As the semester winds down, particularly the one before summer, professors and students anticipate the end with relief and a sense of gratitude. I taught my last class Thursday evening. It was the first time I had taught a late evening class, not the time slot that best fits my natural rhythms. I blew out of there at about 10 p.m. The day had been unseasonably hot and it was still warm. I rolled down the windows, cranked the music, and drove home. School’s out for the summer!

Not quite – there’s that small matter of all those papers to grade. I sat down today with a set of short essays that I had asked my students in my graduate seminar on Advanced Historiography to write, reflecting upon the kind of historian they were or hoped to become. I had assigned a similar exercise at the beginning of the course and was curious to see what, if anything, had changed. As I read these personal reflections, I found myself genuinely touched, amused, and moved by turns.

Having taught theory for some time to both undergraduate and graduate students of history, I know that it often produces a crisis of confidence. After a few weeks in my class, one student began to seriously consider giving up the study of history altogether. She was reminded, however, of childhood incidents that convinced her she was a born historian: a fascination with graveyards, genealogy, King Tut, the Titanic, the Holocaust, the history of the saints. She persevered despite my class, not because of it. Another student compared her trajectory through the course to the process of grieving: denial (surely I am intelligent enough to grasp this, right?); anger (how could these theorists expect me to understand their jargon – “long durée, thick description, structure, superstructure, etc. – I was drowning in a sea of words”); and finally, grudging acceptance as thoughts like “what would Marx say about this?” began to creep unwittingly into her brain. One more ruefully promised to give Hegel, Kant and Marx, “another visit once I’ve recovered from them.”

So was I engaging in a form of inhumane historical boot camp? Putting them through hell in the form of never-ending impenetrable prose and expecting them to be grateful for it at the end? Certainly, that was not my intent. However, I did notice early on the development of the course a kind of esprit de corps and camaraderie derived, perhaps, through a sense of shared suffering. Hmm, maybe I could pitch this as a reality show? “Survivor: Historiography,” anyone? Who will get voted off this week? I know, me; then everybody could go home and read something else.

Not quite. For some students, there was no crisis of confidence at all. One student began his semester as a self-defined “conservative, religious, organized, military, teaching historian” and remained so, with the caveat that he now has a better understanding of why that is so. Another confidently rejected nearly every model discussed in the class. In an essay entitled “ I am not that name,” echoing the title of a book I had assigned, she defined herself as an historian by what she was not: “I am not a universalist, an objectivist, an academic, an archivist, and most of all, I am not a theorist!” She concluded, “ I am part of the great loss of center to which Novick so disparagingly referred. I know as well, I have little or no interest in writing history just for other historians. And I don’t put much stock in false binaries.”

Other students found the study of theory empowering. Said one: “I am an agent… I am part of the construction, deconstruction and production of knowledge.” She also saw theory as a window into the psyche; rather poetically writing: “ I am but a body imprisoned by the constructions of my soul…. The insights of these scholars help me begin to take bricks out of my invisible prison, allowing for a window to a more conscious reality. Yet the walls still stand, and I remain enclosed…. Deconstructing the prison of my Foucauldian soul allows me to better see myself as well as the world around me.”

In a quieter and more humorous vein, another student admitted to some initial apprehensions, having been told previously by another professor that he was “a content person rather than a theory person.” He asked: “Would I learn that I was in fact a crusty, scaly antiquarian, who was better suited to do history in an earlier century? Would I have to read an occasional book by Robert Utley to maintain my intellectual hygiene in the anticipated swarm of obfuscatory theoretical pontifications by bald French philosophers? I discovered the answer to both of these questions is a singular, resounding ‘no’!” And finally, one student who first described himself as an “historical mutt,” asked suggestively, if inconclusively, “ is it possible to teach a new dog old tricks?”

They also mused on the age-old question, “what is history?” Art with rules? A discipline that “prompts and undergirds that which is inhumane”? An antiquated form of storytelling that has been disrupted by the “elitist wankfest” of deconstructionism? Had deconstruction enfeebled the body of history: “inconsistent and scattered, flailing about without a backbone… a bunch of randomly piled vertebrae trying to survive?”

In the end, however, nobody lost faith in the power of the historical narrative. Most expressed an unwillingness to write only for ourselves, “that by writing to an exclusively academic audience we run the risk of turning our field, which is populist and democratic in nature into a bastion of elitism.” There was a strong preference for simplicity of language and clear and accessible prose. And for those that teach children for a living, an awareness of historiography would inform their teaching in the future. One teacher asked if state standards require her to teach on 19th century industrialization to high school students and has only one week to do it: “what do I emphasize? Do I teach about the robber barons and other great men? Do I teach about the horrors of child labor using the photographs of Lewis Hine? Whatever I decide, it needs to be a purposeful decision with some idea of historiography inherent in my choice.”

Unexpectedly, these short meditations provided for me a vivid composite portrait of a diverse group of people who spent sixteen weeks dealing with challenging intellectual material in each other’s company every Thursday night in the spring semester of 2009. So I have taken the liberty of preserving this experience into a composite historical snapshot, a micro-history if you will. I felt that this class was memorable enough to commemorate in some sort of durable form. See, it really happened! Depending on your preference, call it a “fact” or a “linguistic trace.”

I found myself humbled as I read these short meditations. Aside from including some mighty fine and highly personal writing, they also suggested that struggling with this material changed the way that the class (myself included) thought about history and about themselves. No teacher can expect more than that. To conclude: one student reflected “ I sometimes wondered why my professor chose to torture us.” She added, “my mantra throughout this class was the professor’s promise to us on the first night of class that we would feel smarter after taking this class. She was right.”

What can I say?

