the Schultz-Harvey thesis:
Religion is everywhere around us, and religious historians have written about it in compelling and exciting ways, but within mainstream historiography it has been basically left behind. In a sense, religion is everywhere in modern American history, but nowhere in modern American historiography.
4. The Myth and Reality of Christianity's Role in America's Founding: Continuing somewhat the theme from point #3, the historical question of the Christian origins of America was recently addressed in the NY Times. Presented in the context of textbook adoption and revision discussions for Texas schools, here's the article's thesis:
[Christian conservative activists] hold that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts. This belief provides what they consider not only a theological but also, ultimately, a judicial grounding to their positions on social questions. When they proclaim that the United States is a “Christian nation,” they are not referring to the percentage of the population that ticks a certain box in a survey or census but to the country’s roots and the intent of the founders. The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Recently, however — perhaps out of ire at what they see as an aggressive, secular, liberal agenda in Washington and perhaps also because they sense an opening in the battle, a sudden weakness in the lines of the secularists — some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society.
Kamis, 18 Februari 2010
Hobsbawm on the Challenges for Future Historians
The current edition of the New Left Review, serving as the journal's 50-year anniversary issue, presents over 200 pages of fascinating historical, political, and theoretical analysis, from some of its more famous regular contributors, including: Mike Davis, Perry Anderson, Stuart Hall, Robin Blackburn, Tariq Ali, and Susan Watkins. Of interest to readers of this blog is a retrospective critique of Reinhold Neibuhr's The Irony of American History, by Gopal Balakrishnan--a review that certainly merits a post of its own.
But for now I would like to briefly call attention to an interview with the unparalleled historian Eric Hobsbawm. The interview includes his thoughts on historiographic trajectories, past, present, and future.
The concluding question is as follows: “If you were to pick still unexplored topics or fields presenting major challenges for future historians, what would they be?”
Hobsbawm's answer is worthy of sustained thought: “The big problem is a very general one. By palaeontological standards the human species has transformed its existence at astonishing speed, but the rate of change has varied enormously. Sometimes it has moved very slowly, sometimes very fast, sometimes controlled, sometimes not. Clearly this implies a growing control over nature, but we should not claim to know whither this is leading us. Marxists have rightly focused on changes in the mode of production and their social relations as the generators of historical change. However, if we think in terms of how ‘men make their own history’, the great question is this: historically, communities and social systems have aimed at stabilization and reproduction, creating mechanisms to keep at bay disturbing leaps into the unknown. Resistance to the imposition of change from outside is still a major factor in world politics today. How is it, then, that humans and societies structured to resist dynamic development come to terms with a mode of production whose essence is endless and unpredictable dynamic development? Marxist historians might profitably investigate the operations of this basic contradiction between the mechanisms bringing about change and those geared to resist it.”
I post this passage in full more to pose questions than answers. Is this especially relevant to U.S. historians, in the sense that all of U.S. History is the history of how people have accommodated to rapid changes brought on by the mechanisms of capitalism? Are intellectual historians particularly geared to seek answers to Hobsbawm's challenge, in that U.S. intellectual history is broadly about how people thought about change, whether in terms of adjustment, resistance, or advancement?
In a different vein entirely, earlier in the interview Hobsbawm discussed changing class consciousness as a consequence of postindustrialism, and said the following that I find applicable to my studies of the culture wars in the U.S. His observation is not all that original, but it's nicely phrased all the same. He writes of the"the growing divide produced by a new class criterion—namely, passing examinations in schools and universities as an entry ticket into jobs. This is, if you like, meritocracy; but it is measured, institutionalized and mediated by educational systems. What this has done is to divert class consciousness from opposition to employers to opposition to toffs of one kind or another—intellectuals, liberal elites, people who are putting it over on us. America is a standard example of this…”
Do you think of yourselves as "toffs"?
Hobsbawm on the Challenges for Future Historians
The current edition of the New Left Review, serving as the journal's 50-year anniversary issue, presents over 200 pages of fascinating historical, political, and theoretical analysis, from some of its more famous regular contributors, including: Mike Davis, Perry Anderson, Stuart Hall, Robin Blackburn, Tariq Ali, and Susan Watkins. Of interest to readers of this blog is a retrospective critique of Reinhold Neibuhr's The Irony of American History, by Gopal Balakrishnan--a review that certainly merits a post of its own.
But for now I would like to briefly call attention to an interview with the unparalleled historian Eric Hobsbawm. The interview includes his thoughts on historiographic trajectories, past, present, and future.
The concluding question is as follows: “If you were to pick still unexplored topics or fields presenting major challenges for future historians, what would they be?”
Hobsbawm's answer is worthy of sustained thought: “The big problem is a very general one. By palaeontological standards the human species has transformed its existence at astonishing speed, but the rate of change has varied enormously. Sometimes it has moved very slowly, sometimes very fast, sometimes controlled, sometimes not. Clearly this implies a growing control over nature, but we should not claim to know whither this is leading us. Marxists have rightly focused on changes in the mode of production and their social relations as the generators of historical change. However, if we think in terms of how ‘men make their own history’, the great question is this: historically, communities and social systems have aimed at stabilization and reproduction, creating mechanisms to keep at bay disturbing leaps into the unknown. Resistance to the imposition of change from outside is still a major factor in world politics today. How is it, then, that humans and societies structured to resist dynamic development come to terms with a mode of production whose essence is endless and unpredictable dynamic development? Marxist historians might profitably investigate the operations of this basic contradiction between the mechanisms bringing about change and those geared to resist it.”
I post this passage in full more to pose questions than answers. Is this especially relevant to U.S. historians, in the sense that all of U.S. History is the history of how people have accommodated to rapid changes brought on by the mechanisms of capitalism? Are intellectual historians particularly geared to seek answers to Hobsbawm's challenge, in that U.S. intellectual history is broadly about how people thought about change, whether in terms of adjustment, resistance, or advancement?
