May 16, 2012
AHA Member Spotlight: Robert Cottrol
By Nike Nivar
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. The “AHA Member Spotlight” series recognizes our talented and eclectic membership. Would you like to nominate a colleague for the AHA Member Spotlight? Contact Nike Nivar for more information.
Robert J. Cottrol is the Harold Paul Green Research Professor of Law and professor of history and sociology at the George Washington University. Cottrol lives in Alexandria, Virginia, and has been an AHA member since 1976.
1. Alma mater/s: Yale University (BA, PhD); Georgetown University (JD)
2. Fields of interest: Legal History, Race Relations, Comparative
3. When did you first develop an interest in history?
My interest developed fairly early as a student in high school. I was always an avid reader and was particularly interested in what is now called African American history, because it was an area that was often conspicuous by its absence when I was in elementary and secondary school. I was fortunate to be admitted to Yale College, a rarity then and unfortunately now, for a graduate of an inner city high school. I had the opportunity first as an undergraduate and later as a graduate student to take courses from some of the nation’s and indeed world’s leading historians including John Blassingame, John Blum, Emília Viotti da Costa, David Brion Davis, Howard Lamar, William McFeely, Edmund Morgan, Richard Morse, and a number of others. I also worked closely with Kai Erikson, who was one of the pioneers in the field of historical sociology in its modern form. It was an intellectually exhilarating experience and one that has greatly influenced the direction my life has taken.
4. What projects are you working on currently?
I have been doing a lot of work in recent years looking at the issue of race in Latin America and how it is different from and similar to our experience with race in the United States. I am particularly interested in how the different slave societies of the Americas reacted to the challenges that liberalism and the enlightenment posed to slavery and how those reactions influenced patterns of racial inequality after emancipation and indeed down to the present day. I have a book coming out exploring this theme, it is titled The Long Lingering Shadow: Slavery, Race and Law in the American Hemisphere (University of Georgia Press, Studies in the Legal History of the South series, forthcoming).
5. What books or articles are you currently reading?
I always have a million things on my desk that I am trying to get through. Right now I am reading Alan Bullock’s fascinating dual biography: Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. I am also about to start Antonio Carlos Wolkmer’s História do Direito no Brasil (History of the Law in Brazil). I am also going through the latest AHR with particular attention to Ada Ferrer’s article “Haiti, Free Soil, and Antislavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic.”
6. What do you value most about the history profession?
My background is interdisciplinary. I received my PhD in American studies. My primary teaching appointment is in the George Washington University Law School, and I have secondary appointments in history and sociology. In my view, the strength of history as a field is that it is, or should be, less agenda-driven than other disciplines. Lawyers spend their time marshaling arguments and evidence for the side that they are supporting. Social scientists spend much of their time trying to verify or disprove hypotheses. Historians as a group are more free-ranging. We will start off with some basic assumptions about the subject we are studying, but we are more willing to let our inquiries go where the evidence leads us, at least that should be the case.
7. Do you have a favorite AHA annual meeting anecdote?
When I think back on AHA meetings that I have attended, I of course, remember the sessions, the scholarly interchanges both formal and informal. But I also remember two rather humorous encounters. The first occurred at one of my first AHA meetings. It was in San Francisco in the late 70s. A group of my friends and I were going around to the different receptions—they were called ‘smokers’ then for the inevitable and I might add entirely pleasant pipe smoking that went on at these events. My friends and I were newly minted PhDs or ABDs who had gotten our first jobs and were early in our careers. I think all of us had done our graduate work at Yale, so naturally we went to the Yale smoker first. It was a rather staid affair, men in three piece suits, women in equally stuffy attire. People were discussing their research, latest article or book for the more established scholars, dissertations and how to turn them into books or articles for those of us who were more junior. It was all rather serious and formal. After a while my friends and I left the Yale reception and went to one that was hosted by the Stanford History Department. There we found the same level of intensity in terms of scholarly conversation, but something was different. People were dressed casually, most were sipping white wine. There was a little lively music, playing on some device. One of my friends remarked, “I guess this is the difference between Connecticut and California.”
The second anecdote involves a session I attended, not as a panelist, but as a member of the audience. The session was on the crowd in history. After the panelists had made their presentations and comments, discussion was thrown open to members of the audience. A number of people in the audience made comments about various points relating to the topic. Many of those who did so mentioned the work of George Rudé, one of the premier students of the crowd and collective protest. Finally one man stood up and said “I am George Rudé,” and proceeded to give his views on the subject. It wasn’t exactly like the scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen brought in Marshall McLuhan to explain why the film critic was misinterpreting McLuhan’s work, but it bore some resemblance to that scene.
8. Any final thoughts?
History as a discipline is tremendously important. Historians have a sense of the fine texture and the messy details of particular times and places that provide a necessary correction to our tendency to over generalize or to develop broad theories that all too often take real people out of the social sciences. The cliché among historians that “the sources speak to me,” tells of the real commitment among the best of historians to understand the past on its own terms. But I wonder if this very real strength of historians can, at times, become the discipline’s greatest weakness. I wonder if at times historians can become too wedded to particular times and places and miss the necessity to try and draw broader conclusions from our research. This can start with the earliest entry into the profession. Students in graduate school naturally enough have particular fields. No one can be expected to make all of history one’s field in either graduate school or one’s professional life. Still I wonder if we prepare people entering the historical profession for the possibility that their fields and their interests can and perhaps indeed should change over the course of their professional lives. Consider two examples. In many graduate programs we have been eroding, almost to the point of invisibility, the foreign language requirement for students working on PhDs in American history or American studies. Are we saying to the fledgling American historian the issue you are working on—populist politics and racial exclusion, the tension between judicial independence and democratic governance, women’s education and ethnic stratification, and many others—have no foreign counterparts? That a person contemplating a career as an American historian should not prepare herself or himself for the possibility of exploring those questions that engaged their interests in the U.S. context in the context of other societies?