Thank you all.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about how human beings perceive difference. This, of course, is an occupational hazard. Much theoretical ink has been spilled on how human societies and individuals deal with difference – psychologically, culturally, historically, linguistically: “I and thou,” “Self and Other,” “sign, signifier, and signified,” the evocative and provocative “free floating signifier.” As scholars, how do we/can we/should we represent people unlike ourselves? What are we to make of physical difference, the most dramatic example being male/female, and the gender constructions based upon those anatomical distinctions? Racial difference which is less physically marked but no less socially important? The less immediately visible categories of religion, ethnicity and class conveyed through verbal and non-verbal forms of communication: dress, gestures, ritual, conversation? Finally, as privileged intellectuals, can we represent those differences without being dismissive, condescending, patronizing, presumptuous, or just plain wrong?

I believe that we can and should speak of difference, if for no other reason than, as an historian, I am required to translate the thoughts and actions of people from the past in ways that make sense to my own time and place. If this can’t be done, I’m out of a job. So I try. Students sometimes challenge my attempts – rarely on epistemological grounds, more frequently on identity-based claims. Every time I teach the history of slavery and race relations, for example, I know that at least one student will wonder what an uppity white girl from NJ could possibly tell them about the history of their own people. On a few occasions, students have said as much to my face. This doesn’t really offend me. I advise them to stick around for a few weeks and if they don’t like what they see, drop the course. No big deal.

Race also comes up because of what I don’t teach. I once had a colleague who told her students that I was a racist due to my failure to include material on Native American history in my undergraduate historiography class. This did offend me – until my sense of humor kicked in. True, Native American history wasn’t in a syllabus that covers the history of history from Herodotus to the present in 16 weeks. It does include material about identity-based history (working class/women/African-American). I cover indigenous history in my Latin American history classes and I also do research on Brazilian Indians, but as she barely knew me, she wouldn’t have known that. Had she, I suspect her ire would have only increased. Not only do I assign books on Native American history written by non-Native Americans, but I am attempting to write Native American history myself. Given my identity, could I hope to do so properly?

Moving beyond academic pettiness, the perception of difference, of course, has huge consequences in everyday life. It typically justifies wars, massacres, genocides, and all sorts of socioeconomic and political discrimination. It should go without saying, however, that although human beings may have an innate propensity to create oppositional categories to make sense of their world, difference need not be the basis of inequality or exclusion. Why can’t difference simply be … different?

When thinking about such heady ideas, I have found it useful to take a step back and observe how children deal with living in the world. This leads me to what got me thinking about all of this in the first place. A few months ago, my kids started taking African dance classes. My eldest daughter was exposed to African drumming and dancing two years ago at a summer camp and has been begging for lessons every since. I finally located a class for children sponsored by the African American Performing Arts Center, a lovely facility that promotes a variety of cultural activities. My youngest daughter tried a few classes and quickly dropped out. Why? She felt self-conscious. Why? Because she was different. “Mommy,” (delivered in an overly loud stage whisper) “I’m the only one that’s white.” Interestingly, despite the fact that her kindergarten class is almost evenly divided among Hispanic, black, Native American, and white kids, and this never seems to have been an issue, being the only one that was different mattered. No problem; she plays with other siblings who are stuck there during dance class.

My older daughter, however, has been all but color blind since she was very small. If anybody thinks it’s strange that this fair blond kid likes African dance, they haven’t said so. The dance community consists of African American kids and their families, some biracial couples and their kids, and some white parents who have adopted African kids. There’s a few African and Haitian families as well. Nice folks.

While going through the whirlwind of rehearsals leading up to the first performance of the “African American Performing Arts Youth Ensemble,” however, one could not escape constructions of difference. I overheard one adult volunteer attempting to herd a bunch of kids running amok into some kind of order, trying to sort out names. She asked Renee, “are you Ruth?” “No, she answered, “Ruth’s the white girl.”

The white girl. Of course, she is. As her mother, this revelation should not have come as a surprise. But in a certain sense, it did. This is probably the first time she’s been identified with reference to her race. Since “white” is the dominant racial signifier in US society, there is rarely cause to specify. Towards the end of the dress rehearsal, the dancers formed a “solo circle” which allowed any child who felt so moved to go into the center and dance while the remainder of the group clapped. The Brazilianist in me instantly recognized this as a “roda” a circle or “wheel” that one sees in Brazilian samba. Sometimes the kids went out alone, sometimes in twos or threes. Ruth went out with two girls but as they hadn’t coordinated what they were going to do, it didn’t work very well. Later she said, “mom, I felt weird being out there with Diandra and Isis.” “Why?” I asked. Whiteness, it turned out, had nothing to do with it. “Because they’re so tall,” she said. “I felt really short.”

The performance, by the way, was great. It had absolutely nothing to do with elitist, intellectual qualms about white people appropriating the cultural forms of the “other.” The drums were loud, the dancing was great, the applause genuine, the occasion heartfelt. My kid was out there having the time of her life, dancing with verve and a huge, radiant smile. She took my breath away.

A final post script: at the dinner following the performance, one of the drummers asked me if I was the parent of the “tall, blond girl.”

I had to laugh.

I have been thinking about writing a lot lately.  This derives, in part, from teaching a graduate seminar on historical theory this semester.  The reading list is not for the faint-hearted: Kant, Hegel, Marx, Gramsci, Levi-Strauss, Bourdieu, de Certeau, Foucault, Derrida, Spivak, to name a few.  The texts are dense at best, obscurantist at worst.  I am confronted weekly with the implicit, and sometimes explicit, questions: “Why are we reading this?”  “How can this help me to be a better historian?”

I am still working out these questions for myself.  Theory has enriched the ways in which I think about the extent to which human beings exercise free will or are bounded by the cultural norms and institutional constraints of their societies.  It forces me to be honest about what information I can or cannot derive from a documentary source.  It causes me to question how narratives are constructed, for what purposes, and by whom.  And it makes me confront the reality that there are no hard and fast lines that distinguish fact from fiction.  That said, most theoretical works would be all but impenetrable to the average reader.  They are tough going even for specialists who have been trained how to read them.  The conundrum remains, how do I convey these theoretical insights without restricting my readership to a narrow audience of other intellectuals with advanced degrees like myself?

