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Becoming the Editor

Edward T. Linenthal

in The Organization of American Historians and the Writing and Teaching of American History

In this chapter, the current editor of the Journal of American History, Edward Linenthal, muses on his connections with his predecessors and the journal's move into its second century.

What Can And Can’t Be Said: Beyond Civil Rights

Dell Upton

in What Can and Can'T Be Said: Race, Uplift, and Monument Building in the Contemporary South

This chapter describes the African American History Monument in South Carolina as an epitome of the parameters of what can and cannot be said. It begins with an overview of monuments in the South ... More

This chapter describes the African American History Monument in South Carolina as an epitome of the parameters of what can and cannot be said. It begins with an overview of monuments in the South Carolina State House Grounds, most of which celebrate the period between Secession and World War II that witnessed the consolidation of white supremacy. It then considers the planning stages for the African American History Monument, which was designed by Ed Dwight and the historical narrative of which is overlaid with elements of romantic cultural essentialism expressed as an idealized and unitary conception of Africans and African Americans. It also examines two different strategies used to achieve the monument's purpose: one is a historical narrative rooted in the specifics of the black experience in South Carolina; the other is the romanticized pan-Africanism that creates a type of separation, one that locates all that is fundamental to the African American experience in preslavery Africa and in those aspects of African culture that survived in South Carolina.Less

The Long and Influential Life of Social History in the MVHR and the JAH

Stephanie J. Shaw

in The Organization of American Historians and the Writing and Teaching of American History

In a chapter entitled “Sociology, Meet History,” Charles Tilly included a subsection, “The Historical Zoo,” in which he wrote: “I hope my description does not make the historical profession seem ... More

In a chapter entitled “Sociology, Meet History,” Charles Tilly included a subsection, “The Historical Zoo,” in which he wrote: “I hope my description does not make the historical profession seem smoothly organized, neatly hierarchical, or deeply coherent. In reality, the practice of history resembles a zoo more than a herbarium, and a herbarium more than a cyclotron”. His zoo was one in which species occasionally escaped their cages and wandered into the domain of other animals, and sometimes they became something altogether different from what they originally were. Tilly's metaphor is a useful one for this chapter's attempt to trace the development of social history in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review and the Journal of American History. It suggests that, by now, at least in part, as a consequence of the influence of social history, the “inmates” (disciplines, fields, and subfields) are not simply occasionally escaping their cages, mingling, co-mingling, and morphing into different species, but that some of the cages have come down, and the genus itself (history) has been transformed in some important ways.Less

The MVHR, the JAH, and Intellectual History: From Margin to Mainstream

David A. Hollinger

in The Organization of American Historians and the Writing and Teaching of American History

This chapter shifts the focus of the book to intellectual history, a field that was integrated into the mainstream of the discipline in the 1950s. Scholars outside the historical profession did most ... More

This chapter shifts the focus of the book to intellectual history, a field that was integrated into the mainstream of the discipline in the 1950s. Scholars outside the historical profession did most of the early writing on the history of thinking, but the demonstration that ideas could be studied in their social contexts made the field attractive to American historians. Early on, the intellectual historians split, with one group emphasizing popular ideas, the other, sophisticated ones, but in time, the latter approach came to dominate the field. Over the past half century, the Mississippi Valley Historical Review and the Journal of American History have published many important essays on intellectual history, most of them in recent years written from an internationalist perspective.Less

The History That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Kathy Peiss

in The Organization of American Historians and the Writing and Teaching of American History

This chapter discusses how the history of sexuality was virtually absent from the Mississippi Valley Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) before the 1970s and did ... More

This chapter discusses how the history of sexuality was virtually absent from the Mississippi Valley Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) before the 1970s and did not regularly appear until the 1990s. Historians were slower to take up this topic than practitioners of several other disciplines, and some historians presented their findings in other vehicles. In the Journal of American History, the first article did not appear until 1968; the first session at an annual meeting followed in 1971, but very little else showed up in either site during the next two decades. Acceptance and legitimacy within the OAH did not come until the 1990s. The chapter discusses what more needs to be done to grow this field, including a recommendation that the profession should define historical significance.Less

The Persistence of Political History

James T. Patterson

in The Organization of American Historians and the Writing and Teaching of American History

Political history was a prominent feature of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association's major publication, the Mississippi Valley Historical Review throughout its long life (1914 to 1964). This ... More

Political history was a prominent feature of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association's major publication, the Mississippi Valley Historical Review throughout its long life (1914 to 1964). This chapter contests the charge that the field has died out in the Organization of American Historians and its Journal of American History.Less

