The Jack Miller Center Essay Prize Competition

Announcing….

The Jack Miller Center Essay Prize Competition for the best essays published in Historically Speaking during 2010 in the following areas:

• Intellectual History or the History of Political Thought

• Military or Diplomatic History

The prizes are $1000 each and will be awarded in January 2011. Essay submission guidelines for Historically Speaking can be found at www.bu.edu/historic/hs/guide.html. Direct all submissions and questions about the prize competition to: Donald Yerxa at historic@bu.edu.

The Jack Miller Center is a nonprofit, nonsectarian, nonpartisan, educational organization dedicated to strengthening the teaching of America’s founding principles and history.

Jack Miller Center Essay Prize Committees:

Intellectual History/History of Political Thought:
Wilfred McClay, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Chair
Bruce Kuklick, University of Pennsylvania
Jean Yarbrough, Bowdoin College

Military/Diplomatic History:
Dennis Showalter, Colorado College, Chair
Brian McAllister Linn, Texas A&M University
Marc Trachtenberg, UCLA

Rebunking the Pilgrims?

[crossposted at Religion in American History]
Randall Stephens

As Americans prepare to stuff their faces with turkey, pie, turkey pie, and all manner of bread-related foods, and clock in millions of hours of TV football viewing, it’s worth considering the Pilgrims, originators of America's holiday. (I was just thinking that a Martian would have a very hard time understanding how football and overeating are linked to an otherworldly religious sect.) How do Pilgrims fit into American history and religious history in general?

How low the founders of our national myth have fallen. Nineteenth-century Protestants celebrated the Pilgrims as hearty, pure-of-heart forbearers. Yet even in the 19th century Pilgrims had their share of detractors. Eli Thayer, the Kansas prophet, and the Unitarian minister Edward Everett Hale fussed about the place of Pilgrims in American history. Every lowly Kansan (which I proudly count myself among) had more grit and determination and was more deserving of panegyrics than were the not-all-that-great Pilgrims.

In 1881, Mark Twain delivered an uproarious address, in the form of a plea, to the New England Society of Philadelphia. Why all this “laudation and hosannaing” about the Pilgrims? he asked his audience. “The Pilgrims were a simple and ignorant race. They never had seen any good rocks before, or at least any that were not watched, and so they were excusable for hopping ashore in frantic delight and clapping an iron fence around this one.” “Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims” was a classic piece of Sam Clemens’ contrarianism. As the whole country went mad with Pilgrim fever, Twain shouted, “Humbug!”

Good fun. But did Twain’s comic take on those “ignorant,” “narrow” Pilgrims win the day in the 20th century? And did it win the day minus the comedy? Historian Jeremy Bangs thinks so. In 2004, he wrote:

Those inspiring Pilgrims of my youth have taken a beating! According to today’s historians, the Pilgrims were among the least significant of England’s American colonists. Their tiny Plymouth Colony was soon absorbed by the larger and more prosperous Massachussets Bay. The Pilgrims were no friendlier to Indians than other Europeans in the Americas—which is to say, they were greedy, duplicitous purveyors of genocide. Nor did they invent democracy: the Mayflower Compact was just an expedient means of maintaining order in a new environment. And their first “Thanksgiving” was nothing more than a replica of a traditional, secular English harvest feast. The Pilgrims didn’t even call themselves Pilgrims, a term coined by the 19th-century Americans who invented these virtuous forbears out of thin air in an effort to grace the relatively new United States with a glorious past. Indeed, about the only aspect of my schoolboy Pilgrims that has survived this assault is their poverty.

The truth about the Pilgrims—and yes, I do still call them Pilgrims—is perhaps closer to the “myth” than to what we can learn from today’s textbooks.

So Bangs offers an erudite rebuttal to the Pilgrim’s modern-day cultured despisers. His Strangers and Pilgrims, Travellers and Sojourners (General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 2009) sets the Pilgrims in their thick historical context. His well-written scholarly account has no rival as far as scope and detail goes. The book has a whopping 894 pages and by my reckoning weighs nearly 4lbs. As a bonus, it's richly illustrated with a variety of prints and photographs (Bangs has spent much time working on the material culture of English separatists.)