In a different vein entirely, earlier in the interview Hobsbawm discussed changing class consciousness as a consequence of postindustrialism, and said the following that I find applicable to my studies of the culture wars in the U.S. His observation is not all that original, but it's nicely phrased all the same. He writes of the"the growing divide produced by a new class criterion—namely, passing examinations in schools and universities as an entry ticket into jobs. This is, if you like, meritocracy; but it is measured, institutionalized and mediated by educational systems. What this has done is to divert class consciousness from opposition to employers to opposition to toffs of one kind or another—intellectuals, liberal elites, people who are putting it over on us. America is a standard example of this…”
Do you think of yourselves as "toffs"?
Kamis, 11 Februari 2010
Political Anti-Intellectualism And The Liberal Arts: Historical Considerations
Since anti-intellectualism has often been most effective in politics (e.g. with victims such as Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s, Eugene McCarthy in the 60s, and even Bill Clinton in the 90s), I'm not surprised to see a present-day application via the "professor" label.
With regard to the article, I'm not sure I agree---initially at least---with Charles Ogletree's assertion that today's manifestation in relation to President Barack Obama is a "thinly veiled" kind of racism (article's phrase, Jack Stripling is the author). The problem I have with that line of thinking is that it's nowhere in the recent history of anti-intellectualism---as a broad social phenomenon at least. All of the late twentieth-century political figures that were objects of anti-intellectualism were white. Indeed, if there's any historical racism associated with political anti-intellectualism it's in the fact that Martin Luther King, Jr. was never derided precisely for his mental prowess. To carry Ogletree's argument a bit further, it seems to me that if any "uppity" association occurs to racists in relation to Obama, it will be because of his newfound aggressiveness (i.e. bully pulpit), not his mental ability. The "professor" appellation is likely just straightforward anti-intellectualism on the part of some opposition that may be racists.
Returning to Stripling's article, I do appreciate the thinking in this passage related to David S. Brown: It’s no surprise that the anti-intellectualism that Hofstadter wrote about has resonance among some Americans today, says Brown, a historian at Elizabethtown College. Higher education programs are increasingly moving toward the pre-professional variety, and students and parents are inclined to press colleges about how their programs will lead to jobs -- not to intellectual growth, Brown says. In that context, the stereotypical liberal arts professor is ever more marginalized.
When I first read the InsideHigherEd article I thought that, with more people than ever in college and even more than ever in graduate school, this line of political strategy can't be effective, long term, beyond a limited cohort of our citizenry. But I hadn't directly linked today's anti-intellectualism, as Brown did, to the ongoing vocationalism (read: devaluing of the liberal arts) that's occurred in higher education---beginning after World War II but increasingly evident in the last 10-15 years. - TL
With regard to the article, I'm not sure I agree---initially at least---with Charles Ogletree's assertion that today's manifestation in relation to President Barack Obama is a "thinly veiled" kind of racism (article's phrase, Jack Stripling is the author). The problem I have with that line of thinking is that it's nowhere in the recent history of anti-intellectualism---as a broad social phenomenon at least. All of the late twentieth-century political figures that were objects of anti-intellectualism were white. Indeed, if there's any historical racism associated with political anti-intellectualism it's in the fact that Martin Luther King, Jr. was never derided precisely for his mental prowess. To carry Ogletree's argument a bit further, it seems to me that if any "uppity" association occurs to racists in relation to Obama, it will be because of his newfound aggressiveness (i.e. bully pulpit), not his mental ability. The "professor" appellation is likely just straightforward anti-intellectualism on the part of some opposition that may be racists.
Returning to Stripling's article, I do appreciate the thinking in this passage related to David S. Brown: It’s no surprise that the anti-intellectualism that Hofstadter wrote about has resonance among some Americans today, says Brown, a historian at Elizabethtown College. Higher education programs are increasingly moving toward the pre-professional variety, and students and parents are inclined to press colleges about how their programs will lead to jobs -- not to intellectual growth, Brown says. In that context, the stereotypical liberal arts professor is ever more marginalized.
When I first read the InsideHigherEd article I thought that, with more people than ever in college and even more than ever in graduate school, this line of political strategy can't be effective, long term, beyond a limited cohort of our citizenry. But I hadn't directly linked today's anti-intellectualism, as Brown did, to the ongoing vocationalism (read: devaluing of the liberal arts) that's occurred in higher education---beginning after World War II but increasingly evident in the last 10-15 years. - TL
Political Anti-Intellectualism And The Liberal Arts: Historical Considerations
Since anti-intellectualism has often been most effective in politics (e.g. with victims such as Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s, Eugene McCarthy in the 60s, and even Bill Clinton in the 90s), I'm not surprised to see a present-day application via the "professor" label.
With regard to the article, I'm not sure I agree---initially at least---with Charles Ogletree's assertion that today's manifestation in relation to President Barack Obama is a "thinly veiled" kind of racism (article's phrase, Jack Stripling is the author). The problem I have with that line of thinking is that it's nowhere in the recent history of anti-intellectualism---as a broad social phenomenon at least. All of the late twentieth-century political figures that were objects of anti-intellectualism were white. Indeed, if there's any historical racism associated with political anti-intellectualism it's in the fact that Martin Luther King, Jr. was never derided precisely for his mental prowess. To carry Ogletree's argument a bit further, it seems to me that if any "uppity" association occurs to racists in relation to Obama, it will be because of his newfound aggressiveness (i.e. bully pulpit), not his mental ability. The "professor" appellation is likely just straightforward anti-intellectualism on the part of some opposition that may be racists.
Returning to Stripling's article, I do appreciate the thinking in this passage related to David S. Brown: It’s no surprise that the anti-intellectualism that Hofstadter wrote about has resonance among some Americans today, says Brown, a historian at Elizabethtown College. Higher education programs are increasingly moving toward the pre-professional variety, and students and parents are inclined to press colleges about how their programs will lead to jobs -- not to intellectual growth, Brown says. In that context, the stereotypical liberal arts professor is ever more marginalized.
