Blog CXXXVI (136): Eight Questions: Public History

Marla Miller is an associate professor of history and director of the public history program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  She earned her BA from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and her MA and Ph.D. degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She has won the Organization of American Historians’ Lerner- Scott Prize for the best dissertation in Women’s History and the 1998 Walter Muir Whitehill Prize in Colonial History.  Her primary research interest is U.S. women's work before industrialization. Her book The Needle's Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution (2006) won the Costume Society of America's Millia Davenport Publication Award for the best book in the field for that year. Her most recent book, Betsy Ross and the Making of America (2010)—a scholarly biography of that much-misunderstood early American craftswoman—was named to The Washington Post's "Best of 2010" list. She is presently completing work on a microhistory of women, work and landscape in Federal Massachusetts, and a short biography of Massachusetts gownmaker Rebecca Dickinson.

As Director of the History Department's Public History program, Miller teaches courses in Public History, American Material Culture, and Museum and Historic Site Interpretation, and continues to consult with a wide variety of museums and historic sites. The College of Humanities and Fine Arts at UMass Amherst awarder her its Distinguished Teaching Award for the 2006-2007 school year.  In 2012, she and three co-authors released Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service, a multi-year study funded by the National Park Service Chief Historian's office and hosted by the Organization of American Historians.

What is the greatest strength of your field? In the history profession?

Public history can help the whole discipline of history reclaim its place in important national conversations. Our discipline, many would argue, has been under siege in recent years, along with the humanities more generally. We are seeing the numbers of majors in humanities fields decline, and funding for humanities programs at the state and national levels has shrunk dramatically. We wrote about this a little bit in our recent study of the state of history in the National Park Service, Imperiled Promise: so many Americans misunderstand what history is or can be, thinking it is the dull recitation of unchanging facts rather than a dynamic and ongoing inquiry into the past, and that misapprehension can have disastrous consequences as people sell short the value of historical training or insight, or the ongoing need to fund history research. Public historians, wherever they practice, can help people understand that history is an ever-changing enterprise, a conversation between past and present that is an essential part of meeting contemporary challenges. Public historians have the chance to make a real impact on the world around them.

What is the biggest issue facing your field? The history profession?

A constant problem that has challenged the field of Public History is one of definition. As the National Council of Public History has observed, the meaning of the term is always being debated, which is a challenge in terms of reaching audiences (many people who work in public history do not know or recognize the term, so are not drawn toward the practitioners already gathered around that identity), and also in terms of finding common terms, a shared literature, and other things that help form communities of like-minded people. 

The history profession has struggled with the need to demonstrate its relevance. For most of the 20th century, professional university and college-based historians retreated (for the most part) from public life; as a result, the work historians did too often seemed obscure and arcane to most Americans. In recent years we’ve seen a resurgence of interest in history, but many of the titles filling the shelves of local bookstores are written by journalists rather than professional historians. Only slowly has it become acceptable for historians to set aside the monograph and write for popular audiences. And historians rarely contribute to public discourse by way of op-eds and magazine articles; we hardly ever see historians on the Today show commenting on current events. Too few historians seem willing to put themselves out there and show how their many years of research and teaching gives them something to offer debates on the issues of the day.

What is the most interesting work being done in your field? Why?

Many people are inspired by the work of Nina Simon. Her effort to shift the center of gravity in the nation’s museums and make them more “participatory” is really shaking up museum practice nationwide and has a lot of appeal. I personally am fascinated by the work anthropologist, ethnographer and public historian Cathy Stanton has been doing with some partners in the National Park Service that completely rethinks not just how we interpret agricultural history, but basic categories in resource management, and what constitutes “natural” versus “cultural” resources. The whole enterprise has major implications for how we think about our food supply in the past and in the present. I also think everything going on at the George Mason Center for History and New Media is exciting: they seem to be defining the leading edge of digital history practice, and since so much public history now has a digital angle, they are doing a lot of fascinating work that will change the way public historians practice their craft.