One option is that I need not concern myself with a wider reading public.  Academic acclaim is not based on the number of copies one sells or the length of time that elapses before one’s work goes out of print.  Academics generally derive a fairly trivial amount of their income from book sales.  As an aside, I should add that a colleague of mine who wrote a guide entitled, ironically enough, Writing History, earns enough in royalties on that title to pay for his five kids’ summer programs every year.

However, I am also reminded of a recent comment by a student who argued that we need not feel apologetic or defensive for having come up with a specialized, professional language with which we can communicate specific, nuanced ideas to colleagues.  Certainly, researchers in the hard sciences feel no such compunction.  However, I find myself caught between the desire to produce a well crafted, evocative story and to probe its theoretical intricacies in a sophisticated way.  Can one do both?

This dilemma came to a head recently in another class.  I had assigned a recently published book that was well reviewed but that I had not read before ordering it.  Oops!  Upon reading it, I found it simply dreadful, but it was too late.   Every theoretical buzzword and concept was prominently displayed, overblown claims were made on the basis of inadequate or inconclusive data, in short, content-free jargon.  I felt that I had been bludgeoned by the equivalent of badly designed, dysfunctional kitchen sink.  A rather large one.  Even worse, I found myself having to justify to my students, why I made them waste their valuable time and money reading this thing.  I opted for contrition and some reflections on how and why the peer-review process can go badly wrong.  I was genuinely disillusioned that the editorial process, such that it was, had served this scholar so poorly.

Around the same time, a guest speaker came to speak at a workshop in our department.  This was Camilla Townsend, an historian of the Americas writ large, and coincidentally, a long term friend of mine.  Cami and I met as girls at a convention sponsored by the Wizard of Oz Club.  We were both fans of L. Frank Baum and even as a 12 year old, her gifts as a writer were already apparent.  We lost touch and found each other about ten years ago at a history conference, discovering that we had both become historians of Latin America and the Atlantic World.

Cami is a beautiful prose writer.  She examines figures that have been written about so much that you’d think there would be nothing left to say.  Pocahantas.  Frederick Douglass.  Malitzin, also known as La Malinche, an indigenous woman captive who served as Hernán Cortés’s translator during the conquest of Mexico.  But through a careful and imaginative reading of the limited documentation about these individuals, she causes us to rethink what we think we know.

After her visit, I read her Pocahantas and the Powhatan Dilemna which had been sitting on my shelf unread for some years.  Quite simply, it was lovely.  It was the first history book that I have read purely for pleasure in probably ten years or more.  She was quite clear about what she thought could be verified and where she was on shakier ground.  Her voice and methodological interventions, however, remained unobtrusive and did not distract from the compelling story she told.  I was reminded of advice once given by the writer we mutually admire. L. Frank Baum.  In a 1902 editorial entitled “What Children Want,” Baum wrote: “the language employed should be simple and unadorned.  As for a moral, children are quick to discover and absorb one, provided it is not tacked up like a warning on a signpost.”  Substitute “theoretical framework” for “moral,” and these might serve as guidelines for the historian as well.

During Cami’s talk, a colleague commented on the quality of her writing and asked if it “every got her into trouble.”  A strange question at first glance.  The implication was that writing too well could be bad.  Cami responded that, “yes,” if one writes too accessibly, one runs the risk of not being taken seriously.  The analysis and hard work that goes into one’s interpretation can be overlooked if one doesn’t hit the  reader over the head with it.  One can also write for one’s colleagues in the manner respected by the profession in other contexts.  It is a matter of pairing style with venue and intended audience.

I am left with the thought that for the historian, a theoretical foundation might best be utilized as if one were a ballet dancer.  The best dancers wear their training lightly.  They distill years of specialized training and bloody hard work into gestures of astonishing lightness and beauty.  The effort is concealed; in fact it is necessary to do so in order for it to appear effortless.  Perhaps I can aspire to that in my writing.  If I use  theory to inform my conclusions and qualify my claims, that may suffice.  I would like to write something that is beautiful, yet substantial, definitive not because it includes every empirical factoid but because the prose lingers in the mind.

Maybe I also should rethink how I use footnotes.

Early this year, I visited my father while attending a conference in New York City.  The clutter and disorder had reached new depths.  Three years ago, I had spent a week moving his Oz books from the damp cellar to the attic.  The area rug was then damp to the touch.  The room had flooded more than once and a leaky pipe had done a fair amount of damage to a hallway ceiling.  I hacked out what I could reach of the carpet.  I then assumed that the plumbing problem had been fixed but given the clutter and visible mold on walls and ceiling evident during this visit, I smelled a rat.  Speaking of rats, there was also rodent poop on some of the shelves, enough spider webs and egg sacs to festoon a Harry Potter set, and I later learned that two snakes had once taken up residence as well.

moldy books

Welcome Webs

"Lawndry" webs

Time for an intervention.

The dumpster - will it be big enough?

I offered to return during my spring break and clean out the basement so some professionals could then get in there and fix the plumbing, eradicate the mold, etc.   My younger sister Nancy arranged to come up for a day and convinced my father to allow her to remove some shelving/cabinets that he had constructed some twenty years ago.  I can’t even describe them; look at the pictures.  Let’s just say they transformed a split level landing that overlooked a finished basement into a barrier that separated the two spaces and transformed the ground level hallway into a narrow alley.  Utilitarian, but bulky.

entry way - before

basement - before

Day 1: Luck of the Irish!

Going to NJ is a cultural experience.  I arrived on St. Patrick’s day and while debriefing with my dad, I heard bagpipe music.  Great, the neighbors are having a party.  But no, there’s a dude with bagpipes playing next door.  Think Christmas carolers but with pipes.  In my Irish/Italian/Catholic hometown I should not have been surprised.  Still very cool.