When I first read the InsideHigherEd article I thought that, with more people than ever in college and even more than ever in graduate school, this line of political strategy can't be effective, long term, beyond a limited cohort of our citizenry. But I hadn't directly linked today's anti-intellectualism, as Brown did, to the ongoing vocationalism (read: devaluing of the liberal arts) that's occurred in higher education---beginning after World War II but increasingly evident in the last 10-15 years. - TL
With regard to the article, I'm not sure I agree---initially at least---with Charles Ogletree's assertion that today's manifestation in relation to President Barack Obama is a "thinly veiled" kind of racism (article's phrase, Jack Stripling is the author). The problem I have with that line of thinking is that it's nowhere in the recent history of anti-intellectualism---as a broad social phenomenon at least. All of the late twentieth-century political figures that were objects of anti-intellectualism were white. Indeed, if there's any historical racism associated with political anti-intellectualism it's in the fact that Martin Luther King, Jr. was never derided precisely for his mental prowess. To carry Ogletree's argument a bit further, it seems to me that if any "uppity" association occurs to racists in relation to Obama, it will be because of his newfound aggressiveness (i.e. bully pulpit), not his mental ability. The "professor" appellation is likely just straightforward anti-intellectualism on the part of some opposition that may be racists.
Returning to Stripling's article, I do appreciate the thinking in this passage related to David S. Brown: It’s no surprise that the anti-intellectualism that Hofstadter wrote about has resonance among some Americans today, says Brown, a historian at Elizabethtown College. Higher education programs are increasingly moving toward the pre-professional variety, and students and parents are inclined to press colleges about how their programs will lead to jobs -- not to intellectual growth, Brown says. In that context, the stereotypical liberal arts professor is ever more marginalized.
When I first read the InsideHigherEd article I thought that, with more people than ever in college and even more than ever in graduate school, this line of political strategy can't be effective, long term, beyond a limited cohort of our citizenry. But I hadn't directly linked today's anti-intellectualism, as Brown did, to the ongoing vocationalism (read: devaluing of the liberal arts) that's occurred in higher education---beginning after World War II but increasingly evident in the last 10-15 years. - TL
Selasa, 09 Februari 2010
Per our recent discussions on Public History and Public Intellectuals
I just noticed that The Hemmingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon Reed is this month's selection for the New Yorker's Book Club (See my previous post here). David Remnick, the editor explains why. I consider this book as interesting as Menand's The Metaphysical Club. It also uses a small group of individuals to pick apart complicated themes in American history, in a way so remarkably written that it is attracting the attention of the wider body of American thinkers/professionals that follow periodicals like the New Yorker or the New York Times. They both, too, won the Pulitzer. Has anyone else read it? What do those of you who commented on the Menand post by Andrew think of Reed's book? Is there anything to be learned by the fact that both authors were trained outside the historical profession, one in law and one in literature?
Also interesting is the New Yorker's portfolio of images and videos of Civil Rights Leaders. I was listening to the New Yorker Outloud podcast yesterday and was astounded to hear Remnick discuss the Civil Rights Movement with a clear understanding of recent (last 10-20 years) literature that emphasizes the local aspects of the movement and de-emphasizes the idea that it was just King's movement. This is beyond a common perspective among African Americanists, but had not yet seemed to filter into the wider literate society (perhaps because Martin Luther King Jr. day brings us back to him and his "I Have a Dream" speech every year). Nikhil Pal Singh discussed this in Black is a Country. I know every year around this time, African Americans emphasize other aspects of the movement. Perhaps what surprised me was to hear the white editor of the New Yorker have fully synthesized current historiography.
This makes me wonder, too, if you all are aware of Ta-Nahisi Coates, who writes and blogs for the Atlantic? I find his blog one of the most interesting commentaries on the web with regards to race and many other topics. He opens the floor to his commenters every day at noon. They tend to be literate, honest, and surprisingly civil. Talk about a future project for an intellectual historian!
Also interesting is the New Yorker's portfolio of images and videos of Civil Rights Leaders. I was listening to the New Yorker Outloud podcast yesterday and was astounded to hear Remnick discuss the Civil Rights Movement with a clear understanding of recent (last 10-20 years) literature that emphasizes the local aspects of the movement and de-emphasizes the idea that it was just King's movement. This is beyond a common perspective among African Americanists, but had not yet seemed to filter into the wider literate society (perhaps because Martin Luther King Jr. day brings us back to him and his "I Have a Dream" speech every year). Nikhil Pal Singh discussed this in Black is a Country. I know every year around this time, African Americans emphasize other aspects of the movement. Perhaps what surprised me was to hear the white editor of the New Yorker have fully synthesized current historiography.
This makes me wonder, too, if you all are aware of Ta-Nahisi Coates, who writes and blogs for the Atlantic? I find his blog one of the most interesting commentaries on the web with regards to race and many other topics. He opens the floor to his commenters every day at noon. They tend to be literate, honest, and surprisingly civil. Talk about a future project for an intellectual historian!
Per our recent discussions on Public History and Public Intellectuals
I just noticed that The Hemmingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon Reed is this month's selection for the New Yorker's Book Club (See my previous post here). David Remnick, the editor explains why. I consider this book as interesting as Menand's The Metaphysical Club. It also uses a small group of individuals to pick apart complicated themes in American history, in a way so remarkably written that it is attracting the attention of the wider body of American thinkers/professionals that follow periodicals like the New Yorker or the New York Times. They both, too, won the Pulitzer. Has anyone else read it? What do those of you who commented on the Menand post by Andrew think of Reed's book? Is there anything to be learned by the fact that both authors were trained outside the historical profession, one in law and one in literature?
Also interesting is the New Yorker's portfolio of images and videos of Civil Rights Leaders. I was listening to the New Yorker Outloud podcast yesterday and was astounded to hear Remnick discuss the Civil Rights Movement with a clear understanding of recent (last 10-20 years) literature that emphasizes the local aspects of the movement and de-emphasizes the idea that it was just King's movement. This is beyond a common perspective among African Americanists, but had not yet seemed to filter into the wider literate society (perhaps because Martin Luther King Jr. day brings us back to him and his "I Have a Dream" speech every year). Nikhil Pal Singh discussed this in Black is a Country. I know every year around this time, African Americans emphasize other aspects of the movement. Perhaps what surprised me was to hear the white editor of the New Yorker have fully synthesized current historiography.
This makes me wonder, too, if you all are aware of Ta-Nahisi Coates, who writes and blogs for the Atlantic? I find his blog one of the most interesting commentaries on the web with regards to race and many other topics. He opens the floor to his commenters every day at noon. They tend to be literate, honest, and surprisingly civil. Talk about a future project for an intellectual historian!