How valuable is teaching in the professional development of a career?

Teaching is communication, whether in the classroom, a historic battlefield, house museum, exhibition, preservation agency or policymaking agency. It is important for any historian to cultivate the skills necessary to explain her or his work to a wide range of audiences, whether it is a roomful of undergraduates, a family visiting a historic site, analysts reading a position statement, or the readers of a blog like this one. The best historians command a range of languages that enable them to speak to peers (drawing on the distinct vocabulary and content of their field when necessary) as well as many other kinds of listeners; they are able to translate the insights of the discipline to non-specialists who also need to know why historical perspective is important to understanding whatever issues or events are at hand. Apprentice historians should be working to improve their fluency in a range of communication modes, from the classroom to the editorial column to the dinner table.

What direction or type of publishing would you advise a new Ph.D. to conduct?

A new Ph.D. aiming at a tenure-track position on a college or university faculty is obligated to do a certain kind of publishing: one should try to have at last one scholarly article in peer-reviewed journal before going on the job market (and perhaps a book review or two), and to have the dissertation under consideration or under contract at a university press. By the year of the tenure decision, that book should be all-but-out (if not out), accompanied by another handful of articles, and a book review or two, again in well-respected journals. As much as the terrain of publication is changing—and changing rapidly—historians aspiring to the tenure track should probably assume that those standards will remain in place for a while yet. 

Students interested in broadening their practice to include public history work should also be aware of the joint report prepared by the National Council on Public History (NCPH), Organization of American Historians (OAH) and American Historical Association), "Tenure, Promotion, and the Publicly Engaged Academic Historian", which suggests that the academy needs to develop new understandings of what contributions to scholarship actually look like for public historians—which includes intellectual products well beyond the traditional monograph or journal article. Readers who want to understand the present and future state of publishing in public history might also want to check out a series of posts on the NCPH’s blog History@Work; as that organization contemplates plans for its own journal, we get a glimpse into what the scholarly journals of the future might look like. 

But Ph.D. historians who are considering a broader range of possible occupations won’t necessarily want or need to follow that path. Again, versatility is key. People steering toward a museum career might find it more valuable to publish some exhibition reviews. People hoping to land a job in historic preservation should learn to write nominations to the National Register of Historic Places or the National Historic Landmarks program (tutorials are available at http://www.nps.gov/nhl/webinars.htm).

What issues affect most the development of a career: family, school resources, popularity of field, reputation of alma matter, etc.?

I think one’s family does play a big role in shaping careers—as it should. People often have to make career choices around the needs of others, whether it be the job of a spouse, the need to stay close to aging parents, to keep one’s kids in a particular school, or some other factor. Many people who have chosen to work as public historians did so in part to preserve some sort of geographic flexibility—rather than pursuing an academic job market that might take them anywhere in the country, they diversified their skill set and career goals in order to enlarge opportunities at home. In that case, the popularity of their field of study or the reputation of their school or advisors becomes less important than the real-world experience they were able to accumulate in the course of their doctoral work—in that case, things like grantwriting, digital history skills, exhibition design, public program development, budget management and other abilities become more important.

What advice would you give to an undergrad interested in working on a Ph.D. in history?

Make sure you need that degree. Do not just march on through the credentials, but wait and see what you will need to do the work you want to do. Public historians do not necessarily need the Ph.D. Many find that they can do the work they want to do after completing the MA. I strongly advise undergraduates not to go “straight through”—taking some time between the BA and the MA helps you make much better decisions about which grad program to enter and makes you a better student once there. And in the field of public history, we urge people to take a few years after the MA and work in the field, which will help you determine whether another degree is even needed, and if so, what kind of training you need to take the next step that is right for you. Undergraduates would do well to look closely at sites like The Versatile PhD, Beyond Academe, and the American Historical Association’s resources for graduate students as they research their options. 

If you do decide to go on, Margaret Peacock’s advice elsewhere in this series seems sound [See Blog CXXIX (129): Eight Questions: Modern European History] .