I think the problem of over particularity also is seen in the hiring process, particularly of junior faculty. Hiring in history tends to be incredibly field-specific. I wonder if this is good for junior scholars. Does it heighten the tendency for people to think of themselves as very narrow specialists, rather than as historians who have learned a great deal about a specific time and place and who might choose to continue a particular inquiry, or might use their insights to shed light on some new historical problem? I also wonder if overspecialization in hiring is good for the historical profession as a whole. Are departments prevented from hiring the best of the junior historians that come on the market in a given year precisely because field plays too large a role in hiring? It is interesting to contrast hiring in law schools with hiring in history departments. Law schools in hiring junior people tend to go after what they deem to be “the best athlete” in a given year. This is not always the case—certain fields, tax for example, require specialists. But there is a view that a significant percentage of new hires can be seen as generalists who can develop a teaching expertise in a wide variety of areas. Obviously this model cannot be directly imported into history departments. We don’t want a person who has just completed a dissertation on race relations in New York in the Gilded Age to teach a graduate seminar on the Ming dynasty in the 16th century. Even granting that, I wonder if history departments would be better served with more flexibility with respect to fields. I will take the field with which I am most familiar, American history and ask if we get too field specific in our hiring. Should we advertise for people who do Jacksonian era politics or would we be better served by looking for the best young person on the market in 19th-century U.S. history, or perhaps even the best young person in U.S. history? I think we would do better by history as a discipline and as a profession if we did the latter.
May 14, 2012
Herbert Feis Award for Public History
By Debbie Ann Doyle
The American Historical Association invites nominations for the Herbert Feis Award for distinguished contributions to public history. Public historians are welcome to nominate themselves or their colleagues.
The terms of the award define both “contribution” and “public history” broadly. Contributions could, for example, include work as the administrator of a public history group or agency (such as a historical society, a historic site, or a community history project) or as the creator or producer of a public history product or products (such as a museum exhibit, radio script, website, oral history collection, or film).
Often, the contribution will be the result of years of effort in the field, but the prize might also recognize a singular contribution of major importance such as a path-breaking museum exhibit.
Public history is defined as work primarily directed at nonacademic, non-school-based audiences. Those audiences could be very broad (e.g., television viewers) or highly specialized (e.g., policymakers). Although the audience should be primarily outside of academia, the recipient of the award could be employed at a university.
At the suggestion of the selection committee, the prize description has been expanded to widen eligibility beyond “the last ten years”; reiterates and makes more explicit that this is a prize for service, not books; to request more specific examples of contributions to the field; and to emphasize that the contributions should be of more than local significance.
Because there was a delay in appointing the committee, the application deadline has been extended until August 1, 2012. See the prize announcement for more details and instructions on how to apply.
May 11, 2012
Grant of the Week: Hiett Prize in the Humanities
The Hiett Prize in the Humanities, awarded by the Dallas Institute, is an annual award aimed at identifying candidates who are in the early stages of careers devoted to the humanities and whose work shows extraordinary promise and has a significant public component related to contemporary culture. The opposite of a lifetime achievement award, the Hiett Prize seeks to encourage future leaders in the humanities by 1) recognizing their early accomplishment and their potential and 2) assisting their ongoing work through a cash award of $50,000. Learn more about the prize, past winners, and how to apply, through the Hiett Prize page online. The deadline for applications is June 1, 2012.
May 11, 2012
AHA Links for Teacher Appreciation Week
By Allen Mikaelian
If you haven’t thanked a teacher this week, there’s still time. As Teacher Appreciation Week winds down and students and teachers alike turn to appreciation of summer, we offer just the slimmest sample of links to articles in Perspectives on History by committed, engaged, and innovative history teachers over the past few years.
The articles below are just a taste of what’s appeared in Perspectives on History. We welcome other links and resources in the comments section. We also recommend our Resources for Teachers page.
AHA members can read this month’s roundtable on “The Current State of History Education,” which tackles the challenges of teaching good history in systems that seem to devalue the discipline. Not yet a member? Check back on June 1, when all the articles in the May 2012 Perspectives on History become available to all, and please note that all the articles mentioned below are now available to everyone.
Several past articles deal with connecting research to teaching and academia to the K–12 classroom. In “Active Learning in the University Classroom,” Professor Edward Berenson discusses “What I Learned from Elementary School Teachers” and how their innovations desperately needed to be brought to the university lecture hall. Wilson J. Warren writes about the need for “Bridging the Gap between K–12 Teachers and Postsecondary Historians” and how the two sides often differ on what history education is for. Bruce VanSledright asks, “Why Should Historians Care about History Teaching?” and reminds professors that they are part of a cycle. If they are disappointed with the products of high schools, they have to partially blame themselves. Also on the topic of connections is Barbara A. Mathews and Marilyn McArthur’s article on “The Museum in the Middle,” which presents the museum as the “third partner” and a facilitator between the research university and the K–12 school.
