Think Before You Count: Reflections on Trotti's recent article in the JAH

Being that the school year is still young and that the work is usually weighted towards the end of the semester, I actually had time to prop up my feet at the office and enjoy reading an article in the most recent edition of the Journal of American History that I got in the mail today. (I can already hear my professors lecturing me on how I'm supposed to use the free time I have now to get ahead on all the work that that will be due in December, even though they know damn well they did the exact sort thing when they were in grad school.) Of particular interest to me was Michael Ayers Trotti's article, "What Counts: Trends in Racial Violence in the Postbellum South." Trotti's piece is germane to most graduate students, regardless of their specialty, because it wrestles with the methodological pitfalls surrounding quantitative history. Trotti highlights the great difficulty inherent in quantitative historical analysis, especially when said analysis that has moral implications related to some of the darkest chapters in American history. (A quick disclaimer: this blog post is by no means intended to be an exhaustive summary of the article, but only notes some of the key points that I felt like particularly mattered to grad students.)

Trotti begins by reminding his readers that the very definition of lynching is itself contested and not always the best yardstick with which to measure the effectiveness of racial terrorism in American history. Definitions and statistical analyses of lynching emerged in the early twentieth century, usually through the work of groups like the NAACP, in order to combat the epidemic of violence. Usually, we think of lynchings as having multiple perpetrators. But Trotti points out that simply determining what counts as a "lynching" for the historian is far from simple and, furthermore, all lynchings were not created equal. Sometimes the murder of a solitary black leader by a white citizen provoked far greater terror than a brutal public lynching. Even still, it is impossible to even grasp at the total number of lynchings that occurred between 1880 and 1920 (what we usually think of as the high-point of racial terrorism in the US). Records are shoddy, testimony is often skewed, and ascertaining whether an event should count in the tally of a "lynching" is far from clear. (If three people watched one white person murder an African American, but didn't actually participate in the killing, how should the historian count it?) Trotti insists that scholars broaden their view beyond lynchings to a more expansive notion of racial terrorism because studies of "lynchings" fail to capture the totality of the situation for many black Americans living in this time period.

CFP Roundup 8.19.2013

Below are a number of recent Calls for Papers: 

Atlanta Graduate Student Conference in US History

• When? November 15-16, 2013
• Where? Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia
• Deadline: September 13, 2013

 

The Workshop in U.S. History at Emory University will host the second Atlanta Graduate Student Conference in U.S. History November 15-16, 2013.  The Conference will be held on Emory’s campus in Atlanta, Georgia.  Professor Bethany Moreton of the University of Georgia will give the keynote address. Graduate students and advanced undergraduates are invited to submit proposals for individual papers or full panels on any topic pertaining to U.S. history.  We welcome submissions that focus on any region, time period, or topic.  Proposals with a comparative, transnational, or interdisciplinary approach to U.S. history, as well as papers with a public history focus, are also encouraged.

Things I wish I had known (or I was glad I knew) my first year in grad school

All across America, it's back to school time. For most students and families, it's a time to buy new backpacks, pencils, and crayons. If you're in a college town (like I am), every time you go to Walmart or Target you see eighteen year-old kids with their parents buying dry erase boards, plastic storage bins, and dorm room refrigerators. And then, there are first year grad students. Many of you, perhaps those who come to a Ph. D. program with an MA in hand (as I did), are generally well-prepared for the workload. Others are blissfully naive about the changes that are about to happen in their lives. Classes start at most universities in the next week or so; if it's your first year of grad school and you don't feel like Billy Madison waiting for the bus yet, then you will before August is over. Indeed, your first few months as a grad student will likely be one of the most stressful times in your entire life and I think most first-year students could benefit from the collective wisdom of their colleagues. With that that in mind, I solicited suggestions on Twitter and while I was disappointed that I didn't get more responses, I have plenty of tips to offer those of you starting this odyssey in the next few weeks.  So here are my tips for a first grad students in history (along with the ones I received from Twitter).

Bloggin' the Bookshelf: David Hall's "Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Beliefs in Early New England"

Editor's Note: This is a new series started with the aim of reviewing older works that are either directly linked with prelim reading lists or dissertation research. Of course, we invite any reader to contribute content about works valuable to their own research, regardless of period or topic.

Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgement:
Popular Religious Beliefs in
Early New England (1989)

In Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment, David D. Hall has reexamined the spiritual community of colonial New England, arguing for the existence of a popular religion that is both rooted in and supported by culture. Hall’s approach is novel, arguing that religion acted as “a mode of literacy” (18), and this prevailing connection between faith and literacy dominates this seminal work.

For Hall, the faith that emerges in New England cannot be simply explained as a product of cultural transmission. A variety of reasons are noted for colonial distinctiveness: the utility and persistence of folk belief, the spatial relationship between minister and congregation, the separate nature of church and state, the relative lack of appeal for ‘radical’ (i.e. Quaker, Baptist) faiths, the accommodative nature of magic and religion (paying homage to Keith Thomas’ 1971 seminal work), and the prominence of literacy. Popular culture represents something unique, facilitating an environment that was at once strictly demarcated, but flexible enough to include “countervailing practices and motifs” (245).