Economic History and American Historians: From Integration to Segregation in One Century

Gavin Wright

in The Organization of American Historians and the Writing and Teaching of American History

Economic history has been largely segregated from the mainstream of American history for some time now—even more so than political history. However, this has not always been so. Over the past three ... More

Economic history has been largely segregated from the mainstream of American history for some time now—even more so than political history. However, this has not always been so. Over the past three decades or so, one may search the volumes of the Journal of American History almost in vain for studies that might reasonably be counted as contributions to economic history. A search for articles with the word “economic” in the title returns with just one hit when searching post-1985. This contrasts with the pattern in the prior decade (1975–1985), when there were seven “economic”-titled articles, most of them squarely in the economic-history category, dealing with such issues as American economic growth, slaves as fixed capital, New Deal economic policy, and the commercialization of agriculture. This chapter addresses the following two questions: What accounts for this estrangement? Does it have to be this way?Less

The Recent Years

Timothy N. Thurber

in The Organization of American Historians and the Writing and Teaching of American History

This chapter reviews the Organization of American Historians' (OAH) transformation from “a primarily scholarly organization to a more broadly-based professional body that views teaching as central to ... More

This chapter reviews the Organization of American Historians' (OAH) transformation from “a primarily scholarly organization to a more broadly-based professional body that views teaching as central to its mission.” The evidence offered includes the OAH's establishment of the Magazine of History in 1985, its heavy involvement in the Teaching American History Grant Program, begun in 2001, and the pedagogical materials it provides in the Journal of American History and on the web site.Less

The Drama of the Diorama, 1910–1935

Karen A. Rader and Victoria E. M. Cain

in Life on Display: Revolutionizing U.S. Museums of Science and Natural History in the Twentieth Century

Habitat dioramas proliferated in American natural history museums in the 1910s, 1920s, and early 1930s, transforming the social and political dynamics of museum halls. Initially, curators, ... More

Habitat dioramas proliferated in American natural history museums in the 1910s, 1920s, and early 1930s, transforming the social and political dynamics of museum halls. Initially, curators, administrators, trustees and the public enthusiastically supported investment in the expensive displays, which promised to further educational, scientific and institutional goals. As museums built more dioramas, however, these displays awakened new animosity between staff members, altering staff dynamics and making clear how difficult it would be to accomplish popular science education, protect and collect specimens, and produce scientific knowledge simultaneously. As the exhibits grew in number and status, and the Great Depression placed new financial strains on museums, these clashes intensified. United only a few years earlier by an ambitious vision of the New Museum Idea, museum professionals now bickered amongst themselves about what museums should be and do.Less

Epilogue

Burnis R. Morris

in Carter G. Woodson: History, the Black Press, and Public Relations

Evidence of Carter G. Woodson’s influence is abundant. At the opening ceremony for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., on September 24, 2016, Congressman ... More

Evidence of Carter G. Woodson’s influence is abundant. At the opening ceremony for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., on September 24, 2016, Congressman John Lewis, the civil rights icon, recalled his study of Woodson’s work for inspiration as a young man. A New York Times article published in concert with the museum’s opening linked struggles for respect in black history to Woodson’s cause, as well as the contributions of George Washington Williams and John Hope Franklin. However, what little attention Woodson occasionally receives from the media today comes largely from black-oriented media. For instance, The Afro-American has been among the sponsors of the annual observance of Woodson’s birthday at Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, and other black newspapers for a number of years following his death ran articles reciting Woodson’s work.Less

Putting Together American History

Joanne Meyerowitz

in The Organization of American Historians and the Writing and Teaching of American History

In this chapter, the author takes the reader inside the job to describe what editors, as opposed to academic historians, usually do. From her editor's perch, she concludes that the much-discussed ... More

In this chapter, the author takes the reader inside the job to describe what editors, as opposed to academic historians, usually do. From her editor's perch, she concludes that the much-discussed “fragmentation” of American history is a “myth.” She also discusses the digital landscape's impact on journal publication, what initiatives she pioneered, and what might lie ahead.Less

(Trans) Nation, Geography, and Genius: Gertrude Stein’s Geographical History of America

Rebecca Walsh

in The Geopoetics of Modernism

This chapter traces the engagements of Gertrude Stein’s multi-generic text The Geographical History of America with the genre of the geographical history associated with Ellen Churchill Semple. The ... More