For several years now, Perspectives on History has been highlighting the use of technology in the history classroom with articles by several innovative teachers. Among these are Russell Olwell’s take on connecting students to the world through blogging, Krista Sigler’s innovative approach to Twitter as a way to teach the “history of the present,” Jeremy Brown and Benedicte Melanie Olsen’s recent description of a Wikipedia project in an undergraduate classroom, and David Voelker’s “Clicking for Clio,” which demonstrates how to use student response systems for real-time classroom feedback.
One of our most popular recent teaching forums was on “Controversy in the Classroom,” which introduced readers to some particularly brave teachers willing to tackle subjects like sexuality in history (by Christopher L. Doyle), LGBTQ history (by Vicki L. Eaklor), the Middle East (by Omnia El-Shakry), and the Galileo affair, as a way to set the tone for discussing controversy (by Oscar Chamberlain and Anthony Millevolte).
To these teachers and all the others who have contributed stories, articles, ideas, and letters to our magazine and website over the years, we extend our many thanks, and best wishes for the summer.
May 10, 2012
What We’re Reading: May 10, 2012
By Nike Nivar, Allen Mikaelian, and Robert B. Townsend
Today’s roundup of interesting articles and links from around the web includes a look into an undergraduate project about the historical context of 9/11, a manifesto on the vocation of public history, the Smithsonian’s Bigger Picture blog, and more.
News
- John Gray to lead Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History
The former president of the Autry National Center of the American West will oversee a collection of 3 million objects and renovations of the museum’s west wing.
- ASU history professor at center of plagiarism debate
The Arizona Republic reports that a plagiarism charge against one Arizona State University history professor prompted sharp divisions on the campus and in the department.
Digital Archiving
- History Flushed: The Digital Age Promised Vast Libraries, but They Remain Incomplete
Noting large gaps in the preservation of digital materials, The Economist warns that large quantities of contemporary information will soon be consigned to the technological dust bin.
- Greetings from Anywhere
The Smithsonian’s Bigger Picture blog reminds us that it’s National Postcard Week and posts a few cards from its collection in a celebration of deltiology.
Insights
- Historicizing 9/11
Jim Downs describes an undergraduate history project to create a documentary and examine “the broader historical context in which 9/11 unfolded.”
- On the Vocation of Public History<
Suzanne Fischer, associate curator of technology at The Henry Ford, offers an excellent manifesto that encourages students to “Become a public historian because you love the potential of history to change, enrich and help make sense of people’s lives.”
Commentary
- When Was Professional History Not Boring?
Responding to AHA President Bill Cronon’s recent essay on “Professional Boredom,” Darin Hayton of Haverford College reviews the seemingly perpetual anxieties on the issue in the discipline, and the hazards of impenetrable and esoteric prose.
- Discussion of the Chronicle’s “The PhD Now Comes with Food Stamps” article
Reporter Stacey Patton talks about the growth in the number of people with advanced degrees who receive government aid. To help the conversation, Jim Grossman expands on his response to the Chronicle about PhDs on food stamps.
Contributors: Nike Nivar, Allen Mikaelian, and Robert B. Townsend
May 09, 2012
Historians vs. Evolution: New Book Explains Why Historians Might Have a Hard Time Reaching Wide Audiences, Getting a Date
By Allen Mikaelian
Jonathan Gottschall’s new headline-grabbing book, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, didn’t set out to comment on contemporary historical practice. Gottschall barely mentions history in his short, cogently argued volume. But, if he is right about the reasons for the centrality of story in human life, and the type of stories preferred, he has added another pillar to Sam Wineburg’s argument that historical thinking is an “unnatural act.”
Gottschall, while admitting that science isn’t 100 percent certain on the point, clearly believes that we became a storytelling species because of its evolutionary advantage. Stories can help the storyteller find a mate through “gaudy, peacock like displays.” Stories are social simulators, he writes, “honing the neural pathways that regulate our responses to real-life experiences.” He cites studies that suggest “heavy fiction readers [have] better social skills and empathic ability—than those who mainly read non-fiction.” Even after taking into account potentially damaging and pernicious fictions, stories are, he argues, “on the whole, good for us.” And even if they are not, it makes little difference: “We are, as a species, addicted to story.”
Historians can write stories. Sometimes they choose not to, because they’re writing for a particular audience. (Gottschall understands this, having made an effort to ‘unlearn’ his own academic writing habits.) But most historians also believe, to quote William Cronon’s recent article, that “Getting facts right generally trumps good storytelling.” For those historians, The Storytelling Animal could be a depressing book.
Here, facts have little to do with being human, when compared to all that story has accomplished. The public’s inclination toward an engaging story over and above things that historians value, like contingency and complexity, isn’t just a matter of personal choice or intellectual laziness—it’s a successful, hard-wired evolutionary adaptation that allowed societies to be built and genes to be passed on. That gulf separating the careful historian from a general reading public has deep and functional roots. Historical thinking, if Gottschall is right, is not just an “unnatural act,” it’s the kind of thinking that would have, in the wilds from which we emerged, gotten us killed (or at least kicked out of the gene pool).
