Blog CCXXIII (223): The Quit Litters

Apparently there is a whole new genre called "academic quit lit."  Basically these are essays from college professors--usually younger ones--who have decided to leave the profession in which they explain their reasons why.  Colleen Flaherty of Inside Higher Ed wrote an article on the genre: "Public Good-byes: Recent Dear John Letters from Academics Leaving Higher Education Signal a Resurgence in 'Quit Lit.'" They were not the only media outlet interested in the topic.  The Atlantic published several essays on this topic.  Ian Bogost's article makes his position clear with his title: "No One Cares That You Quit Your Job."  It is a short, but strong easy and well worth the read.  Megan Garber wrote another article on the topic: "The Rise of 'Quit Lit.'"  She notes that there is a strong theme in this literature: "'I quit,' goes the text. 'And you should, too,' goes the subtext."

All of these articles referenced an article that Oliver Lee, an assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington, wrote the Vox news and opinion website: "I Have One of the Best Jobs in Academia. Here's Why I'm Walking Away."

I spent six and a half years living in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex; I have been to UT Arlington; I even spent some time looking up Lee's background, and I would never agree with his title.  But it is probably a bit unfair to pick on one professor, even if his essay got a lot of attention.  The Flaherty article makes it clear that a lot of others are quitting academia, and writing about it.  My read of the article is that the people who are going public often have very good options.  Lee, for example, has a law degree, and is apparently starting a legal career.  Others are going into the corporate world where they make much more than a college professor, even one at a very good school. 

Bogost in his article noted: "Why should anyone be impressed that somebody can quit something? Much more impressive is figuring out is how to live with it. More staypieces please." 

That request was easy to fulfill.  James Nikopoulos, an assistant professor of languages and literature at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan--which is probably no easy gig--wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education that the authors of "quit lit" remind him of Arsenio Hall's character in Coming to America objecting to doing manual labor: "I’m badly in need of a manicure."  He offers an important observation: "The fact is that no profession is perfect. Young architects dream of erecting museums but spend more time redesigning kitchens. Even the 'dream' professions are not immune: Aren’t movie stars always complaining about having to answer inane questions in pointless interviews?"

Matthew Pratt Guterl, a professor of American studies at Brown University, wrote a post on his blog entitled: "What to Love."  He decides to take a the-glass-is-half-full approach: "Other realities are out there. Other landscapes for you to inhabit. Or to create. These other landscapes feature faculty who are supportive colleagues and even friends. Students who have big brains and bigger hearts, who are peers and not subjects, consumers, or products. Administrators who spend every single waking moment trying to make everyone’s life easier."  Don't quit.  "Stick around. Fix the place. For others.

You have to build this idyll."

Ann Little responded on her blog as well: "Here’s what I tell myself when I get frustrated:  I work in what used to be called a 'helping profession.'  That is, my job isn’t ripping people off or selling them garbage they don’t need.  My job is offering education and critical thinking skills to students."

Those are good rejoinders to the quit litters.  The basic idea behind the In the Service of Clio blog is trying to offer some advice to younger scholars on how to do things better, and that mostly rejects quit lit.  People quite for all sorts of reason.  A lot of it happens in grad school, where it should happen: "This just isn't for me," etc.  Reading the Flaherty article, I get the impression that the reasons for leaving are often quite petty.  I know of one case where a younger scholar received an AHA book prize, but hated working and living in a small, provincial city like New Orleans, and quit.  On the other hand, life is short and if you are not happy, you only get one shot at life.  Nor should those of us that remain behind dismiss the reasons people have for leaving an academic career: if they have an opportunity to make a lot of money, or do something that is also fun, exciting, and rewarding all to the good. Those are very understandable reasons that can pull someone into something else, rather than getting pushed out of academia.  

The simplest piece of advice I can offer if you are considering quitting comes in the form of some questions:

• Why did you want a Ph.D.? 
• What do you want to do with your career? 
• Can you do that using a university as a platform? 
• Can you use another career as a platform for those objectives? 
• Are these objectives worth the opportunity costs?
• Will another career make things better?  Will it resolve the grievances/shortcomings you are facing in academia?

Blog CCXXII (222): The Logevall and Osgood Debate

Earlier this year, Fredrik Logevall of Harvard University and Kenneth Osgood of the Colorado School of the Mines started a public debate about the status of political history.  They published an editorial in The New York Times: "Why Did We Stop Teaching Political History?"  Neither of these guys is a slouch, complaining about how the profession has passed them and their field by.  Logevall won the Pulitzer Prize for his book on the French war in Vietnam, and Osgood's book on Eisenhower's propaganda campaigns won the Herbert Hoover Book Award, which is less well-known but still quite difficult to receive.  They noted that at one time political history had real influence and pull with those that ran for office.  That has changed in the years since.  The two also argued:

Perceived “traditional” types of history that examined the doings of governing elites fell into disfavor, and political history suffered the effects (as did its cousins, diplomatic and military history). The ramifications extend well beyond higher education. The drying up of scholarly expertise affects universities’ ability to educate teachers—as well as aspiring lawyers, politicians, journalists and business leaders—who will enter their professions having learned too little about the nation’s political history. Not least, in this age of extreme partisanship, they’ll be insufficiently aware of the importance that compromise has played in America’s past, of the vital role of mutual give-and-take in the democratic process.

One measure of the decline in political history is the decline in the number of jobs advertised as political history. 

Although Logevall and Osgood are historians, neither teaches in a history department.  (I should clarify a bit; Logevall has a joint appointment with the Kennedy School; how much time he devotes to each probably varies from semester to semester).  They did not publish in The New York Times for its prestige.  Their recommendations for reform make that clear:

Change will not be easy, and will not come from history departments facing tight budgets and competing demands. What is needed, to begin with, is for university administrators to identify political history as a priority, for students and families to lobby their schools, for benefactors to endow professorships and graduate fellowships and for lawmakers and school boards to enact policies that bolster its teaching—and without politicizing the enterprise.

Since many universities in the United States are public institutions—think of schools like the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia, or Florida State University—and receive their funding from states run by politicians and you might start to realize what a powerful call to action Logevall and Osgood are making.

Days later—actually two—Julian Zelizer of Princeton University fired back with an essay on the blog of the Organization of American Historians: "Political History is Doing AOK."  He argues: "Over the past twenty years the field has experienced nothing short of a renaissance."  It is a very diverse field with many new approaches.  He also adds: "While there was a period in the 1970s when we did move away from 'elections, elected officials, policy and policymaking, parties and party politics,' this is not the case today."  He also disputes many of the arguments made by Logevall and Osgood: "In terms of the lack of jobs, that is a different story. The meager number of jobs in political history is not unique to the field. Everyone in the history profession currently faces a job market that isn’t there."

The OAH then sponsored a forum staring four relatively junior political historians: "What is the State of American Political History" and asked them their thoughts about the Logevall and Osgood article.  From my perspective, if they want to call themselves political historians, fine.  But I am not sure a lot of others would describe them that way.  Their description of what they wanted the field to study would also be difficult to characterize as political history.  With those two points in mind, it is no surprise that they are skeptical about Logevall and Osgood's positions.

They were not the only ones.  Mark Graber of the University of Maryland Law School responded on the Balinization blog with a post entitled: "Rumors of Our Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated."  He argued, "There may be a lot to be said about what happens when political history is done by political scientists rather than historians (we call it "political development"), but calling the field dead is confusing what may be happening in one discipline with what is not happening in the academy at large."