Bangs writes that Samuel Elliot Morrison, Darret Rutman, and Theodre Dwight Bozeman dismissed the Plymouth colony as insignificant, a backwater. Add to that Malcolm X’s turn of phrase: “We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, my brothers and sisters—Plymouth Rock landed on us!” (I'm not sure if Brian Wilson's immortal words count as a critique or a drug-related bit of wordplay: "Rock, rock, roll, Plymouth Rock roll over . . .") Since the 1970s, a simple formula has guided much wisdom on the Pilgrims: Indians = good; Pilgrims = bad.

Why do the Pilgrims deserve a new look? Their lives and the record they left tell us something basic about the European roots and the hot Protestant context of America’s first English settlers. The Pilgrims later significance, Bangs notes, also reveals a great deal about what future generations wanted to remember (and one might add, forget) about early colonial America. Bangs argues: “No history of the Plymouth Colony, no history of Leiden, no history of the Netherlands so far explains adequately the Pilgrims' defining experience in exile.” Travellers and Sojourners “undertakes the necessary task of starting over, not simply to add incrementally to what is already known about the Pilgrims in Leiden but instead to reconceive the question of who the Pilgrims were and what contributed to the choices that make them interesting historically.”

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" Historians Rethink Teaching History at the University Level

Randall Stephens

The History Department at the University of Indiana is reexamining how history is taught/modeled in the classroom. According to a piece in the Chronicle (“A Teaching Experiment Shows Students How to Grasp Big Concepts,” 15 November 2009): “All too often, undergraduate history students make a hash of essay questions . . . They fill their blue books with disconnected strings of names and dates. Or they sketch a plausible argument but leave out supporting evidence.” Do history professor’s expect too much of students who search in vain for a thesis? Does the average student in a history class have much of any understanding of change over time, contingency, or how to read a primary source document?

“Several years ago,” writes David Glenn, “a small group of faculty members at Indiana University at Bloomington decided to do something about the problem. The key, they concluded, was to construct every history course around two core skills of their discipline: assembling evidence and interpreting it.” Glenn goes on to explain some of the interesting assignments and exercises history students at IU are doing in and outside of the classroom.

I buy it. And I hope to implement some of the techniques pioneered by the IU faculty.

Mea Culpa

Lisa Clark Diller

While attending the North American Conference on British Studies last weekend, I was pretty sure I heard one of the most unexpected phrases to be uttered in such settings: “I was wrong about that.” In this case, the historian in question appeared to be attempting to end a long-term feud regarding the importance of religion in the Glorious Revolution. He explained that he had changed his mind about his characterization of the events of 1688/9 as a continuation of the Protestant Reformation.

This got me thinking: To what extent do we make it possible for historians to say they were wrong? Part of the pain of publishing is setting ideas down in print with something one might later change one’s mind about. We all know that with more research we might have to revise our ideas. But sometimes we build our reputations by making very strong claims—even creating a binary within the field, which allows scholars to join one “side” or another. Young scholars decide which side of the historiographical debate they want to be part of. These binaries make it especially hard to admit when one has been wrong.

Nuance and carefully hedged assertions don’t sell books or recruit graduate students. They also don’t play as well in the classroom. But they are often more honest. In order to build our standing within our sub-fields, do we unnecessarily go further than we should? And where and how do we admit we are wrong? Later work may demonstrate that an author has changed her mind, but in few places can she admit it in black and white. Is this just part of the temperament of those who become scholars or do the structures of the academy prevent us from undermining the edifices of our academic status?

I found Tony Claydon’s words to be the most interesting part of the NACBS last week. On the “other side” of his earlier position I, of course, welcome him to what I might humbly call the more “enlightened” view of the role of religion in 1688. But I began to think about what it might take to change my own mind in the face of the evidence. My beginning assumptions, the respect for other scholars’ whose work is similar to my own, and my ideological commitments, may often keep me from admitting that my framework for a particular problem is mistaken or slightly distorted.

What does it take to change one’s mind on that scale? How much evidence is required? I’m curious about the experience of readers. Have you had to change your mind regarding the fundamental framework of the problems in your field? Would you have to look at all the primary evidence yourself or would a compelling piece of scholarship push you in another direction? Does the personality or reputation of scholars on either side of a debate affect you at all? What are the most “famous” examples of scholars changing their minds? Do we have space for those of us who are not superstars to admit our mistakes and still be taken seriously as scholars? What should we do in these situations?