Historians can tell stories too, but it’s important to note what kind of stories the human mind favors, according to Gottschall. Fictions posing as fact seem to have played a strong role in our species’ survival, from the self-aggrandizing memory to the national myth to the conspiracy theory, which sweeps away the “wildly complex swirl of abstract historical and social variables.” Novelists, filmmakers, and some nonfiction writers can take up these fictions and turn them into compelling narratives and reach wide audiences without doing harm to their profession. Historians, however, are stuck with questioning myth, memory, and conspiracy as a professional imperative, and their audiences are, quite possibly, designed by evolution to ignore them.
This may be why we have to revisit this issue again and again, and why so much of what Gottschall says is so familiar. William Cronon has posited that the historian’s passion, the love of the past, can serve as common ground for the academics, general readers, and amateurs. Perhaps that passion can counteract, to some extent, the effects of evolution. We can also listen closely to our history teachers, who are faced with the challenge of communicating to “storytelling animals” on a daily basis.
An essay in this month’s Perspectives on History by Terrie Epstein discusses how to train students to engage in the ”unnatural act” of historical thinking. Historians can (and often do) put some of these techniques into their narratives, addressing a larger audience without sacrificing historical values. For example, Epstein recommends structuring classes around open-ended questions, direct contact with primary sources, and greater participation. It’s not hard to see how any of these techniques could help kindle the amateur’s passion that William Cronon discusses in his recent essay. It’s also possible to see how a writer could do the same—for example, bringing the reader into the project by not revealing the answer too soon, letting them come to their own conclusions, and bringing the primary source more fully into the discussion rather than leaving it in the footnotes.
Gottschall insists that “fiction is, on the whole, good for us.” But, so is understanding complexity and contingency. Teachers have noted, for example, how improved historical thinking improves reading comprehension and writing. Being able to follow an analysis, not simply a narrative, doesn’t have to take us away from the “stories that make us human,” in fact it can bring us back to them with even stronger understanding.
May 08, 2012
More on “The Ph.D. Now Comes With Food Stamps”
By James R. Grossman
The recent Chronicle of Higher Education article, on the struggles of Ph.D. students and graduates on public assistance, raises a vitally important issue, one that deserves the full discussion now taking place online. I was glad to provide comments for the article, but, no doubt, space constraints made a fuller quotation of my longer replies to the Chronicle impossible. So here, to help continue the conversation, are two additional follow-up questions submitted to me via email on March 30, 2012, and my complete, unedited replies.
1. Are you surprised to hear that there adjuncts in the humanities who are on government assistance because they get paid so low?
I’m certainly aware of the inadequate pay scales that characterize the employment structure for many historians and others in the academy. Anyone familiar with the rates of pay for scholars teaching part time in colleges and universities has to be aware of the possibility that part time teaching could easily be compatible with eligibility for various forms of public assistance.
2. What do you think scholarly associations can do to address this issue and the deteriorating working conditions among a good number of adjuncts?
The AHA and other scholarly societies can, and do, establish and endorse best practices documents for employment of non-tenure track faculty, and use the various forums and publications available to us to advocate for such practices. We also have been involved in a substantive data gathering process through the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, which we hope will strengthen these advocacy efforts. The Coalition brings together a variety of organizations, including scholarly societies, the AFT, AAUP, New Faculty Majority, and others, working together to seek and then mobilize leverage in this area. The AHA, like other scholarly societies, considers the shifting employment structure in colleges and universities to be a major issue in terms of both fair employment practices, and educational quality. If we are to provide first class education to our students, we must provide their teachers with working conditions appropriate to those ambitions.
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May 08, 2012
Competitive Proposal Selection for 2013 Annual Meeting
By Debbie Ann Doyle
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The proposal selection process for the 127th annual meeting in New Orleans, January 3–6, 2013, was the most competitive in AHA history. The Program Committee could accept only 42 percent of submissions, and worked hard to craft a program that will represent the breadth and diversity of the field, stimulate conversation across specialties, and offer sessions of interest to all historians.
Notifications of the committee’s decisions were e-mailed to all session organizers on April 27, 2012. If you are a session organizer and have not heard from the Program Committee, please contact aha@historians.org. If you are a panelist, please contact the session organizer.
May 07, 2012
AHA Council Statement on Michigan Legislation
The AHA Council has passed the following statement on recently proposed legislation in Michigan:
Academic freedom is indispensable to the educational enterprise. The AHA deplores efforts of legislators and other public officials to override the professional judgment of college and university faculty in curricular matters broadly defined. Faculty must remain in control of decisions such as establishing curriculum, creating syllabi, choosing reading material and making other kinds of assignments, and providing research opportunities for their students. Partisan political meddling is bad both for the educational development of students and for the pursuit of knowledge.
Increasingly, faculty are finding that students’ education can often be enhanced by internships in organizations that are not a part of the college or university. An internship can enable a student to obtain knowledge, develop skills, and acquire experience in a way that would be difficult, or even impossible, to duplicate in campus settings. At the same time, students should receive history credit for internships only if they are doing work that historians would unquestionably recognize as historical. For a history student, this kind of work outside the classroom might involve learning to create, manage, or do research in a particular type of archive; compiling oral histories or other kinds of documentation; summarizing complex patterns of historical fact for people who have neither the time nor skills to do such research themselves; or countless other activities that simultaneously bring historical skills to institutional needs and enable students to understand the value of their history education beyond the academy.
In a free and diverse society, some students will inevitably choose to intern at organizations pursuing projects of which some people disapprove; indeed, some may wind up at organizations of which the supervising faculty does not fully approve. Placements across the political spectrum are not necessarily inappropriate. In all cases, when assessing the educational value of placements, the professional judgment of properly qualified and appointed faculty must be decisive.