What advice would you give to a new Ph.D. unable to find employment in a history department?

The question assumes that people think of employment in a history department as their obvious first choice; is that intentional? Because I am not sure that that is true. Many people, for some of the practical reasons mentioned above, are not necessarily looking for a job in a history department, and other people would prefer a workplace with different features—a museum where they work with learners of all ages, for example, rather than only college-age students, or a government agency where they can help shape public policy. Some historians truly enjoy the creative aspects of administrative positions in humanities organization, and find those challenges more engaging than those associated with traditional research and publication, or the college classroom. The profession as a whole is slowly coming around to the idea (which public historians have embraced for some time) that there are many ways that historical insight contributes to public life. The America Historical Association not long ago published a paper staking out this position, that jobs outside Academe should no longer be considered “Plan B,” and that graduate training in History is going to have to reorient itself to the actual landscape of history occupations. This is a topic that has been unfolding for some years now, supported in part by a couple of key websites, including Beyond Academe and The Versatile Ph.D. These sites help people think more broadly about the skills their graduate training has cultivated, and encourage them to consider applying them in a broader range of settings. At UMass Amherst, our graduates have landed tenure-track jobs, but also positions as administrators in humanities centers, offices across higher ed, the federal government, publishing houses and of course museums and historic sites.

So, in terms of advising any doctoral student hoping to find any job after graduation, I would say the most important thing is to cross-train: do not work to prepare yourself for only one outcome, but rather make yourself as versatile as possible. While you are learning the skills of research and writing that graduate work confers, and mastering the content of your fields of study, do not neglect other skill sets. If you get a chance to master some digital skills, do it. If you can find a job on campus that helps you develop your administrative and managerial abilities, do that. Consider internships, even at the doctoral level, that give you valuable workplace skills in areas like fundraising, budgeting, program development and implementation, historic preservation planning or whatever else seems relevant to your academic interests and potential career applications. The history workplace of the future—whether in traditional history departments or elsewhere—is going to demand that employees wear multiple hats, and bring more to the table than academic training alone.

Blog CXXXV (135): Colonial American History

Owen Stanwood is an associate professor at Boston College.  He earned a BA from Grinnell College and then went to Northwestern University where he earned the MA and PhD degrees.  He is a historian of early America and the British Atlantic world. He has a number of interests within this vast field, including the development of imperial politics, the diffusion of Christianity, intercultural contact and interaction, and the history of exploration. His first book, The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious Revolution, examines how fears of Catholicism galvanized and transformed Anglo-American political culture during the last decades of the seventeenth century.  His article “Captives and Slaves: Indian Labor, Cultural Conversion, and the Plantation Revolution in Virginia,” that appeared in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography won the C. Coleman McGehee Award from the Virginia Historical Society. Another article “The Protestant Moment: Antipopery, the Revolution of 1688-89, and the Making of an Anglo-American Empire” appeared in the Journal of British Studies and won the Walter D. Love Prize in History from the North American Conference on British Studies.

His current research, tentatively titled "Dreams of Wine and Silk: Huguenot Refugees in the Atlantic World," follows the thousands of French Protestant refugees who traveled and settled on the peripheries of the British, Dutch, and French empires during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In addition, he is working on a smaller project, “Murder in Hadley,” a microhistory of a 1696 trial in western Massachusetts. His teaching ranges from colonial and revolutionary America to early modern Britain, including such topics as European-Indian relations, the settlement of New England, and the development of early modern British imperialism.  He has received a number grants and fellowships to facilitate that research, including the Kluge Fellowship from the Library of Congress, which is a full-year residential fellowship for the 2007-2008 academic year.  He also received the Eccles Visiting Professorship in North American Studies from the British Library and the Newberry Library/British Academy Fellowship for Study in Great Britain, which he used in the 2011-2012 academic year.      

What is the greatest strength of your field? In the history profession?

