Great Caesar’s Ghost! Are Traditional History Courses Vanishing?

New York Times ^ | June 10, 2009 | Patricia Cohen

[reaganaut1]

To the pessimists evidence that the field of diplomatic history is on the decline is everywhere. Job openings on the nation’s college campuses are scarce, while bread-and-butter courses like the Origins of War and American Foreign Policy are dropping from history department postings. And now, in what seems an almost gratuitous insult, Diplomatic History, the sole journal devoted to the subject, has proposed changing its title.

For many in the field this latest suggestion is emblematic of a broader problem: the shrinking importance not only of diplomatic history but also of traditional specialties like economic, military and constitutional history.

The future of the history profession (as well as the journal’s title) are the subject of a roundtable discussion to be held this month at the annual convention of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Many historians “are on the defensive,” said Thomas W. Zeiler, the executive editor of Diplomatic History and the moderator of the panel. (Mr. Zeiler, who floated the name change, said he did not have a particular replacement in mind.)

To Mr. Zeiler there is no doubt that the days when diplomatic history dominated the profession are gone. Fewer traditional courses in the subject are taught, fewer articles are published in refereed journals, and graduate student training has changed. Nonetheless Mr. Zeiler is not as worried as some of his colleagues. The shift does not necessarily mean students aren’t learning the material, he noted, but rather that a new approach to teaching it has developed.

The shift in focus began in the late 1960s and early ’70s, when a generation of academics began looking into the roles of people generally missing from history books — women, minorities, immigrants, workers. Social and cultural history, often referred to as bottom-up history, offered fresh subjects.

[nmh]

I jsut ordered the one you recommended.

What is your take on some of his other books?

Specifically,

The United States as a world power;
a diplomatic history, 1900-1950

By Samuel Flagg Bemis

[nmh]

Lend me some tin foil too!

It’s amazing ... what’s going on and how he LIES about it.

He will specifically point out the he is NOT doing the very evil deed he IS doing - of course with the street thug lilt in his voice.

[what's up]

bookmark

[LS]

It is 100% correct that finding anything remotely resembling a "traditional" history course, that deals 70% with political/military/diplomatic history, 20% with business/economic history, and 10% with religious history is nearly impossible.

I had to struggle to keep "Civil War and Reconstruction" on our teaching schedule, and we only teach it in the summer. Most schools no longer have "Age of Jackson" or "Revolution/Constitution/Early Republic." Everything is "social history this," "minority/women that." Just look at the dissertations that are coming out of the grad schools. Now, that is not to say that there aren't some real gems out there (we got one recently, whose cover I won't blow), or that all the work that these students are doing is meaningless. But it's mostly what I call "supportive" evidence to larger historical questions that they refrain from engaging. You can see this in the reviews of the books, in which "so-and-so offers us a new insights into the world of antebellum urban slaves," etc. Because so little genuine NEW, SIGNIFICANT research is turned out, virtually all of it is "nibbling around the edges." And since it is nearly verboten to write about "great men," or simply do a new biography of Lincoln or Washington unless you "out" them as homosexuals or fraternal twins to a wildebeest, well, you're not going to get anywhere.

[LS]

BTW, I went to UCSB when the author, Pat Cohen, was teaching there, although I did not take any classes from her.

[Kenny Bunk]

He will specifically point out the he is NOT doing the very evil deed he IS doing - of course with the street thug lilt in his voice.

I'm sorry. I am not presently reading any posts from you. What if the new Internet Czar finds out? I could lose my job at the Ho Chi Minh Political-Reducation Camp. (I teach revisionist deconstructed historical oppression appreciation skills.)

There is some small light flickering at the end of the tunnel.* The Rat The Dick Morris is actually publishing some stuff that could be considered slightly critical of our Duce, which means Hillary and that fellow she is still married to think that our Duce may be a somewhat brief phenomenon.

Big time Lefties hedging their bets a bit?

*Stay flexible, it could just be the headlight on The Marxist Express

[x]

If it's true, it's because there's not a perceived "need to know."

I'd bet Military History gets taught intensively at the service academies, but unfortunately, there aren't any institutions which bring the same focus to diplomatic history.

Students just don't think history is important enough. At university's today, history is a dessert, not a main course, because there's no career track associated with it.

The curious thing is that political and military history books sell quite well to the general public -- much better than social history.

[Kenny Bunk]

Other “White People,” The OWPs

It is very hard to believe that about half these OWP's were actually women, because all they have ever done is force their views, their religion, and their cultural values on minority groups.

Because of their incorrect attitudes toward non-Western peoples, their 5,000 years of history must be completely disregarded. History began with the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and although Bill Clinton and JFK were OWP's, they are sort of important milestones in our development as politically correct world citizens, too, under the far-seeing Obama, of course.

Next week, we'll talk about Fidel Castro. In the meantime, watch plenty of TV and don't smoke.

[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	Whomever controls the present controls the past. -- George Orwell Job openings on the nation's college campuses are scarce, while bread-and-butter courses like the Origins of War and American Foreign Policy are dropping from history department postings. And now, in what seems an almost gratuitous insult, Diplomatic History, the sole journal devoted to the subject, has proposed changing its title. For many in the field this latest suggestion is emblematic of a broader problem: the shrinking importance not only of diplomatic history but also of traditional specialties like economic, military and constitutional history. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
·Dogpile · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

[nmh]

LOL!