Day 2: “What the f@*k”

Ground zero at 7:20 a.m.  Already my NJ speech patterns have returned.  Upon clearing the debris from the hallway enough to open the back door, I found atop the concrete patio, a few inches of top soil, an upper strata of decomposing leaves, assorted debris, and vegetation approaching the door.  Not quite what Dorothy encountered when her house landed in Munchkinland.  I believe I exclaimed, “Holy Mother of God.” I’m not Catholic.  As the day wore on, I began interjecting the f-word in every other sentence.  By the afternoon I was mixing Catholic oaths and expletives.  Don’t ask me why this happens; I have no idea.  It’s just NJ.  “Cawfee, anyone?”

"Holy Mary, Mother of God!"

"I'm not in Kansas anymore!"

My sister came and wielded wrenches, hammers, screwdrivers, and hacksaw to good effect.  We concluded that had a nuclear bomb ever gone off in the vicinity, the neighborhood would be flattened save this shelving structure which was built to last.  2×2 steel beams were bolted, screwed and nailed into adjacent surfaces and to each other in ways that contributed to its sturdiness but were a bitch to take apart.  Admittedly, this thing sustained the weight of a half ton of boxed books without collapsing, but still!   Definitely built for the cold war.  Other cold war artifacts included books with titles like “The Mighty Atom” and “Russian for the Scientist.”  There were also eleven boxes of freeze-dried food that had been purchased for the bomb shelter under the shed in the back yard.  My dad reconstituted a pouch of dried carrots and ate them before agreeing that we could throw this stuff out.

Nancy at the end of her rope

bye bye shelves!

Never know when you might need a hacksaw

cold war rations

Into the dumpster went the metal beams (some rusted and moldy), the warped doors, additional metal shelving units from the basement, some of them half collapsed.  Once the shelving was removed, some rotten pipe and two cast iron supports that had once held up a decorative railing separating landing from basement were revealed.  About thigh high with sharp metal edges.  Dad insisted that he would cover the tops with padding.  We overruled him – no need to risk impalement.  Hacksaw out!  Several hundred beta videotapes, scrap wood, rotting pieces of the aforementioned shed, etc. going into the dumpster completed day 1.

"the pipes"

"Look a hallway!" See how wide it is compared to the "before" picture.

Day 3: Flying crabmeat

A painful wake up.  After 10 hours of moving stuff, and minor injuries (steel beam to the knee, can of frozen crab to the shin, etc.), I embarked on day two solo.  Progress was more incremental and far less dramatic.  Moving shelves, sorting books to go to the Audubon society, the local library, a local book dealer (31 large cartons in all), bleaching down ceiling, floor and walls, ripping out the rest of the stinky carpet (which took some of the linoleum tiles with it).  About half of the floor was exposed by the end of the day.  Wildlife sightings were limited to a dessicated earthworm and a cricket.

Day 4: Snow over the dumpster

A really painful wake up.  I now have an inkling of what it must be like to be old and have everything hurt when one arises in the morning.  It was also snowing, on the first day of Spring, go figure.  We threw out fifty or so empty boxes that once held ten reams of xerox paper each.  Seven boxes of books went to the local library.  We also bought some new shelving.  Another ten hours of hard physical labor and the room was done.

Boxes!

south view of basement - "after"

north view of basement - after

entry way - "after"

And here's the dumpster - it was big enough!

Day 5: Reflections

I realized that I’m very fortunate to be able to earn my living by using my mind instead of my body.  I was TIRED by the end of this.  Yet there is also a relaxing aspect to devoting oneself singlemindedly to a task for hours at a time.  No interruptions, no email (I checked it only once a day, how weird!),  or other distractions.  At the end of the day, I’d treat myself to a nice meal out and a beverage.  There’s some satisfaction derived from completing a monumental task.  And if I want to relive the magic, there are eight more rooms plus a garage that could use my attention….

I have been writing a book for what seems like forever, to the point of embarrassment.  I’ve been working on it so long, half the time I don’t remember why I’m writing it or what I’m trying to say.  Like a graduate student that hopes to avoid queries about the progress of one’s dissertation, I dread the well meaning questions: “so how’s the book coming along?” “Are you getting any writing done?”  “So what is your book about anyway?”  I expect this from family, from friends, from colleagues.  Sometimes it comes out of the blue.  At my grandmother’s 100th birthday party in 2007, a friend of her named Connie, a spry, talkative, and mildly irritating 90-something, pounced on me and asked “so when is your next book coming out?”  Huh?  It turned out that she had read the copy of my first book that I had given to my grandmother.  Go figure.  Moreover, she came up with a very precise summary of the book’s main arguments that was surprising in a non-academic.

I began thinking about this book in 1997 and researching it in earnest in 2000.  A few extenuating circumstances – children born in 1998 and 2002, several years of related sleep deprivation, a five year stint as associate chair of my department – have legitimately slowed my progress.  But now it’s time to get the damn thing done.  A sabbatical last semester provided a much-needed jump start and I have two substantial (read overly long) chapters completed.  Since then, I try to write a little bit every day; often I get up early to make this happen.

The book, by the way, is about attempts to settle an indigenous frontier in Brazil from the years 1760-1910. It examines the extent to which Indians were able to dictate outcomes in a context of limited effective state presence.  It deals with how disparate cultures interact with one another.  There’s violence and slavery and disease and exploitation, illicit sex, lascivious dances, entrepreneurship, religious and cultural intolerance, environmental degradation, and a fairly predictable unhappy ending.  In the most abstract sense, it deals with how human beings deal with difference and create boundaries to make sense of their world.

So this morning, I was completing  a section about an Indian soldier named Inocencio who served as an interpreter and mediator for a Portuguese man named Bento Lourenço who was a prospector, explorer and road builder.  Inocencio traveled to Rio de Janeiro and requested and sought audiences with the Brazilian emperor, not once, but at least three times during the 1820s.  This involved walking several hundred miles in each direction.  The local authorities didn’t approve of this fellow wandering off to Rio without formal papers, often attracting native followers to join him in Pied Piper fashion.  They issued arrest warrants.  The Emperor, however, was impressed, and gave the shrewd Inocencio a title as Captain of the Indians, special privileges, freedom of movement and lots of presents, some useful, others symbolic.  My favorite was the portrait of the emperor in a gilded frame – which Inocencio valued enough to lug along a few hundred miles before he was arrested.  Within the space of a year, he went to Rio, illegally sold booty gained from the Emperor, was arrested, reassigned to a new frontier post, escaped, went back to Rio, was arrested again, and sent back to his new post.

