Whig Hill

not doing anything else today

Heh, I just ran another half marathon.

Really nothing to report—perfect weather and perfect scenery. But picture this: coastside; foggy; cool; dramatic cliffs and waves. I worried beforehand that I had been too cavalier about training and would crap out half way through. But we made it, my cousin and I, without stopping and in reasonable time (2:46, which is slower than the race earlier this year).

Anyhow, this was the whole reason for coming here, aside from vacation time, seeing family, exploring this region, dissertation procrastination, birthday present to myself, momentarily having money, personal growth, catharsis, guilt-free vegging, and, apparently, banana slugs.

I’m kind of zoned out right now, but will probably put some photos up at ye olde facebook.

 

I do think so

This California thing is exactly how I imagined it. First off, it’s seventy degrees and not humid. Apparently they think they have a heat wave or something. I find it a bit incongruous that the sun can be shining warmly yet I’m not sweating, and a cool breeze is blowing. This is the most greatest place on the planet!

My cousin lives with this stuff and probably doesn’t find it at all interesting anymore, but I’m a freakin’ rube: OMG! Look at that fog! OMG! Look at that cloud bank rolling in over the Mavericks! OMG! ticky-tacky houses! OMG! Internet startups! I’m on his back porch right now; the sunset is cutting through a wind-swept cedar grove with the waves crashing on the beach beyond.

The only thing of note today was the pot-luck lunch at the Internet Archive. If my dissertation leans heavily toward Baptists, it’s because their State Convention proceedings are on the Internet Archive and the Methodists’ are not. Anyhow, the IA is housed in an early twentieth century Christian Science church. No kidding.

Well, I found a local history book, so tomorrow I intend to find this 1820s mission cemetery that is nearby.

My translation fail

A few days ago, I said historians need better translators. I sat down and attempted, as an example, to translate academic writing into lay words, and something unexpected happened. Here is the passage I whacked at, from this book:  

I argue that sentimentalism is not dismissed as a process of feminization until it is no longer a compelling market strategy. The demotion of sentimentalism to a process of feminization is concurrent with a loss of middle-class interest in sentimental aesthetics after the Civil War. Sentimentalism was not merely a commentary on the development of capitalism but one of the central strategies of market development. Men and women used the language of sentimentalism to insist on and describe an acceptable form of integration of those two spheres. Sentimentalism was a conscious strategy rather than a paradox, a social delusion, false consciousness, or assertion of cultural difference as a critique of mainstream culture. Whereas literary studies of sentimentalism have found the market in the home, I extend this analysis by finding the home in the market. I reexamine the definition of domesticity by asserting the importance of men in the cultural work of class formation and the importance of women in the economic work of class formation. Sentimentalism did not function as the marker of difference between a private feminized domestic sphere and a public masculinized commercial sphere; it was social and cultural phenomena that provided complex connections between those two rhetorical worlds.

Is that not cool? Obviously it would make more sense if read in its original context, but this is a pretty self-contained passage. I suspect, however, that most folks (i.e. non-historians) have no idea what’s going on. Quite a bit, actually.

This idea of translators doesn’t mean that something like this needs to be clarified for a popular audience. What I mean is that historians should make clear what the author is doing. Is that too-fine a distinction? You tell me.

What does that mean? There are generation’s-worth of historical writing being addressed here. There are at least three separate historical phenomenon with their own separate body of literature under review. She is responding directly to another, venerable, historical work. Academics recognize that. When she writes, “I reexamine the definition of domesticity by asserting the importance of men in the cultural work of class formation…”, it is loaded with meaning, and I think of all the work done on domesticity, middle class households, the place of women in the market, class formation, economic trends, and cultural forces. (What appears to be new here is that she will assert that men had significant role in defining domesticity whereas historians of the past generation focused almost entirely on women and domesticity.)