There was also a lot of push back on Twitter.  I am not sure how much deep thinking you can do on Twitter, but the legal historian Mary L. Dudziak does a good job of summarizing the various reactions in a post: "Political History is Alive and Well, and Matters More than Ever" that also appeared on the Balkinization blog.  In summary, she states "the op-ed’s argument fell flat."  I am not sure that is true.  I get that most digitally minded historians pushed back on it—even those that consider themselves political historians—but I think Logevall and Osgood were playing for the long haul.

Roy Rogers, a Ph.D. candidate in American History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a writing fellow at the New York City College of Technology, and a contributor to The Junto group blog that focuses on early American history, wrote an essay that while negative towards Logevall and Osgood's arguments, did more to confirm them than deny them.  In "The Strange Death (?) of Political History," he stated that the two were addressing the field from their perspective as historians working on Twentieth Century topics.  "Perhaps political history is dead, but it died a strange death. It is certainly true that, from a certain point of view, political history has declined over the last several decades. But that perspective is partially a matter of definitions. Logevall and Osgood have a very constrained definition of what constitutes political history."  Developments in the historical profession "forced a fundamental change in what it means to be political. The search for politics moved out of the state house and into the streets, the fields, the parlor, and even the bedroom."  My take: that is something, but it ain't political history.

Gabriel Rosenberg of Duke University and Ariel Ron of Southern Methodist University wrote a post for the blog Lawyers, Guns & Money with a title that makes their thesis pretty clear: "Chill Out. Political History has Never Been Better."  Their essay is similar to Rogers' in that it basically does more to confirm rather than deny Logevall and Osgood arguments even though its purpose was the exact opposite.  They make the same basic argument as well: Logevall and Osgood have to narrow a definition.  They offer up a number of titles that they claim are political history—but really aren't—to refute Logevall and Osgood.  Rosenberg and Ron  also make the mistake of conflating policy history with political history, citing the relatively healthy Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations which has well-attended conferences and a thick journal.  SHAFR is the main organization in diplomatic history, and their arguments are basically correct about the organization.  But I would argue that diplomatic history is very different from political history.  (Logevall and Osgood make this point explicitly in their essay).

Logevall and Osgood were hardly dissuaded by these type of arguments.  They appeared on the podcast of The American Interest roughly a month after their essay appeared in the Times.  Logevall did clarify that they did not pick the title, and that it was a bit misleading, but other than that they held firm.  They discussed how many historians were uncomfortable discussing "high politics," When asked about Zelizer's arguments about diversity, Logevall explained,  "I don't think he is wrong, but what I said to him is that something has been lost."

So, what are we to make of all this bleeding of digital ink?  I am not sure anyone is totally right in this debate.  First, I do not think historians are every going to be turned to as policy makers or advisors just because they are historians.  Some will find positions of influence in government, but that will be because of their personal efforts and connections. 

Next, I actually think political history has been strong, even if not popular.  There is a clear public audience for this type of historical literature.  But even within the profession historians have done well producing this type of history.  Stephen Ambrose, Robert Dallek, and H. W. Brands come to mind immediately, but there are others: Alonzo Hamby, William Leuchtenberg, and Sean Wilentz.  As the history book review editor for the academic journal Presidential Studies Quarterly, I am swamped with titles.  Even those on the presidents we do not care that much about like Millard Fillmore or Chester A. Arthur.  Writing on presidents consistently seems a great way to get a lot of attention within the profession. 

But there is the rub and that gets to my third point: political history seems to be focused on the executive branch.  The legislative and judicial branches get far less attention, so there is some real merit to what Logevall and Osgood argue.  This executive branch bias also appears to be the case when historians look at state level politics.  There are a number of reasons for this emphasis.  There are fewer presidents and governors and it is easier to focus on them.  Presidents of the United States—at least those in the Twentieth Century—have presidential libraries, which makes research easy compared to trying to track down the personal papers of the 10 or 15 Senators that sat on the Armed Services Committee.  They might be at institutions on opposite sides of the country, making travel and research expensive.  (The best case scenario is that they are at the Library of Congress, which happens a lot, but not enough).  Then there is the question of quality of organization.  I have looked at the papers of some senators that were still sitting in the boxes in which they were mailed to the archives three decades before.  Then again I have found others that were organized beautifully.  There is also the question of how important is any one senator.  There are a hundred of them; more than 1,100 since 1789.  All of them "matter," but some of them a lot more than others—the Henry Clays, John C. Calhouns, Daniel Websters, Henry Cabot Lodges and Lyndon Johnsons of the world are better known than those they served with in the Senate, or those that held their seats in the years since for a reason. 

Moving on to point four: policy history is a new development, but even if it incorporates new subjects and perspectives, it is not political history and it still tends to be executive branch centric.  How much influence did the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have in the development of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War?  "Don't know" is the short answer, because no one has written on the committee as a institution.  There are biographies of individual senators, but that is a bit of a narrow focus, much like trying to watch a film by looking through a straw.  How influential are the Speakers of the House?  How much influence do they have on legislation, policy, and the political direction of Washington?  Are they the equal of presidents, or in a relatively junior position?  Political scientists have spent a lot of time answering these questions, but their answers have to be tentative given the imbalance in coverage.  Case in point, how many books are there on Sam Rayburn?  (Some of you are probably wondering who is Sam Rayburn? Answer: he set the record for longest tenure as Speaker of the House of Representatives.)  There are four books on Rayburn.  Now, think of how many biographies—and just biographies—are out there for Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy—the presidents he interacted with as Speaker.

Here comes point number five: there is still a lot of good work to be done.  Elections—which are purely political—are topics that have seen less attention than the deserve.  What do they tell us about the American people?  Actually a lot if we pay attention.  Polling data is quite informative, but there is still a lot of information that we can utilize from elections before this practice became widespread and dependable.  Again, political scientists do a lot on this topic, but the focus seems to be on the second half of the Twentieth Century, and on the presidential elections. 

This is the last point: Logevall and Osgood might not be getting much agreement from their peers, but that is not the audience they were really addressing.  I would not be surprised if this article has some long-term reverberations in the historiography of American history, but also on other higher education related activities like appropriations and fund raising.

Blog CCXXI (221): The History P.h.D./Major After Graduation

This blog started as a forum on which a dude in mid-career could give advice to junior scholars about some of the things I have learned on the job; that was not part of my formal grad school training.  Over the years, I think I have maintained that focus fairly well.

One of the things that I have been trying to do with the blog is to discuss options for Ph.D.s outside of a history department, because the numbers make it clear that is the fate waiting for half of those that finish.  John Fea's blog has probably offered better information on that venue than I have.  In a post on his blog "The History Majors We Celebrate" he asks: "What would happen if we celebrated our graduates who get jobs in the corporate or nonprofit world in the same way we celebrate those who have been accepted to graduate schools at Ivy League universities?"

That is a pretty good question/point.  Non historian types are the type of people that are going to make lots of money and be willing to donate it to their alma matters in years to come.  Fea's series "So What CAN You Do With A History Major?" does a good job of exploring this issue.  Blog CCV has a series of links to the individual essays in this series.  One particularly interesting post in the series was a pie chart that the History Department at Dartmouth put together on the post graduation careers of their graduates.  While it is an Ivy League school, Dartmouth has no Ph.D. program, so it is a study of what undergraduates did with their degrees.  Long story made short: a lot of different things.  The biggest single group was law, but that was only 23 percent.

