Archive for February, 2010
February 25, 2010
What comes after Graduation? (Wikimedia Commons)
Whether it’s Stockholm Syndrome, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or Survivor’s Guilt, those of us considering a career outside academia find it nearly impossible to imagine just what life after the academy might actually look like. Part of this is because we find it hard to envision a career path beyond the university. We spend at least a decade sheltered in our departments, surrounded by and receiving our career socialization from other scholars. At the same time, academic departments are rarely the most supportive environments for discussions of non-academic career paths. Having just completed fourteen years of university in the middle of a major recession, I nonetheless see this as a time of opportunity rather than desperation. But I still ask myself, whither next? (more…)
Tags:After the Academy, alternative careers, career, employment, history, History Compass, History Compass Exchanges, humanities, jobs, profession
Posted in General, Online Resources, Podcast | 9 Comments »
February 24, 2010
College admission offices have appeared frequently in the news recently for their creative attempts both to appeal to and get to know prospective students. Yale, to the bemusement of some alumni and the intense embarrassment of others, produced a fifteen-minute film clip, in the style of the Disney teen vehicle High School Musical. The Tufts admission office made optional the submission of a short film by applicants. Other schools have also received youtube videos from prospective students. The outpouring of creative applications to college admission offices echo other efforts I have encountered in the past year to more actively involve students in their course work. Many of these new approaches, however, bring up some of the same concerns I had brought up in my last blog entry about new classroom technologies. Do these films spur student creativity? Or, do they detract focus from the old fashioned skills of writing a good essay?
(more…)
Tags:film, history, pedagogy, technology, youtube
Posted in General, Podcast, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
February 23, 2010
A recent talk sponsored by the Research Focus Group on Identity Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara got me thinking about the intersections between current events and historical scholarship. While many historians might groan when encountering a social science oriented grant application requesting contemporary relevance, much historical research does have relevance to current political, social and economic concerns. Dr. Paul Spickard presented his research on immigrants in Germany last Friday, February 19, showing that despite the large population of permanent immigrants and their children that live in Germany, immigrants are still largely understood by ethnic Germans as temporary residents and outsiders to the German nation. Spickard spent a year in Germany conducting interviews with the children of immigrants, most of them born in Germany, with German as their first language. Spickard’s impassioned lecture demonstrated the everyday racism that immigrants and their children continue to face in Germany, whether through overt means such as police harassment and violence or the more subtle social exclusions such as the assumption that they don’t speak or write German well.
Turkish Day in Berlin, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
(more…)
Tags:European History, Germany, History Compass, History Compass Exchanges, identity, immigration, Interdisciplinary, social sciences
Posted in Europe, General | 2 Comments »
February 22, 2010
I confess that this past year I’ve become a bit of a conference junkie–I anticipate and enjoy each one more than I probably should (I never knew being a historian could be so fun!)
It used to be that when I attended conferences I felt awkward and nervous. They were overwhelming–so many smart people and so many unfamiliar faces. I would usually sit alone at the back of the sessions and leave as soon as they were over. It was overly self-conscious that if I talked to someone I would betray my own lack of knowledge on any given topic. This change in my attitude towards conferences is probably primarily due to greater experience with such events. Twitter has undoubtedly helped, too–I often find an instant community through the dropping of a few hashtags. (more…)
Tags:Conferences, digital humanities, Past's Digital Presence, Podcast
Posted in Conferences, Podcast | 5 Comments »
February 18, 2010
In 1679, ‘The Knavery of the Rump Lively represented in a Pack of Cards’ was available to purchase in London. I recently received a gift of a facsimile set of these historical illustrated playing cards. This pack is just one of those made available by Harry Margary, in association with the Guildhall Library, London.
The satirical pictorial cards which make up ‘The Knavery of the Rump’ were based on designs by the artist Francis Barlow. Only three complete original sets of these cards are known to survive, and one of these rare and valuable sets was once owned by Lord Nelson. Sylvia Mann has suggested that, by 1679, ‘The Knavery of the Rump’ did not have much appeal for the English population. Based on the number of surviving sets, another pack produced around the same time, ‘The Horrid Popish Plot’, would seem to have been far more popular.
Oliver Cromwell, 1599-1658 by Peter Lely (Wikimedia Commons)
While assessing the appeal of these cards to its intended seventeenth-century audience is somewhat problematic in light of the inevitably patchy evidence relating to such material, the illustrations and the captions found on them do provide some insights into English culture in the late 1670s and into the perceptions that existed at time of the significant events which had unfolded as recently as the 1640s and 1650s. (more…)
Tags:art history, Britain, British History, Ireland, Popular Culture, Popular History, Scotland
Posted in Britain and Ireland, General | Leave a Comment »
February 17, 2010
The recent controversy about University of Minnesota graduate student Scott DeMuth, who is facing conspiracy charges for not disclosing the identities of his research subjects raises a whole host of fascinating questions about academic freedom. DeMuth, who uses the data to develop an understanding of how environmental and animal-rights activist groups operate, refused to divulge names of the members of the Animal Liberation Front involved in an attack on research laboratories because he signed IRB-vetted confidentiality agreements with his subjects.