Also interesting is the New Yorker's portfolio of images and videos of Civil Rights Leaders. I was listening to the New Yorker Outloud podcast yesterday and was astounded to hear Remnick discuss the Civil Rights Movement with a clear understanding of recent (last 10-20 years) literature that emphasizes the local aspects of the movement and de-emphasizes the idea that it was just King's movement. This is beyond a common perspective among African Americanists, but had not yet seemed to filter into the wider literate society (perhaps because Martin Luther King Jr. day brings us back to him and his "I Have a Dream" speech every year). Nikhil Pal Singh discussed this in Black is a Country. I know every year around this time, African Americans emphasize other aspects of the movement. Perhaps what surprised me was to hear the white editor of the New Yorker have fully synthesized current historiography.
This makes me wonder, too, if you all are aware of Ta-Nahisi Coates, who writes and blogs for the Atlantic? I find his blog one of the most interesting commentaries on the web with regards to race and many other topics. He opens the floor to his commenters every day at noon. They tend to be literate, honest, and surprisingly civil. Talk about a future project for an intellectual historian!
Sabtu, 06 Februari 2010
Niebuhr And Obama: Part Cinq
We've discussed Obama's connections to Reinhold Niebuhr here (Paul Murphy post), here (Andrew Hartman post), here (Hartman again), and here (David Sehat). Since we've left the discussion alone for almost two years, I thought I'd pick it up again at the instigation of this long CNN feature, titled: "How Obama's favorite theologian shaped his first year in office" and authored by John Blake. Questions:
1. Do we agree with the points of the feature?
2. Is Niebuhr Obama's favorite philosopher, theologian, or both? The article's title uses the term "theologian," but the text cites a "widely cited New York Times column" where "President Obama called Niebuhr his 'favorite philosopher.' " We've talked about a Dionne citation/column here (via TNR, although I couldn't find the exact Dionne piece in TNR?). But CNN is apparently referring to an earlier piece by David Brooks who they cite later in the column (though he's not explicitly attached to the prior NYT reference). Anyway, I wonder which of the specialties of knowledge precisely fits Obama's view of Niebuhr.
As a former Missourian, I can't resist noting the last section of the CNN piece in relation to Missouri's former three-term senator, John Danforth. Here's the excerpt:
"Niebuhr would have loved that [Oslo] speech," says John Danforth, an Episcopal priest and a former Republican senator who also admires Niebuhr.
"I was very impressed with that speech," Danforth says. "He said you need to deal with terrorists in a very hard-nosed, pragmatic way but hold to American standards."
Yet Danforth says there are critical differences between Obama and Niebuhr.
"I see in Obama's approach to politics, which is surprisingly partisan and ideological, a hubris that is not Niebuhrian," says Danforth, who is also a partner at the Bryan Cave law firm in St. Louis, Missouri.
But how true, or non-ideological, is that last statement? When Danforth makes those claims, which hat is he wearing: Episcopal priest? Former Republican? Bryan Cave law firm partner (a firm that specializes in corporate transactions)? Global Leadership Foundation member? Or just that of a regular concerned citizen?
BTW: Avoid the 120-plus CNN comments if you can. They're depressing in their obtuseness. - TL
1. Do we agree with the points of the feature?
2. Is Niebuhr Obama's favorite philosopher, theologian, or both? The article's title uses the term "theologian," but the text cites a "widely cited New York Times column" where "President Obama called Niebuhr his 'favorite philosopher.' " We've talked about a Dionne citation/column here (via TNR, although I couldn't find the exact Dionne piece in TNR?). But CNN is apparently referring to an earlier piece by David Brooks who they cite later in the column (though he's not explicitly attached to the prior NYT reference). Anyway, I wonder which of the specialties of knowledge precisely fits Obama's view of Niebuhr.
As a former Missourian, I can't resist noting the last section of the CNN piece in relation to Missouri's former three-term senator, John Danforth. Here's the excerpt:
"Niebuhr would have loved that [Oslo] speech," says John Danforth, an Episcopal priest and a former Republican senator who also admires Niebuhr.
"I was very impressed with that speech," Danforth says. "He said you need to deal with terrorists in a very hard-nosed, pragmatic way but hold to American standards."
Yet Danforth says there are critical differences between Obama and Niebuhr.
"I see in Obama's approach to politics, which is surprisingly partisan and ideological, a hubris that is not Niebuhrian," says Danforth, who is also a partner at the Bryan Cave law firm in St. Louis, Missouri.
But how true, or non-ideological, is that last statement? When Danforth makes those claims, which hat is he wearing: Episcopal priest? Former Republican? Bryan Cave law firm partner (a firm that specializes in corporate transactions)? Global Leadership Foundation member? Or just that of a regular concerned citizen?
BTW: Avoid the 120-plus CNN comments if you can. They're depressing in their obtuseness. - TL
Niebuhr And Obama: Part Cinq
We've discussed Obama's connections to Reinhold Niebuhr here (Paul Murphy post), here (Andrew Hartman post), here (Hartman again), and here (David Sehat). Since we've left the discussion alone for almost two years, I thought I'd pick it up again at the instigation of this long CNN feature, titled: "How Obama's favorite theologian shaped his first year in office" and authored by John Blake. Questions:
1. Do we agree with the points of the feature?
2. Is Niebuhr Obama's favorite philosopher, theologian, or both? The article's title uses the term "theologian," but the text cites a "widely cited New York Times column" where "President Obama called Niebuhr his 'favorite philosopher.' " We've talked about a Dionne citation/column here (via TNR, although I couldn't find the exact Dionne piece in TNR?). But CNN is apparently referring to an earlier piece by David Brooks who they cite later in the column (though he's not explicitly attached to the prior NYT reference). Anyway, I wonder which of the specialties of knowledge precisely fits Obama's view of Niebuhr.
As a former Missourian, I can't resist noting the last section of the CNN piece in relation to Missouri's former three-term senator, John Danforth. Here's the excerpt:
"Niebuhr would have loved that [Oslo] speech," says John Danforth, an Episcopal priest and a former Republican senator who also admires Niebuhr.
"I was very impressed with that speech," Danforth says. "He said you need to deal with terrorists in a very hard-nosed, pragmatic way but hold to American standards."