Colonial American history is a great field because it is diverse and vibrant – and always changing. In the old days (say before the 1980s) early Americanists tended to study a few places and topics: New England Puritans; Virginia planters; the origins of the American Revolution. Since that time the field has exploded in terms of geography and methodology. Today at a conference of colonial historians you will find papers on Quebec, Cuba, and New Mexico. Some of us stress Atlantic approaches while others look at connections to Latin America or the Far West. All of this makes colonial history great for those, like me, with short attention spans. Depending on the day I could be reading about early modern France, Puritan Massachusetts, or the Indian Ocean—and it's all relevant!

The history profession as a whole has experienced a similar transformation that makes it great to be a historian these days. I think that as a field we have become much more imaginative about how we situate our projects. Many scholars are experimenting with new sources, methodologies, and perspectives—and the digitization of sources is making research easier.

What is the biggest issue facing your field? The history profession?

There are a number of issues facing the field, and the profession in general. For colonial historians, one of the key issues is maintaining a coherent story in the face of the massive expansion of the field that I already described. We have brought in so many different people and perspectives that we sometimes have trouble explaining to students and the general public why it matters. We need to do a better job at telling stories that are factually correct and interpretively interesting but also provide narratives that people can remember.

Of course the biggest issue facing the profession as a whole is the fact that many of us can not find jobs. Colonial history is somewhat better than other fields in this regard. For instance, early modern European historians have seen a catastrophic loss of positions, while nineteenth- and twentieth-century Americanists have more jobs but far too many applicants. We have a bit better of a balance—but at the same time, there is no doubt that the short and long-term employment situation is bleak.

What is the most interesting work being done in your field? Why?

The most interesting work in my field is being done by people who are pushing into new linguistic territory. Since the field has traditionally been defined around British America, we have not usually worked in other languages—but now many of the greatest untapped sources are in other languages, especially Spanish, French, German, and Dutch. For instance, over the last decade a number of scholars have begun working in the archives of the Moravian Church—German missionaries who operated Indian missions in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania and Ohio. Others have started to work in native languages as well. In his new study of Indian slavery in New France (Bonds of Alliance), for example, Brett Rushforth not only uses French sources, but also French-Algonquian dictionaries to understand how Indians talked about enslavement. I think this kind of work is the future of the field. I encourage all undergraduates interested in colonial America to start learning languages.

How valuable is teaching in the professional development of a career?

Teaching is a vital part of being a historian for two reasons. First of all, by designing broad classes we can figure out how our own research matters—how it fits into the overall narrative of American or world history. If there is no place for the work we are doing in our classes, then perhaps we should not be doing it. Also, teaching is the way that we take the insights of our (and other scholars') research and send them out into the world. Few of our books reach wide audiences, and that is okay, as long as we all read each other's work and share it with our students. Then hopefully our new interpretations will gradually make an impact, as our students internalize them. In my large core lecture class at BC I make a point of introducing a number of obscure but important historical characters to my students to illustrate broad topics. Few things give me more satisfaction than knowing that through my teaching hundreds more people now know the stories of these men and women from the past whose lives have taught me so much.

What direction or type of publishing would you advise a new Ph.D. to conduct?

This depends on his or her ambitions. I have always taught at research universities that expect a published monograph at a leading university press. The good news is that this is still somewhat easier in colonial history than in other fields, as there is a small readership beyond the academy for many of our books. There are perhaps a dozen good presses that publish in the field. Journal articles are helpful because they allow young scholars to get feedback on their work and get their names out there, but the book is still the thing that makes or breaks careers.

What issues affect most the development of a career: family, school resources, popularity of field, reputation of alma matter, etc.?

All of these things have an impact, but the main factor as I see it is finding a good research topic early in graduate school. I have served on several search committees, and while the reputation of the grad school (or advisor) does sometimes sway us, the main thing we look for is an interesting and innovative project. That said, you can not get a job unless there are jobs available. Anyone interested in graduate school should spend some time on H-Net looking at job listings to see what fields have jobs. For instance, I would not advise anyone to go to grad school in early modern European history right now. It's a fascinating field and lots of great work is being done in it, but there are just no jobs. Choose colonial American (or Latin American) history instead.

