Tampilkan postingan dengan label book reviewing at USIH. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label book reviewing at USIH. Tampilkan semua postingan
Jumat, 21 September 2012
S-USIH Publications Committee News
As our regular readers know, I was recently appointed by the S-USIH executive board to serve as the chair of the Publications Committee. My colleague Tim Lacy is taking a temporary break from official S-USIH duties, and I am honored to serve out the remainder of his term.
There are a few items of news and business I would like to bring to the attention of our membership.
News
As stated in the S-USIH bylaws, the PubComm chair can appoint up to two additional members to assist in the work of the committee. Thankfully, my colleague Ben Alpers has graciously agreed to continue his work on the Publications Committee. As part of his PubComm duties, Ben is the editor of this blog.
I am also pleased to announce that Mary Ellen Lennon will be joining Ben and myself as a member of the Publications Committee. Mary Ellen is an assistant professor of history at Marian University (Indianapolis); you can read her faculty profile here. She will begin her stint with the committee after October 1.
I have also asked Mary Ellen to take over for me as our book review editor, and I'm glad to say that she has agreed to do so. I'm pretty good at spinning plates, but doing triple duty on the Publications Committee is one plate too many. So I'd rather hand one off than drop one. However, I don't plan on laying everything on Mary Ellen's shoulders. We have a few book review roundtables coming up -- on Ray Haberski's God and War, on Kerwin Lee Klein's From History to Theory, and on Erik McDuffie's Sojourning for Freedom. I will work with Mary Ellen on presenting the Haberski and Klein roundtables; our colleague Lauren Kientz Anderson has arranged the McDuffie roundtable, and she will be assisting Mary Ellen with that presentation.
In the meantime, publishers who wish to submit a book for review should contact Mary Ellen at this email address.
Business
As a regular feature in our S-USIH newsletter -- an edition of which will be published to coincide with this year's conference -- we plan to include a column highlighting professional news from our members.
If you have some news you would like to share with the S-USIH membership -- a recent publication, a new academic position, an upcoming lecture, a professional appointment to an editorial or governing board, and the like -- please let us know.
Send your news items to me, L.D. Burnett. To be included in this fall's newsletter, news items from S-USIH members in good standing (join online here, or download this form and mail it in) should be received BEFORE October 5.
Besides member news, we would be glad to consider guest contributions from our members. We are particularly interested in publishing reflections on the state of the discipline. If you would like to submit a brief essay (1000 - 1250 words), please send that to me before October 5.
Additionally, this blog often features essays by guest contributors. If you would like to write for the blog as a guest contributor, you can contact any of our regular bloggers with a proposal. All of our bloggers have the opportunity to sponsor guest posts at their discretion.
Finally, we would be delighted to add some bloggers to our roster. If you are interested in becoming a weekly contributor to the S-USIH blog, please contact Ben Alpers, our blog editor.
Thank you to our blog readership and to the Society membership for your engagement in our discussions and your support of our work. If you have any suggestions or questions about the work of the Publications Committee, please email me, and I will be glad to discuss the matter with you.
L.D. Burnett
Publications Committee Chair
Rabu, 11 Juli 2012
What the Hell
A few weeks ago, this blog published Jim Livingston's savage critique of Paul Murphy's new book. The critique was part of a roundtable organized by Tim Lacy, our outgoing book review editor. I am our current book review editor. When I read Livingston's piece, I thought, What the hell have I gotten myself into?
I wasn't just wondering about the book review editing gig, or doubting the wisdom of the blogging gig (from which I was taking a working break). What I really had in mind was the entire field and practice of U.S. intellectual history.
That review scared me to death. It was a hit job; I mean, it was a frickin' crime scene. I was stunned, shocked into silence -- sure that I had witnessed something awful and wrong, but afraid to say a thing about it publicly. I did write Jim Livingston privately about it, but I didn't say a thing on this blog.