The proposed Michigan legislation improperly injects political criteria into education, and attempts to write into law broad principles that would have negative consequences, both for education and the communities in which our institutions of higher education exist. Had legislation like this existed fifty years ago, a Michigan public university probably could not have placed a student as an archivist with a civil rights organization that supported lunch counter sit-ins; today it probably could not approve an internship that requires a student to search foreign newspapers to help build a non-profit’s database on forced labor by prisoners, worker safety, or waste disposal at third-world factories if a Michigan company had an interest in one of those factories. Nor, for that matter, could it place a student doing even non-controversial kinds of research at an organization studying any number of global problems—religious or political persecution, child trafficking, or genocide—if that organization called for a Michigan business to stop dealing with the offending foreign government or movement.
The proposed law would, in short, make illegal the gathering of information, or even learning how to gather information, in cooperation with a group that seeks to inform public debate. Such restrictions would both improperly hinder student learning, and impoverish the reasoned debate which is essential to democracy. Moreover, since the proposed legislation does not distinguish between the main activity of the organization and incidental activities, its reach and its harm are probably even broader than is immediately apparent. Even a single gesture in the history of an otherwise completely neutral organization could theoretically make it impossible for a university to ever place an intern there.
The question to ask about an educational internship is not whether one fully endorses everything that every organization receiving an intern does; it is whether a particular internship has been designed in order to confer a significant educational benefit on the student. And that is a question for educators, not politicians, to decide.
May 04, 2012
Grant of the Week: Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, located in Berlin, offers one Postdoctoral Fellowship for a scholar in legal history or history of technology. The position lasts for 10 months, starting October 15, 2012 (with the possibility of starting earlier), and may be renewed. Outstanding junior scholars are invited to apply. This fellowship is awarded in conjunction with the research project, “The Writing of Deaf-Muteness and the Construction of Norms,” which “traces the writing and illustration of deaf-muteness from the early 17th century to the late 19th century in Europe and the United States.” The fellowship is endowed with a monthly stipend between €1,900 and €2,300. Deadline: June 6, 2012. Learn more and find instructions on how to apply here.
May 03, 2012
What We’re Reading: May 3, 2012
Today’s roundup of interesting articles and links from around the web includes H-Net’s updated platform, digital projects in the humanities, historic photos from the New York City Department of Municipal Records, and more.
News
H-Net 2.0
H-Net, an online discussion space for historians, is moving over to a new platform, which offers a sleeker design and more functionality.- NEH Accepting Nominations for 2013 Jefferson Lecturer
The National Endowment for the Humanities is now accepting nominations of an outstanding scholar for next year’s Jefferson Lecturer. Previous lecturers include Drew Gilpin Faust, Jonathan Spence, and a number of other notable speakers. This lectureship is a distinguished honor and carries an honorarium of $10,000. In other NEH news, the NEH website has undergone a redesign. - Rome Prize Winners 2012–13
Congratulations to Joshua Colin Birk and Dominique Kirchner Reill, AHA members who are among the winners of the 2012–13 Rome Prize.
Digital Humanities
The Humanities, Digitized
Harvard Magazine explores a number of humanities digitization projects and considers the “impact of communication revolutions.” One of the scholars featured in the article, historian Jo Guldi, discusses the importance of involving historians in analyzing data.- MLA Urges Evaluators to “Give Full Regard” to Digital Work
The Chronicle reports on the Modern Language Association’s recently revised “Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media.” - Data Journalism Handbook
Solid introduction to how to turn a large amount of data into a story. Includes visualization, queries, crowdsourcing, acquiring data, and how to “become data literate in 3 simple steps.” Free and open source.
Insights
- Pilgrims, Cowboys, and Loneliness
Cameron Blevins at Historying appreciates the thoughtful and measured tone of this month’s Atlantic cover story, but not how it uses history. - Cockroaches and Compromise
Paul Starr reviews two books on compromise and two historical cases of compromise gone wrong. - Historiann retains birthright
Blogger Historiann has far too much fun responding to an offer to have a computer grade her students’ papers. - Behind the Right’s Phony War on the Nonexistent Religion of Secularism
Rick Perlstein looks at the history of the idea that “secular humanism” is a religion.
History
Historic Photos From the NYC Municipal Archives
The Atlantic’sIn Focus blog showcases a few images from the New York City Department of Municipal Records’ online archive (please note, this website is very slow to load), which contains over 870,000 images.- The Castle: An Illustrated History of the Smithsonian Building, 2nd edition
The most distinctive building on the National Mall gets a detailed coffee-table treatment, covering the history of the building and many of the notable curators and scientists who worked there. - Video: Civil War Widows’ Pension Digitization Project at the National Archives
In a new video, the National Archives goes behind-the-scenes at the Civil War Widows’ Pension Digitization Project. - Discover Churchill
Last week, the Morgan Library & Museum and the Churchill Archives Centre jointly launched DiscoverChurchill.org, a new website that examines Winston Churchill’s words, leadership, actions, and historical impact.
Contributors: Elisabeth Grant, Matthew Keough, Allen Mikaelian, and Robert B. Townsend
May 02, 2012
Hiring: AHA Assistant Editor, Web Content and Social Media
The American Historical Association is seeking a detail-oriented self-starter to assist in updating and maintaining content on the AHA’s website and social media outlets.