Yet Danforth says there are critical differences between Obama and Niebuhr.
"I see in Obama's approach to politics, which is surprisingly partisan and ideological, a hubris that is not Niebuhrian," says Danforth, who is also a partner at the Bryan Cave law firm in St. Louis, Missouri.
But how true, or non-ideological, is that last statement? When Danforth makes those claims, which hat is he wearing: Episcopal priest? Former Republican? Bryan Cave law firm partner (a firm that specializes in corporate transactions)? Global Leadership Foundation member? Or just that of a regular concerned citizen?
BTW: Avoid the 120-plus CNN comments if you can. They're depressing in their obtuseness. - TL
1. Do we agree with the points of the feature?
2. Is Niebuhr Obama's favorite philosopher, theologian, or both? The article's title uses the term "theologian," but the text cites a "widely cited New York Times column" where "President Obama called Niebuhr his 'favorite philosopher.' " We've talked about a Dionne citation/column here (via TNR, although I couldn't find the exact Dionne piece in TNR?). But CNN is apparently referring to an earlier piece by David Brooks who they cite later in the column (though he's not explicitly attached to the prior NYT reference). Anyway, I wonder which of the specialties of knowledge precisely fits Obama's view of Niebuhr.
As a former Missourian, I can't resist noting the last section of the CNN piece in relation to Missouri's former three-term senator, John Danforth. Here's the excerpt:
"Niebuhr would have loved that [Oslo] speech," says John Danforth, an Episcopal priest and a former Republican senator who also admires Niebuhr.
"I was very impressed with that speech," Danforth says. "He said you need to deal with terrorists in a very hard-nosed, pragmatic way but hold to American standards."
Yet Danforth says there are critical differences between Obama and Niebuhr.
"I see in Obama's approach to politics, which is surprisingly partisan and ideological, a hubris that is not Niebuhrian," says Danforth, who is also a partner at the Bryan Cave law firm in St. Louis, Missouri.
But how true, or non-ideological, is that last statement? When Danforth makes those claims, which hat is he wearing: Episcopal priest? Former Republican? Bryan Cave law firm partner (a firm that specializes in corporate transactions)? Global Leadership Foundation member? Or just that of a regular concerned citizen?
BTW: Avoid the 120-plus CNN comments if you can. They're depressing in their obtuseness. - TL
CFP: American Ideas In Context (University of Nottingham)
FYI: From Nick Witham, USIH participant in 2009.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CFP
American Ideas in Context
A Postgraduate and Early Career Conference
School of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham
14 September 2010
Plenary Speaker: Professor Michael O'Brien, Cambridge University
Intellectual history, or the history of ideas, is a methodological approach too often downplayed in disciplinary discussions of American Studies. This belies the fact that the study of American ideas and their specific contexts is vital to a wide variety of work currently taking place within the field.
The School of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham has historically provided a unique institutional context for the development of scholarship in American intellectual history. This one-day conference seeks to build on this expertise in order to highlight and promote the existence of a nation-wide community of postgraduates and early career researchers whose study of the interdisciplinary history of American ideas ranges from history and political theory to literature, art history and cultural studies. Proposing a broad definition of intellectual history, "American Ideas in Context" not only invites papers that cover traditional ground by stressing the importance of certain key intellectuals or abstract ideas. It also encourages presentations that highlight the origins of American ideas in social and political movements. This approach seeks to widen the classification of intellectual 'institutions' to encompass cultural as well as strictly academic sites of knowledge production (visual cultures and the press, for example). Contributions exploring the function of global, transnational and comparative linguistic factors in the formation of American thought will also be encouraged.
Overall, it is hoped that the conference will contribute to a wider understanding of the multiple historical, political and social contexts in which American ideas have been forged.
Subjects might include:
- Republicanism
- Liberalism
- Pragmatism
- Historiography
- Social Science
- The Old and New Lefts
- Conservatism
- Race Thinking
- Feminism
- Environmentalism
- Globalisation
- Identity Politics
If you are a postgraduate student or have completed a PhD since 2005 and wish to give a paper, please send a proposal of no more than 300 words along with a short CV to the contact details below. Papers should be of 20 minutes duration. There will be a number of travel bursaries available for postgraduate presenters, and information about accommodation options will be available shortly.
DEADLINE: 1 May 2010
Email: Nick Witham, american.ideas-at-gmail.com
Here's a link to the conference blog.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CFP
American Ideas in Context
A Postgraduate and Early Career Conference
School of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham
14 September 2010
Plenary Speaker: Professor Michael O'Brien, Cambridge University
Intellectual history, or the history of ideas, is a methodological approach too often downplayed in disciplinary discussions of American Studies. This belies the fact that the study of American ideas and their specific contexts is vital to a wide variety of work currently taking place within the field.
The School of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham has historically provided a unique institutional context for the development of scholarship in American intellectual history. This one-day conference seeks to build on this expertise in order to highlight and promote the existence of a nation-wide community of postgraduates and early career researchers whose study of the interdisciplinary history of American ideas ranges from history and political theory to literature, art history and cultural studies. Proposing a broad definition of intellectual history, "American Ideas in Context" not only invites papers that cover traditional ground by stressing the importance of certain key intellectuals or abstract ideas. It also encourages presentations that highlight the origins of American ideas in social and political movements. This approach seeks to widen the classification of intellectual 'institutions' to encompass cultural as well as strictly academic sites of knowledge production (visual cultures and the press, for example). Contributions exploring the function of global, transnational and comparative linguistic factors in the formation of American thought will also be encouraged.
Overall, it is hoped that the conference will contribute to a wider understanding of the multiple historical, political and social contexts in which American ideas have been forged.
Subjects might include:
- Republicanism
- Liberalism
- Pragmatism
- Historiography
- Social Science
- The Old and New Lefts
- Conservatism
- Race Thinking
- Feminism
- Environmentalism
- Globalisation
- Identity Politics
If you are a postgraduate student or have completed a PhD since 2005 and wish to give a paper, please send a proposal of no more than 300 words along with a short CV to the contact details below. Papers should be of 20 minutes duration. There will be a number of travel bursaries available for postgraduate presenters, and information about accommodation options will be available shortly.