What advice would you give to an undergrad interested in working on a Ph.D. in history?

When students ask me about grad school in history I always say two things: First, only get a Ph.D. if you can not imagine doing anything else. Its a wonderful career if you succeed, but can be a difficult path to employment, and it's an unusual professional life that is certainly not for everyone. Second, do not go to a graduate program that does not give you a stipend. No one should go into debt to get a degree that may not lead to a job. But if you truly love history and can get a good financial package, go for it. Just be realistic about the possible difficulties finding employment.

What advice would you give to a new Ph.D. unable to find employment in a history department?

This is more difficult for me to say, as it is not a situation I have faced myself. I know in our department we try to make students aware of opportunities for employment beyond teaching—in museums, archives, etc.—but to be honest there are not huge quantities of jobs in these fields either. The main thing I would say to young Ph.D.s is that there is no shame in doing something else, and it does not mean that you have failed as a historian. I have friends who have left the profession and found satisfying careers elsewhere, but still feel proud of the skills and knowledge they gained in graduate school.

Blog CXXXIV (134): Eight Questions: Middle East History

Will Hanley is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Florida State University. He studied at the Universities of Saskatchewan, Toronto, and Oxford before taking his doctorate in history at Princeton (2007). He is completing work on a book about the emergence of nationality as a social and legal category in Alexandria between 1880 and 1914. During the 2012-13 academic year, as a Rechtskulturen fellow in Berlin, he is studying the broader institutional history of justice in Egypt between 1875 and 1950. He serves as Associate Editor (Book Reviews, Non-Americas) of the Law and History Review. He is also developing an NEH-funded digital tool (called Prosop) to help historians to collect and organize large volumes of demographic data.

What is the greatest strength of your field? In the history profession?

The greatest strength of the field of Middle East history, at least in the North American context, is the sustained interest in the region over the last decade due to the September 11 attacks and the wars that followed. It is a bittersweet fact that scholars of the Middle East living in the United States benefit from this violence, through increased hiring, student enrollments, readership, and public interest in our work. I would say that historians in the field have worked hard to honor that interest with work that is responsible to the past and to the present.

What is the biggest issue facing your field? The history profession?

Two big issues facing historians of the Middle East have their source in current events. First, in the context of American debates over the region, it is challenging to convert our historical expertise into useful knowledge. Audiences and even the media are interested in what we know, but their interest is not sustained if we talk to them the way we talk to other historians. Learning to speak in two or more registers is a real challenge, and one that we must typically learn outside of the classrooms of our graduate programs. 

The second issue facing the field concerns the history of the last half century. The authoritarian regimes that governed (and still govern) the states of the Middle East create practical challenges for researchers. Access to state archives is difficult and often impossible, especially for material from the post-colonial period, and historians face roadblocks when pursuing particularly controversial topics. As a result, we have fewer studies of recent history than one might wish, and those that appear typically employ ingenious work-around research techniques. There are few signs that these conditions will change in the wake of the 2012 uprisings. 

In the profession as a whole, I think that the tyranny of quantity poses a real challenge. This is true of publishing—it seems almost impossible to keep up with new books and articles—as well as research itself. The widespread use of digital cameras in archives and the digitization of print material means that historians often have too much worthwhile material at hand. Information technology can offer some solutions here. Although historians currently have few opportunities to learn or develop tools to automate some parts of our research, I believe that we will have no choice but to manage our data digitally.

What is the most interesting work being done in your field? Why?

The website Jadaliyya, which began publishing serious writing about the Middle East late in 2010, has become one of the key sites of scholarly exchange for historians and others working in the field. Obviously the political upheavals of the last two years created conditions favorable to the success of this project. But the editors and contributors to Jadaliyya have done a remarkable job in sustaining a high quality and quantity of timely and profound writing. The site offers a model of history writing engaged with the present day and integrated with other disciplines: politics, economics, the arts. 