This chapter traces the engagements of Gertrude Stein’s multi-generic text The Geographical History of America with the genre of the geographical history associated with Ellen Churchill Semple. The chapter argues that Stein relies upon the American exceptionalist notions that we find in texts like Semple’s American History and Its Geographic Conditions. And yet Stein draws persistent comparisons between America and France and deconstructs the very categories of place and attachment she seems to evoke. The Geographical History thereby manufactures an (anti)comparative nationalism that allows Stein to position a sense of her own American belonging against that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and to simultaneously work toward restoring a more “American” version of America to itself. The chapter argues that Stein’s genius exceeds the categories of geography and concludes by exploring some similarities between Stein’s moves and the development of possibilism within the well-established French academic geography of Paul Vidal de la Blache.Less

Oceanic Historiography: The American Dimension

William Henry Flayhart m

in Maritime History at the Crossroads: A Critical Review of Recent Historiography

This essay lists and analyses vital works concerning American Oceanic history in order to encourage the continued research and publication of American maritime history. Works discussed include those ... More

This essay lists and analyses vital works concerning American Oceanic history in order to encourage the continued research and publication of American maritime history. Works discussed include those relating to categories such as Bibliographies and Works of General Reference; Monographs; Seapower; Age of Discovery in America; American Maritime Expansion; European Maritime History; Pacific Maritime History; Colonial America; US Inland Lakes and Waterways; American Regional Studies; American Maritime Law; American Naval History; American Revolutionary War; American Civil War; World War One and Two; the US Merchant Marine; American Shipbuilding Industry; Shipwreck and Maritime Archaeology; US Coast Guard; US ports; US Fishing, Whaling and Hunting; US Social History; and Recreation and Sport in the US.Less

Imagining a Black Museum in Cold War Chicago

Ian Rocksborough-Smith

in Black Public History in Chicago: Civil Rights Activism from World War II into the Cold War

The second chapter of this book looks at how a vision for a black-history museum persisted despite the stifling conditions of Cold War America and deals explicitly with how this vision for a museum ... More

The second chapter of this book looks at how a vision for a black-history museum persisted despite the stifling conditions of Cold War America and deals explicitly with how this vision for a museum existed in the context of the control of black-history celebrations in Chicago in a highly contested struggle among public historians increasingly divided by Cold War<EN>-era ideologies. The chapter traces the left-wing backgrounds of the museum’s founders, which spanned decades of activity and demonstrates how they sustained the vision of the National Negro Museum and Historical Foundation (NNMHF) for a museum in Chicago through the 1960s with the founding of what would become the DuSable Museum of African American History.Less

The Irony of The Irony of American History

Scott R. Erwin

in The Theological Vision of Reinhold Niebuhr's The Irony of American History: “In the Battle and Above It”

This chapter turns to Irony, where Niebuhr, more than in any other work, relied on his theological vision to address the American conflict with the Soviet Union. Niebuhr develops from this vision an ... More

This chapter turns to Irony, where Niebuhr, more than in any other work, relied on his theological vision to address the American conflict with the Soviet Union. Niebuhr develops from this vision an ironic perspective that he would wield throughout the course of the work to warn the United States against its own illusions on one hand while pointing out the injustices perpetuated by the Soviet Union on the other. Niebuhr was not explicit in Irony about the Christian basis for his ironic perspective, however, so this chapter will broaden its scope to include his writings both prior to and following the work’s publication in order to reveal the pertinence of his specific religious beliefs and overall Christian disposition. This chapter also looks to Niebuhr’s complete writings on Abraham Lincoln, many of which were published in the late 1950s, to reveal the theological significance of Niebuhr’s identification of Lincoln in Irony as the historical figure exemplifying his theological vision.Less

Editing and the Challenges of Specialization, Audiences, Sites of Practice

David Thelen

in The Organization of American Historians and the Writing and Teaching of American History

In this chapter, the author talks about how he recognized he had much to learn about the Journal of American History and the practice of American history. He hoped to make that practice more ... More

In this chapter, the author talks about how he recognized he had much to learn about the Journal of American History and the practice of American history. He hoped to make that practice more democratic and polled readers about what they wanted. They persuaded him to publish new kinds of essays on what historians outside as well as inside academic institutions and around the world were doing.Less

Esther and Jack in American History

Sara Rzeszutek Haviland

in James and Esther Cooper Jackson: Love and Courage in the Black Freedom Movement

In retirement, Esther and Jack continued to be active and were committed to preserving and disseminating the history of the black Left. Increasingly, they worked with scholars to educate the public ... More

In retirement, Esther and Jack continued to be active and were committed to preserving and disseminating the history of the black Left. Increasingly, they worked with scholars to educate the public about the long, complex, and varied history of the black freedom movement. The regeneration of interest in the black Left in the late 1980s, the 1990s, and the first decade of the twenty-first century reflects a triumph in their life’s work.Less