DEADLINE: 1 May 2010
Email: Nick Witham, american.ideas-at-gmail.com
Here's a link to the conference blog.
CFP: American Ideas In Context (University of Nottingham)
FYI: From Nick Witham, USIH participant in 2009.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CFP
American Ideas in Context
A Postgraduate and Early Career Conference
School of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham
14 September 2010
Plenary Speaker: Professor Michael O'Brien, Cambridge University
Intellectual history, or the history of ideas, is a methodological approach too often downplayed in disciplinary discussions of American Studies. This belies the fact that the study of American ideas and their specific contexts is vital to a wide variety of work currently taking place within the field.
The School of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham has historically provided a unique institutional context for the development of scholarship in American intellectual history. This one-day conference seeks to build on this expertise in order to highlight and promote the existence of a nation-wide community of postgraduates and early career researchers whose study of the interdisciplinary history of American ideas ranges from history and political theory to literature, art history and cultural studies. Proposing a broad definition of intellectual history, "American Ideas in Context" not only invites papers that cover traditional ground by stressing the importance of certain key intellectuals or abstract ideas. It also encourages presentations that highlight the origins of American ideas in social and political movements. This approach seeks to widen the classification of intellectual 'institutions' to encompass cultural as well as strictly academic sites of knowledge production (visual cultures and the press, for example). Contributions exploring the function of global, transnational and comparative linguistic factors in the formation of American thought will also be encouraged.
Overall, it is hoped that the conference will contribute to a wider understanding of the multiple historical, political and social contexts in which American ideas have been forged.
Subjects might include:
- Republicanism
- Liberalism
- Pragmatism
- Historiography
- Social Science
- The Old and New Lefts
- Conservatism
- Race Thinking
- Feminism
- Environmentalism
- Globalisation
- Identity Politics
If you are a postgraduate student or have completed a PhD since 2005 and wish to give a paper, please send a proposal of no more than 300 words along with a short CV to the contact details below. Papers should be of 20 minutes duration. There will be a number of travel bursaries available for postgraduate presenters, and information about accommodation options will be available shortly.
DEADLINE: 1 May 2010
Email: Nick Witham, american.ideas-at-gmail.com
Here's a link to the conference blog.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CFP
American Ideas in Context
A Postgraduate and Early Career Conference
School of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham
14 September 2010
Plenary Speaker: Professor Michael O'Brien, Cambridge University
Intellectual history, or the history of ideas, is a methodological approach too often downplayed in disciplinary discussions of American Studies. This belies the fact that the study of American ideas and their specific contexts is vital to a wide variety of work currently taking place within the field.
The School of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham has historically provided a unique institutional context for the development of scholarship in American intellectual history. This one-day conference seeks to build on this expertise in order to highlight and promote the existence of a nation-wide community of postgraduates and early career researchers whose study of the interdisciplinary history of American ideas ranges from history and political theory to literature, art history and cultural studies. Proposing a broad definition of intellectual history, "American Ideas in Context" not only invites papers that cover traditional ground by stressing the importance of certain key intellectuals or abstract ideas. It also encourages presentations that highlight the origins of American ideas in social and political movements. This approach seeks to widen the classification of intellectual 'institutions' to encompass cultural as well as strictly academic sites of knowledge production (visual cultures and the press, for example). Contributions exploring the function of global, transnational and comparative linguistic factors in the formation of American thought will also be encouraged.
Overall, it is hoped that the conference will contribute to a wider understanding of the multiple historical, political and social contexts in which American ideas have been forged.
Subjects might include:
- Republicanism
- Liberalism
- Pragmatism
- Historiography
- Social Science
- The Old and New Lefts
- Conservatism
- Race Thinking
- Feminism
- Environmentalism
- Globalisation
- Identity Politics
If you are a postgraduate student or have completed a PhD since 2005 and wish to give a paper, please send a proposal of no more than 300 words along with a short CV to the contact details below. Papers should be of 20 minutes duration. There will be a number of travel bursaries available for postgraduate presenters, and information about accommodation options will be available shortly.
DEADLINE: 1 May 2010
Email: Nick Witham, american.ideas-at-gmail.com
Here's a link to the conference blog.
Rabu, 03 Februari 2010
Tim's Light Reading (02/3/2010)
1. Studying Reading Reception: The Reception Study Society and its associated annual, Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History, should be of interest to practicing U.S. Intellectual historians. Why? It seems to me that every single community of discourse that ever existed in U.S. history worked, in some way, around the production and reception of some kind of text. Practitioners of reception history studying recent times have recourse to oral histories. This is an exciting development. In the past, however, reception was studied only through personal or institutional papers, and published accounts. On the last, I believe that book reviews are an understudied and under-explored resource for intellectual historians. While I fully understand the weaknesses of this source (e.g. word limitations, written for money, notoriety, for spite, etc.), the problems in assessing authorial motivations in reviews are no different than for any other publication. In other words, we can correct for those limitations, or publicly acknowledge them, and still pick out relevant nuggets of thought from reviews. Of course there are limits: How do we assess the audiences of reviews? That seems to throw us back into the archives to examine personal papers, diaries, etc.
2. The Weight Of Tradition In Publishing: A Berkeley study, summarized in the Chronicle of Higher Education, unsurprisingly reports that tradition weighs heavily on authors in considering publication options. This paragraph sums up the situation:
Although the seven fields surveyed have very different cultures, which are explored at length in the 733-page report, the executive summary points to the persistence of doing scholarly business as usual. "Experiments in new genres of scholarship and dissemination are occurring in every field, but they are taking place within the context of relatively conservative value and reward systems that have the practice of peer review at their core," the report states. It found that young scholars "can be particularly conservative" in their behavior, perhaps because they have more to lose than senior scholars, who "can afford to be the most innovative with regard to dissemination practices."
[The report's authors] identified five key needs of faculty members in regard to scholarly communication. Those include developing "more nuanced tenure and promotion practices that do not rely exclusively on the imprimatur of the publication or easily gamed citation metrics," and reassessing "the locus, mechanisms, timing, and meaning of peer review."
Here are the report's findings on its "History Case Study" (p. 388-503).