Burning book, Wikimedia Commons
Although DeMuth is a sociologist, he could just as easily have been an historian. We are just as subject to the tenuous nature of academic freedom, because the ways in which we interpret events, cultures, places and ideas are often the impetus for social and political changes that can affect quality of life for countless individuals. In theory, Academic freedom gives us a lot of power.
The truth is that free speech and academic freedom are protected, but not unequivocally. Disposability of graduate students and non-tenured faculty can endanger the practice of genuine academic freedom. It is up to us to ask the questions and seek the answers that are often difficult for many, and our collective responsibility to protect those that do. It goes without saying that with academic freedom comes the need for great personal responsibility.
(more…)
Tags:academic freedom, activism, freedom of speech, history, History Compass Exchanges, justice, peer review, politics, social sciences, sociology, tenure
Posted in General | 5 Comments »
February 16, 2010
One of the highlights of this past week was a visit to McGill by the award-winning Irish author and critic Colm Tóibín, who gave both a public lecture and seminar in connection with the McGill Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies. His lecture, entitled “Oscar Wilde in Prison”, addressed both the link between Wilde’s experience in prison and his subsequent writing and the problem of relating the silences in source materials to a narrative of gay history.
Upon entering the lecture theatre I thought, with naïve arrogance, that I had read or heard just about every possible argument about Oscar Wilde’s life, the significance of his experiences for gay history
Oscar Wilde (Wiki Commons)
and identity, and the defining aspects of his work as influenced by his trial and imprisonment. I was dead wrong. What Tóibín presented was the most eloquent and comprehensive account of Wilde’s life and work that I have ever heard.
One of the major themes of the lecture was the persistent dualities that defined Wilde’s actions and identities. This theme represented as having particular literary and historical importance for understanding Wilde’s ultimate downfall after his unsuccessful defamatory libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry in 1895. (more…)
Tags:British History, gay and lesbian history, history, History Compass, History Compass Exchanges, Irish History, literature, queer history
Posted in Britain and Ireland | 2 Comments »
February 15, 2010
Last week I was able to participate in an archaeological tour of the Dead Sea region. Usually, this kind of activity is not open for anyone, but the Israel Antiquities Authority was very kind to let me join. That day, I got a glimpse into what it means to be an archaeologist, and I can honestly say that it was different from the picture I had in my imagination. The plan for that day was to visit a group of Byzantine sites along the coast as part of a ‘periodical check-up’, look for a prehistoric cave and visit a Neolithic structure. (more…)
Tags:antiquities, archaeology, byzantine, conservation, dead sea, neolithic
Posted in General | Leave a Comment »
February 11, 2010
LGBT History Month (Wikimedia Commons)
February is LGBT History Month here in the UK, which focuses attention on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans issues in the present, and also the experiences of queer Britons in the past. This yearly program to promote diversity and LGBT histories reminds us just how rich queer history actually is. But it is still taken as a truism by many that the lives of gay men and lesbians remain absent in the archive, that their stories are “hidden from history.” While it is true that the stories of many gay men and lesbians cannot be found in the traditional archive, we are nonetheless discovering their footprints across the historical record. (more…)
Tags:archives, Britain, British History, education, gay and lesbian history, Graduate School, historical research, history, History Compass, History Compass Exchanges, Homosexuality, humanities, identity, LGBT History Month, oral history, Postgraduates, queer history
Posted in Britain and Ireland, General, Online Resources | 1 Comment »
February 10, 2010
I should start by saying that some of the best lectures I had attended as an undergraduate involved no powerpoint presentations, film or sound clips, or even slides on an overhead projector. The best lecturers awed me with their comprehensive knowledge of the field, the clarity and conciseness of their presentation, and yes, just a touch of dramatic performative skills. I remember one professor who had taught his intellectual history course for many years, and precisely timed his lectures to end with the noon-time bells tolling from a nearby church. The bells worked particularly well on those days when the lectures ended with a turning point of history – the outbreak of war, the end of a prosperous era, or the death of an intellectual giant.