People finishing their Ph.D.s should really look at this chart to get some ideas on what to do after graduation, if there is no job offer pending.  (You can only do adjunct work for so long.)  Rebecca Schuman has an interesting article on this topic in Slate: "Alt-Ac” to the Rescue? Humanities Ph.D.s are Daring to Enjoy their 'Regular' Jobs, and the Definition of Academic Success is Changing. Sort Of."

I am not sure if that "Sort Of" part is true for historians, but it should.

Blog CCXX (220): An Open Letter

In 2011 Larry Cebula of Eastern Washington University became something of an internet sensation when he wrote a hilarious post on his blog: "Northwest History."  The original essay turned into a three part series:

• "Open Letter to My Students: No, You Cannot be a Professor" 
• "No, You Cannot be a Professor--the Reactions" 
• "No, You Cannot be a Professor Part III: Survivor Stories"

The original post basically makes the same points I have been making on this blog, but in a much more entertaining way.  The second essay is exactly what the title suggests it is, but it failed to capture all the reactions to the essay.  Holger Syme, an associate professor of English at the University of Toronto responded with his own posting: "Yes, You Can Be a Professor."   Leslie Rogne Schumacher wrote another essay, "The Problem with Plan B: Thoughts on the Jobs Crisis in History" to which Cebula responded (see the comment section at the end).  Edward J. Woell in a blog posting, discusses] how he has assigned the essay to his grad students and finds that most of them refuse to accept the facts of the job market.  Doug Rocks-Macqueen, a British archeologist, has also disputed Cebula's position.  Roger Whitson, an assistant professor of English at Washington State University posted an essay on his blog in which he stated: "I’m making a plea for Professor Cebula and the rest of his colleagues to stop writing posts like this."

The third essay on Cebula's blog is from one of his students about how he defied the odds. 

These posts are well worth reading, because Cebula is right.

Blog CCXIX (219): "The History Ph.D. as..." Series Revisited

"The History Ph.D. as...." series never died officially.  (In fact, you might see two new entries fairly soon.)  I just ran out of contacts and good ideas on how to structure some of the articles.  Other historians that blog, though, have been doing the same thing as me, and a couple of these essays are quite good.

The most commented on post in the eight year history of this blog was Blog XXXI: "The History Ph.D. as a Librarian."  Mark Danley, then of the University of Memphis and now at the U.S. Military Academy, wrote about the challenges and rewards of work in a library.  The blog of the American Historical Association has an article "A Historian in the Stacks: Finding a Professional Home in the Library" from Annie Johnson on much the same topic.  I like Danley's essay a lot, but Johnson, who works at Temple University, has written a pretty good essay as well.  Probably because she got her Ph.D. from USC. 

Two weeks before Danley wrote his post, Sarandis "Randy" Papadopoulos added to the same series with Blog XXIX (29): The History Ph.D. as a Government Historian: Still the “Improbable Success Story”?  Over at The Ohio State University, Mark Grimsley turned his blog over to a guest blogger, Frank Blazich, a colleague of Papadopoulos at the Naval History and Heritage Command.  Blazich's post "Beyond the Academic Cage: Observations of a New Federal Government Historian" discusses his experiences finding work outside of academia.

Geoffrey P. Megargee, a historian working at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, contributed to the series with "Blog XXXV (35): The History Ph.D. in the Museum."  Rachel Feinmark discusses her path to museum work and the role the Public Fellows Program of the American Council of Learned Societies played in that process with her article "Who’s Afraid of Being a Generalist? On Being a Historian outside the Academy," which appeared on the AHA's blog earlier this year.

Individuals interested in these topics should read the two "twined" essays.  I am both proud and grateful for the essays from Danley, Papadopoulos, and Megargee, but the postings from Johnson, Blazich, and Feinmark add to our understanding of how to make a career outside of a history department.

Blog CCXVIII (218): What to Do with the "Systematic Inequality" Findings

This essay is from the better-late-never department.  This essay was intended as a follow up to Blog CLXXIX, where I basically endorsed the findings of the article "Systematic Inequality."  I am going to explain a bit more on why in this essay, and offer some advice on who various groups should react to the study.  I should note, though, I have some reservations about the findings of the article, and in this essay, I am going to develop more on those misgivings.

I should first explain that I think that this study was an inventive way to measure something that is very difficult to measure: prestige.  Clauset, Arbesman, and Larremore--to use the words of Arbesome--"developed a new ranking methodology based on a simple idea: a school’s prestige (and rank) is determined by where its graduates go. If a school is good, then lots of other schools will want to hire its graduates."  They have hit on something very important here: the major coin of the realm in academia is reputation.  Where a school places its graduates is exceptionally important.  In my Ph.D. program, getting students through their qualifying exams and on the job market was something the faculty stressed and stressed and stressed.

Some of the findings were a bit surprising.  That there is a hierarchy in academia is not news.  That it is so damn steep is another thing altogether.  These findings, though, simply repeat for the profession a general conclusion that was made in a cover story in the January 24, 2015 issue of The Economist on American education.  The basic thrust of the news magazine was that the United States was developing an aristocracy based on education.  The quality of education of is the key to wealth and power in the nation, and if you have wealth, you can begin investing in your children's schooling at a very early age.  They, as a result, get into the best schools, not because they are the children of the wealthy and powerful, but because they are better qualified than their peers because of the educational preparation, which their parents paid for. As I said in Blog II, the rich get richer and the poor don't get so much.  

Some of the rankings of various departments were surprising.  That Brandeis was part of the "Magic Eight" was a bit of a shock.  I was also surprised to see UC, Davis and UC, San Diego finish in the top twenty.  Davis is not exactly considered one of the better locals in the state of California, but a quick visit to the web page of the UC, Davis history department reveals that their faculty have two Pulitzer Prizes, a Bancroft Prize and an AHA president among their numbers.

There are problems with this study, though.  The first big one is that it is focused on Ph.D. placement at other Ph.D. granting institutions.  As a result, some pretty prestigious schools that lack Ph.D. programs will not be found in this ranking: Dartmouth, BYU, West Point, Annapolis, the Air Force Academy, and Villanova.  More importantly, placement at these schools does not count.  Some Ph.D. granting institutions are also absent: Baylor, Oregon State, and SMU.  Another problem, is that the study fails to account for the rise and fall of a department.  It is altogether possible that USC might have had a bad decade in the 1980s when it came to placing their grads.  On the other hand, a school like the University of Rochesther might have had a strong program in the 1980s and 1990s that it could not sustain in the 2000s and the 2010s.  Departments rise and fall and the study fails to capture that dynamic.

Another bigger problem is that subfields are a key part of a department's strength.  If you want to study U.S. diplomatic history, then Yale is a great place to study.  If you want to write a dissertation about Scandinavian history, then it really is the wrong place to be.

With all these points in mind, this study is important to some groups more than others.  To be more specific:

• Undergraduate History Majors: ignore the study. It is all about Ph.D. program placement. If you are majoring in history at a good school a bit down the rankings, like TCU or Alabama, do not worry. The quality of teaching and instruction is quite good across the boards. In fact, both of those schools had history professors listed in the compilation The 300 Best Professors In The Country that the Princeton Review put together. 

