Historiann

Hi all–Historiann here, coming at you from weakly sunny downtown Seattle, because the Organization of American Historians’ Annual Conference starts in a few hours.  Pull up a chair and have a cup of coffee!  Only, I won’t be here long to pour–I’ve got meetings, meet-ups, and fun planned all week, so posting will probably be light since I  have the opportunity to meet and talk to historians in Real Life and not on-blog.  I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing here, since I feel less like an American historian every day–and this is very much a modern (and even recent) U.S. History conference.  It seems like the OAH is getting with the transnational program, since the theme this year is “History Without Boundaries.”  Don’t fence me in, babies!

As for Seattle:  I visited a few times in the mid- to late-90s, back when it was the cool place to be, and had an epic hiking and camping trip on the Olympic Peninsula back in the day.  But–Kurt Cobain’s been dead for nearly fifteen years now.  Oh well–whatever.  Nevermind.

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I’ve got another day of fun in the sun planned, so I’ll just leave you with a few quick linkies to get your holiday Monday started right:

• For Presidents’ Day, here are their current rankings, according to this group of historians (via Inside Higher Ed).  The thing I always find really silly about these rankings of presidential greatness is the obvious bias towards more recent presidents.  You’d almost be relieved to have lived in the twentieth century, because of all of the presidential awesomeness then.  Of the top ten on this ranking, only two (#1, Abraham Lincoln, and #7, Thomas Jefferson) are from the nineteenth century.  There’s your obligatory citation of George Washington  (#2?), which just seems like Founding Fathers tokenism, and the chronic overrating of John F. Kennedy (#6–who wants to bet that his stock drops dramatically when people born after 1963 dominate the historians who do these rankings?)  Seriously:  James K. Polk is #12?  Whatever, dudes.  Clearly, starting unnecessary and unprovoked imperial wars isn’t a disqualifying feature in these rankings, with George W. Bush listed at the high rank of #36.  (And bien sur, most of the historians who did the rankings are dudes:  57 men, 10 women by my quick count.) Continue Reading »

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According to this article at Inside Higher Ed about an AHA roundtable last Sunday, “A Learning Process:  Revisiting the Role of Graduate Coursework in the Making of a Historian,” graduate courses should be “more relevant to training their students for their teaching duties.”  Sounds good, right?  Well, how that’s actually supposed to happen is a little unclear.  On the one hand, Kathleen Canning of the University of Michigan decried what she called the old model of “[p]ick your favorite books, hold forth, and wait for the graduate students to do the same.”  On the other hand, faculty shouldn’t just “‘pick the latest, hottest, coolest books and throw them at students with no background,’ without a ‘sense of where these books have come from.’”  Instead, faculty should strive to

frame the entire course around books they haven’t previously read or taught. The goal is not just to pass along “truncated knowledge,” but to “enter the defamiliarization of the students and experience it with them.” Also along those lines, Canning said she makes sure that her graduate students are asking the first questions, and offering the first opinions in class. “I’m not letting them rely on me to be the interpreter,” she said, even if, as the course proceeds, she shares plenty of information and ideas. “I’m trying to model the kind of professional participatory skills and ethics they need.”

I realize that most of us with Ph.D.s have only one graduate institution–and therefore can’t know what graduate training is like at other institutions in any detail–but this doesn’t strike me as a particularly new model of graduate education.  This sounds like just basic, thoughful instruction at the graduate level–like the graduate education I received nearly 20 years ago at the University of Pennsylvania.  Our profs assigned a few classics–in my area of specialization, books like Edmund Morgan’s American Slavery, American Freedom, and Winthrop Jordan’s White over Black, and perhaps signal works by Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood, but nothing more than 25 years old at the time.  Otherwise, we read mostly new to newish contributions to the historiography (in 1990-93, I read books that were overwhelmingly published between 1980-93).  Maybe Penn was just an incubator of brilliant graduate advisers and self-confident grad students, but professors rarely “led” discussion–it was more like they had to duck out of the way of the volley of impassioned comments from scary smart graduate students.  (I’m talking about my classmates–Historiann was too young and out of her league, and by far the dumbest in the class.) 