Jadaliyya is not the only such initiative. The Ottoman History Podcast offers dozens of engaging discussions of Middle East history, as well as a fascinating website, with a lot of quirky original documents as well. The project is an initiative of graduate students, mostly from Georgetown. Their scholarly communication is an example for those of us who already have jobs. 

As far as traditional scholarship is concerned, I am most excited by scholarship that situates the Middle East in the mainstream of world history. Until quite recently, much of the historiography of the Middle East was quite isolated, even exceptionalist. Most historians of the field focused narrowly on a single state, city, or region of the Middle East. They did this for good reasons: the start-up costs in language learning and research networking are daunting, and coverage of regions and periods was quite incomplete. As the field has matured, however, its research focus has widened. The historiography of the Ottoman empire has been particularly important in this regard. As the vast complexity of its centuries becomes better articulated, it is clear that narrower histories are incomplete. And so research projects ranging across the lands and languages of Africa, Asia, and Europe, as well as the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, have become common. This research builds on the foundational narrow studies of previous generations.

How valuable is teaching in the professional development of a career?

Teaching offers the opportunity to practice communicating historical knowledge in a variety of registers. The public mission of Middle East historians can be confusing and frustrating, but it is important, and teaching helps us to learn how to do this work. Many students of Middle East history have special motivation for the undertaking, and contact with them is especially rewarding.

What direction or type of publishing would you advise a new Ph.D. to conduct?

It can be useful to direct scholarship to those outside the field of Middle East history. For reasons I mentioned above, I think that this is a sound choice in intellectual terms. It also makes sense professionally. Most history departments have only one Middle East historian, and it can be useful to engage with the wider world by publishing in less specialized venues.

What issues affect most the development of a career: family, school resources, popularity of field, reputation of alma matter, etc.?

As far as the particular demands of Middle East history are concerned, the resources of the graduate school are an important consideration. Those schools with a critical mass of scholars (and students) in the languages and literatures of the Middle East, as well as the study of its religions, are often those with the most to offer students of Middle East history. Supplemental interdisciplinary study with area specialists contributes to well-rounded historical training. It is no coincidence that these schools usually offer the best funding and the best reputation. Research in this field typically entails extended time in the region, which in turn requires special institutional and family support.

What advice would you give to an undergrad interested in working on a Ph.D. in history?

I agree with the most frequent piece of advice appearing on this site: language work is the key to success in Middle East history. You can never be good enough at any of the languages of the region. I will add, however, that this language fetish can also be a drawback: sometimes scholars whose language skills are merely good enough feel that they lack a warrant to conduct serious research. As the Middle East becomes integrated into the mainstream of world history, I hope that historians of France (for example) whose Arabic is “good enough” will feel welcome to use Arabic sources; Middle Eastern historians whose French is “good enough” certainly use French sources. So, make your language skills good enough, and better. 

I would also advise undergrads to learn a programming language or two.

What advice would you give to a new Ph.D. unable to find employment in a history department?

This is a difficult question to answer if the new Ph.D. has not already been prepared for this possibility. The demand for Middle East historians has been relatively strong, but few of us win the sort of jobs that our grad school advisors have. For some, this means preparing for work as a historian who does a lot of teaching and not much research. But the profession is making great strides in diversifying the professional imagination of graduate students and their advisors to look further afield (see Grafton and Grossman’s “No More Plan B.”) Almost every graduate of my department’s MA program in Historical Administration and Public History finds work as a historian, but not in a history department. 

The traditional chestnut that historians have superior “analytical skills” is correct. I would like to see us add another: that historians have a superior ability to communicate information. Of course, neither is true of every historian. But as scholarly publication changes, and the discipline moves away from the single author monograph tradition, we need to learn to communicate in new ways. The general public does not have much interest in reading our monographs, and we would do well to become experts in other formats, such as the emerging medium called data visualization. Many programmers get history wrong, but they can reach a wide audience because they can communicate. Historians with technological skills could do this work right.