• Students Shopping About for a Ph.D. Program: you are the ones that need to take heed most of this study. This next statement has some important qualifications, but here goes—you need to get yourself into the highest ranked program on this list as is possible.  The reason is simple--you want to give yourself as much of an edge as possible in a hyper competitive job market. The key qualification is the subfield you want to study. If you can get into Stanford, good for you, but if you want to study maritime history and they have no one that covers that topic, it is the wrong school for you, end of story. When you find a school that has specialists in the topic you want to study, you need to make sure that the individual professors are willing to take on grad students. 

• Grad Students at the “Magic Eight”: Congratulations. You have a real advantage of your peers at some really good schools. It will help you. But be warned—it does not make you bullet proof. Clauset and his team noted that many graduates of these schools end up at lower tier schools. I should also note that many graduates from these schools and their faculty have a sense of entitlement; that the name of their school will be enough to get them a job. I have seen this more than once and from more than one of these schools. You might be the front runner for a job before you even apply, but you still need to work at the interview process. History is littered with front runners that ended up not winning. Do you really want to be the person that loses out to a graduate from one of the universities ranked in the twenties?

• Grad Students at Institutions other than the “Magic Eight”: Do not lose faith, but also be realistic. Subfields make a difference. If you are specializing in Latin American history at the University of Texas—which has one of the best programs in the world—you are going to be competitive for jobs in this field.  For that field UT is just as good as Harvard or Yale.  Another thing to consider is that this study only examined schools granting a Ph.D., some people might be very content to teach at an institution like BYU or the Air Force Academy that has a terminal BA or MA program. On the other hand, this study makes it clear that if you are attending a lower tier Ivy League school, a Pac-12 school outside of the San Francisco Bay area, an institution in the Big 10, Big XII, or the Southeastern Conference, then the grads of the “Magic Eight” have an enormous, enormous advantage over you. The AHA study The Many Careers of History PhDs also makes it clear that half of all history Ph.D.s have to find jobs outside of teaching. If you already in a program, you probably want to finish and earn the degree. You should, though, begin asking your faculty about your options. Don’t be surprised if they are not able to give you immediate guidance—many of them might be grads of the “Magic Eight” and were fortunate enough to go from grad student to professor. But you need to ask what options have previous graduates turned to in the past. Start this conversation in your department as soon as possible, it is only your future that is at stake.

Blog CCXVII (217): What is Your Purpose?

Several of the recent posts have focused on writing and publishing--the two are different things.  One issue that has not been discussed much is the purpose of the historical writing.  Another way of putting it is: who is your audience?

There are two interesting essays on this topic that I am recommending.  The first is Adam Hochschild's "Do You Need a License to Practice History," which was published in the March/April issue of Historically Speaking.  Hochschild teaches writing in the graduate journalism program at the University of California, Berkeley.  He makes it clear that if you want to write to a larger audience there is basically only way to do it:

If you want a lot of readers to pay attention, you usually have to write narrative history, and to do that you have to bring characters alive. But there is always the temptation to go overboard and imply that Abraham Lincoln single-handedly freed America’s slaves, that Eisenhower alone won World War II, or that it was the wisdom of Washington and Jefferson that created the American nation and has guided us beneficently to the present day.  

As any look back at your high school year book will reveal, there is a downside in chasing popular fads:

The greatest danger in writing history for the general public is a more hidden one: letting popular taste, or publishers’ ideas of popular taste, determine your subject matter. This can bar the door to good writing even more firmly than the conventional image of what a Ph.D. thesis should be. Big publishers can be very small-minded. And writers are dependent on them, because earning a living by writing history outside the academy is extremely difficult.

Hochschild avoids the mistake of arguing that those do not publish large are writing poor books.  In fact, he knows better:

The craft of history inside the academy is immeasurably more rigorous, more accurate, and more thoughtful and wide-ranging than it was a century ago. It is no longer a history merely of presidents and kings, but of ordinary people, of women, of the dispossessed. It makes use of the tools of statistics, sociology, anthropology, and more. Refereed scholarly journals and university presses following the same model have produced an enormous wealth of sophisticated and reliable material that had few equivalents in 1870 or 1880.

With that said, he sees no reason why a historian cannot both be rigorous, analytical and engaging:

There is no reason why most history can’t be written in a way that offers thought-provoking analysis and, at the same time, reaches well beyond an audience of fellow scholars. Plenty of people span both worlds.

The editors of the journal then arranged for responses from 17 scholars, including H. W. Brands, John Demos, Joseph J. Ellis, John Ferling, John Lukacs, and Jay Winik. Since Historically Speaking has gone out of business, it is a bit tricky in getting electronic copies of this entire exchange, and I will recommend that if any of your are interested in looking at the full record, you obtain a copy through your library.

Two years later, Gordon Wood, the Alva O. Way University Professor Emeritus at Brown University, wrote "In Defense of Academic History Writing," which was published in the April 2010 issue of Perspectives on History.  Wood, who won both a Pulitzer and Bancroft Prize, knows something about writing but his essay is exactly what its title suggests.  He first begins by dismissing certain critiques:

Academic historians have not forgotten how to tell a story. Instead, most of them have purposefully chosen not to tell stories; that is, they have chosen not to write narrative history. Narrative history is a particular kind of history-writing whose popularity comes from the fact that it resembles a story.

He also notes that many of these scholars are not trying to tell stories that will have wide appeal:

So advising academic historians that they have to write more stimulating prose if they want to enlarge their readership misses the point. It is not heavy and difficult prose that limits their readers; it is rather the subjects they choose to write about and their conception of their readership as fellow historians engaged in an accumulative science. 

Both Hochschild and Wood have important points that are worth considering.  Hochschild is right in that many more historians could probably go popular without hurting their scholarship.  But Wood is correct when he says that much scholarship does not lend itself to a three-part story arc no matter how dramatic.  In the end, it is up to the author to know the reason they are investing all the time and effort into the project.   

Blog CCXVI (216): More Writing Roundtables

The roundtable listed in Blog CCXV was not the first one to discuss  the importance of writing well in history in recent years.  There was a session at the 2014 American Historical Association Annual Meeting on this topic: "Writing History for the Public."  Elizabeth Covart reported on this for John Fea's blog The Way of Improvement Leads Home.  There are, again, very interesting insights offered up in her summary.  Covart expands on her reporting of this session with a posting on her own blog.

Covart also has a question and answer series on her blog about Megan Marshall's views on writing.  Marshall won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for her biography of Margaret Fuller, and was a participant in the 2014 AHA meeting...sort of.  (Plane delays kept her from attending in person; her comments were read by another participant).  The first post is on the importance of narrative over argument.  The second is on art of writing biography.  The third is on the origins of Marshall's writing style.

Covart also has an extended assessment of the writing advice that journalism professor Mitchell Zuckoff offers on how to write for your readers.  Ann Little in her Historiann blog offers her own assessment: "This is all good advice, but I think the issue of journalists who write books that people buy versus historians who write books for other historians is oversimplified, and ignores the question of resources, platforms, and marketing that work to the advantage of the journalists who write a history book or two."  Despite this difference of opinion, Little, who has real talent as a writer, agrees with most of Covart's post about the importance of writing.  Covart's response is basically one in which she agrees that platforms are important.