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Wicked Walter from Waxahachie got his “crazzy” on and informed Rate Your Students yesterday that “[y]ou done killed it. And I hate you for it.“  Says Le Mauvais:

I loved this site. I think a lot of longtime readers did. And now the place is all clean and well lighted (and heavily advertised!) and it’s just another mainstream piece of bull$hit. You know what it means if an idea has 75% of the faculty in favor of it? It’s a colossal waste of time. If you let 5 academics run anything, it turns into the biggest f#@king mess since the Bay of Pigs. (See, I read my history, too.)

Well, good for you, Walter.

Walter also gives props to our pal Archie, who checked in again from the dwindling hours at the AHA yesterday morning.  Well, mostly he was complaining about the job candidates he interviewed, and Historiann (aided by the white-robed angel on my left shoulder, who goes by the name of GayProf) is feeling like this website has already given itself over to teeing off on the youngest and most vulnerable among us…and that’s not the Historiann way.  We are not Rate Your Students, not even the shinier, better-lighted version that Walter complains about–we’re about compassion and understanding for all (except the Chapstik guy.  That was just nasty.)  The funny thing about Archie’s last post is that he agrees entirely with Tenured Radical about the 2010 San Diego conference kerfluffle and suggests that there are more (and less expensive) ways to piss off a homophobe than boycotting the 2010 conference or trying to move it to another hotel at this late date.  Says Tenured Radical:

I would like to propose an alternative for next year’s AHA: I think we should go. I think queer folk and their allies should go to San Diego in unprecedented numbers. I think we should occupy Doug Manchester’s hotel, and I think we should hold mock weddings in the lobby. I think we should pass out literature to his guests educating them on civil rights issues and their connections to queer citizenship. I think we should move our queer programming out of the meeting rooms and into the public spaces of the hotel — the lobby, the restaurants, the shops. . . . [A] good start for queer historians might be to go to San Diego in vast numbers and queer the convention, and queer that hotel, big time.

And, as though he is channeling a fouler-mouthed TR, here’s Archie: 

[W]e wound up with a resolution that created a fund to hold a bunch of history of marriage panels in this a$$hole’s hotel. This strikes me as the saner route. It might even get picked up in the media, which might then actually cause this f^*khead some embarrassment at the country club. I mean isn’t that better than giving him half a million free dollars because we all want to be pure?

Well, you know what they say about politics making strange bedfellows.  Finally, in a helpful public service, Squadratomagico has reposted some links to two tasty and nutritious posts from yesteryear on 1) mistakes to avoid on job interviews (for both the interviewing departments and the job candidates), and 2) how to craft a job talk.  (That second one seems particularly timely and useful.)  Have a great day, darlings–I’ll be checking in later, so play nice!

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Classy Claude, just phoning it in.

In academic hiring, universities are represented by two equally important groups:  the job candidates, and the search committees interviewing them.  Classy Claude, an American Studies scholar at Hudson University, spent most of last weekend in the Job Register, also known as “the Pit,” or “the Killing Floor.”  These are his stories:

The wireless miraculously appeared when I turned on my computer this morning.  I’m due to check out in an hour or so and head back downtown, but here are some thoughts:

AHA winds down today (panels through the early afternoon).  In a change from the normal Thursday-Sunday routine, this year in NY the festivities began on Friday and continued through to Monday.  My sense was that most people had hightailed it out of here sometime yesterday and, if not (and as in the normal routine) were using the final morning as a travel day with perhaps a brief stop in the book fair (Knopf paperbacks reduced to 3 bucks) before heading out.

I was on a search committee this year and am rather a junior member of my department so had not long ago been on the other side of the table.  We interviewed in the room I heard referred to as the Killing Floor: the bad rayon curtains (red this year), the distracting voices, the Dixie cups for water, the crowd of anxious interviewees awaiting their fate.  

I heard a few horror stories, but I’ll start with my own (admittedly basic) observations:

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In case you missed it, Hotshot Harry checked in with us last night from the AHA with his second report.  Meanwhile, there are some other folks blogging the conference–some of the most interesting posts are listed below (with thanks to Cliopatria and The Way of Improvement Leads Home for pointing them out to me.  Please note Cliopatria’s pickup on Indyanna’s reminiscences about Nat Hentoff being called a very bad word–repeatedly–at an early 1970s AHA!)