The assistant editor for web content and social media reviews and posts information, maintains the schedule for updating content, and solicits updated information for key sections of the site. Basic copyediting skills, comfort working with HTML code, and the ability to work independently as well as in a team environment are essential.
Experience with the digital humanities and social media strategy a plus. Opportunity to learn new skills and training provided. Salary in the 40s (commensurate with qualifications) with excellent benefits. For additional details, see the complete description of the position. Send resume and cover letter by e-mail to applications@historians.org.
May 02, 2012
AHA Member Spotlight: Padraic Kenney
By Nike Nivar
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. The “AHA Member Spotlight” series recognizes our talented and eclectic membership. Would you like to nominate a colleague for the AHA Member Spotlight? Contact Nike Nivar for more information.
AHA Member Spotlight
Padraic Kenney is a professor of history, director of the Russian and East European Institute, and director of the Polish Studies Center at Indiana University. Kenney first joined the AHA in 2010.
1. Alma mater/s: Harvard University, University of Toronto, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
2. Fields of interest: Eastern Europe, communism, social movements, revolution
3. When did you first develop an interest in history?
In Moscow in 1984. I thought I was interested in Kremlinology, really (I was a Russian studies major, and had taken only a few history courses, including one on the Russian Revolution taught by Jane Burbank). But I had to notice that my Russian friends really cared about history, in ways I could not understand. For example, some were dissidents, yet they spoke with warm emotion about 1917, and made me memorize some of Mayakovsky’s verse. I came back from that four-month study committed to history, and to the study of the experience of revolution.
4. What projects are you working on currently?
I am writing a book on the experience of political incarceration in the modern world, in which I try to explain how prisoners emerge as important figures in modern contentious politics, and to examine what takes place in the prison cell. This work is based on research in about two dozen archives in Poland, South Africa, Ireland, and the UK.
Meanwhile, I continue to think a bit about my earlier focus, the revolutions of 1989, and in particular the ways that East European experiences in the 1980s inform, influence, or help us to understand subsequent revolutions, up to and including the Arab Spring of 2011.
5. What books or articles are you currently reading?
I am afraid I have the habit of reading several things at once, alternating chapters. I never seem to be able to stay immersed for long. At my favorite reading chair now are:
- Steven Barnes, Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society (Princeton, 2011)
- Andrzej Friszke, Anatomia buntu: Kuroń, Modzelewski, i komandosi (Znak, 2010)
- Tom Lodge, Sharpeville: An Apartheid Massacre and Its Consequences (Oxford, 2011)
6. What do you value most about the history profession?
I am proud of the fact that the work of historians, even at its most specialized, has the potential of speaking to the educated public. I think we underestimate this quality, maybe assuming that those who watch the History Channel or browse the shelves at Barnes & Noble only seek certain types of history. But in fact most of our work has that accessible potential, and the same cannot be said of many other disciplines.
Editor’s Note: Are you an AHA member? Would you like to nominate a colleague for the AHA Member spotlight? Contact Nike Nivar at nnivar@historians.org for more information.
May 01, 2012
Reader Survey: Perspectives on History
We are inviting members of the AHA and subscribers to Perspectives on History to provide feedback on the newsmagazine through a short survey. The last survey, conducted in 2008, resulted in changes like full color printing and more feature articles. We now invite you to help us shape your newsmagazine as it moves into its 51st year. Please click here to take survey. It should take less than 15 minutes to complete.
If you prefer, you can also fill out the questionnaire on pages 53-54 of the print version of the May 2012 issue of Perspectives on History and fax the two pages to Perspectives Survey at 202-544-8307 or mail them to Perspectives Survey, AHA, 400 A St., SE, Washington, DC 20003-3889.
For those interested in the previous survey results, they are here.
We appreciate your taking the time to complete the survey, and look forward to reading and reporting on your responses.
May 01, 2012
Perspectives on History – May 2012
By Elisabeth Grant
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The online version of the May 2012 issue of Perspectives on History is now available, and features a forum on the “Possibilities of Pedagogy,” which explores the current state of history education and thought-provoking ideas for the classroom. The issue also includes articles on the importance of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), a recent report on history salaries, Brazilian film as a cultural lens, and more.
As always, thank you for reading, and be sure to take the Perspectives on History Reader Survey to help shape the newsmagazine’s future.
Read on for an overview of some of these articles, and check out the May 2012 issue online for yourself. Please note that some articles are available only to AHA members. To read these articles, you will need to log in to AHA online services.
From the President and the Executive Director
AHA President William Cronon begins this month’s issue by considering historians’ use of analysis or synthesis, or “depth over breadth.” He asks, “which should we prefer?” and then goes on to examine the qualities of both.
On March 22, 2012, AHA Executive Director James Grossman and a diverse group of other humanities supporters advocated for the humanities and NEH funding by testifying before the House Committee on Appropriations’ Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies. Read the transcript of Grossman’s testimony, reprinted in this month’s issue.
News
Robert B. Townsend reports on history salaries and how they compare to other fields in the humanities and considers book reviewers’ resistance to e-books in his two articles this month. Also learn about the AHA Professional Division’s new statement on online publication of dissertations and the OAH’s report urging the National Park Service to “recommit to history.”
In other news, Debbie Ann Doyle explains what sessions, tours, and other events are being planned for the AHA’s 2013 annual meeting in New Orleans.
