AHB wonders: where are the ladies? There are not too many cracks in the glass ceiling of historical punditry. Doris Kearns Goodwin is the only prominent woman historian who regularly appears as a commentator on national television. The only other historical pundit who shares the gender of the goddesss Clio to break through is New Hampshire's Ellen Fitzpatrick, who joined PBS's rather tired squadron of talking heads in the 2004 election and continues to appear on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Fitzpatrick's matter-of-fact style is a rather refreshing contrast to the inarticulate bloviation of Mark Shields and the blow-dried history as trivial pursuit practiced by Michael Beschloss.
In the aftermath of the historic Hillary Clinton campaign and now the GOP's troubled selection of Alaskan Sarah Palin, yr humble servant offers up these suggestions for the next female talking heads.
First, AHB eliminates a few candidates. George Washington University historian Allida Black, best known for her scholarship on Eleanor Roosevelt, spent her capital rallying the embittered supporters of Hillary Clinton in the last, dying days of her candidacy. And a few leading women historians might just be a little too controversial for prime time. Surely the teleworthy Glenda Gilmore would be hounded by those watchdogs of the so-called liberal media for her comment a few years ago that George W. Bush was "all hat and no cattle." Chicago's Christine Stansell has the media connections and the scholarly gravitas but is rather too soft-spoken for prime time.
Who better to cover the tiresome recrudescence of family values politics in the Republican party, not to mention the failure of coitus interruptus in the case of Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston than University of Minnesota historian Regina Kunzel? Gigi, as she is known to her peers, is a rising star in the history of sexuality and author of the most important book on the history of illegitimacy. Is Bristol Palin a fallen woman or a problem girl? Kunzel could hop into a taxi and be in CNN's convention booth within minutes.
Two scholars of real wit and presence who could liven up the commentariat are Iowa's Linda Kerber and Santa Barbara's Laura Kalman. Neither have that perfectly coiffed made for TV appearance, but both are formidable scholars. Yr faithful gossip would find our political discourse elevated greatly by Kerber's reflections on women and national service. She has also trained a number of students who have researched conservative women, giving her special expertise in the topic du jour. Kalman, a leading legal historian, would surely have wise things to say about judicial appointments and the legal issues that are sure to be on the agenda of the new president. And one last suggestion, mostly for color. U.C. Riverside's Catherine Allgor, despite the fact that her last name is a homonym with the failed candidate turned environmentalist, is a former actress who would certainly perform well in front of the camera. Her work on historical women in the early Republic and on Dolly Madison plays to the media's enduring Founder-philia. And her flamboyant style is tailor-made for the small screen.
Good readers do you too have suggestions breaking the talking head glass ceiling?
Showing posts with label Glenda Gilmore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Glenda Gilmore. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Eli rising
Edmund S. Morgan, David Brion Davis, Howard Lamar, C. Vann Woodward, David Montgomery, and Nancy Cott. These six accounted for nearly all of Yale’s Ph.D. degrees in American history in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. Together their students redefined their respective fields. Collectively, it’s hard to imagine a more diverse, yet more influential group of historians. The soft-spoken but highly literary Morgan had only one peer in early American history, Harvard’s Bernard Bailyn. Davis practiced an erudite combination of cultural and intellectual history and trained a whole generation of scholars who went on to redefine nineteenth-century cultural historiography. Only Berkeley's Lawrence Levine was more influential. Lamar brought the history of the west to the east (something that Yale’s Ivy League peers still have not done). Woodward was possessed of an extraordinary mind that made him a magnet for talented graduate students, even if he had the reputation of being a less than engaged advisor. Montgomery was so charismatic that his disciples, now in their mid-careers, are collectively known at the Montgomeryites for their distinctive shop-floor centered labor histories. And even though Cott commuted to dreary New Haven from self-important Cambridge, she trained a veritable who’s who of women’s historians who defined a field and remain some of its most important practitioners.
When this stellar cast of characters retired (or in Cott’s case decamped to Harvard to run the Schlesinger Library), Yale faced the crisis that besets most major history departments at some point in their life cycle. It lost the great historians whose scholarship and mentorship defined the program. In the mid-1990s, when the contours of that crisis became clear, Yale, like many departments, did not have a deep bench of younger historians to take over. But Yale’s potentially tragic story had a different outcome. It struggled for a few years, but not for long, and then rebuilt itself into a department arguably as mighty as any in its past. And it managed to reconstitute itself despite its location decidedly outside the East Coast metropole. And it did so in the most effective way, by making smart junior hires and tenuring them from within, while also recruiting senior historians in their mid-careers. Some universities go after trophy hires, hoping that a senior scholar past his or her prime but remunerated lavishly will restore its luster or give it a gloss that it never had. That’s a strategy that almost always fails. By contrast, Yale went after the one-book wonders and two-book rising stars within its walls and extramurally.
By pursuing this strategy, Yale stands mostly alone. Of top-ranked departments, only Michigan, Penn, and Wisconsin have been as ambitious and successful with junior and mid-career hiring. By contrast, many other big departments lost their bearing when they lost their most prominent senior faculty. Harvard, long mired in dysfunctionality, struggled for years before reinventing itself. Chicago and Leland Stanford Junior University have quirkily half-rebuilt. Berkeley has never recovered from the loss of Leon Litwack and Larry Levine. And UCLA has hoarded its greatness in European and Asian history, while letting its American side languish (although its recruitment of Washington’s James Gregory is most promising).