Hide your eyes from my rants.

I’m having my daughter read Animal Farm and I am more than happy to name names for present day characters. I just can’t wait till she does a book report on that one.

[stayathomemom]

Is a lot of this “non-basics” teaching because those striving for their PhD’s must publish new material? What’s new about the old guys? Their advisers steer them toward new topics for their dissertations, and frankly this might be all that’s left that is new: Outlier topics or discoveries of hidden scandal. When called to teach a course, these people would naturally gravitate to that which is easy for them to teach: their field of study. I would wonder if the best chance to find a good basic course in history would be from a professor who had a passion for the topic. If the department is full of left wingers, those who won’t propagandize the material may be hard to find. Is this an accurate reading of the situation, or am I off base?

[Altura Ct.]

Speaking of Martin Luther, my daughter had to do a porject on Martin Luther. All she could find were oodles and oodles of stuff on Martin Luther King and Martin Luther King Jr. at her local library. It was as though Martin Luther, the German Reformer didn’t exist. I had to use the internet to get material on him.

I am not surprised at all. The Marxist have almost completely taken over without firing a shot and little confrontation. MLK & Rosa Parks are the new "American" heroes and icons. Along with rewriting history they are hard at work displacing street names, school & building names etc. Our icons, symbols and heritage are slowly but surely being displaced, destroyed and demonized. Even on this supposedly conservative board many here will quote or refer to MLK as the ultimate American. He's quoted and idolized in spite of his Marxist and racist connections.

Of course what we are starting to see now is the big push for Hispanic heroes and icons. If we continue down this path in 20 years or less The founders and other American heroes will all but be wiped from our history except as examples as evil slave holding whites. The Alamo will be used as another example of this evil manifestation. Whites are the fair haired step child and eventually will be destroyed. Destroy our heroes and history and then genocide is all but a given but many either don't care or have their head buried in the sand. Our posterity is being set up and our country ransacked.

It starts and ends in our "public education" system but implicitly with our government and the MSM. Another reason why home schooling is vital but of course it also depends on the curriculum used and We the People.

[CatoRenasci]

Indeed. No more 'kings and battles' as we used to call it, and very little work in the sweep of history that isn't absolute crap.

And, of course, my own specialty fields of European Intellectual History (18th/19th centuries), American Intellectual History, and Philosophy of History are pretty much gone. The study of Modern Europe certainly doesn't mean what it used to.

It's amazing. There are good specialized books published in the last 30-40 years, but not much (yours excepted) in surveys. The newer editions of the essential text on Modern Europe, the R.R. Palmer, et. al. A History of the Modern World are not as good (IMHO) as the 1970 edition I still have. For a US survey, there are really on a couple of choices: your Patriot's History, the Morison, Commager and Leuchtenburg (they of the last generation of solid liberal scholars) The Growth of the American Republic, which I think is a little more in depth and represents the 'consensus' of the generation that taught us, or, maybe, with reservations, Bob Kelly's survey, which is a bit stronger on intellectual history but otherwise veers a bit squishy left.

I think someone wanting a solid knowledge of history today is probably better served with the courses on DVD or CD from The Teaching Company from the local library, than they would be in most college or university history departments. Our town library has several dozens of them, I've probably listened to 25-30 courses over the past 5 years on everything from Ancient Egypt through the Greeks and Romans (philosophy, literature, and history) through the First World War. Some of the bibliographies are good enough that between the lectures and the suggested readings, they're really pretty close to being equivalent to a decent upper division course on the old UCSB model of 1-2 books a week for a quarter course.

[CatoRenasci]

Wait until they replace the "Sam Houston High School" and the "Stephen Austin Elementary School" with the "Escuela primaria Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón."

The quality of local libraries varies enormously. Most college and university libraries are still pretty good, and many libraries in big cities and wealthy suburban towns are good. Ours (Greenwich, CT) is pretty good if you know what to look for, but the omissions in history especially are striking. My own personal library is stronger in terms of major works of history and the history of ideas. It's a constant battle with the wife, who wants to see the 4,000 odd volume personal library pared way down. She keeps saying, if you want it, it will be in the library. And I reply, no, it's not there. And, as they keep changing the collection, less and less solid stuff is there, and more politically correct fluff replaces the solid stuff.

[wildbill]

Traditional students are also vanishing. I had a graduate history class where a young lady who taught high school said, “Professor you keep talking about WWII. Does that mean there was a WWI?”

It was an uncomfortable moment for the professor and some of the students who actually understood the implications of her remark.

[Hegemony Cricket]

"...a young lady who taught high school said, “Professor you keep talking about WWII. Does that mean there was a WWI?”"

I think I just threw up a little in my mouth...

[LS]

Don't forget both of Paul Johnson's books. Modern Times is fantastic, a History of the American People good, but flawed. There are truly few sweeping books left.

I'm at work on a "big" project that is essentially a "Patriot's History of the Modern World." Probably 60% finished.

[LS]

First, not all lefties are bad teachers. We have a devout socialist whose views NEVER come out in the classroom, who believes in really putting people "back in time," in the mindset of the people who acted at the time.

I don't think it's correct that only the new guys publish the junk. People like Sean Wilentz still get awards for writing socialist pap.

[Lorica]

bookmarking for later Amazon order.

Real history has going down the memory hole at breakneck speed.

[Lorica]

bookmarking for later Amazon order.

Real history has been going down the memory hole at breakneck speed.