It is hard to argue with either one.  As Brandon Proia point out in his article quoted in Blog CCXV, any number of things can go wrong when trying to write for a larger audience, and Little is right: it is easier for people with a public platform to get those big contracts.  The rich get richer, although Proria argues can work to change that factor.  Covart is also correct to emphasize working on making your writing better.  It is a skill set that does not get developed much in graduate programs.

Blog CCXV (215): The Mechanics of Trade Book Publishing Revisited

In the early days of this blog, I wrote several essays on the publishing process.  Three focused on what it took to get a book into print:

• Blog XXII (22): Book Publishing
• Blog XXIII (23): The Mechanics of Academic Book Publishing
• Blog XXIV (24): The Mechanics of Trade Book Publishing

What does it take to write for the general public?  While I have five academic books to my name and five writing awards, I might not be the best person to answer that question.  I think the observations offered in Blog XXIV are pretty sound, but I have never published a trade book. 

Even if I had, that question is difficult to answer, and the experiences of editors, authors, and literary agents tend to be very different.  The American Historian, a publication of the Organization of American Historians, published an article on this topic: "Writing History for a Popular Audience: A Round Table Discussion."  What makes this article so valuable is it is a roundtable of three individuals involved in the trade book world: Danielle McGuire, an award winning historian who teaches at Wayne State University; Andrew Miller, a senior editor at Alfred A. Knopf; and T. J. Stiles, the Pulitzer Prize winning biographer.   It is a very insightful exchange on publishing, offering a number of perspectives, but one point Stiles made stands out: "Trade publishing exists in the commercial economy. Here, you try to expand your audience, rather than more deeply penetrate a closed market, as in academic publishing. You do that not by dumbing down, but by maximizing the reading experience. The ultimate goal of the trade book is not to advance the state of the field, though it certainly may do that, but to succeed as a book—as an organically complete and satisfying work."

In another article from The American Historian on this topic, Brandon Proia, the history editor at the University of North Carolina Press who previously worked at Basic Books and PublicAffairs, tries to explain what works and does not work in the trade book industry: "The Art of the Serious: Writing History for an Elusive Mass Readership."  As he admits, "There is much mythmaking surrounding the jump from publishing revised dissertations and monographs to writing history for the masses. What makes a trade book 'trade' is the fact that it targets the broadest possible book-buying audience. Yet how to accomplish this is less settled." 

Proia explains that any number of things can go wrong: the editor that acquired the project leaves the press, the manuscript is rushed into production without enough editing, there is not enough marketing support, and so on.  These facts can be a bit demoralizing, but it is hardly surprising.  Books--trade books in particular--are part of the entertainment industry and the whims of what are popular do not always go hand in hand with what is good.  There are too many examples of good television series or films failing to find an audience despite their artistic merit. 

There are a number of differences between television, film and books, but one that works to the advantage of authors and publishers is that books often get the time to become successful.  "What few publishers will admit out loud is that it takes time for a readership to find an author, and vice versa."  Overnight successes are often years in the making.  "It may take multiple books, a multitude of lectures and interviews and reviews before an argument begins to sink in and audiences begin to arise around one’s book."  Basically, he argues that historians make their audiences book after book.  "The serious historian and publisher must cross over to larger and larger audiences—and keep pushing even when the initial attempt doesn’t take. They must do so, not out of a faith that readers must be out there, but precisely because they know that they’re not—not yet. Readers spring up only where we sow."

Anyone interested in going the trade route should read these two essays.  They have much to offer.

Blog CCIV (214): Writing in History Some More

What does it take to be a good writer in the profession of history?  That is an issue that does not get discussed much in graduate programs—at least not at the schools I attended.  Despite that fact it is an important skill set, and I am not the only that thinks so.  "The Junto" is a group blog on early American history.  The contributors tend to be ABD grad students and junior scholars.  The site addresses many issues, not all of them limited to the period before 1815.  There are a couple of interesting interviews with historians about a number of topics.  The ones that focus on the writing process are listed below:

• Edward E. Andrews: "As a teacher, I find that my students understand course material best when it is communicated through stories, anecdotes, and little vignettes, and I think that holds true for our scholarly endeavors, as well."
• Ann Little: "I’m not so much a planner as a noodler. I just noodle along in a pile of sources—or with a few sources and get interested in one detail, which leads me to another detail, which might lead eventually to a story."
• Zachary Hutchins: "For those interested in editing a collection of essays, I have three pieces of advice. First, before circulating a [call for papers], have a preliminary discussion with editors at one or more press... Second, try to select and shape proposals in a way that emphasizes the unity of your collection and the continuities between individual essays... Third, pay more attention to the proposals of your contributors than their CVs."

The New York Times also has a series called "By the Book."  It is a series of Questions and Answers with authors of new books, both fiction and non-fiction about their literary lifestyles.  As a result, many of these entries discuss things other than the craft of writing; what writers would you invite to dinner party, and so on.  Some of the "authors" are not even writers, but the celebrities who have "written" a book with a co-author.  As a result, this series is less useful than the one that The Chronicle of Higher Education published.  Nonetheless, there are several useful comments and the historians, journalists writing history, and even a historian turned novelist featured in this series are listed below:

• H.W. Brands: "To a writer...tone and voice conquer all. Dickens knew it. Tom Wolfe has dined out on it forever."
• Jeffrey Toobin: "I love mastery and confidence in a writer — the feeling that she knows exactly where she’s taking you and why."
• Joseph J. Ellis: He likes writers that "know how to tell a story with a style as distinctive as their fingerprint." 
• David McCullough: "The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White. I read it first nearly 50 years ago and still turn to it as an ever reliable aid-to-navigation, and particularly White’s last chapter, with its reminders to 'Revise and Rewrite' and 'Be Clear.'"
• James M. McPherson: "Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels, a novel about the battle of Gettysburg that, to my mind, provides the most incisive insights into the various meanings of the war for the men who fought it."
• Erik Larson: "Hemingway may not have been the nicest person in the world, but his work gave me a new way of thinking about writing — the value of weeding out adjectives and adverbs. He was, above all, a master at the art of not saying."
• Sara Paretsky: "Believable characters first, a good story, an understanding of how to pace dramatic action. I like commitment by a writer, to the form, to the story."
• Rick Perlstein: "I look to historians for their power to illuminate not just the invisible lineaments of the present, but also that which is not present. What are the roads that were not taken that most shape our own time?"
• Lynne Cheney: "Some of the best history today is being written by people who aren’t professional historians. Several have journalistic backgrounds — David McCullough, Ron Chernow, Jon Meacham — and they know how to create a gripping narrative, which is pretty important when you are telling a story the ending of which is known."

Blog CCXIII (213): Life in Hell Again

The best parody has an element of truth in it. Here is another cartoon from Matt Groening's Life in Hell comic strip.  I never dropped out of grad school, but everything else has the ring of truth to it.

