Limits of History, Limits of Historians

Randall Stephens

Timothy Chester has an interesting review of Sarah Blackwell's life of Montaigne--How to Live--in the TLS (May 7, 2010). Reading Chester's appraisal, I came across one of Montaigne's signature critiques. He took aim at historians, who, he thought, often made things up or misread evidence. It got me thinking about other judgments. Book reviews in history journals often point out the logical inconsistencies, over generalizations, silences, or glaring absences in a historian's work. "Historian X should really have looked at evidence Y." Here are a few such critiques, starting with that of the French Renaissance man of letters.

Michel de Montaigne, "Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions," in The Complete Works of Montaigne, ed., Donald M. Frame (Stanford University Press, 1958.), 239.

They choose one general characteristic, and go and arrange and interpret all a man's actions to fit their picture; and if they cannot twist them enough, they go and set them down to dissimulation. Augustus has escaped them; for there is in this man throughout the course of his life such an obvious, abrupt, continual variety of actions that even the boldest judges have had to let him go, intact and unsolved. Nothing is harder for me than to believe in men's consistency, nothing easier than to believe in their inconsistency.

Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Provincializing Europe: Postcoloniality and the Critique of History," Cultural Studies 6:3 (October 1992): 337.

In the academic discourse of history--that is, "history" as a discourse produced at the institutional site of the university "Europe" remains the sovereign, theoretical subject of all histories, including the ones we call "Indian," "Chinese," "Kenyan," etc. There is a peculiar way in which all these other histories tend to become variations on a master narrative that could be called "the history of Europe." In this sense, "Indian" history itself is in a position of subalternity; one can only articulate subaltern subject-positions in the name of history. That Europe works as a silent referent in historical knowledge itself becomes obvious in a highly ordinary way.

Jesse Lemisch, Jack Tar vs. John Bull: The Role of New York's Seamen in Precipitating the Revolution (Garland, 1997), 159.

If maritime history, amateur and professional, has largely ignored the seaman, this is only part of a larger pattern in the writing of American history: neglect of the lower classes. We live, it is said, in an affluent, mobile society, we are all middle class, and it has always been so, more or less: thus the biases with which we view the contemporary scene have been reflected in our view of the past, and the existence of a lower class has been denied, or, when its actions forced some recognition, it has been contended that it acted as the tool of more prominent citizens.

See also this previous post: "I am almost coming to the conclusion that all histories are bad"

Still Time to Register for the Historical Society Conference in DC

Randall Stephens

Eric Arnesen, George Washington University, has put together a terrific program for the Historical Society Conference next week at GWU's Marvin Center. And, there is still time to register for "Historical Inquiry in the New Century," at a reduced rate, if you have not already done so.

The conference will feature panels on a variety of topics, ranging from high school history teaching, historians as expert witnesses, and military history to gender, religion in modern Britain, and the Medieval West (you can read some of those papers now on-line). The conference has a number of sessions devoted to labor history and African-American history. The latter includes:

THURSDAY, JUNE 3

1:00-2:30

Session ID: SLAVERY, HISTORY, AND THE FUTURE: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Room 309

Chair: Robert Cottrol, George Washington University School of Law

Karlee-Anne Sapoznik, York University
"‘They Say That It's Culture, but It's Abuse’: Slavery and Servile Marriage in Historical and Contemporary Perspective”

Jeffrey Gunn, York University
"Evolving History in the 21st Century: The Paramount Role of Autobiography and Biography in Linking Historical and Contemporary Issues"

2:45-4:15pm

Session IID: DOES IT TAKE A SMALL WINDOW TO SEE THE BIG PICTURE?
Room 309

Chair: Melvin Patrick Ely, College of William and Mary

Melvin Patrick Ely
"What Reviewers Should Have Criticized about Israel on the Appomattox, But Didn't"

Nancy A. Hillman, College of William and Mary, "Drawn Together, Drawn Apart: Biracial Fellowship and Black Leadership in Virginia Baptist Churches Before and After Nat Turner"

Jennifer R. Loux, Library of Virginia, "How Proslavery Southerners Became Emancipationists: Slavery and Regional Identity in Frederick County, Maryland"

Ted Maris-Wolf, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
"Self-Enslavement in Virginia, 1856-1864: How Two Free Black Men Shaped a Law That Fueled the National Debate Over Slavery"

Comment: Melvin Patrick Ely

FRIDAY, JUNE 4

8:30-10:00am

Session IA: CIVIL RIGHTS AND THE BACKLASH
Room 301

Chair: Sonya Michel, Woodrow Wilson Center

Jerald Podair, Lawrence University, “‘One City, One Standard’: The Struggle for Equality in Rudolph Giuliani's New York”

Brett Gadsden, Emory University, “Refiguring White Backlash: Joseph Biden and the Liberal Retreat from School Desegregation”

