Bleg: Request For Article Suggestions

Speaking of Professor Cotkin, here's a special request from him:

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I am going to be teaching a reading seminar for M.A. students in U.S. Intellectual and Cultural History in the fall. Are there articles in the field that you think are must reads for the graduate students? If so, please let me know. Thank you for your help.
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Thoughts? John Higham was an outstanding essayist. I would think something by him would float to the top. Also, David Hollinger's collection, In the American Province, seems like it would hold forth possibilities. -TL

Bleg: Request For Article Suggestions

Speaking of Professor Cotkin, here's a special request from him:

-------------------------------------
I am going to be teaching a reading seminar for M.A. students in U.S. Intellectual and Cultural History in the fall. Are there articles in the field that you think are must reads for the graduate students? If so, please let me know. Thank you for your help.
-------------------------------------

Thoughts? John Higham was an outstanding essayist. I would think something by him would float to the top. Also, David Hollinger's collection, In the American Province, seems like it would hold forth possibilities. -TL

A Quote for Tuesday

"In my case, every kind of reading belongs among my recreations--hence among things that liberate me from myself, that allow me to walk about in strange sciences and souls--that I no longer take seriously. Reading is precisely my recreation from my own seriousness. During periods when I am hard at work you will not find me surrounded by books: I'd beware of letting anyone near me talk, much less think. And that is what reading would mean."

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (1908; New York: Vintage, 1967), 242.

A Quote for Tuesday

"In my case, every kind of reading belongs among my recreations--hence among things that liberate me from myself, that allow me to walk about in strange sciences and souls--that I no longer take seriously. Reading is precisely my recreation from my own seriousness. During periods when I am hard at work you will not find me surrounded by books: I'd beware of letting anyone near me talk, much less think. And that is what reading would mean."

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (1908; New York: Vintage, 1967), 242.

Editors and Editing

Over at the Historical Society blog, Randall Stephens recently posted on editors and editing. For some time now, changes in the publishing industry have made it difficult for editors to actually edit. They spend their time in meetings, running budget numbers and performing a variety of tasks that make them more like product managers than editors. Even though the problem seems to lie in the structural and financial changes in publishing houses, editors themselves can sometimes be defensive about these changes. After all, I imagine that they did not get into the business so that they can be product managers that handle intellectual content. When I was shopping around my book manuscript, I once asked an editor (who shall remain nameless) whether it was true that editors no longer edit. He responded tetchily (I'm paraphrasing here, but this is pretty close to what he said), "When am I supposed to edit? I don't have time, and I can't really be expected to sacrifice my entire life to read every book I publish." I don't really want to focus on these changes, which we can't reverse and neither can the editors (but if you want to read about some of the structural shifts, especially as they affect trade houses, check out this piece by Richard Curtis). I want, instead, to talk about the editors who, in spite of these adverse conditions, continue to edit. My editor on The Myth of American Religious Freedom, Theo Calderara, was the platonic ideal of an editor, giving my entire book a close line edit and walking me through the entire process. There are others who continue to find time to edit. I'm told that Susan Ferber of OUP and Joyce Seltzer of HUP provide careful, developmental editing. Chuck Grench at UNC Press does an "editorial report" for the author that makes macro-level suggestions for changing and developing the manuscript before it goes to the copy editor. I'd be curious about other editors that provide substantial editorial help. Note that this is not the place for complaints about an editor, many of whom do the best they can with limited resources. But given these changes in the publishing industry, who continues to edit?

Editors and Editing

Over at the Historical Society blog, Randall Stephens recently posted on editors and editing. For some time now, changes in the publishing industry have made it difficult for editors to actually edit. They spend their time in meetings, running budget numbers and performing a variety of tasks that make them more like product managers than editors. Even though the problem seems to lie in the structural and financial changes in publishing houses, editors themselves can sometimes be defensive about these changes. After all, I imagine that they did not get into the business so that they can be product managers that handle intellectual content. When I was shopping around my book manuscript, I once asked an editor (who shall remain nameless) whether it was true that editors no longer edit. He responded tetchily (I'm paraphrasing here, but this is pretty close to what he said), "When am I supposed to edit? I don't have time, and I can't really be expected to sacrifice my entire life to read every book I publish." I don't really want to focus on these changes, which we can't reverse and neither can the editors (but if you want to read about some of the structural shifts, especially as they affect trade houses, check out this piece by Richard Curtis). I want, instead, to talk about the editors who, in spite of these adverse conditions, continue to edit. My editor on The Myth of American Religious Freedom, Theo Calderara, was the platonic ideal of an editor, giving my entire book a close line edit and walking me through the entire process. There are others who continue to find time to edit. I'm told that Susan Ferber of OUP and Joyce Seltzer of HUP provide careful, developmental editing. Chuck Grench at UNC Press does an "editorial report" for the author that makes macro-level suggestions for changing and developing the manuscript before it goes to the copy editor. I'd be curious about other editors that provide substantial editorial help. Note that this is not the place for complaints about an editor, many of whom do the best they can with limited resources. But given these changes in the publishing industry, who continues to edit?

Is African American literature a function of the Jim Crow era?

Kenneth Warren, one of our plenary speakers at last semester's USIH conference, posted an article in today's Chronicle offering the argument for his new book, What Was African American Literature?--that African American literature no longer exists because it responded particularly to the issues of the segregation/Jim Crow period. He suggests that today black writers are more naturally a part of their class rather than their race and that their literature should be organized based on genre.

I'm still thinking about his argument. Race and class have been bound up in ways that are difficult to disentangle throughout our country's existence. Warren's argument seems to be a function of the question of whether or not African Americans are really more American than they are black, a question that has been perennially raised by black intellectuals. I think the themes he traces within black literature from the Jim Crow period are interesting and compelling, but I don't know that that removes the possibility of a contemporary African American literature that is both black and American and, depending on the content, part of a particular class or a diaspora or many other potential investigations.

Warren's first paragraph:

I'd like to make a claim that runs counter to much of literary scholarship. Historically speaking, the collective enterprise we call African-American or black literature is of recent vintage—in fact, it's just a little more than a century old. Further, it has already come to an end. And the latter is a fact we should neither regret nor lament.