 

Blog CCXII (212): Writing in History

In previous posts--Blog XXII and Blog XXV--this blog has stressed the importance of writing well.  As I have argued, this skill is a factor--more indirect than direct, but significant nonetheless--in professional advancement. Rachel Toor, an associate professor of creative writing at Eastern Washington University, tends to think the same way. She has a series that she publishes in The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Scholars Talk Writing" in which she interviews a number of individuals from different academic disciplines. Only three of the individuals she has interviewed are historians, but I have included all of them because the issues they discuss are often not that different, in my opinion, from what a publishing historian encounters:

• Carl Elliot: "In academic writing you’re given a lot of latitude to be boring."
• Jennifer Crusie: "It’s an incredibly arrogant act to publish anything."
• Steven Pinker: "Good prose requires dedication to the craft of writing, and our profession simply doesn’t reward it."
• Jay Parini: "You have to write a lot to get better at writing," so "don’t stop."
• Michael Bérubé: "I still have the standard anxiety of a struggling musician: Regardless of the gig, I want to be invited back."
• Deirdre McClosky: "You know the standard is not high in economics. Whenever I get the slightest bit vain about my allegedly good writing, I open The New Yorker and weep."
• James M. McPherson: "I learned how to write mainly by the trial and error of writing."
• Laura Kipnis: "Writing for wider venues is actually a lot more challenging; at least that’s been my experience."
• Camille Paglia: "I must stress that all of my important writing, including my books, has been done in longhand, in the old, predigital way. I absolutely must have physical, muscular contact with pen and page. Body rhythm is fundamental to my best work."
• Rebecca Newberger Goldstein: "You have to think about what you’ve written from the point of view of someone who isn’t you."
• Sam Wineburg: "The two most important tools a writer has are his ears."
• Anthony Grafton: "It’s a matter of establishing your voice on the page, in the first sentence, while hoping to win the reader’s attention and not put her off,"

HistoryNet, the on-line presence of a number of popular history magazines (American History, America's Civil War, Aviation History, Civil War Times, Military History, MHQ, Vietnam, Wild West, and World War II) has also been interviewing a number of historians, journalists, and biographers about their work.  These interviews published in the various print magazines that HistoryNet represents, focus on a number of issues, but all of them discuss the importance of writing as part of the interview:

• T. J. Stiles: "I try to write the kind of book I like to read. I want to be transported to another place, to have the visceral pleasure of following a subject in peril, and to have those “aha” moments, when I come to see the world in a different way."
• Nancy Plain: "Just try to tell a good story, and tell it, as much as possible, as if they are talking to a friend. Tell it simply and clearly, with colorful details and plenty of primary-source quote."
• Bill O'Neal: "I realized early that I’m not a gifted writer, so I’ve worked very hard (armed with my trusty thesaurus) to become a good craftsman, a wordsmith who can produce a smooth read."
• Rick Atkinson: "My ambition is to have a distinctive narrative voice, to bring a literary sensibility to writing about war, and to make that voice compelling enough and vivid enough that even people who are well read about World War II feel that they are coming to the story fresh."
  

Blog CCXI (211): Patton as an Academic

Mark Grimsley

Mark Grimsley of The Ohio State University is one of the leading military historians in the profession.  He writes primarily on the Civil War time period.  His first book was: The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), which won the Lincoln Prize.  He has written, co-written, or edited five others.  He has won three teaching awards at OSU.  He is also a blogger of the first order.  He developed the website, Facebook page, and blog of the Society for Military.  His website is warhistorian.org and the blog of that website is: "Blog Them Out of the Stone Age: Toward A Broader Vision of Military History and National Security Affairs." 

An essay he posted on "Blog Them Out of the Stone Age" really spoke to me in several ways.  As many of you might note, I wrote a book on the making of the film Patton.  The introduction is the piece of writing I am most proud of at the moment.  I modeled it after the Frank Sinatra film The Manchurian Candidate (1962), cutting back and forth between George C. Scott shooting the scene, the scene itself, and reactions to that section of the film.  (Francis Ford Coppola wrote this section of the script, by gluing several speeches the real Patton gave into one short address).  The chapter that was the most difficult to write was the one, where I discuss all the references to it in films and television shows since  and various other appropriations of the film.  In one of the more clever of these efforts, Grimsley rewrote the scene with Patton as an academic. It begins:

Now I want you to remember that few PhDs ever get the job they really wanted. They get used to taking a job at some college where they feel under-placed.

It ends:

Now, all this stuff about there not being many jobs, much less tenure-track jobs, is absolute gospel. Colleges love to exploit PhDs.  Most real colleges love to make you adjuncts. 

Oh.  I will be proud to lead you gullible fools down the garden path any time I can get my readings course to subscribe 

That’s all.

I am not sure if I should laugh or cry.

Blog CCX (210): People News

A couple of new developments in the history business have transpired of late that are worth taking note of.  Here they are:

Benjamin H. Irvin

The Journal of American History has a new editor.  Benjamin H. Irvin, associate professor at the University of Arizona, is taking over the journal and will also serve as associate professor in the department of history at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty: The Continental Congress and the People Out of Doors (2011).   His next book, which is in the works, focuses on veterans of the American Revolution in the early republic period.

Alex Lichtenstien

The American Historical Association is also changing editors. Alex Lichtenstein, professor of history at Indiana University, will take over as editor of the American Historical Review in August of 2017.  Unlike Irvin, Lichtenstein is already a member of the Indiana faculty.  His research focuses on labor history and the struggle for racial justice against the forces of white supremacy.  He is no stranger to the journal.  He served as associate editor of the AHR in 2014–15 and interim editor in 2015–16. He has also been the editor of another academic publication, Safundi: The Journal of South African & American Studies.

Angela Lahr

The blog of the American Historical Association has a feature called "Member Spotlight."  This feature is a series of interviews with individual members of the AHA.  On May 5, the series focused on a friend of the blog: Angela Lahr of Westminster College.  Lahr wrote one of the first entries in the "Eight Questions" series.  To be specific, she wrote Blog CX (110): Eight Questions: Religious History.

Edwin J. Perkins

A few months before, the "Member Spotlight" series focused on another friend of the blog, Edwin J. Perkins, a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California.  We were both at USC at the same time in the mid 1990s.  I never took any classes from him, but he gave me a good deal of professional advice--he was the associate editor of Pacific Historical Review at the time.  He took a look at the first academic article I ever published.  Much of his input  has percolated into this blog in many ways. 

Blog CCIX (209): Faculty Unions the California Case Study

I have never really believed that faculty unions will solve the problems facing history.  With that said, while I am a bit skeptical, I am open-minded.  The Organization of American Historians has published several articles on its blog about the status of contingent faculty.  Donald W. Rogers, an adjunct lecturer in history at both Central Connecticut State University and Housatonic Community College, argues, "The most impressive gains for contingent faculty members have come from local campaigns waged on a campus-by-campus basis."   Labor unions have secured collective bargaining agreements that have the states of  part-time faculty.  "The gold standard for these contracts has been set by faculty associations in Canadian institutions like Concordia University and the California State University system."

Trevor Griffey, a former adjunct professor in the history department at Long Beach State, begs to differ.  He has an interesting article on the blog about his experiences as an adjunct and as a union organizer: "Can Faculty Labor Unions Stop the Decline of Tenure?"  The answer seems to be: not really.  "Arguably, they have slowed the decline of faculty pay and job security more than they have reversed it," Griffey states.  He also explains that two-thirds of all unionized faculty are located in five states: California, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York. 

In 2001-2002, the California Faculty Association, the union representing faculty in the California State University system got the California state legislature to commit to having a tenure density of 75 percent.  The results were immediate.  Cal State schools hired nearly 2,000 new faculty positions--all to the good.  The thing is--almost at the same time, the state legislature cut funding to the system by half a billion dollars.  What happened?  Tuition went up, non-teaching elements of the system were cut to the bone, and salaries for faculty went down.  The average is $38,000 and that is in California, which is a bit more expensive than other areas of the country. "The biggest lesson that I take from my brief experience in the CSU system," Griffey observes, "is that college faculty in labor unions currently lack the power to effectively resist or reverse the decline of tenure."  Griffey also notes that administrators are not the real problem, although he admits that many in the Faculty Association disagree with him.  The real problem is the state legislature, which the union is reluctant to criticizes, for partisan reasons.