As I was finishing, my husband wandered out and asked me what I was doing.  I proceeded to summarize this tale, in a shamelessly long-winded and circuitous fashion, replete with excessive detail.  While holding forth, my 6 year old daughter emerged from her room and sat in my lap and listened.  She then spontaneously made up the following dialogue which summed up the main points quite nicely:

“Oh no, I’m in jail again!  Poopy!”

“Hurrah!  I’m out of jail!  Let’s go to Rio!” (upon repetition, she added “with our Indian friends!”)

“Let’s sell stuff!”

I think she should write the damn book.

Me as Historian

I am told that my late colleague, Tim Moy, often began responses to student questions with the phrase, “We as historians…”  I like this, both as strategy and rhetorical device.  Strategically, it makes students feel as they are participants in the historical endeavor and not just passive recipients.  Rhetorically, it evokes the democratic potential of history.  With a few bucks and a website, anybody can be an historian.

Yet on the rare occasions when I interject “we as historians” during a class, it feels a bit presumptuous.  Tim, of course, was anything but.  But for myself, I have some trouble speaking for all historians when we are such a diverse lot.  “Me as historian,”  while a grammatically questionable construction, is a bit more manageable.  And given that I tend towards the small scale in my historical work, at a minimum it’s internally consistent.

This somewhat rambling preamble is an entry into the question, “What kind of historian am I?”  This evening I will lead the first session of a graduate seminar in Advanced Historiography and I am requiring each student to write a short essay responding to this question.  I ask my undergraduates to do a similar exercise with the question “What is History?”   In order for this not to devolve into intellectual voyeurism and perhaps even to approximate some sort of debate, I figured it was only fair to devote some thought to the question myself.  So here goes.

My undergraduate degree was in Anthropology and my approach to history reflects that.  I strive to be an ethnographer of the past.  I had too many moral qualms about poking into the lives of the living to be a successful anthropologist, unless I wanted to use fieldwork as the basis for an extended meditation on myself.  I did not.  An added plus: accountability towards the dead, while still a real concern, is rather more attenuated than responsibility towards the living.

I am probably not much of a credit to my Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins.   Hopkins was the first doctoral program in History in the United States – it embraced German models of empiricism and pedagogy.   One of my advisers really did claim in Rankean fashion that the “facts spoke for themselves.”  Hence there was no need for formal training in the philosophy or theory of history.  All that was required was a comprehensive gathering of data, artfully arranged into a coherent narrative.  I may have found that enough at one time; I no longer do.

I exaggerate a bit.  There were theorists at Hopkins, proponents of the linguistic turn and subaltern studies.  Gayatri Spivak came to give a talk; Hayden White taught there.  Gabriel Spiegel, a path-breaking theorist in the historical field, now teaches at JHU and just assumed the presidency of the American Historical Association.  But in the late 80s-early 90s, theorists were much embattled and (this may be urban legend) reputedly some literally came to blows with the empiricists in faculty meetings.

Since leaving graduate school, I have become more theoretically inclined.  My work has been enriched and informed by theory.  However, I can’t really claim to be a theorist either, at least, not a very good one.  Some scholars have a natural aptitude for theory; others dismiss it out of hand.  Some approach it because they think they should or because they are required to teach it or learn it.  Of those, I suspect the majority work their butts off and get maybe half of it.  That’s pretty much where I stand.

So much for what I am not.  The historical approach that best fits what I do is micro-history.  I enjoy studying the small to illuminate the large.  In particular with respect to how the state interacts with society, how the actions of individuals, particularly those situated at the far extremities of power, are able to mediate ideas, policies, disparate cultural understandings.  They are also sometimes able to subvert or transform larger political agendas, often because at the local level the state often doesn’t pay a whole lot of attention.  Looking at the local often provides ample evidence that what the state discursively asserts as reality is just a load of bull.  I like these contradictions.  They amuse and often fascinate me … as historian.

This week I attended a ballet recital put on by a studio that my daughter and I had attended for four years.  She had moved on to a new studio; I had taken a temporary break from dance altogether.  As the auditorium filled, we both felt conflicted for related reasons.  She, understandably, felt left out as she watched the girls with whom she had danced for several years perform without her.  She found the choreography more interesting than what she was doing at her new studio.  Well past her bedtime, this spilled out in an angry, pouty, teenager-to-come outburst,

I could relate.  I saw many people, parents of other girls, other women with whom I danced for many years, all very welcoming and happy to see me.  But it wasn’t the same as dancing with them on a regular basis.  I also noticed a number of talented young dancers in the audience that I was accustomed to seeing on the stage.  And some weren’t there at all.  I was not the only person that had moved on to something else.

I also viewed the performance with a more critical and less indulgent eye.  The little ones were adorable; their primary function is to be cute and they did it well.  The more seasoned dancers performed a variety of interesting, often playful or moving numbers.  But many in my daughter’s cohort seemed to struggle with the ambitious choreography.  This contrasted with an informal holiday performance at my daughter’s new studio.  While the dances were simpler, they were well executed in unison and with confidence.

Fast forward to yesterday evening: opening night of the Nutcracker.  This version is put on by the studio my daughter now attends and she and a good friend were both performing in it.   Her friend’s mother and I had volunteered as ushers.  Here I experienced a different sense of community.  I had performed in this show last year and thus had gotten to know many of the dancers.  For several months, I have also been interacting with them in the studio.  I have watched their skills evolve and seen them move into new, more demanding roles.  I have begun to know their parents.  So, there I was in the back of the theater sitting on a folding chair next to the mother of the female lead, “Clara,” watching her cry (and shedding more than a few tears myself).