3. The Effects Of Catholic Higher Education On Catholics: Positive, Negative, Or In-Between?: Some relatively conservative American Catholic organizations criticize Catholic colleges and universities on the historical grounds that Catholics who attend Catholic institutions come out less Catholic (intellectually, socially, theologically) than when they entered. I have not seen a precise starting date put on this trend by critics. In his comprehensive history of American Catholic higher education, titled Contending With Modernity, Philip Gleason identified a turning point as the 1967 Land O' Lakes Conference held in the Wisconsin town of the same name. Here is the famous statement produced at the conference. Conservative critics pointed back to Land O' Lakes during last year's debates about Obama's Notre Dame address. But a new study, underscored by this InsideHigherEd article, forwards that while Catholics do indeed lose ground on specific Catholic teachings, they gain ground on others at Catholic colleges. In sum, the broad claim by some that Catholic colleges are really not functioning as such is questionable at best. It is more the case that Catholic colleges are not doing exactly what the conservative critics want.
4. Book of Interest: Williams, Zachery R., In Search of the Talented Tenth: Howard University Public Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Race, 1926–1970. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009. xiv, 250 pp. $39.95, isbn 978-0-8262-1862-9.)
5. Workshop of Interest: This Harvard University gathering will be of interest to some of our readers:
International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1825 (Bernard Bailyn, Director)
Workshop---Intellectual History: New Findings, New Approaches, in the Study of Religion, Science, and Cultural Identity
April 10, 2010
This Workshop will concentrate on current innovations in the study of the intellectual history of the Atlantic world, the flow of ideas between Europe and the Americas, from Jos̩ de Acosta to Jonathan Edwards Рnew findings on Biblicism, alchemy, science, architecture, critiques of idolatry, and approaches to the Enlightenment. The intention is not to present descriptive summaries of these subjects but for leading authorities to identify, from work in progress, innovative points of inquiry and to indicate profitable lines for future study. ... To register, and for additional information, please see our Web site or contact the Atlantic History Seminar [Emerson Hall 4th Floor, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; Phone: 617-496-3066; Fax: 617-496-8869; e-mail elebaron-at-fas.harvard.edu].
2. The Weight Of Tradition In Publishing: A Berkeley study, summarized in the Chronicle of Higher Education, unsurprisingly reports that tradition weighs heavily on authors in considering publication options. This paragraph sums up the situation:
Although the seven fields surveyed have very different cultures, which are explored at length in the 733-page report, the executive summary points to the persistence of doing scholarly business as usual. "Experiments in new genres of scholarship and dissemination are occurring in every field, but they are taking place within the context of relatively conservative value and reward systems that have the practice of peer review at their core," the report states. It found that young scholars "can be particularly conservative" in their behavior, perhaps because they have more to lose than senior scholars, who "can afford to be the most innovative with regard to dissemination practices."
[The report's authors] identified five key needs of faculty members in regard to scholarly communication. Those include developing "more nuanced tenure and promotion practices that do not rely exclusively on the imprimatur of the publication or easily gamed citation metrics," and reassessing "the locus, mechanisms, timing, and meaning of peer review."
Here are the report's findings on its "History Case Study" (p. 388-503).
3. The Effects Of Catholic Higher Education On Catholics: Positive, Negative, Or In-Between?: Some relatively conservative American Catholic organizations criticize Catholic colleges and universities on the historical grounds that Catholics who attend Catholic institutions come out less Catholic (intellectually, socially, theologically) than when they entered. I have not seen a precise starting date put on this trend by critics. In his comprehensive history of American Catholic higher education, titled Contending With Modernity, Philip Gleason identified a turning point as the 1967 Land O' Lakes Conference held in the Wisconsin town of the same name. Here is the famous statement produced at the conference. Conservative critics pointed back to Land O' Lakes during last year's debates about Obama's Notre Dame address. But a new study, underscored by this InsideHigherEd article, forwards that while Catholics do indeed lose ground on specific Catholic teachings, they gain ground on others at Catholic colleges. In sum, the broad claim by some that Catholic colleges are really not functioning as such is questionable at best. It is more the case that Catholic colleges are not doing exactly what the conservative critics want.
4. Book of Interest: Williams, Zachery R., In Search of the Talented Tenth: Howard University Public Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Race, 1926–1970. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009. xiv, 250 pp. $39.95, isbn 978-0-8262-1862-9.)
5. Workshop of Interest: This Harvard University gathering will be of interest to some of our readers:
International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1825 (Bernard Bailyn, Director)
Workshop---Intellectual History: New Findings, New Approaches, in the Study of Religion, Science, and Cultural Identity
April 10, 2010
This Workshop will concentrate on current innovations in the study of the intellectual history of the Atlantic world, the flow of ideas between Europe and the Americas, from Jos̩ de Acosta to Jonathan Edwards Рnew findings on Biblicism, alchemy, science, architecture, critiques of idolatry, and approaches to the Enlightenment. The intention is not to present descriptive summaries of these subjects but for leading authorities to identify, from work in progress, innovative points of inquiry and to indicate profitable lines for future study. ... To register, and for additional information, please see our Web site or contact the Atlantic History Seminar [Emerson Hall 4th Floor, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; Phone: 617-496-3066; Fax: 617-496-8869; e-mail elebaron-at-fas.harvard.edu].
Tim's Light Reading (02/3/2010)
1. Studying Reading Reception: The Reception Study Society and its associated annual, Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History, should be of interest to practicing U.S. Intellectual historians. Why? It seems to me that every single community of discourse that ever existed in U.S. history worked, in some way, around the production and reception of some kind of text. Practitioners of reception history studying recent times have recourse to oral histories. This is an exciting development. In the past, however, reception was studied only through personal or institutional papers, and published accounts. On the last, I believe that book reviews are an understudied and under-explored resource for intellectual historians. While I fully understand the weaknesses of this source (e.g. word limitations, written for money, notoriety, for spite, etc.), the problems in assessing authorial motivations in reviews are no different than for any other publication. In other words, we can correct for those limitations, or publicly acknowledge them, and still pick out relevant nuggets of thought from reviews. Of course there are limits: How do we assess the audiences of reviews? That seems to throw us back into the archives to examine personal papers, diaries, etc.