The essay is interesting and thoughtful, presenting a complex issue without dumbing it down.  I suggest a careful read.

Blog CCVIII (208): Ten Greatest Television and Film College Professors

The most previous post got me to thinking about the portrayals of college professors in film and on television.  I suppose one could write a serious, scholarly article on the topic, but that also seems to suck all the fun out of it.  Below is my list.  My criteria was pretty lose.  I had to have seen the film and the character had to have been a professor at a college or university even if the story line was about another activity, which is true about a lot of them.

Turns out Hollywood finds college professors a pretty interesting lot.  No wonder people keep enrolling in graduate school despite the dire economics of it all!  We do all sorts of things from dating Jennifer Anniston to finding the Holy Grail, and helping win the Cold War to documenting the nature of human society for aliens from outer space.  Enjoy:

10)  Charles W. Kingsfield, Jr. (John Houseman) The Paper Chase (1973)
Houseman won an Academy Award as best supporting actor for this role. A writer, director, and producer, Houseman was the director of the drama division at The Juilliard School.   His students included Kevin Kline, Patti LuPone, Mandy Patinkin, Christopher Reeve, and Robin Williams.  Kingsfield was first major acting job.  At least one of his former students said Houseman was not acting.  The thing that is different about this role from most of the others on this list is that that Kingsfield's main activity on screen is teaching.  It also is probably the most realistic portrayal of a college professor.


9)  Professor Terguson (Sam Kinison) Back to School (1986)
Kinison's role in this film is quite small, but Terguson makes this list mainly because he is a historian.  Kinison was a stand up comic, and in his main scene, he delivered his lines in the screaming style that characterized his night club routines:

Terguson: You remember that thing we had about 30 years ago called the Korean conflict? And how we failed to achieve victory? How come we didn't cross the 38th parallel and push those rice-eaters back to the Great Wall of China? Then take the fucking wall apart brick by brick and nuke them back into the fucking stone age forever? Tell me why! How come? Say it! Say it!

Thornton Melon: All right. I'll say it. 'Cause Truman was too much of a pussy wimp to let MacArthur go in there and blow out those Commie bastards!

Professor Terguson: Good answer. Good answer. I like the way you think. I'm gonna be watching you.

Thornton Melon (to the camera): Good teacher. He really seems to care. About what I have no idea.

8) Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) The Da Vinci Code (2006) Angels & Demons (2009) and Inferno (2016)
In Dan Brown's novels and the films, Langdon is a professor of religious symbology at Harvard University.  There is no actual field of "religious symbology."  What Langdon does is really art history.  Does not sound as cool, though. 


7)  Richard "Dick" Solomon (John Lithgow) 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996-2001)
Solomon is a professor of physics at Pendleton State University in Rutherford, Ohio and shares an office with Mary Albright, a professor of anthropology.  I always wondered how small Pendleton had to be for professors from such different fields to be sharing an office.  The other thing is that Solomon is an alien sent to Earth to observe the human race.  Lithgow is hilarious in the role and won three Emmy Awards.  Of course, he might have had some help.  His wife is a history professor.


6) Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) The Hunt for Red October (1990)
The question is which Jack Ryan?: Baldwin's, Harrison Ford's, Ben Affleck's, or Chris Pine's.  I will go with the original, even though all the things Ryan has done by 31 (Baldwin's age at the time) is pushing the limits of believability: CIA analyst, U.S. Naval Academy history professor, published historian, Ph.D. from Georgetown, a Wall Street trader who made $8 million before going to grad school, and U.S. Naval Academy graduate.  (His undergraduate alma matter is a major difference between the films and books). But The Hunt for Red October has a great line that is from the original novel:

Capt. Marko Ramius: What books did you write?  

Jack Ryan: I wrote a biography of, of Admiral Halsey, called The Fighting Sailor, about, uh, naval combat tactics... 

Capt. Ramius: I know this book!  

Capt. Vasili Borodin: Torpedo impact... 

Capt. Ramius: Your conclusions were all wrong, Ryan... 

Capt. Vasili Borodin: ...10 seconds. 

Capt. Ramius: ...Halsey acted stupidly.

5) Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) How I Met Your Mother (2005-2013)
Theodore Evelyn Mosby is an architect living and working in New York, New York.  How I Met Your Mother is the story about how he found his wife.  Mosby is telling the story in flashback mode.  In the nine seasons of the television program, he dated 38 women, before finding "the one."  In season four his fiancé leaves him hours before the wedding for her son's father.  In an effort to make things right, her once again boyfriend uses his family connections to get Mosby a job as a professor of architecture at Columbia University as a consolation prize.  Mosby teaches at Columbia even though he only has a bachelor's degree.  (He must of been some type of adjunct).  As it turns out, he and his future wife see each other for the first time when Mosby accidentally enters the wrong classroom on his first day of teaching.  As a professor, his students tend to act as something of an entourage. 

4) The Professor (Russell Johnson) Gilligan's Island (1964-1967)
Roy Hinkley, Ph.D. apparently liked Los Angeles and the Dallas/Forth Worth area.  He has degrees from USC, UCLA, TCU, and SMU.  Cool, calm, and rational, he took a lot of books with him for a three hour tour.  The Professor was a learned man and a master of many fields of science, but some things were beyond him.  In the 1987 movie Back to the Beach, Bob Denver played the "Bartender" who was Gilligan in everything but name for legal reasons (the "Bartender" even dressed like Gilligan), and delivered this line:

You know, I lived with a guy for years. A real genius. He could take a couple of these pineapples or a couple of coconuts with some strings and wire and make a nuclear reactor. But he couldn't fix a two-foot hole in a boat. Wanna hear the rest?

3) Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989)
Venkman loses his job at Columbia University early in the film--apparently he did not have tenure--and the dean makes the reasons for his dismissal clear:

Doctor... Venkman. We believe that the purpose of science is to serve mankind. You, however, seem to regard science as some kind of dodge... or hustle. Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable! You are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman! 

Venkman then goes on to fame as the leader of the Ghostbusters and saves the city from Gozer the Gozerian, a Summerian god who comes in the form of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.


2)  Ross Geller (David Schwimmer) Friends (1994-2004)
Friends was one of the funniest shows on television and dominated the 1990s.  Ross has a Ph.D. in paleontology from Columbia University at age 27, which is possible, but just barely.  At times Schwimmer's portrayal struck me as quite realistic; Ross seems a bit "over devoted" to his field, and is a bit sensitive when people did not treat his title of "doctor" with the same level of respect that they would give a physician,  On the other hand, all he seems to do is hangout with his friends at the local coffee shop, and has a really healthy social life for an academic--he got married and divorced three times and slept with lot of other women.  People have done studies, and come up with numbers ranging from 14 to 17, which is twice the supposed national average.
 