Blog CXXXIII (133): Eight Questions: Latin American History

Steven Bunker is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Alabama where he teaches classes in Mexican and Latin American history. Bunker earned a BA and a MA from the University of British Columbia, and a Ph.D. from Texas Christian University. His is the author of the book Creating Mexican Consumer Culture in the Age of Porfirio Díaz to be published in December 2012. He has also published articles in Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos and the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing in addition to several essays in works published in French, Spanish, and English. His research interests in consumption, modernity, and the influence of the French in Mexico has now shifted for his second book project to Ricardo Bell and the English clown invasion of Latin America during the half century before World War I.

What is the greatest strength of your field? In the history profession?

What attracted me from the first was the interdisciplinary character of Latin American history. This trait is a strength that reflects and is reinforced by the remarkable range of investigative possibilities and diversity of the societies and the people that we have chosen to study. Because the region is such an historical crossroads of empire and the exchange of goods, people, and ideas, much of our scholarship has long anticipated the vogue of transnationalism, globalism, and the questioning of the nation-state paradigm. Of course, proximity to the United States (especially Mexico) drives interest on our work, although the same can’t be said for Canada . . .

The greatest strength of our profession is that it presents the complexity and context necessary to better imagine our collective past and, by extension, to understand and embrace the complicated nature of our current world as normative rather than exceptional. Those hallmarks of thinking historically—context and complexity—are essential to a functioning democracy, inoculating citizens from the presentism and puerile ideology of much public and political discourse.

What is the biggest issue facing your field? The history profession?

Latin American history experienced a heyday of public interest and government support after the Cuban Revolution that continued through the Cold War as other social revolutions in the region and the threat of Soviet influence kept the region’s profile relatively high among U.S. policymakers and in the press. With the end of the Cold War, interest and support has waned with the exception of highly politicized topics such as drugs and immigration. The retention of interest among the public and university administrators along with maintaining sufficient publishing outlets for monographs are two of the biggest issues facing our field.

The history profession in general faces these issues. The lack of public support for the humanities at all levels and the belittling of a Liberal Arts education by our political elite threaten us all.

What is the most interesting work being done in your field? Why?

Studies of historical memory are surging in our field. The secretive Dirty Wars waged by South American military juntas in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile (among others) from the 1960s through the 1980s against any opposition drive this scholarship. Even in putative democracies, such as Mexico, longstanding government opposition to releasing or heavily redacting documents on events such as the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre and its official cover-up have pushed scholars to rely on oral sources for studies that have broad popular support. Studies of Catholicism, particularly an emphasis on competing visions of Catholicism and the interaction between church authorities and parishioners, are providing a richer understanding of the role that religion in all its forms played during both the colonial and modern period. Economic historians of Latin America employing the methodology of “New Institutional Economics” have shaken up classical approaches by including a society’s norms and cultural values in their analyses. Historians of science and technology should pay attention to the caliber and abundance of studies being produced on both the colonial and modern period of Latin America. Work on Brazil continues to increase in quantity and sophistication as the field, long subordinated and separated from that of the former Spanish American colonies, benefits from present-day Brazil’s growing geopolitical and economic importance.

How valuable is teaching in the professional development of a career?

If you want employment at a college or university you had better achieve competency in the classroom by the time you are on the market. While it is true that the type of institution dictates the priority of teaching versus research, many search committees at Research 1 schools (including the University of Alabama) consider teaching experience and evaluations when deciding on an interview short list. Moreover, they may require a teaching demonstration as well as a job talk for on-campus interviews. In a job market where every opening receives an abundance of applications, strong teaching combined with excellent research and publications may help put you on the short list. Develop at least three courses (and preferably teach at least one) that demonstrate your interest in and ability to handle courses beyond the chronological, geographical, or thematic scope of your narrow research interests. In other words, demonstrate your versatility. The vast majority of search committees at teaching institutions (particularly in small departments) are searching for this characteristic in candidates. As a Latin Americanist in a department dominated by U.S. and European historians I am, by necessity, a Jack-of-all-trades when it comes to teaching and I developed and taught eight courses prior to tenure. For me, teaching and interacting with students can be frustrating at times but overall it is an invigorating and fulfilling diversion from the isolation of research and writing.