• First of all, Archie has checked in again at RYS hall to post another report.  (I like Archie, foulmouthed though he is.)  He spent most of day 2 interviewing people for a position in his department, and reports only one candidate flameout while offering some excellent (if screamingly obvious) advice:

Here’s a hint to the grad-flakes in the audience: the first question you will face in every AHA interview (and I mean every single f#%king one) is some variation on the old standby, “tell us about your $hitty f#&king work and its relationship to the boring-a$$ field.” This is a softball. This is the easiest motherf*!king question you can get. You should have a 45 second answer to this question in your back pocket. And when I say 45 second, I mean 45 f#&king seconds and not a second more. Practice it in the mirror if you have to. Go to an acting coach if you must. But if you cannot state the importance of your work and its relationship to the field in 45 seconds or less, you are not getting the job. Sometimes candidates can get away with a 90 second answer if they have charm, but your goal should be 45 seconds. I mention this because today the self-immolating candidate took up the entire interview trying to answer this question. And I tried to stop him. My colleagues tried to interrupt. But he was having none of it. He spent 40 minutes trying to answer the question. And when we told him his time was up, he said “I guess what I’m trying to say is that my ideas are really complex.”

• Our pal Notorious Ph.D. actually found intellectual stimulation and inspiration at the AHA!  (Quick!  Alert the media.)
• Cameron Blevins at History-ing provides evidence for Hotshot Harry’s theory about the AHA being largely about “celebrity”-watching.  Blevins seems to have done better than most bloggers in finding the elusive wireless connection at the Hilton–and see Ann Bartow’s advice in the comments on the previous post for exactly where she found a wireless connection.  More substantially, Blevins reports on a session on writing for readers outside of the academy, which slided into a discussion of blogging:

The first session I attended was The Promise and Pitfalls of Writing for Readers beyond the Academy, at which I was that guy who embarrassingly enters late and bumps into people while finding a seat (in this case, on the floor). It was a relatively informal panel, with none of the typical reading of papers in a monotone voice, and with a lot of back-and-forth with the audience. I found it interesting that for the first part of the session, blogging was never touched upon. Then an audience member brought it up, and the panelists began to fervently speak about it for a fair amount of time. What surprised me was the relatively positive attitude many of the panelists carried towards blogging. This might be a kind of self-selective mechanism, as panelists for a session on popular writing are probably not the stuffy academic types that look down their noses at blogging. On the other hand, I got the sense that blogging as a whole has become much more mainstream and accepted within the academy. The panel also reminded me of the kind of “exercise” aspect of writing on a blog – in that it forces you to write and is a great tool for experimentation and self-improvement.

That’s a little too high-falutin’ for this cowgirl.  I see blogging–even professionally-related blogging–mostly as a tool for entertainment and self-promotion.  At their most serious, academic blogs can be sites for communities of likeminded individuals to meet and share ideas and concerns–my blogging about bullying work environments and urging people in academia to be fair and decent has served that purpose, I hope, as has some of my women’s history blogging.  But I’m not on board with the movement of academic bloggers who want job credit for blogging.  Putting this baby on my annual review would make it feel like work–and although I enjoy my work, I like thinking of this space as a not-work space.

Anyhoo–back to y’all in New York.  Good luck, greenhorns and vaqueras!  Let me know how it goes for you–send in a dispatch before you start that long cattle drive home.

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Hotshot Harry dishes on the AHA

UPDATED BELOW

First day musings [from the American Historical Association's annual meeting 2009]…[ed. note:  Eat your heart out, Rate Your Students--my correspondents have reported first!]

I think the Friday start is a bit disorienting for folks. (That, and the crush of New Year’s vacationers leaving as the frumpy historians arrived gave the Hilton a sense of strangeness.) My memories of AHA openings is that they are rather tame, but this one was far more active. Registration opened at 12.00pm, and you would have thought they were giving out free booze. By 12:08, the very large promenade was packed and the printers serving up badges had suspended business due to overuse. (They were up and running shortly thereafter, but the lines took a solid hour or so to settle down to normal volume.) All I could think of was the Coconut Grove.  [Ed. Note:  Have no historians mastered on-line registration yet?]

More disconcerting for most was that the book exhibit did not open until 3:00pm. And really, this is the highlight of the conference for most, if not all. Picture the AHA without the book exhibit, even for five minutes. Grim.

