Comments on: The 2008 Berkshire Conference: The Year Cultural History Broke?

By: Historiann

Historiann — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:22:09 +0000

Hi LMC–thanks for stopping by to comment. Yes, how “retro”–doing research that uncovers new knowledge! Oh well–thanks to our friends in public history, archivists, museum studies professionals, historic preservationists, etc.–the archives, museums, and historic structures will be there when the worm turns (as it always does!)

By: Little Midwestern College

Little Midwestern College — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:27:40 +0000

I so agree with what you say about getting into the archive–there are still rafts of good primary stuff about women yet to be worked on and I wish I had graduate students because I’ve run across more good projects on new topics than I can handle. I always chuckle when the discussion comes back to archival work–it reminds me of a discussion at the Library of Congress years back during the seminar/launch of the American Women website/book, when someone called this kind of work “New Retro History.” I’ve been using this phrase ever since. . .

I’ll be looking forward to your future posts on this issue.

By: Berks blogging: Juneteenth edition : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:58:05 +0000

[...] and Writing the Lives of Unfree Women, Friday June 13. I reported briefly on this panel on Sunday, but want to follow up because it was so good. The room was jam-packed, so that when Natalie [...]

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:25:34 +0000

Right on to this last point. The old/new-fashioned “listening to the inarticulate” and then amplifying what you say they (would have) said approach had its own degree of narcissistic presumptiousness that never got self-consciously acknowledged or examined. But I always thought the “cultural turn” quickly established a too-easy comfort level with James River planter elites and other privileged producers of rivers of quotable quotations. I guess we need some sort of Amazon “people who count these also close-read this and that” methodological measuring stick!

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:02:13 +0000

Thanks, KC–you’re making my point better than I have myself! I should clarify: I don’t think that social and cultural history are mutually exclusive. I think they’re both better together than when they stand alone. Cultural history made social history interpretively powerful and compelling in a way that those old charts and graphs from the 1970s and 1980s just weren’t, so I’m certainly not arguing that we should dump cultural history. I’ve just seen too much cultural history that works as a kind of media critique that focuses only on “representations,” when I think it’s still important to find out how people actually lived.

By: Knitting Clio

Knitting Clio — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:50:34 +0000

I know what you mean, Patty. I have to agree with Historiann that in some cases there is a tendency to just use convenient sources — e.g. journal articles, advertisments, etc. We saw that in our seminar, especially the paper by the communication prof who did not even set the advertisements from the Duke Digital Scriptorium he was analyzing in historical context, either past or present. He also doesn’t seem to know about the work of Roland Marchand and others on the history of advertising, or really cultural history more generally. I was going to say something about this at the seminar but ran out of time.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:13:48 +0000

Thanks for stopping by to comment–it was great to meet you too! Perhaps this is more of an issue for those of us working in pre-20th C history, where it has seemed for many years that the same old evidence and texts were being used, and the fear that there were no new discoveries to make. And moreover, I think many grad students and younger scholars were led to believe that they could simply produce “new readings” of familiar texts instead of doing archival work. I think for modern historians working in fields where the historiography is very thin (or nonexistent!), there still is a sense of new discovery in archival work.

I’m so pleased you thought the seminar was great–I’m sure it was, and I think your seminar was enriched by having two mid-career scholars there. (Many of the seminars featured largely if not entirely junior scholars, but I’ve heard that the discussions were very thought-provoking, and that the audiences who showed up were very engaged with the issues and were able to contribute a lot to the discussions.)

By: Sungold

Sungold — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:07:47 +0000

Ann, It was great to meet you yesterday after lunch, while I was hanging out with Heather.

I’m not sure I buy the dichotomy lurking behind your title. I take a cultural and social approach to the history of childbirth, and heaven knows that archival research was a huge part of it. I think it’s possible to take a cultural (or at least vaguely anthropological view) of archival sources. IMO, the question is not so much what kinds of artifacts we’re using as the lens through which we choose to view them.

Can I just say again that I thought the conference was a smashing success? I didn’t go to any of the same panels you did, but they ranged from excellent to unforgettable. And the seminars rocked - well, at least mine and Heather’s did.

So thanks!
Sungold (Patty Stokes) at Kittywampus

By: Berkshire Post-mortem « Knitting Clio

Berkshire Post-mortem « Knitting Clio — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:33:25 +0000

[...] transferred to a suite at the Holiday Inn, my conference experience got much better! I got to meet Historiann in person — very nice outfits, H! I would agree with her post that the sessions I attended [...]

By: Susan

Susan — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:37:24 +0000

When did you find time for this? But I thought the most important figure that Liz Lunbeck provided on Thursday night was time to parity. And for full professors, it’s merely some 230 years (or some such number). For assistant professors, we’ve gone backwards, but it was about 80 years.