What was wholly unexpected, was my reaction to the first act, the party scene, in which I had participated last year.  I expected to feel some regrets at not taking part, some envy, feeling left out.  There was some of that.  But mostly, I was spellbound, genuinely moved.  In the past, I’d always found the party scene a little boring, a little too prolonged.  But having done it, I felt as if I were there and not there,  simultaneously within and without.  It was as if I was watching myself even though I was not on stage.  Perhaps this is voyeurism, or a kind of narcissism, who knows?  It was, nonetheless, a curious sensation.  I could predict the choreography, the flow of people on and off the stage.  But from the outside, I could see and fully appreciate the complexity of the staging that involves so many people in a relatively confined space.  When on stage, my primary concern was to not bump into anybody, remember my right from my left, and to engage in purposeful milling about.

My daughter and her friend, of course, were lovely in the roles they performed.  More mommy tears.  Then, at the reception after the performance, a number of dancers and parents came up to me and said nice things about her.  Not just about her dancing, but about her essential character, aspects that only people that knew her and was paying attention would notice.  She may not yet fully appreciate this new community.  But I did. And I also look forward to reconnecting with the old one.

Yesterday, I volunteered to serve as a voter challenger for the Democratic Party.  In layperson’s terms, this amounts to voter protection.  One must ensure that the law is upheld without actually speaking directly to voters.  Rather, one issues gentle and respectful reminders to the precinct board if violations or distortions of the law occur and document irregularities.

I’ve never done anything like this before.  No previous candidate during my voting life has inspired me sufficiently to donate fourteen hours of time I don’t really have.   Like thousands of others, I found myself moved by Obama – his eloquence, his intelligence, his steady demeanor, his organizational genius, and, as he showed last night, a capacity for humility.   As the race progressed, I also was repelled by the alternative – the hate speech, the intolerance, and the character attacks that pandered to the worst impulses and irrational fears of this society.

Nothing I’m saying is new or unique.  However, the impulse to volunteer led to some surprising relevations.

1.  I had assumed that my primary role would be to protect voters from partisan-based shenanigans – intimidation, harassment, deliberately erroneous claims that would discourage or prevent people from voting.  In fact, very little of this occurred.  Also no long lines and frayed nerves.  Due to the availability of early voting in New Mexico, about half of the voters in the precinct had cast ballots prior to election day.  Many more voted absentee.  We processed fewer than 100 ballots over the course of 12 hours.

2. The main impediment was not partisan ill-will, but incompetence.  The precinct board was an interesting mix – a young Hispanic woman who helpfully wiped down the voting booths with antiseptic wipes at regular intervals, a graduate student in Economics, an older woman who runs her own needlework and framing business, another older and very well-preserved woman who was a living testimony to the anti-aging nutritional supplements she sells, and a youthful and very funny lesbian in marketing.  The Republican challenger was knowledgable, decent and a University accountant.  And then there was the presiding judge, an elderly woman about which I know little other than her general cluelessness.

Of the cast of characters, the most knowledgable people in the room were me and the other challenger.  This was alarming as we had no prior experience and had only a crash course and some handouts.  Of the precinct board members, some were complete novices, others were not, all had good will, but few were well informed.  The presiding judge was completely and utterly incompetent, not to mention unpleasant.  She did not know how to set up or turn on the ballot processing machine or the auto-mark machine for the disabled.  When asked about how she would handle the various types of ballots, she seemed confused.  She demonstrated almost no knowledge of electoral law and made frequent mistakes.  The low point of the day probably was when she was told she had to sign an envelope for a provisional ballot.  She was instructed to turn the ballot over to find the signature line.  Instead she rotated it 90 degrees.  Then there was the time when she voided the forms for hand-tallied ballots without reading them first.  She also failed to oversee what the precinct board was doing, for example, when one member repeatedly and incorrectly tried to tell voters that if they voted provisionally their “vote may or may not be counted.”  I could go on.  Little did I expect that much of the day would consist of overseeing the judge and trying to maintain an environment that would inspire voter confidence.  Or that the Republican challenger would be my best and most supportive advocate.

3. Given this experience, my faith in the electoral system was shaken anew.  One expects and anticipates that improperly calibrated machines or ill-intentioned individuals might subvert the system.  But I now have to wonder how much electoral outcomes might be dictated by the fact that people might not know what they were doing.  So while I signed on to support Obama, I am likely to work at the polls in the future because the eleectoral process is too important to be left to people who neither know nor seem to care about voter rights.  I might even train to be a judge (no law degree trequired).

4.  I did not expect to be emotionally touched by the voting process but I often was.  Some moments stand out: a gentleman who assisted his son, who had Down’s Syndrome; a visually-impaired woman who was so moved to be voting that she cried; a guy we dubbed José the plumber; an elderly man covered with Rosary beads who kept blessing us (we later found out that he had to be removed by security for haranguing voters of the opposite party); a hippie couple that were in a hurry to vote because their daughter was about to deliver twins; and a lot of voters that said they had never voted before.   Not all of them were young.

I left home before the sun rose and returned after it had set.  I also had gotten no news during the course of the day.  I would have liked to have gone to a party or something but not something one can do in good conscience after being away from the kids for fourteen hours.  So I watched the returns come in and the speeches.  Kudos to McCain for ending on a high note and showing a glimpse of the McCain he once was.  I can’t say I’ll miss that creepy, insincere smile or Palin’s grating voice and twitchy body language.  But I will miss getting those daily personalized emails from my buddies, Barack, Joe, Michele and Al.

And whoever stole my Obama yard sign last night could you please return it?

No this is not a self-description. I’m quoting a young girl’s response to her father’s proselytizing discourses over breakfast at a hotel where I stayed on a recent vacation to southern California. He was attempting to explain the relationship between religion and politics. His daughter seemed eager to please; his teenage son was somewhat more skeptical. After conceding that one COULD be a Democrat and a Christian, if one were moderate and not too “liberal” the girl piped up with the above comment. He thought a moment, fixed a stare upon her and responded, “Are you SURE she’s a Christian? How do you know?”