Richardson's Rules of Order, Part XI: A Note About Professors

Heather Cox Richardson

Please remember that your professors are human and it’s hard work to stand in front of a hundred pairs of eyes and talk for an hour. In the last decade, students seem more and more to regard us as if we’re behind a screen, and seem to think they can talk, read, sleep, or just stare at us glassy-eyed without it having any effect on our performance. This is a shared enterprise. It’s hard to lecture to an apparently disinterested sea of eyes. If you don’t think a lecture hall is intimidating, take a minute after class some day to stand behind the podium and look at all those seats. Then imagine holding the attention of everyone in those seats for an hour, two days a week. Wouldn’t it be easier if the people there seemed interested? You don’t have to act like you’re watching U2, but do try to make it clear your heart hasn’t actually stopped beating.

Please don’t let the anonymity of a large classroom make you feel like you can use an evaluation form to be vicious. While you can walk away from that form, remember that your teacher is going to live with whatever you say on it for the rest of his or her career. Your bile, spilled on a page, can devastate a junior professor, while even older scholars would rather not have the chair, the members of the personnel committee, and the dean (all of whom read our evaluations), read commentary on our personal attractiveness, our choice in clothing, or on what professions would suit us better. Criticize when it’s appropriate, yes, but do so constructively. It doesn’t hurt to mention things that have gone particularly well, too.

Remember that for many history professors their university jobs dictate that only about a third of time and energy should go into teaching (although it always takes way more time and effort than that!). We have significant responsibilities outside of the classroom. We’re supposed to sit on the committees that keep the university running, as well as to manage national and international scholarly and educational projects. In addition to teaching and what is called “service,” we’re also supposed to maintain a prominent profile as scholars and writers. These three parts of our professional lives mean that we are usually trying to manage three different kinds of schedules, as well as three different kinds of work, all of which take place in widely different locations and settings. If we cannot meet you at a time you think is convenient, it is not because we’re being jerks, but because, for example, we have to be in another city that week to help evaluate a university. We will try to make things convenient for you, but please do remember that we have other professional commitments.

Finally, you might want to Google your professors to see what they do outside the classroom. You will probably see that your school has an extraordinary faculty. You might find that your school has national leaders in nanotechnology and sports medicine; or Pulitzer Prize winners and consultants to the State Department. Go meet these people, talk to them, work with them. When an extraordinarily famous professor agreed to work with a friend of ours on her undergraduate thesis, we were shocked. “How did you get HIM?” we demanded. “I just went and asked,” she answered. “He says no one ever asks him to do anything anymore because he’s too famous, and he misses students.” A professor can’t work with every one who asks, but it’s certainly worth talking to someone whose work you admire.

"Military History: The State of the Field" in Historically Speaking

[The full forum will be available at Project Muse. Subscribe to HS to read more.]

The uncertain status of military history in the academy has been the subject of considerable debate over the last decade. With John J. Miller’s 2006 National Review Online piece, “Sounding Taps: Why Military History is Being Retired,” the debate went public. It surfaced again as part of a broader assessment of the discipline of history in Patricia Cohen’s June 2009 New York Times article, “Great Caesar’s Ghost! Are Traditional History Courses Vanishing?”

Here several leading historians assess the state of the field of military history. Brian Linn and Dennis Showalter, current and past presidents of the Society for Military History, offer their opinions. Prominent military historians Robert Citino, Victor Davis Hanson, and Roger Spiller respond, followed by brief rejoinders from Linn and Showalter. This forum is funded by a generous grant from the Earhart Foundation.

MILITARY HISTORY: REACHING BEYOND THE TRADITIONAL ACADEMY
Brian McAllister Linn, Historically Speaking (November 2009)

Military historians occupy a distinct position within the historical discipline. Some university faculty, particularly those in history departments, regard them with suspicion. At best they are wannabe generals, at worst warmongers and militarists corrupting the nation’s youth. In contrast, the public and the armed forces turn to military historians for entertainment, for insight, and for explanations of current events. Whereas many academic fields grow ever more specialized and narrow, the interests of military historians are as broad as in the days of Herodotus and Thucydides. Their purview remains the study of war and the institutions that fight it, a definition encompassing everything from a naval air squadron to a Stone Age tribe, from weapons development to national mobilization, and from the individual experience of combat to how societies memorialize their war dead. Marxists believe that history reflects mankind’s relationship to the means of production; military historians believe that it reflects mankind’s relationship to the means of destruction.

