Embargo or EmbargNO?

Yesterday, the AHA caused quite an uproar with a press release regarding the embargoing of completed history PhD dissertations. You can read the whole statement here, but I would like to highlight a number of key quotes: 

Although there is so close a relationship between the dissertation and the book that presses often consider them competitors, the book is the measure of scholarly competence used by tenure committees...History has been and remains a book-based discipline, and the requirement that dissertations be published online poses a tangible threat to the interests and careers of junior scholars in particular.  Many universities award tenure only to those junior faculty who have published a monograph within six years of receiving the PhD.  With the online publication of dissertations, historians will find it increasingly difficult to persuade publishers to make the considerable capital investments necessary to the production of scholarly monographs...

Reactions on Twitter varied (and somehow, Jon Butler made an appearance): 

Bloggin' the Bookshelf: Peter Mancall's "Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America"

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. 

Neither Indians nor colonists could sever the alcohol trade from the workings of empire. The peculiar vice of Europeans had become a fixture in Indian country, deadly medicine that remained to poison relations between the peoples of North America (180).

So concludes Peter Mancall's nearly twenty-year old work on alcohol in early America. Mancall, now at Southern Cal, wrote this book not only with an eye towards trying to figure out the roots of the conundrum of rampant alcoholism in modern Native American communities, but also to try and highlight how contingency - and not simply a biological predisposition - played such an important role in the early alcohol trade. According to Mancall, "Indians in colonial America made choices when they drank" (8), more often than not as responses to opportunities that became available to them. 

CFP Roundup 7.16.2013

Below are a number of recent Calls for Papers:

80th Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association

• When? November 13-16, 2014
• Where? Atlanta, Georgia
• Deadline: September 15, 2013

The Program Committee for 2014, chaired by Laura Edwards, Duke University, invites proposals on all topics related to the history of the American South from its pre-colonial era to today...According to SHA policy, no one who appeared on the previous two programs, those at Mobile and St. Louis, can be part of the program in Atlanta...All proposals for the 2014 program must be submitted online.

History: Science, Humanity, or Something Else?

While no one would confuse Momma Goldberg’s of Auburn as a wellspring of erudition, it was there, last night, while consuming drink and breaking bread (or, rather, cheap nachos) with the graduate cohort that I had a bit of inspiration for my first post to this blog.  The issue was one that I think dogs most historians:  is history a science, or is it one of the humanities?  This type of existential question is one that I think is important for us, as professionals, to consider.  After our conversation, it was brought to my attention that Ken Owen has written on this matter at The Junto in reaction to Eric Herschthal’s piece comparing popular history and popular science for Slate.  While I agree with the general thrust of Owen’s argument, on the question of history’s relationship to the sciences, I would like to suggest that the relationship might not be as cut and dry as Owen seems to suggest.  Specifically, history – or, academic history - is scientific, even if it is not considered one of the sciences in the sense that chemistry or biology is. 

Thoughts on Bernath's recent JSH article

It being a relatively mild, overcast, and dreary day in Durham, I woke up this morning and poured a cup of coffee and picked up the most recent edition of the Journal of Southern History. I went right for Michael Bernath's article, "The Confederacy as a Moment of Possibility," mostly because the title looked startlingly provocative. In the piece, Bernath revisits the argument that many powerful southerners, including Jefferson Davis, viewed formation of the Confederacy as a profoundly conservative revolution - the purging of the cancerous northern influences. It is well known that despite these conservative intentions, the necessities of war pushed the CSA to become more powerful and centralized. The ultimate defeat of the Confederacy led to radical changes that few southerners could have foreseen in the heady days of secession. But, as Bernath reminds us, many viewed the creation of a new southern nation and the resulting war as an opportunity to push new reforms that were, for a variety of reasons, unimaginable under the old Union. He uses the example of three reform initiatives: expansion of women's education, slavery reform, and reactionary antidemocratic activism. Bernath's article is thoughtful and convincing, and I want to take a moment to both add to his argument, but also to take issue with some of his assertions. 

Edmund Morgan, 1916-2013

Today is a sad day: at around noon I found out that Edmund Morgan, the dean of early American history, passed away. 

I have struggled to try and figure out how to describe how much Dr. Morgan has meant to me. One skill that I always admired about him was his ability to simply explain the complexities inherent in the historical actors he wrote about (John Winthrop and Ezra Stiles to name a few). With that in mind, I'm going to (attempt) to write as Ed did, clearly and passionately. 

RECAP: ARC Biennial Sourcing Emotions Conference

Winthrop Hall, University of Western Australia

Last week, the Australian Research Council held its Biennial Sourcing Emotions conference at the University of Western Australia. I was fortunate enough to have a paper selected for presentation at the conference, and jumped at this unique opportunity to connect with academics involved in the study of emotions in the Middle Ages and early modern Europe. The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions provides an institutional sanctuary – and I don’t think “sanctuary” is a dramatic term, many scholars iterated their gratitude towards the ARC in bringing them together and “out of isolation” as one plenary speaker noted – for this still-nascent field that is absent from the American university system, buoyed by a $24 million grant from the Australian government, the largest grant bestowed to the humanities in the history of Australia.

My goal here is to provide a short recap of the conference. Since the conference followed a parallel-session format, I am unable to comment on a number of the panels. As an upfront disclaimer, I admit that I was drawn to panels that included emotions in the New World, the colonization of Australia, Anglo-Aboriginal interactions in early Australia, and reading emotions in early modern English literature.