I am soliciting paper proposals for a panel on U.S. capitalism for this year's U.S. intellectual history conference, to be held in New York City on November 12 and 13.
For the panel, I am interested in any aspect of the intellectual history of capitalism in the United States, in the broad spirit, perhaps, of the 2006 anthology American Capitalism, edited by Nelson Lichtenstein. Though I hope to be able to focus the panel a bit more after receiving submissions, for now I am interested in anything that might broadly relate to the category, in any time period: biographical portraits, textual analyses, social criticism, business histories, etc. My own paper will be an analysis of Henry Wallace's New Deal-era concept of "progressive capitalism" and its relationship with the goal of full employment.
Anyone interested in participating should send to me (mbo2@psu.edu) by May 1 a one-page paper proposal and a one-page CV, both in MS Word format. Anyone who would be interested in moderating the panel should also send a one-page CV, again by May 1.
Thanks very much.
Mike
Friday, February 06, 2009
2009 USIH conference CFP: U.S. Capitalism
Gordon Wood: Old Versus New History
In Pulitzer Prize-winning political historian Gordon Wood’s recent book, The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History, Wood discusses some issues central to U.S. intellectual history. Namely, Wood is critical of the turn the historical discipline has taken away from more traditional political history. Substitute political history for intellectual history if you wish, and the arguments are the same.
For one, Wood laments the hyper-relativistic turn the discipline has taken. He harshly criticizes those like cultural historians Hayden White, who by his estimation have internalized the poststructuralist theories of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida to mean that historical writing is no truer than literature. For Wood, this is historical relativism reductio ad absurdum.
I assume most historians agree with Wood that our work is non-fiction, even if we might debate the degree to which we are able to uncover historical truth. If so, I sense that White acts as a straw man for him to argue something else. Just as anti-relativism often serves conservatives as a way to critique liberalism (something about which I've written here, in an essay I titled, How Conservatives Have Come to Despise the Academy), it seems Wood’s critique of relativism is cover for his lament over the social and cultural turns the discipline has taken. He is careful to emphasize that the expansion of peoples studied by historians (to include minorities and women, for example) has benefited our understanding of the past. However, Wood is dismayed that studying great political leaders is no longer fashionable. He is dismayed that, for example, of the ten “Best American History Essays” chosen by the OAH in 2006, seven dealt with race or gender.
I find Wood’s lament somewhat amusing, because one of my colleagues and friends happens to be his daughter, Amy Wood, ironically, a cultural historian who focuses on race. Amy has a book coming out on UNC Press titled Lynching and Spectacle. Gordon Wood discussed this irony during a recent C-Span interview. Although he’s proud of his daughter’s accomplishments, especially since his first book was also published with UNC Press, he insinuates that Amy—and most graduate students—must study race or gender because they’re advised it’s their only entry to the profession. In sum, he regrets that political history no longer serves to integrate the broader discipline, even as the political history written by non-academics like David McCullough grows ever more popular.
What should we make of Wood’s lament? I think his critique is mostly born of a defensive posture, and as such, we should take it with a grain of salt. Wood, of course, realizes social and cultural history enhance our understanding of American political life. In fact, his work on the founders employs some social and cultural history, even if he doesn’t write about race and gender. And to relate this to one of my fields: fusing political and social history has greatly improved our understanding of American conservatism. Lisa McGirr’s Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right, exemplifies this.
McGirr roots her study in a straightforward theory of human agency—a theory long familiar to social historians of slavery and the working class. She argues that the conservative takeover of the Republican Party, which allowed for the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964, and which eventually paved the way for the Reagan Revolution, was due more to ordinary people, often women, than the Machiavellian conspiring of a corporate elite. Although I think McGirr overemphasizes the novelty and centrality of “agency” as a historical force, and although I think she underestimates the importance of race to the conservative movement, her look at the grassroots right represents a necessary expansion of historical inquiry into political conservatism. That she devotes space to housewives who mix their coffee klatches with anti-ACLU organizing—as much space as to, say, Ronald Reagan’s rise in California politics—does not make her book less significant as political history. So, Professor Wood doth protest too much.