Military history defies academic trends in other ways as well. Despite much rhetoric about multidisciplinary approaches, academic history is becoming more exclusionary and inbred. Some historians are so specialized that their writings are all but incomprehensible to another historian, even one who studied that subfield two decades ago. And there are academics who would restrict the title of “historian” to the doctorate-holding faculty. In contrast, military historians are a wide and diverse lot—the more than 2,400 members of the Society for Military History range from graduate students to three-star generals—and some of the field’s most popular and influential authors are not academics at all. This has always been the case, for alongside its own “cuttingedge” and “paradigm-shifting” scholars, military history has also relied on “amateurs” such as Livy, Teddy Roosevelt, and Bruce Catton, as well as on warrior-scholars like Carl von Clausewitz and Alfred Thayer Mahan. Indeed, if today’s readers can tell a Mauser rifle from a javelin, they can readily immerse themselves in two millennia of military writing.

Much of the debate about the current state of military history has focused entirely on the distress of military historians who are faculty or graduate students at universities. Commentators as diverse as Professor John Lynn and the National Review’s John Miller have drawn attention to the perilous state of “the embattled field.” They note that for decades the two most prestigious professional journals essentially embargoed articles in military history (in fairness, recently the American Historical Review and the Journal of American History published review articles and the OAH Magazine of History did a special issue on teaching military history). They argue that universities are not replacing their retiring faculty, and the corollary, that graduate programs at top-rated universities are disappearing. They warn that if universities cease training students in military history, the public, the armed forces, and the nation’s policy makers will have to rely for their critical analysis of defense policy and war on ideologues, social scientists, former officers, and the ubiquitous celebrity historians.

Certainly the state of military history in the ivory tower is cause for concern. But what characterizes a successful historical field? For far too long, academic military historians have judged their specialty by the opinion of their colleagues and their deans, and then publicized their dismal findings. The result has been a widespread perception that the field is in precipitous decline. But is ephemeral and subjective academic prestige going to be our sole criterion for judging the state of military history? Perhaps as the child of an academic I was born cynical, but I often wonder if the average college department is capable of establishing consistent and verifiable indices for excellence. If there were such standards, why have so many departments hired so many faculty whose dissertation topics went from “cutting-edge” to “traditional” in the time it took them to come up for tenure? Why are faculty who “popularize” history, whether to enthusiastic students or the reading public, regarded as lacking in academic rigor? And why is publishing a 400-copy monograph that is favorably reviewed by another specialist in a journal with a circulation of a few hundred other specialists seen as the apex of scholarly achievement? I could go on, but the academic readers already know why so many murder mysteries, dramas of dysfunctionality, and vicious satires are set on campus, while the rest of you still would not believe what passes for normal in most departments. Clausewitz and Sun Tzu emphasized the importance of picking the battlefield, so why should military historians not heed their illustrious ancestors and look outside of the narrow confines of college departments to judge the state of the field? . . .

>>> The rest of the forum will be posted at Project Muse and available in print.

Historical Inquiry in the New Century: The Historical Society's June 2010 Conference

Below is the call for papers for our 2010 conference, chaired by me, past president Eric Arnesen. The conference will be at George Washington University's Marvin Center, within walking distance of the Library of Congress, the Mall, the White House, and the shops and restaurants of vibrant Georgetown as well as Dupont Circle. We hope to see you there! The call for papers focuses broadly on the future of history, but we welcome proposals on all manner of historical subjects. There is plenty of time to get organized--the deadline for submitting a proposal is January 31, 2010. So if you're working on something you'd like to talk about, please do send in a proposal.

HISTORICAL INQUIRY IN THE NEW CENTURY

The Historical Society's 2010 Conference
June 3-5, 2010, George Washington University, Washington, DC

We invite participants to address a wide range of questions and issues, including: What are the current historiographical debates? Where do particular fields now stand? What's changed for the better--or the worse--in specific areas? What are the truly big questions historians face, and are we adequately grappling with them? How will historical inquiry change in the 21st century?