Now…here. I’m doing it again; that unexpected thing. I don’t know how to explain what’s going on in this passage without reverting to academic-speak. I bet the end of this previous paragraph was denser than the original passage. (This is an accomplishment for me, but a handicap in the real world.)

I guess this is insight, if far, far, from original—historians are in conversation with other historians and, just like two friends talking about football, the dialog (published material) is loaded with previous knowledge, shorthand language, specific vocabulary, and an intuitive understanding of where the other person is coming from. It seems near impossible have the same conversation with someone who lacks those prerequisites.

But I believe this passage has relevancy and can illuminate our present circumstances. If you’ve paid attention this summer, you might have noticed that the middle class died recently. Certainly this hits close to home with blog readers. Well, what are we losing? What assumptions about American life are going to be overturned? Assumptions about what men and women do in the home, what they do at work, what they spend money on, and how is that money acquired? Is the decline of American fortune an agonizing and unique break in human history? Or just the end of something that started sort-of randomly in the middle of the nineteenth (or twentieth) century? Wouldn’t you like to know? (Here is a good historian assessing the same questions today.)

Anyhow, I’m thinking out loud here and fear I’m being ponderous about a boring topic, not to mention getting all worked up again (the worst time for me to be putting my thoughts online.)

How would you translate that passage? How could you better understand it?

Films in my classroom

I use films to teach history in the classroom. Two articles today address that very issue, so I thought I’d toss in my two cents.*

My classes tend to be 100-level community college students whose future lies in dental tech and light manufacturing. Few, if any, are headed for a four-year liberal arts degree. I figure the skills they need to know are not how to deconstruct primary documents, but how to intelligently handle the history they are likely to encounter in their everyday lives. Hence, I consider film reviews one of the more important of their assignments. (That, and assessing historical information from the internet.)

I do not ask the students to think about the films as primary documents, or as interpretations that attempt to convey historical truth. That may be where I differ slightly from other teachers. We begin with the assumption that historical accuracy is not the goal of feature films. Once we get that out of the way—get past the outrage that Hollywood doesn’t tell the truth—we get on to the real questions. What are the producers trying to create, if not historical accuracy? What decisions are evident on the screen to support their point of view?

We get to thinking about choice of actors, details of costumes of sets, the overall tone, storylines that are emphasized (or deemphasized), intended audience, why are historical events portrayed inaccurately, and most important, what do these decisions say about us (not about the past they pretend to portray.)

One thing I noticed from the beginning that has helped shape this exercise…they know Hollywood films are not meant to be historical documents. They know that historical events are altered for modern sensibilities. This is not a problem and getting them to realize this is not the point. Analyzing historical films as modern constructs is the primary goal—conveying the lesson that all historical narrative is a modern construct.

I think they’re pretty good at this, even if their ultimate analyses aren’t that sophisticated. I give some sample films they can choose from but encourage them to find movies they would like to review. (When they go see a movie in the theater, they go for what appeals to them.) I tell them that addressing the historical accuracy and declaring things wrong are not going to impress the teacher—unless they review The Patriot (which they know going in that the teacher hates with every fiber.) They do gravitate towards WWII movies. Westerns aren’t as popular as I expected. One of my favorites to talk about is the Kirsten Dunst Marie Antoinette. Turns out, I like that movie from a historical p.o.v. It also gives us a lot to talk about regarding modern stylistic sensibilities and historical storytelling.

From the teachinghistory.org article, I like the idea of reading primary documents along with watching the film, but I don’t think I’ll do that because assessing historical accuracy is not the goal. (Actually, I once had them compare the Hector/Achilles scene from the Iliad with the Hector/Achilles scene in Troy. That went pretty well, but after noting the differences—and similarities—it didn’t go anywhere.) I do like watching movies on the same subjects from different time periods back-to-back. I’ll try to work that in in the future.

(I did this in my 200-level four year college class and it went pretty much the same.)

*I wouldn’t know any of this without Kevin Levin’s morning Twitter roundup.