(more…)
Tags:classrooms, East Asia, films, history, multi-media, teaching, technology
Posted in Asia, General | 5 Comments »
February 9, 2010
In a recent talk entitled “Akosombo Stories: The Methodological Challenges of Researching Postcolonial African Histories” Stephan Miescher of the University of California, Santa Barbara used his ongoing research project on the social and cultural history of the Akosombo Dam in Ghana to assess the difficulties of researching post colonial Africa and offer some possible solutions. While in part his discussion addressed the terrible state of many official records from the postcolonial period in Ghana due to political instability, coups and a lack of resources, Miescher’s larger point was one relevant to all historians, a reminder that no matter how complete and well-preserved the official archive, it always tells only a partial story.
Cover of booklet, The Volta River Project (Accra: Ghana Information Services, 1963), Courtesy of Stephan Miescher
(more…)
Tags:African history, archives, Ghana, History Compass Exchanges, methodology, oral history
Posted in Africa, General | 3 Comments »
February 8, 2010
Since I started paddling an outrigger canoe through the Newport harbor, I’ve gone under a lot of bridges. I learned, very quickly, that the current around bridges can be unpredictable–even dangerously so. In my small boat if I hit a bridge it means that I’ll likely end up going for an unintentional swim and the blow from hitting a cement pylon can easily cause irreparable damage to my fragile canoe.
As I paddled under a low-lying bridge last week and heard the uncanny echo of water and wind through that space, I realized why trolls always live under bridges in folktales. Bridges are important places–necessary crossroads. But they are also liminal places where danger lurks. It might be in the form of a malintentioned someone hiding in the shadows, or it might be a whirl of current that pulls the boat toward a cement piling encrusted with mussel shells. Whatever the possibilities, bridge-crossings demand heightened attention.
Like the dangers of the bridges that I face as I paddle around segments of the harbor, there seem to be trolls lurking around the bridges of academia, too. (more…)
Tags:dissertation, writing
Posted in General | 1 Comment »
February 4, 2010
It’s no particular anniversary; I just got curious to look back at the HCE posts since we launched the blog last November. No great surprise: elements of “digital humanities” feature prominently. But “digital humanities” is a pretty big umbrella and in this case it occludes more than it describes. Experiments with technology permeate everything we do as readers, writers, teachers, scholars.
The technology changes rapidly, so we’re all figuring this out together, finding new tools, working out how to use them, and when. For a historian, these changes might mean access to archival sources without traveling, as the result of many digitization projects; or access to information that is searchable and sortable as data; or new ways of collaborating; or new ways of disseminating our finished work. (These changes also mean alternative ways to inform, provoke and assess our students, an arena that is certainly being explored widely in the academy, but hasn’t yet received attention from the HCE collective.)
As dramatic as these changes in research process and communication/distribution are, I wonder about how fundamentally technology is changing the discipline of history, and whether or not we want it to. (more…)
Tags:communication, digital history, digital humanities, methodology, writing
Posted in General | 2 Comments »
February 3, 2010
Last week, I had the fortune of spending an afternoon with Peter Brush, Vanderbilt University’s Reference and History Librarian. We discussed how Open Access (the emerging culture of online free-of-charge access to scholarly materials such as journals, databases and teaching materials) could affect historians and the way we produce and consume knowledge.
The Access Principle, by John Willinsky (Read this book for free at MIT Press)
The debates surrounding Open Access reach beyond the obvious issues of affordable access to more information for a greater number of scholars. The expansion of this movement carries philosophical, economic, and political ramifications that affect historians as much as or more so than free access to the latest field journal or database.
Open Access isn’t free, of course. There are costs related to web-hosting and peer review, and the costs are distributed differently. This makes Open Access an economic issue every University grapples with in some way or another, as funds are reshuffled between departments and libraries to accommodate these changes. (more…)
Tags:Academic Conference, archives, Debate, digital, history, History Compass Exchanges, human rights, libraries, Open Access, publishing
Posted in Conferences, Online Resources, World | 10 Comments »
February 2, 2010
In anticipation of its final conference, taking place at McGill from March 18 – 20, 2010, I thought it might be useful to say a few words about the technologically innovative Making Publics (MaPs) project as it has unfolded over the past five years.
Beginning in 2005 and funded through a Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Major Collaborative Research Initiatives grant, the project has brought together academics from an array of disciplines in order to ‘illuminate the artistic, intellectual, scientific, religious and political culture of Britain and Western Europe’ and to develop ‘an interdisciplinary methodology’ through a commitment to accessibility and innovative modes of learning. (more…)
Tags:art history, British History, digital history, digital humanities, digitization, European History, history, History Compass, History Compass Exchanges, history of science, Interdisciplinary, philosophy
Posted in Britain and Ireland, Europe, General, Online Resources, Podcast | 2 Comments »