Nobody did. The whole day that review just sat there, drawing traffic like crazy, and generating who knows what back-channel conversations -- but eliciting not a single remark from any of us, all day long. Then at three in the morning on the day after the essay went up, a blog commenter I hadn't seen in this space before remarked (in a way) on our collective spectatorial silence, but said nothing about the spectacle itself: a senior historian practically eviscerating a junior scholar.
Finally, the day after the review went up, Dan Wickberg took Livingston on. I saw Wickberg's name in the sidebar, and I thought, "Thank God; we're off the hook. The Cavalry has arrived." If anybody exemplifies both intellectual rigor and professional comity, it is Dan Wickberg. If anybody were to speak with unquestionable authority and unwavering collegiality, I knew that Dan would be the one to do it.
Then I came to the closing lines of his comment:
"Instead of farting in the museum, give us a careful and considered argument. We're all adults here; I think we can handle it."
I could not believe my eyes. Farting in the museum? Dan Wickberg wrote this?
What the hell!
But of course, when I re-read the whole comment, it made perfect sense, and I could see exactly what Wickberg was trying to do. He was basically asserting that Livingston's critique amounted to a bit of adolescent behavior meant to shock the priggish, stuffy, dusty old traditional profession of intellectual history. By starting his comment with an offhanded "oh, hell," and ending it with a nonchalant reference to "farting in the museum" (something, alas, I will never be able to un-read), Wickberg was attempting to demonstrate that if Livingston's "screed" is falling on deaf ears, it's not because historians are scandalized by his potty-mouthed language. It's because he's not making a convincing argument.
But if you don't bring a knife to a gun fight, I guess you don't bring a fart to a shit-slinging contest. Livingston's reply to Wickberg's charge of "farting in the museum" was an affectionate and admiring "fuck you."
"What the hell," I thought. "He did NOT just say that."
It's not that I was scandalized or even surprised by Livingston's reply. (It's not that I wasn't ever so slightly amused by it, either.) Instead, I was disappointed. I wanted to hear the argument that Dan had invited him to make.
So I wrote Jim and told him that he blew it; he missed an opportunity to make his case to someone who represents the profession in a way that is open to critique and willing to take Livingston's ideas seriously.
"You have to admit," I wrote, "he rolled out the red carpet for you to deliver a damning indictment of the whole discipline. A scathing Jeremiad. But you have too much of the Prophet Ezekiel about you today. But whenever you're ready to write a guest post, let me know."
I am very pleased to say that Jim Livingston took me up on my offer. He has written a thoughtful essay that is predictably provocative, but perhaps profitably so as well.
It's not a scathing jeremiad, nor is it the cryptic musing of a prophet too easily mistaken for a madman. In this essay, which will be published here on the blog on Thursday, Livingston revisits and to a certain extent revises his earlier critique of Paul Murphy's book. He does so as part of an insightful meditation on the practice and purpose of doing history. Indeed, to call this piece a "historiographic essay" doesn't quite do it justice. Such a description gets at the genre but not the gist, the type but not the tone. Livingston's essay is historiographical, and then some -- it is an inescapably elegiac homage to the historical profession, a profession that must not be content with writing elegies.
I wasn't just wondering about the book review editing gig, or doubting the wisdom of the blogging gig (from which I was taking a working break). What I really had in mind was the entire field and practice of U.S. intellectual history.
That review scared me to death. It was a hit job; I mean, it was a frickin' crime scene. I was stunned, shocked into silence -- sure that I had witnessed something awful and wrong, but afraid to say a thing about it publicly. I did write Jim Livingston privately about it, but I didn't say a thing on this blog.
Nobody did. The whole day that review just sat there, drawing traffic like crazy, and generating who knows what back-channel conversations -- but eliciting not a single remark from any of us, all day long. Then at three in the morning on the day after the essay went up, a blog commenter I hadn't seen in this space before remarked (in a way) on our collective spectatorial silence, but said nothing about the spectacle itself: a senior historian practically eviscerating a junior scholar.
Finally, the day after the review went up, Dan Wickberg took Livingston on. I saw Wickberg's name in the sidebar, and I thought, "Thank God; we're off the hook. The Cavalry has arrived." If anybody exemplifies both intellectual rigor and professional comity, it is Dan Wickberg. If anybody were to speak with unquestionable authority and unwavering collegiality, I knew that Dan would be the one to do it.
