Historiann

These boots were made for kicking some a$$!

Hiya, folks!  Hecksapoppin here–it’s warm and clear here on the High Plains Desert, so I have to pitch hay while the sun shines.  Here are some ideas to keep you occupied while I’m out.

• Isis the Scientist writes about the “Mythical Sunshine and Unicorns of University-Based Child Care.”  We see those little chain gangs of toddlers and preschoolers on campus–they must be somebody’s kids.  Why not yours? 
• The Mohegans have elected Lynn Malerba, a woman Sachem, for the first time since the eighteenth century.  In my book, I argued that the Algonquian Indians had no tradition of female political leadership, and that the so-called “squaw Sachems” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were evidence of the stresses of colonialism on Indian peoples.  (And of course, having women leaders became further evidence in English minds that Indian peoples didn’t deserve political sovereignty.  Never mind Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Anne, of course.)
• It’s only March 6, but I think we already have our Mansplainer of the Month.  Of course, it makes perfect sense that one 40 year-old 14-page article probably would have changed my intellectual life.  How tragic for me that I missed this Rosetta Stone!  All is lost!  I’ve submitted my resignation letter to my department Chair already, and will go dark here at Historiann.com as of midnight Sunday.
• A former No Child Left Behind advocate changes her mind and decides that testing kids to death isn’t teh awesome:  Continue Reading »

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Howdy, friends:  GayProf has posted part III of our conversation this week about American History and the mysteriously vanishing Latin@ presence therefrom.  Go read!  Comment!  Argue!  Enjoy!   (If you need to do the homework first, here’s Part I, and here’s Part II of our discussion.)

Have a great Friday.  For those of you who are sliding into Spring Break–have fun, and travel safely (if you’re traveling at all.)  For those of you who aren’t–well, it’s almost spring for all of us in the northern hemisphere, so buck up!

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Good morning, friends!  Today’s post is part II of GayProf‘s and my radical subversive plot to ruin American history!  (Part I was over at Center of Gravitas yesterday.)  Enjoy–and please leave your thoughts in the comments below:

Historiann:  As a Coloradoan now, it’s interesting to note that there have been two articles published in The William and Mary Quarterlyin the past fifteen years urging the de-centering of “colonial America” from the Atlantic littoral and recognizing that there is an early American history west of the Appalachians, west of the Mississippi, and west of the Rocky Mountains (not to mention South of the Rio Grande and North of the St. Lawrence.)  In “Why the West is Lost” (WMQ51:2, April 1994), James A. Hijiya decried the absence of western history from most American history textbooks, and the relentless focus on eastern history and Anglophone people.  Claudio Saunt’s cartograms in “Go West:  Mapping Early American Historiography” (WMQ 65:4, October 2008) illustrate the eastern bias of early American history, and he notes that much of this was probably due to the fact that colonial historians were and are still trained in eastern U.S. universities near lots of local archives and libraries with colonial records, making it easy to do local history and call it early America.  (Saunt also says that if American historians bothered to learn Spanish, they’d find a wealth of records in Spain, Mexico City, and in western local archives, and I can assure you that there’s lots of exciting things to be found in French archival sources in Quebec.  But, as we all know, it’s just pi$$ing up a rope to insist that American historians learn another language!) 

<<GayProf rushes to read articles in the WMQ so he doesn’t sound tragically uninformed>>
 
I think it’s quite telling that Hijiya’s article spurred a lively, often defensive, sometimes congratulatory, and sometimes patronizing response from early Americanists and western historians later that year (“‘Why the West is Lost,’ Comments and Response,” WMQ 51:4, October 1994), while Saunt’s article has been greeted with silence.  (So far, anyway.)  This appears to be a trend I’ve observed in the historical profession in the past decade or so.  Maybe because the debates over “the canon” and multiculturalism were sometimes overheated in the 1980s and 1990s, we all seem to have a policy of détante.  No one will call us names or accuse us of ruining the historical profession these days–they’ll just ignore us.  (We’ll see–on blogs, anything can happen!) Continue Reading »

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This week,  inspired by his post a few months ago about the politics of always presuming that Latino/a history in American history is a “new” issue, GayProf and I have cooked up a series of posts that will reveal our Marxist feminist Latino/a Reconquista schemes for hemispheric domination! We put the panic in Hispanic, I tell ya.  Part I is over at Center of Gravitas–follow me over there, and discuss amongst yourselves!

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Happy Monkey says congratulations!

In response to “Practicing collegiality, and what to do when it’s not returned,” onlooker writes,

Perhaps you have thoughts on this question: What if a [tenure-track Assistant Prof.] were to leave [a] post after [the] first year? Can one resign a TT position within a year (especially for a “more prestigious” school) without ruining . . . relationships with [hir] colleagues? Is moving quickly considered okay within the field at large or can it damage your professional reputation?

onlooker:  I’m sure that taking a more prestigious job will only enhance your reputation as a rising star in your profession!  But, I think you ask a really good question, which seems to boil down to “can I do this without seeming like I’m a complete jerk?”  My answer is yes, of course–unless you want to look like a jerk.  (I’ve done that–it’s fun!  Especially when I delivered my big F.U. speech at the last faculty meeting I attended in my former job.  But, I’m sure that others will want advice on how to make a more graceful exit.) Continue Reading »

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