That said, on the flip side, I maintain that some of the emphases of the older political history—the type Wood admires—should, in fact, be reemphasized, especially the history of political ideas and the history of education. These two more traditional focuses are at the heart of my research interests. With regard to the latter, as education became integral to the American experience, people with conflicting visions of the “good society” increasingly expressed their political aspirations in educational terms. Richard Hofstadter recognized this, which is why he included two chapters on John Dewey and progressive education in his Pulitzer-winning Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. According to his biographer David Brown, Hofstadter hoped to establish "a new historiography that presented the educational past as indispensable to the progress of American freedoms." Another venerable American historian, Christopher Lasch, also included educational history in all of his major works, including his bestselling The Culture of Narcissism, although, unlike Hofstadter, he typically wrote about education as a way to explain the iron cage of modernity. This divergence aside, for both Hofstadter and Lasch, it was impossible to understand the modern US without investigating the schools (which serves as theoretical grounding for my book, Education and the Cold War).
In conclusion, although I loathe the Vital Center politics of the early Cold War and beyond, I suppose I am a vital centrist on the great historiographic debates that continue to rock our discipline. I like aspects of both the old and the new.
For one, Wood laments the hyper-relativistic turn the discipline has taken. He harshly criticizes those like cultural historians Hayden White, who by his estimation have internalized the poststructuralist theories of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida to mean that historical writing is no truer than literature. For Wood, this is historical relativism reductio ad absurdum.
I assume most historians agree with Wood that our work is non-fiction, even if we might debate the degree to which we are able to uncover historical truth. If so, I sense that White acts as a straw man for him to argue something else. Just as anti-relativism often serves conservatives as a way to critique liberalism (something about which I've written here, in an essay I titled, How Conservatives Have Come to Despise the Academy), it seems Wood’s critique of relativism is cover for his lament over the social and cultural turns the discipline has taken. He is careful to emphasize that the expansion of peoples studied by historians (to include minorities and women, for example) has benefited our understanding of the past. However, Wood is dismayed that studying great political leaders is no longer fashionable. He is dismayed that, for example, of the ten “Best American History Essays” chosen by the OAH in 2006, seven dealt with race or gender.
I find Wood’s lament somewhat amusing, because one of my colleagues and friends happens to be his daughter, Amy Wood, ironically, a cultural historian who focuses on race. Amy has a book coming out on UNC Press titled Lynching and Spectacle. Gordon Wood discussed this irony during a recent C-Span interview. Although he’s proud of his daughter’s accomplishments, especially since his first book was also published with UNC Press, he insinuates that Amy—and most graduate students—must study race or gender because they’re advised it’s their only entry to the profession. In sum, he regrets that political history no longer serves to integrate the broader discipline, even as the political history written by non-academics like David McCullough grows ever more popular.
What should we make of Wood’s lament? I think his critique is mostly born of a defensive posture, and as such, we should take it with a grain of salt. Wood, of course, realizes social and cultural history enhance our understanding of American political life. In fact, his work on the founders employs some social and cultural history, even if he doesn’t write about race and gender. And to relate this to one of my fields: fusing political and social history has greatly improved our understanding of American conservatism. Lisa McGirr’s Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right, exemplifies this.
McGirr roots her study in a straightforward theory of human agency—a theory long familiar to social historians of slavery and the working class. She argues that the conservative takeover of the Republican Party, which allowed for the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964, and which eventually paved the way for the Reagan Revolution, was due more to ordinary people, often women, than the Machiavellian conspiring of a corporate elite. Although I think McGirr overemphasizes the novelty and centrality of “agency” as a historical force, and although I think she underestimates the importance of race to the conservative movement, her look at the grassroots right represents a necessary expansion of historical inquiry into political conservatism. That she devotes space to housewives who mix their coffee klatches with anti-ACLU organizing—as much space as to, say, Ronald Reagan’s rise in California politics—does not make her book less significant as political history. So, Professor Wood doth protest too much.
That said, on the flip side, I maintain that some of the emphases of the older political history—the type Wood admires—should, in fact, be reemphasized, especially the history of political ideas and the history of education. These two more traditional focuses are at the heart of my research interests. With regard to the latter, as education became integral to the American experience, people with conflicting visions of the “good society” increasingly expressed their political aspirations in educational terms. Richard Hofstadter recognized this, which is why he included two chapters on John Dewey and progressive education in his Pulitzer-winning Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. According to his biographer David Brown, Hofstadter hoped to establish "a new historiography that presented the educational past as indispensable to the progress of American freedoms." Another venerable American historian, Christopher Lasch, also included educational history in all of his major works, including his bestselling The Culture of Narcissism, although, unlike Hofstadter, he typically wrote about education as a way to explain the iron cage of modernity. This divergence aside, for both Hofstadter and Lasch, it was impossible to understand the modern US without investigating the schools (which serves as theoretical grounding for my book, Education and the Cold War).