We especially encourage panel proposals, though individual paper proposals are welcome as well. And our interpretation of "panel" is broad: 2 or more presenters constitute a panel--chairs and commentators are optional. As at past conferences, we hope for bold yet informal presentations that will provoke lots of questions and discussion from the audience, not presenters reading papers word-for-word from a podium followed by a commentator doing the same.
Please submit proposals (brief abstract and brief CV) by January 31, 2010 to
Eric Arnesen, 2010 Program Chair, at jslucas@bu.edu

We look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,
Eric Arnesen

Writing American History Textbooks and Teaching Religion: An Interview with Paul S. Boyer

Randall Stephens

What to cover? What not to cover? What makes an event, individual, or movement worthy of our attention?

History professors and high school history teachers spend quite a bit of time thinking about those questions. If you have to get through the sweep of American history (pre-Columbian to 1865) in just one semester, then you're going to need to make some cuts. Goodbye obscure Puritan theologian. Hello slave insurrectionist. Hardly enough time in class to talk about how each colony took shape. King Philip's War is interesting, but how much time on center stage does it deserve? For those who teach Western Civilization or the West in the World, good luck figuring out content and coverage. The same questions about scope and range occupy the time of history textbook writers.

Last weekend I caught up with the historian and general bonhomie Paul S. Boyer at a conference on Adventism in Portland, Maine. Boyer, Merle Curti Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, is the author of a number of American history books, like Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968); Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), co-author with Stephen Nissenbau; Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978); By

the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (NY: Pantheon, 1985); When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); and Fallout: A Historian Reflects on America's Half-Century Encounter With Nuclear Weapons (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998). He's also written articles for the Journal of American History, American Quarterly, American Literary History, The History Teacher, Virginia Quarterly Review, and the William & Mary Quarterly. But he may be best known as the author of a couple of very successful textbooks: The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People (6th edition, 2007); and The American Nation (Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 4th edn., 2002).

In the 2-part Youtube video embedded here, I ask Boyer about the writing of history textbooks and how he thinks about the role of religion in history. He comments at length on how religion has shaped American history and considers some of the major questions textbook writers ask as they go about their task.

Anglo-Saxon Treasure: The Border of History and Prehistory

Randall Stephens

In late September the NYT reported on a massive Anglo-Saxon find: "LONDON — For the jobless man living on welfare who made the find in an English farmer’s field two months ago, it was the stuff of dreams: a hoard of early Anglo-Saxon treasure, probably dating from the seventh century and including more than 1,500 pieces of intricately worked gold and silver whose craftsmanship and historical significance left archaeologists awestruck."

More recently in the October 14, 2009 issue of the TLS, Alex Burghart writes about "The 1,500-piece collection unearthed from the Staffordshire mud" which is "the richest collection of gold from Anglo-Saxon England ever found." This find brings up all sorts of questions about Anglo-Saxon England. The date of the find is already being debated along with the circumstances and context. Burghart observes: "There is always a temptation to link any rich Anglo-Saxon archaeology with a king. Sutton Hoo has often been called the grave of Raedwald of East Anglia (d.616–627), and the burial chamber from Prittlewell, Essex, has been linked with early kings of Essex, though the associations are far from provable. Some authorities, no doubt, will look at the bent crosses of the Staffordshire Hoard and claim it as the booty Penda of Mercia (d.655), the last great pagan King of Anglo-Saxon England. Such guesswork is good fun, but it is also slightly disingenuous."

The whole can of worms opened by the discovery is particularly interesting to historians. Questions it brings up are fascinating: What can or can't we know about the past? What are the limits and boundaries of history? When and where does the archeology come to the aid? Burghart concludes: "At present it seems unlikely that we will ever know who buried it, why they did, when they did, or where they got it." Bummer.

See also this piece in the National Geographic.

Richardson's Rules of Order, Part X: A Word to Athletes (or Musicians, or Artists, or Anyone Who Has a Significant Interest Outside of the Classroom)

Heather Cox Richardson

Sometimes it seems as if athletes feel as if they’re not welcome in academic classrooms; that they’re in college to play a sport, and the classes are only to keep them eligible. Somehow, they seem to feel that good athletes cannot also be good students. THIS IS RIDICULOUS! I don’t believe it, and you shouldn’t either.

The years you have spent perfecting your sport (or your music, or your art…) have given you a skill set that makes you an ideal student, in many ways. You know how to work hard for a long-term goal. You know how to push yourself. You know how to look at the larger frame of a race, or a game, to get the best end result. From working with a team, you know how to look at a goal from a number of different perspectives and to chart your own course to see it through. You know how to budget your time and energy. You have rare skills that translate precisely to a classroom. Many of your classmates don’t have these skills and, rather than feeling unwelcome in a class, you should recognize that your perspective is imperative.