Then, reporting from Washington, National Coalition for History Executive Director Lee White explains how “Advocacy Begins at Home,” and provides a checklist so you can get started. Marian J. Barber describes how the National History Center is a most useful virtual intellectual destination—especially for teachers, students, researchers, and others interested in current historical scholarship—in “A Global Forum without Walls.”
Possibilities of Pedagogy
The bulk of this month’s issue is taken up by a forum on the “Possibilities of Pedagogy.” This series of articles tackles the current state of history, using history to improve student literacy, the California History-Social Science Project, two pieces on history in elementary schools, grammar and history, world history, teaching with primary sources, preparing history teachers, and history writing.
Masters at the Movies
The Masters at the Movies series, which features historians offering their perspectives on film, continues this month with an introduction from Robert Brent Toplin, followed by Marshall C. Eakin’s discussion of the Brazilian film Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands.
More
In this issue you’ll also find recent news from AHA members, letters to the editor about professional boredom and getting facts right, our social media roundup, and memorials for Bernard Bellush, Paul Boyer, and Domenico Sella.
April 30, 2012
AHA Book Prizes and Awards – Apply by May 15
By offering a variety of prizes, fellowships, and awards, the American Historical Association recognizes a wide range of distinguished historical work, which can take the form of an exceptional book, teaching and mentoring, and even film. Judge contact information for all AHA book prizes and awards has now been posted on the AHA’s web site. Applications for these book prizes and awards must be postmarked by or on May 15, 2012.
April 30, 2012
Planning Your History Road Trip
By Allen Mikaelian
There are some things researchers gather on their archive trips that infect their projects and guide their prose, but never make it into the citations—standing where the subjects stood, walking through buildings they’d inhabited, getting a feel for the climate and the landscape. There is no substitute for being there. In honor of summer travel, of road trips, archives visits, family vacations, and wanderlust, here are a few resources for taking history on the road.
National Park Service
Construct a plan with the National Park Service Itinerary Series. Organized by state, region, or topic, history travelers can use the site to build itineraries around interests like the Underground Railroad, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the development of flight, and “places where women made history.”
Civil War
No one should be surprised to find an overwhelming amount of online assistance for Civil War tourism, with one of the most popular sites being civilwartraveler.com. Twenty-six of their podcasts, which provide walking tours by Park Service historians, are available on their website or through the iTunes store. The Civil War Traveler recommends the 1861 Project, providing contemporary takes on Civil War music, as something to listen to while driving between Civil War sites.
Roadside America
Longtime favorite Roadside America takes cultural tourists well off the beaten path and can guide the history traveler to the largest rural Chinatown in the U.S., the Computer History Museum, Dutchy the Yankee Confederate, and the Birthplace of “Happy Birthday to You.” Roadside America specializes in the quirky and grassroots locales, providing a pitch-perfect counterpoint to the National Park Service sites. Combining the two, a traveling historian could explore two levels of interpretation of the past—the chaos of the idiosyncratic popular exhibits set up by untrained but enthusiastic amateur historians and the more carefully considered and closely mediated history of the Park Service.
Alternative History
As a bonus, the peripatetic historian can experience the histories that never were at sites like Professor Cline’s Dinosaur Kingdom (link to one of many news stories), which writes dinosaurs into the Civil War. Or, those interested in history that hasn’t happened yet can explore the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk. How to interpret such sites? What do they tell us about the place of history in American culture? Might they hint at a rebellion among the public at large against the idea that there is a single, monolithic past? Or is it simply that everything is better with dinosaurs?
Looking Into the Past
Some time ago, there was a burst of interest in the “looking into the past” meme (more, and more, and still more) that involved holding an old photograph up to the scene where it was taken, and snapping another photo, creating a layer of the past over the present. New websites and mobile apps take this activity into the age of social media, and can potentially turn any street into a museum.
Historypin, available in a browser or as a mobile app, has collected over 100,000 historical photos, from archives and personal collections, and virtually pinned them to a Google Map. An impressive number of museums and libraries have contributed photos (you can find them through ‘channels’—for example, here’s the National Archives’ channel). A GPS-
enabled smartphone with the Historypin app will guide you to the spot where the photo was taken, and the smartphone’s camera will allow you enter the world of “augmented reality” by overlaying the historical photo onto the current view of the location. Another similarly innovative use of historical photos is at What Was There, which makes good use of Google Maps’ street view and also has a mobile app.
This is of course only the smallest taste of what’s available to the history road tripper. We welcome other suggestions in the comments, and would love to hear about how being at a place where history happened can change your perspective on the past.
April 27, 2012
Students of History, AHA members, among new Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellows
By Allen Mikaelian
Four history graduate students, including two AHA members, are among the 21 PhD candidates who have been awarded the 2012 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. The fellowship supports outstanding work being done by “Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences addressing questions of ethical and religious values.” The fellows will receive $25,000 to support a year of writing.
Joshua Gedacht has traveled to the Philippines, the Netherlands, Indonesia, and Washington, D.C. to research his dissertation, “Islamic‐Imperial Encounters: Colonial Warfare, Coercive Cosmopolitanism, and Religious Reform in Southeast Asia—1801‐1941.” His project examines “the relationship between colonial violence and religious values in Southeast Asia” through conflicts in the Netherlands East Indies and the Philippines. He is a doctoral candidate in modern world history at the University of Wisconsin.