I never caught the end of that discussion – I suspect it was ongoing. But it was one of those moments that lingers in the mind when one covers 1800 miles in 9 days with two children and a parent in the car. Our destination was the earthly paradise of Disneyland with stops at Tucson (to pick up my dad who was wrapping up a tour to Copper Canyon) and San Diego on the way. Some observations:

1. Clouds are nice. I had the unusual experience of driving through much of New Mexico and Arizona in late May in cool, cloudy, and even rainy conditions. Usually one expects near 100 degree temperatures and a lot of glare and dust at this time of year. Instead, temperatures ranging from the high 40s to the mid 60s with periodic showers. It was extraordinarily restful.

In general, we could not have asked for better weather. The hottest it got was on our last day at Disneyland when the temperature hit an impressive 75 degrees.

2. Children respond well to bribes. Instead of bracing yourself for several hundred miles’ worth of bickering and whining, pay them for good behavior. It works! Even with a relatively modest sum. And when that fails, try audiobooks.

3. Children often find fake or anthropomorphic animals as good or better than the real thing. At Sea World and the San Diego Wild Animal Park (one of the world’s best zoos for both fauna and flora IMO), what most excited the kids? The stuffed animals available at the ubiquitous kiosks and gift shops. Bribe money financed the acquisition of four of them, imaginatively named “Jaffe” (a giraffe), “Dolly” (a dolphin), and I’ll let you guess what “Tigey,” and “Turtie” stand for.

Then there were the overly produced whale, dolphin and seal shows at Sea World. Animals that don’t behave like animals, how fun is that? Yeah, I liked them too.

Of course, Disney wins in this category. No, I’m not talking about the obvious – Chip and Dale, Mickey and Minnie, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, etc. There were some fake animals that were positively creepy. If you take the opportunity to ride the train that encircles the park, you will go through a tunnel that takes you through the “Grand Canyon,” a cheesy old style diorama complete with taxidermically stuffed mountain lions, bison and the like. Then you repeat the same scene but in the time of the dinosaurs which features some creaky, mechanically animated T-Rexes and other creatures. I’ve read enough about Walt Disney to know that he was heavily into nostalgic versions of the past (as well as imagined futures). So I thought, “OK, maybe he was trying to recreate the worst attributes of 19th century natural history museums.” But no, we later went on the more recently introduced “Jungle Cruise” where a river boat and a guide complete with pith helmet and fake revolver took us through a series of river environments where we encountered fake (but somewhat more realistic looking) elephants shooting water through their trunks, hippos rising and descending in the river, and, best of all, menacing painted natives with shields and spears. All of it plastic and very weird.

Topping the anthropomorphic list was “Asimo,” Honda’s fully ambulatory, interactive robot on display at Innoventions. This was genuinenly cool. The kids demanded that we see the robot show twice.

4. Potty Paranoia AKA Toilet Trauma or Fear of Flushing. Do not contemplate a long road trip if any of your children are afraid of public restrooms. Inexplicably, my youngest child developed an extreme aversion to the kind of toilet that automatically flushes with a loud whooshing sound. In order to get her to go to the bathroom, I had to physically drag her or carry her into the stall as she cringed, cried, and wailed. Then she raced out of the stall with her pants down to get out before the infrared sensor flushed the toilet. Bribing did not work in this instance. I can only wonder what the other moms thought of me. Actually, they were probably just thinking, “thank goodness that’s not my kid.”

This may sound funny, and in retrospect it is. In the moment, it was not.

5. Deconstructing Disneyland. I had never been to Disneyland before and had only visited Disneyworld as a kid a very long time ago. For the record, I loved it and would go back tomorrow if I could. Embrace the kitsch and it will not disappoint.

If you’re a novice, the following may be useful advice:

The park consists of different environments, the oldest of which seems to be Main Street and Fantasyland. In the middle of Fantasyland are a bunch of 50s era indoor and outdoor rides which I suspect are original to the park. The indoor rides are all basically the same – you ride on a little car on a track and go through environments based on classic Disney movies – Snow White, Pinocchio, Peter Pan. Sometimes the car spins, sometimes you can drive it, sometimes it even “flies.” They are quaint and charming; our personal favorite was Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. This format extends into the more modern film-based rides based on Roger Rabbit, Toy Story, Monsters Inc., etc in other parts of the park. Outdoor rides include the iconic teacups, the Dumbo and Alice in Wonderland rides and a large carousel.

Also suitable for smaller children are Tune Town, Princess Faire (crafts and cheesy princess show) and It’s a Small World (closed for renovation, alas).

The more modern and ambitious rides are located in Tomorrowland, Frontierland, and Adventureland. So if you like roller coasters or more fast paced thrills, head there.

California Adventure, if you have a “Park Hopper” pass, you can visit here too. It seems geared more towards older kids and adults. It’s also more oriented towards Pixar characters. The overall concept seemed a little weird – why invent a fake California in …. California? However, don’t miss the Aladdin musical or whatever live show might be playing. It was superb.

Dealing with lines:

The Fastpass system is great if you know how to use it. You can only accumulate one Fastpass every 30 minutes or an hour – your wait time is listed on the bottom of your most recently accumulated fast pass. Go to the most popular/newest rides first as the wait time to redeem your Fastpass can quickly extend to several hours.

If you have a disabled or mobility impaired person in your group, get a document from guest services and your group (a maximum of 6 people) can cut the lines, providing your companion can get in and out of the rides with assistance. [formal documentation is not necessary if one is in a wheelchair]

You won’t be able to see everything, not even in three days. So do you really need to spend two hours waiting for the Finding Nemo Submarine ride? Do something else.