In conclusion, although I loathe the Vital Center politics of the early Cold War and beyond, I suppose I am a vital centrist on the great historiographic debates that continue to rock our discipline. I like aspects of both the old and the new.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Tim's Light Reading
1. Intellectual historian Wilfred McClay on the idea of Lincoln, or our changing views of Lincoln's greatness.
2. Sometime conservative historian of education and intellectual Diane Ravitch on how teachers' unions are NOT the problem. You read that right. She also cites the UDHR and the current economic climate on why unions are important in general.
3. Baylor professor of philosophy Alexander Pruss speculates on why we, as humans, move with more epistemological certainty from effects to causes than from causes to effects, even when reason tells us what will happen. Perhaps this is why we have academic history departments in universities, but not departments for futurists?
- TL
2. Sometime conservative historian of education and intellectual Diane Ravitch on how teachers' unions are NOT the problem. You read that right. She also cites the UDHR and the current economic climate on why unions are important in general.
3. Baylor professor of philosophy Alexander Pruss speculates on why we, as humans, move with more epistemological certainty from effects to causes than from causes to effects, even when reason tells us what will happen. Perhaps this is why we have academic history departments in universities, but not departments for futurists?
- TL
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Lacy On Stacy's Walt Whitman's Multitudes: Labor Reform and Persona in Whitman's Journalism and the First Leaves of Grass, 1840-1855
Review of Jason Stacy’s Walt Whitman's Multitudes: Labor Reform and Persona in Whitman's Journalism and the First Leaves of Grass, 1840-1855 (New York: Peter Lang, 2008). ISBN-13: 978-1-4331-0153-3 (hardcover). 168 pages.Review by Tim Lacy
Visiting Assistant University Historian, University of Illinois at Chicago
Whitman the Educator-Intellectual
Between the covers of Walt Whitman's Multitudes, Jason Stacy analyzes three stages of thinking and writing in Whitman's career. His shorthand for those stages---as they chronologically occurred in Whitman's life---are the "Schoolmaster," the "Editor," and the "Bard." These distinct yet linked personas provide an arc of consistency to Whitman's thought; they make Stacy's story an abbreviated intellectual biography of Whitman. The real topic of Stacy's book, however, is education. This includes Whitman's own formation, as well as his formal and informal roles as an educator through the aforementioned personas. By integrating these topics, Walt Whitman's Multitudes successfully conveys the diversity and unity in his approach to teaching the multitudes about America. Whitman becomes a lens for examining the social virtues and vices of the Antebellum Era.
Thinking about the goals, content, and methods of education comes naturally to Stacy. He is an Assistant Professor of U.S. History and Social Science Pedagogy at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Prior to SIUE, he taught in Illinois public schools for ten years. I am happy to add that I have known Jason for many years. We were graduate school colleagues at Loyola University Chicago.
This study is not by any means a full biography of Whitman. We see only one half of Whitman's life and work in Multitudes. The book's subtitle indicates that the 1840-1855 period is covered, but the first few chapters also touch on the 1820s and 30s. ...
To continued reading the review, click here.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Help Wanted With Panel Proposals
Colleagues,
I'm trying to dream up panel proposals for USIH 2009 and OAH 2010. I have a pretty firm idea for USIH (probably something on Diggins), but definitely need help for OAH (due Wed., Feb. 25). Here are my rough ideas for topics:
1. Catholic Intellectual Life in the 1930s and 1940s: Related to my own work, my contribution would be on Mortimer J. Adler and the Thomistic philosophy movement in Chicago/U.S. If that timeframe doesn't work, I could expand it to the interwar period or 1900-1950.
2. 20th Century Anti-Intellectualism: I wrote a survey paper on this for the 2008 USIH conference, but now want to relate anti-intellectualism directly to my work on Adler and the great books movement. This might also include some intersections with Catholicism.
3. Diggins: I could modify whatever I do for USIH for OAH in the spring? Hmm...
4. Higher Education Admissions: This isn't sexy, but I have a project in the works that I can definitely use here---something ~not~ related to the great books, Adler, or UIC (not directly at least).
One reason I'm presenting my ideas publicly is that I'd like to find partners in crime. Anyone planning for OAH in 2010? If so, any thoughts on collaboration? - TL
I'm trying to dream up panel proposals for USIH 2009 and OAH 2010. I have a pretty firm idea for USIH (probably something on Diggins), but definitely need help for OAH (due Wed., Feb. 25). Here are my rough ideas for topics:
1. Catholic Intellectual Life in the 1930s and 1940s: Related to my own work, my contribution would be on Mortimer J. Adler and the Thomistic philosophy movement in Chicago/U.S. If that timeframe doesn't work, I could expand it to the interwar period or 1900-1950.