What direction or type of publishing would you advise a new Ph.D. to conduct?

For the type of publishing I would harp on publishing the dissertation regardless of institution. Even if you land a job at a teaching institution that does not require a book for tenure, a book expands your future employment options and ensures you are not beholden to your first job. I would also counsel publishing in a respected journal at least one article based on your dissertation. While you will be inundated with requests to review books or contribute to encyclopedias, be selective and, for the most part, learn to say no until you have the book published. In terms of direction of publishing, expand beyond the typically-narrow focus of your dissertation. Funding agencies (and publishers) want research with a broad appeal. Read widely, beyond your specialization, for ideas and approaches that you can bring to your research and field. Of course, if you have a tenure-track job, be sure to know the department requirements for tenure and focus on fulfilling them.

What issues affect most the development of a career: family, school resources, popularity of field, reputation of alma matter, etc.?

If we are talking about obtaining a job, then certainly choice of field, the subject and quality of your dissertation, and the reputation and resources of your advisor and degree-granting institution are all major factors in your success. Although far from guaranteed, your odds are noticeably higher landing a job in the current market as an historian of Africa, the Middle East, Asia and (to a lesser extent) Latin America rather than the United States and Europe. Without the financial support for research provided by my institution and outside funding from the Canadian government I would never have been able to visit the variety or archives and accumulate the range of sources that supported my dissertation and gave me time to develop my ideas and hone my arguments. If you have a job, school resources and support from your department and administration move to the top of the list. I would also add that networking at various levels (graduate students, junior and senior professors, librarians and archivists) from the moment you start your degree is essential, whether for keeping up with job and publishing opportunities, new archival sources, or general information on navigating our profession. Finally, family is an important variable. Life and research trips abroad are much less complicated without a significant other or dependents. For those embracing complexity in their personal lives, having a partner who supports your chosen path with its long hours and often extended trips away from home is a necessity. Be prepared for developments that force you to refocus the life path you’ve envisioned. For example, during my Master’s I planned to avoid a serious relationship at least until I finished my Ph.D. Then I met a confident and independent woman who loved to travel. Next thing I knew I was married and raising children while writing my dissertation. What could have been a disaster was instead a source of confidence and support (well, and sleep deprivation) because we discussed realistically our needs and the demands of our respective paths before we made any big decisions. I encourage you to do the same.

What advice would you give to an undergrad interested in working on a Ph.D. in history?

Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Honestly, I steer most students away unless they are exceptional. I detail the requirements, particularly the need for languages and a depth and breadth of reading that most are incapable or unwilling to achieve. I explain the realities of graduate school and the job market. I hit them with dire statistics and the trends in academic hiring. If they are still interested and I think them capable (such hubris) I discuss the importance of the advisor and program, the field of study, and the dissertation topic as well the necessity of acquiring funding. I then send the student to research programs and advisors. I also come up with a list of a handful of colleagues in universities with strong programs and have the student contact them for advice on general and program-specific grad school preparation. I then wish them good luck, tell them to work on their language skills now, and counsel them to draft a Plan B.

What advice would you give to a new Ph.D. unable to find employment in a history department?

Set a time limit on how long you are willing to pursue this career path and have a backup plan. Be persistent, get feedback if possible from any interviews you may have had, and remember that hiring decisions are often based on considerations that you have little control over. That said, have others look at your letter of application, make sure you discuss everything the job posting asks for, and be sure to tailor your letter to the type of organization to which you are applying . . . and remember, no one wants to read two pages on your dissertation.