On the job front…well, there isn’t much of one this year. The smell of fear that normally permeates the cattle pen is a bit more stale this time around.  [Ed. note:  it's a little known fact that Hotshot Harry lived in Potterville before he decamped for Tucumcari, so this greenhorn knows from cattle pens!]

As for the attire, there were some folks who seem to be trying for Soho hip and have missed the mark a bit. Otherwise, standard AHA attire is in effect. Manufacturers of wool have little to fear, despite the economic downturn.

UPDATE, 1/3/09:  RYS has posted the first-day at the AHA impressions of Archie–which brings back memories for me.  Consider Hotshot Harry’s post here the briefer, G-rated version of what Archie has to say.  Archie also provides more of an explanation for those long registration lines yesterday:

So just to prove that academics shouldn’t even be allowed to plan a cluster f*@k, this year’s meeting features an “improved” registration system. If you pre-registered, you wait in line to use one of several laptop computers. You look up your name and press print. Then you go stand in line and wait for one of the graduate student volunteers to call your name and hand you your badge. How this constitutes an improvement over the cardboard box full of alphabetized envelopes is beyond me. In the twenty minutes I stood there, the system crashed twice, and the whole show ground to a screeching halt. Only an a$$hat academic could have been talked into paying someone for this. On a related note, they made the poor grad student workers wear these red AHA T-Shirts that make them look like they are trying out for Santa’s workshop. Just sad.

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Since Historiann will be remaining at least 1,750 miles away from the American Historical Association’s annual meeting, y’all will have to keep me informed about what’s going on in New York.  What did you see or hear?  Who did you run into?  Did you see any interesting panels or discussions?  Do you feel like slitting your wrists or enrolling in truck driving school now, or are you infused with love of the life of the mind and appreciation for your fellow historians? 

Does holding the annual meeting in New York City mean that historians dress any better, or are they just as square and dowdy as ever?  (Wait, wait–don’t answer that–I think I know!)  Well, I suppose most dudes can’t pull off Historiann’s daring look (above right.)

Before you conference-goers unpack and start trolling the book exhibition looking for editors who might buy you a meal, try this food for thought from GayProf, who has written up some excellent tips for search committees, and how they should strive to actually read the candidates’ files, avoid violating state and federal laws in their interviews, and look like good future colleagues that anyone would want to work with.  The money quote:  “Lastly, remember to play nice. You don’t want to end up as the committee that becomes a dreadful story on a future academic blog.”  You’ve been warned, friends.  Also, a little belatedly, here’s some more good advice from Tenured Radical for job-seekers approaching their first AHA convention interviews–see especially her advice on how to answer the “do you have any questions for us?” question.

Anyhoo–enjoy those concrete canyons if you’re in New York this weekend.  Me, I like the ones we’ve got here in snowy Colorado, but I’ve got a few cowboys on the ground who should be telegraphing their dispatches from the AHA.  Check back here later this weekend for more reports from Historiann’s special correspondents!  (If any other readers want to send along their impressions, please do–you know how to whistle, don’t you?)

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Rate Your Students has posted some concluding thoughts on the job interviewing scene from the perspective of the job candidates.  Here’s one that represents a range of viewpoints, from “Three interviews and each one was friendly and just like talking to friends. I’m stoked for the future,” to “This is how it works? I felt like a piece of meat – and not in a good way.”  (Is there ever a good way to feel like meat?  Special tip for the Meatman:  showing up on time for your interview and not an hour late sure helps start things off on the right foot, doesn’t it?)

And, you knew this was coming, didn’t you?  “Diaper Dave” wrote in to justify the behavior of most of the ten boneheaded candidates from yesterday’s post.  I’m pretty sure Dave is a senior faculty member posing as a young turk jerk.  Just a guess–I could be wrong.  Tell me:  do you think he’s sincere?

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It’s all here in this post at Roxie’s World–keep an eye out for the mysterious recluse who makes a brief appearance in the post.  (Allegedly, the barfing was due to a stomach flu, not an excess of Harvey Wallbangers, or whatever it is those MLA-types are drinking these days while they watch the world go by outside of Trader Vic’s.)  Love you, gals!  Wish I could ring in the New Year with you, but I’ll probably be in bed before 2009 even hits Nova Scotia, let alone Sonoma!

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