2. 20th Century Anti-Intellectualism: I wrote a survey paper on this for the 2008 USIH conference, but now want to relate anti-intellectualism directly to my work on Adler and the great books movement. This might also include some intersections with Catholicism.
3. Diggins: I could modify whatever I do for USIH for OAH in the spring? Hmm...
4. Higher Education Admissions: This isn't sexy, but I have a project in the works that I can definitely use here---something ~not~ related to the great books, Adler, or UIC (not directly at least).
One reason I'm presenting my ideas publicly is that I'd like to find partners in crime. Anyone planning for OAH in 2010? If so, any thoughts on collaboration? - TL
Sunday, February 01, 2009
How Will Intellectual History Help Us Understand the Bush Administration?
I have been listening to Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side* and it has gotten me thinking about how intellectual history may and may not help explain exactly what happened over the last eight years of our nation’s political life. Mayer’s book is excellent and I heartily recommend it as a chronicle of much of what went wrong in the prosecution of the so-called War on Terror. But though Mayer’s book largely concerns the power of ideas—such as the novel legal theories that underwrote so much of what the Bush administration did—Mayer largely avoids intellectual historical explanations for these ideas.
Mayer, instead, focuses on personality and temperament as the central factors in explaining why Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Yoo, and the other architects of the “War on Terror” acted as they did. Thus we get thumbnail biographies of these and other figures that aim at explaining their habits of mind. Now as William James reminds us, the history of philosophy (and, I think, of all human thought) “is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.” Nonetheless, when Mayer describes how, when the Bush administration announced its military tribunal policy, Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights was immediately reminded of an old Reagan-era Heritage Society volume entitled Mandate for Change, which apparently contained many of the Bush administration’s future policies as desiderata, I wished that Mayer had spent more time exploring these--and other--intellectual roots of the Bush administration’s policies.
Of course over the last eight years there has been no shortage of popular explanations of the Bush administration that focus on intellectual roots. But these explanations often take the form of fairly crude scapegoating. Take, for example, the idea that Leo Strauss was pulling the strings of the Bush administration from beyond the grave, an argument made on stage by Tim Robbins’s Embedded , on the TV screen by Adam Curtis’s BBC documentary series The Power of Nightmares, and in numerous newspaper articles. Now I happen to think that Straussian political philosophy did play some role in the backstory of the Bush years. But that role is much more complicated than the often Dan-Brownish version that became part of our public culture. And Strauss was hardly the only important intellectual influence on the Bush White House.
As the Bush Administration fades into history and, with any luck, its extraordinary veils of secrecy are slowly lifted, I wonder how large a role intellectual history—and intellectual historians—will play in forging an understanding of its actions.
_____________________________________
* I know that some people like to describe listening to an audio book as "reading," but much as I love audio books, it's not reading. I should say that I'm about a quarter way through the book, so this post should very much not be read as a review.
Mayer, instead, focuses on personality and temperament as the central factors in explaining why Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Yoo, and the other architects of the “War on Terror” acted as they did. Thus we get thumbnail biographies of these and other figures that aim at explaining their habits of mind. Now as William James reminds us, the history of philosophy (and, I think, of all human thought) “is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.” Nonetheless, when Mayer describes how, when the Bush administration announced its military tribunal policy, Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights was immediately reminded of an old Reagan-era Heritage Society volume entitled Mandate for Change, which apparently contained many of the Bush administration’s future policies as desiderata, I wished that Mayer had spent more time exploring these--and other--intellectual roots of the Bush administration’s policies.
Of course over the last eight years there has been no shortage of popular explanations of the Bush administration that focus on intellectual roots. But these explanations often take the form of fairly crude scapegoating. Take, for example, the idea that Leo Strauss was pulling the strings of the Bush administration from beyond the grave, an argument made on stage by Tim Robbins’s Embedded , on the TV screen by Adam Curtis’s BBC documentary series The Power of Nightmares, and in numerous newspaper articles. Now I happen to think that Straussian political philosophy did play some role in the backstory of the Bush years. But that role is much more complicated than the often Dan-Brownish version that became part of our public culture. And Strauss was hardly the only important intellectual influence on the Bush White House.
As the Bush Administration fades into history and, with any luck, its extraordinary veils of secrecy are slowly lifted, I wonder how large a role intellectual history—and intellectual historians—will play in forging an understanding of its actions.
_____________________________________
* I know that some people like to describe listening to an audio book as "reading," but much as I love audio books, it's not reading. I should say that I'm about a quarter way through the book, so this post should very much not be read as a review.
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