You should do the work for class discussions and then take part in them. Your unique perspective is welcome in class. Yes, you might feel like you’re approaching things in a very different way than your classmates, but this is exactly why your view is so important to the class.

It is true that the years you have spent on the playing fields or in the pool may have shortchanged your writing or reading skills. But those skills can be acquired quite easily with practice. That practice doesn’t necessarily mean tying yourself to a desk and suffering through moldy old books. Stop IMing or picking up your cell phone and instead write emails to your friends and family using good English. Keep a journal. Write to elderly relatives (often nursing homes will print out emails for patients, so don’t say you can’t get to the post office!). And read… anything, so long as it’s grammatically correct. Read blogs, the sports pages (some sports reporters are brilliant writers), the latest Stephen King novel. As you read, think about what you’re reading. Do you agree with the latest predictions about the upcoming baseball season? Why or why not? What makes an argument on a blog convincing? When do you tune someone out? Why? These are the same skills you will use to write term papers and to evaluate arguments. Like anything you do, practice at reading and writing will make it come easier. If all you read are the scholarly books listed on a syllabus, of course it will be difficult. (Imagine trying to play in a golf tournament with no practice, first!). But with a modicum of talent (and everyone in this classroom has a modicum of talent at the very least), practice will achieve a respectable outcome.

Don’t forget, too, that your professors are here to help you, and that there are also a number of academic services on campus.

You don’t have to see yourself as an athlete only, or even as an athlete first. There’s no reason you can’t be both an athlete AND a scholar. Yes, you spend a block of time every day at your sport, but do you really think the students who don’t play a sport spend those hours at the library? They have jobs, other interests, and often just hang around. And you have significant time in buses—enforced work time, when you’ll miss nothing by settling down with work—as well as time spent doing repetitive activity like running, during which you can be reviewing your work in your head. Sports require you to organize your life, but they don’t demand that you ignore everything else.

Nostrum Fatum: Humanities on the Downward Slope

Randall Stephens

This will be an outside scoop item for those of you who saw William M. Chace's "The Decline of the English Department," American Scholar (Autumn 2009). But for those who didn't, Chace raises some interesting questions for English and other departments now fighting it out with fewer students and less support than in decades past. His essay goes along with similar topics Chris Beneke discussed here in recent months.

Here's Chace:

During the last four decades, a well-publicized shift in what undergraduate students prefer to study has taken place in American higher education. The number of young men and women majoring in English has dropped dramatically; the same is true of philosophy, foreign languages, art history, and kindred fields, including history. As someone who has taught in four university English departments over the last 40 years, I am dismayed by this shift, as are my colleagues here and there across the land. And because it is probably irreversible, it is important to attempt to sort out the reasons—the many reasons—for what has happened. . . .

Here is how the numbers have changed from 1970/71 to 2003/04 (the last academic year with available figures):

English: from 7.6 percent of the majors to 3.9 percent
Foreign languages and literatures: from 2.5 percent to 1.3 percent
Philosophy and religious studies: from 0.9 percent to 0.7 percent
History: from 18.5 percent to 10.7 percent
Business: from 13.7 percent to 21.9 percent

Off-campus, the consumer’s point of view about future earnings and economic security was a mirror image of on-campus thinking in the offices of deans, provosts, and presidents. . . .

Well worth a close read.

An Interview with Mark Noll on American Religious History

Randall Stephens

Earlier in October I interviewed Notre Dame historian Mark Noll on his work and the field of American religious history. I

spoke to him up in Wenham, Mass, as we were hosting an Eastern Nazarene College-Gordon College conference on Noll's groundbreaking book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. The conference brought to the fore certain historical, philosophical, and sociological questions about one of America's largest mass religious movements.

In the Youtube clip here (in two parts) I speak to Noll about his research and writing as well as his views of the field as it has developed since the 1960s and 1970s. Noll discusses the influence of Henry May, Perry Miller, Timothy Smith and other predecessors and also lauds the work of early-career scholars, like Heather Curtis, Ed Blum, Rachel Wheeler, Charles Irons, and Wallace Best.

See a fuller post on the conference at Religion in American History.