The next department that will face a major crisis is mighty Columbia. The top-heavy department recently poached the most important immigration historian of her generation, Mae Ngai, from Chicago. It bolstered its otherwise non-existent strength in cultural history with Indiana’s Casey Blake. But still Columbia lacks a senior colonialist after a series of failed searches to replace Richard Bushman. And it must ponder an uncertain future with Eric Foner, Kenneth Jackson, and Alice Kessler-Harris all well into their sixties. The department’s best hope is that revered teacher and mentor Alan Brinkley may return to the classroom from his stint as Provost.
That leads us back to Yale. While most of its peers struggled, Yale aggressively rebuilt. After decades of sending its young talent packing, Yale’s history or American studies programs (the two overlap considerably) tenured colorful North Carolinian Glenda Gilmore, slightly too prolific Matthew Frye Jacobson, and one-book wonders Joanne Freeman, Stephen Pitti, Jonathan Scott Holloway, and Jennifer Klein. And it built its senior ranks selectively, hiring mid-career scholars with several books left in them, beginning with David Blight from Amherst in the wake of the publication of his field-defining book on the Civil War and memory. Just as impressively, Yale recruited two of the three top historians of sexuality in American history: Joanne Meyerowitz of Indiana and George Chauncey of Chicago (the third is Penn’s Kathy Peiss). Of them, Blight, Gilmore, and Chauncey have the best chance of filling the shoes of their esteemed predecessors. Much credit for Yale’s rebuilding must go to senior faculty like the erudite and marvelous Jon Butler, who refused to let a great department languish for too long.
Yale’s reconstruction strategy has been smarter than that of most of its colleagues. What Yale has learned is that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. It is arguable whether most of the young faculty Yale has tenured will ever singly be magnets for graduate students. Most of them, at least to date, do not have the star power of a Morgan, Cott, or Montgomery or books that are as field-defining. But in combination, the Yale department is truly formidable. If Professor Bierce has the good fortune this year of advising a smart undergraduate who is foolish enough to want to go to graduate school in history, he will encourage her to apply to Yale. (Professor Bierce’s next choices will be the subject of future postings).
When this stellar cast of characters retired (or in Cott’s case decamped to Harvard to run the Schlesinger Library), Yale faced the crisis that besets most major history departments at some point in their life cycle. It lost the great historians whose scholarship and mentorship defined the program. In the mid-1990s, when the contours of that crisis became clear, Yale, like many departments, did not have a deep bench of younger historians to take over. But Yale’s potentially tragic story had a different outcome. It struggled for a few years, but not for long, and then rebuilt itself into a department arguably as mighty as any in its past. And it managed to reconstitute itself despite its location decidedly outside the East Coast metropole. And it did so in the most effective way, by making smart junior hires and tenuring them from within, while also recruiting senior historians in their mid-careers. Some universities go after trophy hires, hoping that a senior scholar past his or her prime but remunerated lavishly will restore its luster or give it a gloss that it never had. That’s a strategy that almost always fails. By contrast, Yale went after the one-book wonders and two-book rising stars within its walls and extramurally.
By pursuing this strategy, Yale stands mostly alone. Of top-ranked departments, only Michigan, Penn, and Wisconsin have been as ambitious and successful with junior and mid-career hiring. By contrast, many other big departments lost their bearing when they lost their most prominent senior faculty. Harvard, long mired in dysfunctionality, struggled for years before reinventing itself. Chicago and Leland Stanford Junior University have quirkily half-rebuilt. Berkeley has never recovered from the loss of Leon Litwack and Larry Levine. And UCLA has hoarded its greatness in European and Asian history, while letting its American side languish (although its recruitment of Washington’s James Gregory is most promising).
The next department that will face a major crisis is mighty Columbia. The top-heavy department recently poached the most important immigration historian of her generation, Mae Ngai, from Chicago. It bolstered its otherwise non-existent strength in cultural history with Indiana’s Casey Blake. But still Columbia lacks a senior colonialist after a series of failed searches to replace Richard Bushman. And it must ponder an uncertain future with Eric Foner, Kenneth Jackson, and Alice Kessler-Harris all well into their sixties. The department’s best hope is that revered teacher and mentor Alan Brinkley may return to the classroom from his stint as Provost.
That leads us back to Yale. While most of its peers struggled, Yale aggressively rebuilt. After decades of sending its young talent packing, Yale’s history or American studies programs (the two overlap considerably) tenured colorful North Carolinian Glenda Gilmore, slightly too prolific Matthew Frye Jacobson, and one-book wonders Joanne Freeman, Stephen Pitti, Jonathan Scott Holloway, and Jennifer Klein. And it built its senior ranks selectively, hiring mid-career scholars with several books left in them, beginning with David Blight from Amherst in the wake of the publication of his field-defining book on the Civil War and memory. Just as impressively, Yale recruited two of the three top historians of sexuality in American history: Joanne Meyerowitz of Indiana and George Chauncey of Chicago (the third is Penn’s Kathy Peiss). Of them, Blight, Gilmore, and Chauncey have the best chance of filling the shoes of their esteemed predecessors. Much credit for Yale’s rebuilding must go to senior faculty like the erudite and marvelous Jon Butler, who refused to let a great department languish for too long.
Yale’s reconstruction strategy has been smarter than that of most of its colleagues. What Yale has learned is that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. It is arguable whether most of the young faculty Yale has tenured will ever singly be magnets for graduate students. Most of them, at least to date, do not have the star power of a Morgan, Cott, or Montgomery or books that are as field-defining. But in combination, the Yale department is truly formidable. If Professor Bierce has the good fortune this year of advising a smart undergraduate who is foolish enough to want to go to graduate school in history, he will encourage her to apply to Yale. (Professor Bierce’s next choices will be the subject of future postings).
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