A number of people have advised me that the best strategy is to get to the park when it opens, leave at around 11-12 to avoid the maximum heat and crowds, do something else in the afternoon and come back at around 4-5. This sounds like good advice but my kids didn’t comply. They generally lasted until about 3 and once back at the hotel, I was unable to pry my kids away from the concrete reality of the pool with the theoretical allure of Disneyland. Which leads me to my last point:

6. A beach or hotel pool is as least as compelling as a theme park. Some of our most memorable moments were spent hanging out on beaches – at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego with friends Eric Shanower and David Maxine and a little public access beach in Oceanside (go west on Cassidy from 101 – about a mile or two south from the pier, easy parking, local scene of surfers, older folks, and lots of cute teenagers in bikinis).

This posting was inspired by a recent entry in the blog entitled “stuff white people like.” This blogster pokes fun at a variety of elite white pretensions: Priuses, vegetarianism, organic food, bottled water, gifted children, gourmet sandwiches, bilingualism, and so on. There is enough truth in the stereotypes to make some of them quite funny; after all that is how and why stereotypes work. And I freely admit that many of them apply to me: I recycle, bike to work, and would drive a Prius if I could afford one. I have “gifted” children who are learning second languages. I have studied and lived abroad, in locations where I have been the only white North American around. I like coffee, overly elaborate sandwiches, sushi, dark chocolate, wine, and tend towards a vegetarian diet. I have, not one, but two “useless” degrees, in Anthropology and History respectively, am happily ensconced in my own Ivory Trailer, and can discuss arcane theorists and philosophers. I also do most of my shopping at Walmart (we all have our contradictions); except for produce of course, that comes from the locally owned and operated community farm.

So that’s all very nice. A full disclosure in the confessional mode. How very Foucauldian. Not to mention ironic. Now what about graduate school?

The entry, which can be found at: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/81-graduate-school/ argues the following:

Whites are congenitally addicted to intellectual one-up-manship. An impractical undergraduate degree is insufficient to succeed in this game. So further higher education is needed with preference for “ the true ivory tower of academia …. as it imparts true, useless knowledge. The best subjects are English, History, Art History, Film, Gender Studies, <insert nation> Studies, Classics, Philosophy, Political Science, <insert European nation> Literature, and the ultimate: Comp Lit.”

Pursuit of a graduate degree also allegedly enables one to live a life of sloth while obtaining it and then provides an inexhaustible fund of erudition that can be strategically deployed at cocktail parties.

Lest I be dismissed unfairly as a humorless white girl, let me say that I did find the satire funny, because, after all, some of it is true. My mother, who had a B.S. in chemical engineering, used to say that B.S. stood for bullshit, M.S. stood for more shit, and Ph.D. meant piled higher and deeper (that would refer to my dad who had a Ph.D. in chemical engineering). Of their progeny, one kid got a Ph.D., one got a Master’s and one dropped out of college after about a year (that would be NS or “No shit!”) Incidentally, No Shit!, when in the workforce, made considerably more money than Piled Higher and Deeper.

We have all run across irritating pretentious intellectual poseurs in social settings. And hey, not all of them are white. Irrespective of color though, it is easy to write them off as useless, self-indulgent dilettantes whose educational forays are bankrolled by secret trust funds or mom and dad. However, I suspect they are in the minority. Many graduate students dig themselves deep into student loan debt, and, if they obtain the coveted Ph.D., face uncertain employment prospects and modest salaries. If this is the case, and if one privileges economic self- interest over other goals, it begs the obvious question, “are you friggin’ stupid or what? If you’re that smart, why not become a lawyer instead?”

Our blogster would seem to agree, stating “It is important to understand that a graduate degree does not make someone smart, so do not feel intimidated. They may have read more, but in no way does that make them smarter, more competent, or more likable [sic] than you.” Picking pretense over profit, in fact, would make one dumber, less competent and less likeable (or perhaps merely “likeable enough”).

True, a diploma does not confer brains, despite what the Wizard of Oz may have claimed to the Scarecrow in the MGM movie. Or, to quote another line of the Scarecrow’s from that film, “some people without brains do awful lot of talking.” Plenty of advanced degree holders are, in my opinion, complete idiots. And I also count among my friends a number of very smart, resourceful people who never completed college, or even high school. But to dismiss the acquisition of a specialized, graduate degree as merely frivolous and self-indulgent is to miss the point. Most people that follow that path are people of good will, motivated by idealism, a sense of vocation, and a desire to create and disseminate knowledge. They often give up years of potential income and career advancement and require a great deal of tolerance from friends, spouses, and children along the way. Given the degree of sacrifice required, if this path were pursued solely out of a desire to feel intellectually smug, well, these folks indeed would deserve our mockery and contempt.

However, I’d like to believe that the average academically-minded person, white or otherwise, is not that pathetic, shortsighted, or shallow. Given that I am a professional academic, you might dismiss this belief as shamelessly self-serving. But let’s think a minute about what purpose the supposedly “useless” disciplines of literature, history, philosophy, or political science serve. The successful pursuit of a liberal arts degree, from the B.A. to the Ph.D., requires the development of a certain skill set. You must learn how to read, write and think critically about material that is often difficult to understand upon first reading. Ideally, you then pass on those skills to others as a teacher or in some other professional setting. A foundation in critical thinking might then be translated into real life situations like being able to pick apart the logic or evidentiary grounds of arguments for or against global warming. Or to be able to see through cheap political tricks during election season.

One of the privileges enjoyed by complex societies is the economic wherewithal to support an intellectual class. That class, while it may provide its fair share of obfuscating, impenetrable prose, also produces art, literature, and investigations about how individuals and societies have behaved, thought, and acted, in the past and the present. In fact, the blog “stuff white people like” is a perfect example of this kind of intellectual production. Its author is providing an ethnography, of sorts, of the values held by a certain class of the mainstream white population in the early twenty-first century U.S. But undergirding this site is the belief that affluent white people behave the way that they do, not out of genuine conviction or conscience, but simply because they want to feel superior to the rest of humanity. Yes, I get that it’s satire. But if it happens to be true, it’s not very funny.