Then I came to the closing lines of his comment:
"Instead of farting in the museum, give us a careful and considered argument. We're all adults here; I think we can handle it."
I could not believe my eyes. Farting in the museum? Dan Wickberg wrote this?
What the hell!
But of course, when I re-read the whole comment, it made perfect sense, and I could see exactly what Wickberg was trying to do. He was basically asserting that Livingston's critique amounted to a bit of adolescent behavior meant to shock the priggish, stuffy, dusty old traditional profession of intellectual history. By starting his comment with an offhanded "oh, hell," and ending it with a nonchalant reference to "farting in the museum" (something, alas, I will never be able to un-read), Wickberg was attempting to demonstrate that if Livingston's "screed" is falling on deaf ears, it's not because historians are scandalized by his potty-mouthed language. It's because he's not making a convincing argument.
But if you don't bring a knife to a gun fight, I guess you don't bring a fart to a shit-slinging contest. Livingston's reply to Wickberg's charge of "farting in the museum" was an affectionate and admiring "fuck you."
"What the hell," I thought. "He did NOT just say that."
It's not that I was scandalized or even surprised by Livingston's reply. (It's not that I wasn't ever so slightly amused by it, either.) Instead, I was disappointed. I wanted to hear the argument that Dan had invited him to make.
So I wrote Jim and told him that he blew it; he missed an opportunity to make his case to someone who represents the profession in a way that is open to critique and willing to take Livingston's ideas seriously.
"You have to admit," I wrote, "he rolled out the red carpet for you to deliver a damning indictment of the whole discipline. A scathing Jeremiad. But you have too much of the Prophet Ezekiel about you today. But whenever you're ready to write a guest post, let me know."
I am very pleased to say that Jim Livingston took me up on my offer. He has written a thoughtful essay that is predictably provocative, but perhaps profitably so as well.
It's not a scathing jeremiad, nor is it the cryptic musing of a prophet too easily mistaken for a madman. In this essay, which will be published here on the blog on Thursday, Livingston revisits and to a certain extent revises his earlier critique of Paul Murphy's book. He does so as part of an insightful meditation on the practice and purpose of doing history. Indeed, to call this piece a "historiographic essay" doesn't quite do it justice. Such a description gets at the genre but not the gist, the type but not the tone. Livingston's essay is historiographical, and then some -- it is an inescapably elegiac homage to the historical profession, a profession that must not be content with writing elegies.
Kamis, 01 Maret 2012
The Book Review Editor's Desk: A Call For Reviewers
I was thinking about another long post today on Rick Santorum and his thought in relation Catholic intellectual history, but decided I'm tired of the topic. I don't think it's polemical to say that noting his inconsistencies, Catholic and otherwise, historical and presently, is akin to shooting ducks in a barrel.
So post number one for today comes from "Tim Lacy, USIH Book Review editor." [And now I put on my fedora with the long feather---think Steve Martin in *The Jerk* after he obtains his riches from the opti-grab.]
I want to build up the USIH book review editor's database. With that, if you're interested in contributing to our illustrious review page (and it's more distinguished than you might at first think), send me an e-mail with:
1. Your name;
2. Your institutional affiliation. If you are fortunate enough to have a link for a faculty page, send it;
3. Your USIH specialties (don't just say "intellectual and cultural history"). And, finally,
4. A copy of your most abbreviated CV.
That's it! Here's my address: timothy.n.lacy-AT-gmail.com. - TL
I want to build up the USIH book review editor's database. With that, if you're interested in contributing to our illustrious review page (and it's more distinguished than you might at first think), send me an e-mail with:
1. Your name;
2. Your institutional affiliation. If you are fortunate enough to have a link for a faculty page, send it;
3. Your USIH specialties (don't just say "intellectual and cultural history"). And, finally,
4. A copy of your most abbreviated CV.
That's it! Here's my address: timothy.n.lacy-AT-gmail.com. - TL
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