2. The Weight Of Tradition In Publishing: A Berkeley study, summarized in the Chronicle of Higher Education, unsurprisingly reports that tradition weighs heavily on authors in considering publication options. This paragraph sums up the situation:
Although the seven fields surveyed have very different cultures, which are explored at length in the 733-page report, the executive summary points to the persistence of doing scholarly business as usual. "Experiments in new genres of scholarship and dissemination are occurring in every field, but they are taking place within the context of relatively conservative value and reward systems that have the practice of peer review at their core," the report states. It found that young scholars "can be particularly conservative" in their behavior, perhaps because they have more to lose than senior scholars, who "can afford to be the most innovative with regard to dissemination practices."
[The report's authors] identified five key needs of faculty members in regard to scholarly communication. Those include developing "more nuanced tenure and promotion practices that do not rely exclusively on the imprimatur of the publication or easily gamed citation metrics," and reassessing "the locus, mechanisms, timing, and meaning of peer review."
Here are the report's findings on its "History Case Study" (p. 388-503).
3. The Effects Of Catholic Higher Education On Catholics: Positive, Negative, Or In-Between?: Some relatively conservative American Catholic organizations criticize Catholic colleges and universities on the historical grounds that Catholics who attend Catholic institutions come out less Catholic (intellectually, socially, theologically) than when they entered. I have not seen a precise starting date put on this trend by critics. In his comprehensive history of American Catholic higher education, titled Contending With Modernity, Philip Gleason identified a turning point as the 1967 Land O' Lakes Conference held in the Wisconsin town of the same name. Here is the famous statement produced at the conference. Conservative critics pointed back to Land O' Lakes during last year's debates about Obama's Notre Dame address. But a new study, underscored by this InsideHigherEd article, forwards that while Catholics do indeed lose ground on specific Catholic teachings, they gain ground on others at Catholic colleges. In sum, the broad claim by some that Catholic colleges are really not functioning as such is questionable at best. It is more the case that Catholic colleges are not doing exactly what the conservative critics want.
4. Book of Interest: Williams, Zachery R., In Search of the Talented Tenth: Howard University Public Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Race, 1926–1970. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009. xiv, 250 pp. $39.95, isbn 978-0-8262-1862-9.)
5. Workshop of Interest: This Harvard University gathering will be of interest to some of our readers:
International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1825 (Bernard Bailyn, Director)
Workshop---Intellectual History: New Findings, New Approaches, in the Study of Religion, Science, and Cultural Identity
April 10, 2010
This Workshop will concentrate on current innovations in the study of the intellectual history of the Atlantic world, the flow of ideas between Europe and the Americas, from Jos̩ de Acosta to Jonathan Edwards Рnew findings on Biblicism, alchemy, science, architecture, critiques of idolatry, and approaches to the Enlightenment. The intention is not to present descriptive summaries of these subjects but for leading authorities to identify, from work in progress, innovative points of inquiry and to indicate profitable lines for future study. ... To register, and for additional information, please see our Web site or contact the Atlantic History Seminar [Emerson Hall 4th Floor, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; Phone: 617-496-3066; Fax: 617-496-8869; e-mail elebaron-at-fas.harvard.edu].
2. The Weight Of Tradition In Publishing: A Berkeley study, summarized in the Chronicle of Higher Education, unsurprisingly reports that tradition weighs heavily on authors in considering publication options. This paragraph sums up the situation:
Although the seven fields surveyed have very different cultures, which are explored at length in the 733-page report, the executive summary points to the persistence of doing scholarly business as usual. "Experiments in new genres of scholarship and dissemination are occurring in every field, but they are taking place within the context of relatively conservative value and reward systems that have the practice of peer review at their core," the report states. It found that young scholars "can be particularly conservative" in their behavior, perhaps because they have more to lose than senior scholars, who "can afford to be the most innovative with regard to dissemination practices."
[The report's authors] identified five key needs of faculty members in regard to scholarly communication. Those include developing "more nuanced tenure and promotion practices that do not rely exclusively on the imprimatur of the publication or easily gamed citation metrics," and reassessing "the locus, mechanisms, timing, and meaning of peer review."
Here are the report's findings on its "History Case Study" (p. 388-503).
3. The Effects Of Catholic Higher Education On Catholics: Positive, Negative, Or In-Between?: Some relatively conservative American Catholic organizations criticize Catholic colleges and universities on the historical grounds that Catholics who attend Catholic institutions come out less Catholic (intellectually, socially, theologically) than when they entered. I have not seen a precise starting date put on this trend by critics. In his comprehensive history of American Catholic higher education, titled Contending With Modernity, Philip Gleason identified a turning point as the 1967 Land O' Lakes Conference held in the Wisconsin town of the same name. Here is the famous statement produced at the conference. Conservative critics pointed back to Land O' Lakes during last year's debates about Obama's Notre Dame address. But a new study, underscored by this InsideHigherEd article, forwards that while Catholics do indeed lose ground on specific Catholic teachings, they gain ground on others at Catholic colleges. In sum, the broad claim by some that Catholic colleges are really not functioning as such is questionable at best. It is more the case that Catholic colleges are not doing exactly what the conservative critics want.
4. Book of Interest: Williams, Zachery R., In Search of the Talented Tenth: Howard University Public Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Race, 1926–1970. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009. xiv, 250 pp. $39.95, isbn 978-0-8262-1862-9.)
5. Workshop of Interest: This Harvard University gathering will be of interest to some of our readers:
International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1825 (Bernard Bailyn, Director)
Workshop---Intellectual History: New Findings, New Approaches, in the Study of Religion, Science, and Cultural Identity
April 10, 2010
This Workshop will concentrate on current innovations in the study of the intellectual history of the Atlantic world, the flow of ideas between Europe and the Americas, from Jos̩ de Acosta to Jonathan Edwards Рnew findings on Biblicism, alchemy, science, architecture, critiques of idolatry, and approaches to the Enlightenment. The intention is not to present descriptive summaries of these subjects but for leading authorities to identify, from work in progress, innovative points of inquiry and to indicate profitable lines for future study. ... To register, and for additional information, please see our Web site or contact the Atlantic History Seminar [Emerson Hall 4th Floor, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; Phone: 617-496-3066; Fax: 617-496-8869; e-mail elebaron-at-fas.harvard.edu].
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