How these chapters go

One of my (many) problems is that I don’t know what I’m going to argue when I start. I kind of know the framework, and where it’s heading in a general direction, but I don’t think it through until I write it out. Some people do it the other way around: think through to their conclusions, outline it, and then write it out. The way I’ve got it is, apparently, how I’ve always done things. Back in museum days, I’d conceptualize exhibits by drawing out figures and flowcharts on a giant piece of paper. Working through that process gets me there.

So anyhow…take this present chapter. When I began to write three months ago all I knew was I’d be working on religious-based benevolent enterprises. I didn’t know all that would be included; and I knew some basic historiographical outlines on what historians say about benevolent societies; but not much more. See a previous post on this.

Survey the sources. They tell me that higher education, Sunday Schools, domestic and foreign missions, Bible and tract societies, and temperance are the primary initiatives. Not exactly Rochester, but that’s pretty good for the rural south, so I’ve got an outline—examine each of these things in order.

Sources again: read them all (again) and take notes on what they say about each benevolent category. Most of my sources are in Winston-Salem, Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh, and occasionally Charlotte (and Philadelphia over the summer). My notes on them are more an index than actual manuscript.

Then, how to interpret those sources? Read other history books. Read books and articles on higher education in America, in the South, in North Carolina. What have other historians said about religion and education? (This inevitably leads to rethinking my approach, and/or chasing more and more reading.) How am I different from what they’ve said? What are my sources telling me based on my “larger framework;” or, how I understand the big questions about culture, power, gender, and all that. Write it out.

In the process of writing it out, I begin to get what I’m saying, and what I’m saying about higher education will reflect back on what I’m saying about religious benevolent activity in general. This will inform the conclusion that I’m beginning to develop.

Now, do it again for Sunday Schools. Go back to the notes. Read more books. And here’s where it starts to get a little complicated. What I conclude about Sunday Schools will alter how I’m thinking big-picture-wise about religious benevolent activity. That gets tacked on to that developing conclusion and in the process, makes my thinking about higher education seem a little one-dimensional.

But the best dissertation is a finished dissertation, so press on.

Do it all again for domestic missions. Tack this on to ever-changing conclusion.

Do it all again for Bible and tract societies. Tack this on.

At this point the conclusion is going in an almost entirely different direction than when I first started to conceptualize it three months ago. The questions I’m asking are different. The angles on the sources are different. The framework is getting bent out of shape. Well, I like to think it’s getting more sophisticated…

Then, temperance societies. These things are considered benevolent work, but they’re different. I won’t bore you with explaining why, but figuring them out makes me re-cast my entire conclusion for this chapter. In a good way, that is—the slightly different angle on them helps me better define my entire thinking about religious benevolent work in the southern piedmont (or anywhere for that matter.)

But I look back at what I did on higher education, and now I’ve pretty much got to do that again to make it harmonize with what I’m thinking now.

Bigger picture? This chapter will do the same thing to the first two chapters as each section within it did to the earlier section: make them fairly obsolete, if not contemptible. And looking ahead, this chapter and its conclusions will entirely reshape how I begin to approach the next chapter. So, whatever I had thought it was going to be…that has changed.

I’m trying to wrap it up. I’ve drafted out the temperance stuff and need to consolidate my conclusion, and then move on. Today I checked out my first historiographical reading for the next chapter. Anyone up for sentimentalism in the Victorian home?

Better finished than good.

another rant aborted for its own good

Every so often I get all worked up and want to be boorish about academic and public history. Then I realize I don’t want to be tiresome to you, and don’t have the time to write up something thoughtful, or interesting. I risk, then, putting up something more smartass than smart, because I tend to do that. So I’ll leave it to the experts.

Here are some good links to good essays and posts:

Alexandra Lord and Michelle McClellan in The Chronicle with “Changing History.”