1) Henry "Indiana" Jones, Jr. (Harrison Ford) Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Not many people know this but Indiana Jones has been played by 7 actors in the 4 films and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, an American television series that lasted for 4 seasons.  Despite that fact, Harrison Ford is the actor most associated with this role.  In 2003 the American Film Institute ranked Jones as the second greatest cinematic hero of all time.  He got his Ph.D. in archeology at the University of Chicago and teaches at Marshall College in Connecticut.  He seems to be a specialist in a number of time periods and locals, which is super unrealistic.  But how many of us get to see God evaporate a professional, academic rival into nothing?

Blog CCVII (207): Life in Hell

Matt Groening rocketed to fame when he created The Simpsons.  Before that he drew the Life in Hell cartoon.  I remember seeing this cartoon as an undergraduate and laughing hysterically.  Today, it gets a chuckle.  I think that is me and not the cartoon.  Enjoy:

Blog CCVI(206): The Letter of Recommendation

As I said in my last post, I do not read the blogs of a lot of other historians.  John Fea's blog "The Way of Improvement Leads Home" is an exception and so is Ann M. Little's "Historiann."  In fact, a few weeks ago she wrote a post on the letter of recommendation that I wish I had written: "More From the Mailbag: How Can I Write a Good Letter of Recommendation?"  Here is an excerpt about what makes for a good letter:

the most helpful letters of recommendation are written like the best letters from tenure and promotion referees.  That is, they’re experts in a subfield writing to peers who are experts in other history subfields, and so understand their charge to contextualize and explain the candidate’s research to an intelligent audience of non-specialists.

That might not strike you as all that difficult an undertaking, but you would be surprised.  One of the first things you learn when you are on a search committee is that you do not know the field, the players, or the historiographical issues in debate.  Letters that can explain the importance of his work without spending three pages summarizing the dissertation, chapter by chapter, are extremely helpful.  A good letter will also discuss the candidate's teaching experience and abilities.  This topic is more important than you might think.  In graduate school, we focus on interpretations and research, but most people will find gainful employment in the profession at schools where teaching is the primary focus.  Letters about the candidates research agenda and contributions are good, but they only go so far. 

Little also mentions something else that I have seen:

I’m sure you, the referee, are a big shot in your field, but not everyone will recognize your name and tremble that you have deigned to address words to us on the search committee.

I mentioned much of what I am about to report in Blog LVII, so it is not new, and I am going to name names...as much as I can remember.  I was on a search committee where a we had a candidate that we were keen on.  He had a Ph.D. from Princeton, but was from Dallas, Texas and was teaching at a community college in the Dallas area.  His letters from Princeton were basically useless.  His dissertation advisor wrote a letter that positive, but no more than three sentences long.  He basically figured that his name and the Princeton reputation would carry the day.  (One of the problems with this approach is that we had two Princeton Ph.D.s apply for the job.)  In the end, it was the letter from his supervisor at the Dallas area community college that really explained his strengths and moved him into the interview on campus list.

The comments from Little's post are also worth reading.   

There is also a downside to writing letters of recommendation.  Little discusses that in another posting: "Functioning Like A Senior Scholar with Junior Scholar Prestige and Pay."

Jonathan Wolff over at The Guardian is a bit skeptical about the value of letters of recommendation and hits on an important shortcoming that he makes clear in the title of his essay: "Academic Reference Inflation Has Set In, and Everyone is Simply Wonderful."

How do you get good letters?  Well, if Wolff is right, then everyone gets them.  That is a bit of an issue in grad school, since everyone knows how the game is played.  But not always.  See the essays by John Fea: "On Letters of Recommendation" and "More on Letters of Recommendation."  Also see, Chris Blattman's article for Inside Higher Ed: "Will I Write a Letter for You?"

Blog CCV (205): So What CAN You Do With A History Major?

As a general rule, I try not to read the blogs of other historians.  Some of them are quite good, but they are generally focused on their fields.  I find all sorts of different fields of history interesting, but at some point you have to say, I just cannot keep up with issues developing in U.S. intellectual history, and/or Medieval European history.  History bloggers also tend to wander off topic a bit; I probably have done that a bit, but only a bit; others wanted to use their forums to talk about the 2016 U.S. presidential election, or the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series. 

With those points made, I do every once and a while--more once than while--I visit other history blogs.  One of the better ones out there is John Fea's "The Way of Improvement Leads Home."  Fea is a religious historian of the 19th Century, and chair of the Department of History at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.  Although his blog focuses a lot on his research and teaching areas, Fea moves around the 19th Century a fair deal, and discusses many other history profession issues.

In 2009 Fea started a series on his blog "So What CAN You Do With A History Major?"  The majority of the entries in this series are interviews with history graduates of Messiah College on what they have done with their degree since graduation, but it is more than a little idiosyncratic.  There are re-postings of other articles, multiple posts about the same person, interviews with guidance counselors, and so on.  This series is aimed at convincing undergraduates and/or their parents that a BA in history is not a waste of a college degree.  Despite that fact, it serves a useful purpose for people in graduate school as a way of generating ideas on what they might do if they are unable to line up gainful employment as professional historians:

1. Introduction to the Series
2. "Closing the Gap Between the Liberal-Arts and Career Services"
3. HNN Intern
4. Famous History Majors
5. Police Officer
6. History Professor
7. Medical Doctor
8. You Majored in What?
9. Jonathan M. Young, Chair, National Council on Disability
10. The Dartmouth Chart
11. Five Interviews
12. Salaries
13. Librarian
14. A Passion for History 
15. Katherine Brooks Interview
16. Janet Vogel, Librarian, Thurmont Maryland Regional Library System
17. Scott Keyes, "Stop Asking Me My Major"
18. Matthew Shaffer, "Educating for the Good Life"
19. Layne Lebo, Minister, Mechanicsburg Brethern in Christ Church
20. Go Into Business
21. A Collection of Articles
22. Sarah Baker, Documentary Film Maker
23. Tony Horowitz, Reporter/Writer
24. Amy Bass, NBC
25. Sonia Nazario, reporter, Los Angles Times
26. Interview with Katherine Brooks
27. Allyson Moore Wall Street Journal guest editorial
28. AHA Today
29. Financial Analysis
30. Bill Stone, Director of Forecasting and Financial Operations, Pearson Education
31. Salaries
32. Georgiana Iasnik, Systems Specialist
33. Cali Pitchel McCullough, Marketing and Communications Associate
34. Scott Rohrer, editor, National Journal
35. Philip Bess, Maine Media Workshops
36. Joshua Kim, Academic Administrator, Dartmouth College
37. Tara Anderson, program coordinator, CURE International
38. Matthew Bucher, Church Missionary/Administrator
39. Jeff Robinson, AmeriCorps
40. Work For Social Justice
41. Joe Hackman, Pastor, Salford Mennonite Church, Harleysville, Pennsylvania
42. Michael Rossi, Documentry Film Maker
43. "History Majors in the Job Market"
44. "Want Innovative Thinking? Hire from the Humanities"
45. Lloyd Blankfein, Chief Executive Officer, Goldman Sachs
46. Robert “Buddy” Hocutt, Web Content Writer
47. Megan Talley, Administrative and Programming Coordinator, Hershey Foundation
48. Michael Adams, Paralegal
49. Caitlin Babcock, Non-Profit Organization Management Trainee
50. Brianna LaCassem, Biopharmaceutical Technology, Quality Assurance Analyst
51. Cali Pitchel, Director of Marketing, Analytic Pros
52. Jonathan Lewis, Supply Chain Engineer
53. Cali Pitchel, Director of Marketing, Analytic Pros
54. David Glenn, Nurse