Theresa Keeley, a graduate of Colgate University, a PhD candidate in American history at Northwestern University, and a member of the AHA, will receive support for her 
work on U.S.-Central American relations in the 1980s, specifically on how conservative American Catholics were instrumental in driving U.S. foreign policy and how the Reagan administration adopted the language of the Catholic conservatives. For her dissertation, “Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns: Catholicism and U.S.-Central American Relations,” Keeley has done archival research in San Salvador, Chicago, Indiana, Alabama, Connecticut, and California, among many other places, and argues from these sources that a Catholic “intra-religious conflict influenced how the administration interpreted events in Central America and marketed its policy….”
Anelise H. Shrout, also an AHA member and a PhD candidate at New York University, is examining “early transnational humanitarianism” through the Irish famine of the mid-19th century with her dissertation, “Distressing News from Ireland: The Famine, the News and International Philanthropy.” Her research in Ireland, the UK National Archives, and New York has led her to conclude that “Widespread participation in Irish famine relief crystallized the idea that observers ‐ no matter how far away ‐ were obligated to mitigate remote suffering.”
Ronit Stahl, who received a fellowship for “God, War, and Politics: The American Military Chaplaincy 
and the Making of Modern American Religion,” is exploring “the role of the state in the public expression and negotiation of religion in the United States.” Among other research questions, she is investigating “How did particular religious groups interact and engage with one another as well as agitate and advocate for themselves as American religions? In what ways did religion serve the state, and in what ways did religion remain an independent force capable of critique?” She is a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
The AHA extends congratulations to these students, and best wishes for their dissertation writing and defense.
Images courtesy of fellowship recipients, and provided by The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
April 27, 2012
Grant of the Week: Paul Murphy Prize in the History of Civil Liberties
The American Society for Legal History offers the Paul Murphy Prize to support the completion of a book on the history of civil liberties that addresses any topic or any time in American history. The recipient will receive $5,000 to support their work. Nominees at all levels of seniority will be considered, however the award is not for the completion of a dissertation. Learn more about the prize and how to apply in this online call for nominations. The deadline for receipt of proposals is June 30, 2012.
April 26, 2012
What We’re Reading: April 26, 2012
Today’s roundup of interesting articles and links from around the web includes reports on the 2012 Jefferson Lecture, HNN coverage of the OAH/NCPH annual meeting, a look at never constructed buildings in Washington, D.C., the connection between history and law, 101 nonfiction stories, and more.
News
2012 Jefferson Lecture: Wendell Berry Laments a Disconnection From Community & Land
In the 2012 Jefferson Lecture, which took place this past Monday, Wendell Berry “delivered a characteristically eloquent yet scathing critique of the industrial economy and its toll on humanity.” Also check out Inside Higher Ed’s report.- HNN Coverage of OAH/NCPH Annual Meeting
The joint annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians and National Council on Public History, which AHA Deputy Director Robert Townsend attended, took place last Wednesday, April 18 to Sunday, April 22. HNN was there, recording video, reporting on award winners, and providing coverage of each day. - AAUP Election Results Reflect Backlash Against Recent Leadership Decisions
AAUP elections prompt a critical blog post from ACTA, "Whither Academic Freedom?", followed by a strongly-worded response by John K. Wilson at Academe Blog.
Glimpses of the Past
Map of Unbuilt Washington
The National Building Museum’s exhibit Unbuilt Washington features “unrealized proposals for noteworthy architectural and urban design projects in Washington, D.C., from the 1790s to the present.” To coincide with the exhibit they’ve created an online interactive map, featuring the locations of the unrealized projects and the drawings of what was not to be.- Dirty pages reveal medieval fears, prayer habits
An innovative approach to book history’s long standing questions on reading habits and reception: Measure the amount of dirt on each page. Dr. Kathryn Rudy of the University of St. Andrews uses a densitometer on medieval prayer books, and claims, "through analysing how dirty the pages are we can identify the priorities and beliefs of their owners." Hat tip to The History Blog. - New Racism Museum Reveals the Ugly Truth Behind Aunt Jemima
The Atlantic covers the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, due to open April 26 at Ferris University in Michigan.
Insights
Dusting Off First Drafts of History
Andrew Nagorski, a journalist during the collapse of the Soviet union reflects on the maxim that "journalism is the first draft of history" and notes that often what reporters get wrong is more valuable than what they get right.- Can Students Learn Law "Without Knowing One Whit of History"?
The Legal History Blog’s Karen Tani is in a discussion on the uses of history in courses on poverty law. Amy Wax, Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at University of Pennsylvania Law School, is skeptical that history can help with today’s most important domestic policy questions: "I submit that all these questions can be meaningfully addressed without knowing one whit of history." - Shift Happens
David Weinberger looks back on Thomas Kuhn’s pivotal book , The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Writing
101 Spectacular Nonfiction Stories
Conor Friedersdorf has posted his annual roundup of some of the best recent journalism. In this collection he includes Evan Fleischer’s “The Last Two Veterans of WWI,” Ariel Dorfman’s “My Lost Library: Books, Exile and Identity,” Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Legacy of Malcolm X,” and much more.- Jargon To Jabberwocky: 3 Books On Writing Well
How well historians write has been a concern for probably as long as there have been historians writing (see our recent blog post “Debating ‘Professional Boredom’ in History” and the 1926 AHA report, “The Writing of History.” Historians and others looking to write for a wide audience may be interested in checking out the three books profiled in this NPR Books article.
Contributors: Elisabeth Grant, Vernon Horn, Allen Mikaelian
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