Thomas Bender in the SSRC with “Historians in Public”

            Both of these h/t John Fea

Kevin Levin on Civil War Memory

Since leaving public history to practice academic history, I’ve come to think that more divides the two disciplines than we like to think. I don’t think it’s an “artificial wall” as Lord and McClellan have it, but it can be overcome. It does worry me how quickly many, but not all, academics think they can slide on over and start doing public history. To my mind, it sounds like, “I can’t find a job in a hospital with my M.D. so I’ll just go practice at a veterinarian’s office because I know how bodies work.”

And while I’m at it, absolutely no academic in my internet circles have mentioned going to or being at the AASLH conference being held right now. (This is an observation, not a condemnation. Some are, but I can’t see them from my small circle.) If you want to do academic history, get excited about AHA. But if you want to do public history, you really ought to know what’s being discussed in Richmond.

See, I told you I’d get this way.

Anyhow, academics need better translators, to explain what they do. When that happens, we’ll have a better profile in the public space. Kevin Levin is real good at that. So is Vicki Bynum. John Fea is a master.

Better stop now before I become even more incoherent. In six months or so, this is going to be developed into a compelling argument for why you should hire me.

This whole temperance society thing

I want to talk about this whole temperance society thing I’m struggling over, but fear that it would make no sense without understanding how it fits into my larger picture. For my present chapter I am working on benevolent societies in Piedmont North Carolina. Benevolent societies in the early nineteenth century are—broadly defined (by me)—as voluntary associations dedicated to improving society. They focused on things like poverty alleviation, education reform, and establishment of “middle class” behavioral standards toward sex, work, (and sex work), and sobriety. Historians have identified benevolent associations as markers of the emerging bourgeoisie and its attempt to direct societal development in industrializing northern cities. In this view, the rural south, lacking similar widespread reform movements (but having slavery) was a place hesitant to become modern, or liberal, and thereby hostile to union with northerners. Overgeneralization? Yes, but I’m trying to be brief. Some historians, however, have identified modernist tendencies in the large slaveholding class, urbanites, and others in the slaveholding south. I am trying to expand that view…that ordinary rural people in parts of the south embraced modern social assumptions as well.

In this chapter, the channel for these ideas (universal education, nuclear family structures, and—forgive me—“imagined communities”) is the work of religious denominations. I’ll skip past what I have so far and get to the temperance societies. These organizations, which promoted a variety of measures from opposition to distillation of liquor to abstinence from all alcohol, were the most secular benevolent societies in the south. Denominations were quite ambivalent toward the Temperance movement for decades before tepidly embracing its goals in the 1850s. The thing is, churches had a long-standing tradition of promoting sobriety in their own communities. Church disciplines banned the making, sale, and use of liquor and by far the most expulsions from congregations arose from members being charged with distillation or repeated drunkenness. Yet membership in temperance societies made headway in rural places. (Bruce Stewart has recently argued otherwise, but I disagree.)

So, what is up with that? Whereas denominations easily found reasons to advocate education, and bases to promote it from the churches and from the government; and while religious people quickly built (relatively) sophisticated commercial structures to spread the sale of printed material, they suddenly hesitated to support secular movements that advocated a thing the churches already practiced. And I don’t know why.

Clearly, if I’m placing this in the pre-modern/modern transitory period, issues of community are at work. What I mean is that congregational regulation of alcohol consumption contains the mark of pre-modern societies—communal, local, patriarchicaly governed, and self-policing. Secular temperance societies are the opposite of that—national, abstract, democratic, and complex. Yet in all other reform causes, denominations (and communities) largely embraced modern techniques and outlooks with much enthusiasm. (Something else to be aware of is the changing temperance movement, particularly the class implications of the Washingtonians and the Sons of Temperance after 1840. I’m keeping that one in mind.)

Anyhow, that’s what I’m working on now. I’m hoping to get this finished up: then I’ll have a draft of Chapter 2 and can move-the-*&*^ on to Chapter 3.