Clarence Taylor, Baruch College, “The New York City Teacher's Union and Civil Rights”

Comment: Sonya Michel

10:15-11:45am

Session IIA: RETHINKING EMANCIPATION
Room 301

Chair: Alex Lichtenstein, Florida International University

James Oakes, CUNY Graduate Center
"Rethinking Emancipation"

Comment: Alex Lichtenstein

Comment: Chandra Manning, Georgetown University

2:45-4:15pm

Session IVA: STATE OF THE FIELD: TWENTIETH-CENTURY AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY
Room 301

Chair: Adele Alexander, George Washington University

Daniel Letwin, Pennsylvania State University, "Black Political Thought in the Age of the New Negro"

Carol Anderson, Emory University, "Freedom Fighters on the Cold War Plantation: The Histories of African Americans' Anticolonialism"

Mary Ellen Curtin, University of Essex, "Race, Gender, and American Politics since 1965"

4:30-6:00pm

Session VA: "THE LONG CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT": A ROUNDTABLE
Room 301

Chair: Eric Arnesen, George Washington University

Patricia Sullivan, University of South Carolina

J. Mills Thornton, University of Michigan

Beth Bates, Wayne State University

Robert Korstad, Duke University

James Leloudis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

SATURDAY, JUNE 5

8:30-10:00am

Session IE: RACE, POLITICS, PROSTITUTION, AND THE COLLAPSE OF RECONSTRUCTION IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH
Room 413-14

Chair: Leslie Rowland, University of Maryland

Emily Landau, University of Maryland, “Public Rights and Public Women: Plessy, Prostitution, and the Effects of Reconstruction’s Demise in New Orleans 1862-1896”

Michael A. Ross, University of Maryland, “Creole Icarus: Jean Baptiste Jourdain and the Rise and Fall of Reconstruction in New Orleans”

Comment: John Rodrigue, Stonehill College

10:15-11:45am

Session IIA: NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF CIVIL RIGHTS AND RACE IN THE U.S., I
Room 301

Chair: James Miller, George Washington University

Thomas Guglielmo, George Washington University, “Raising a Black and ‘So-Called White’ Military: Race-Making and America's World War II Draft”

Touré Reed, Illinois State University, “The Urban League in the New Deal Era”

Yevette Richards Jordan, George Mason University, “George McCray and the Shifting Dimensions of a Transnational Black Identity in Newly Independent Ghana”

1:00-2:30pm

Session IIIA: NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF CIVIL RIGHTS AND RACE IN THE U.S., II
Room 301

Chair: David Chappell, University of Oklahoma

Kevin Gerard Boyle, Ohio State University, “Redemption: Civil Rights, History, and the Promise of America”

Joseph Kip Kosek, George Washington University, “‘Who Is Their God?’: Religion and the Civil Rights Movement”

Sophia Z. Lee, Yale University, “Without the Intervention of Lawyers’: Race, Labor, and Conservative Politics in 1950s America”

Comment: David Chappell

2:45-4:15pm

Session IVB: RACE AND LABOR IN THE CONTEMPORARY SOUTH
Room 307

Chair: Robert H. Zieger, University of Florida

Jane Berger, Cornell University, "'A Lot Closer To What It Ought To Be': Black Women and Public-Sector Employment in Baltimore, 1950-1975"

Rob Chase, Case Western Reserve University, "Slaves of the State Revolt: Southern Prison Labor and a Prison-Made Civil Rights Movement, 1960-1980"

Michael Dennis, Acadia University, "The Virginia Organizing Project and the Movement for Economic Democracy"

Comment: Robert H. Zieger

Session IVD: TRADITIONS, REVISIONS, AND PUBLIC THEOLOGIES IN AFRICAN AMERICA
Room 309

Chair: Richard S. Newman, Rochester Institute of Technology

David Waldstreicher, Temple University, "Phillis Wheatley, Religion, and the American Revolutionaries"

Jacqueline Robinson, St. Joseph's University, “A Halfway Covenant for Harlem: The Public Theology of William Lloyd Imes”

Comment: Richard S. Newman

Session IVE: NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE STUDY OF RACE AND SLAVERY
Room 413-14

Chair: Mark Smith, University of South Carolina

Joyce Malcolm, George Mason University School of Law, “Slavery in 18th-Century Massachusetts and the American Revolution”

Robert Cottrol, George Washington School of Law, “Race-Based Slavery and Race-Based Citizenship: How Brazil and the United States Became Different”

Amy Long Caffee, University of South Carolina, “Hearing Africa: Early Modern Europeans’ Auditory Perceptions of the African Other”

4:30-6:00pm

Session VA: NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF CIVIL RIGHTS AND RACE IN THE U.S., III
Room 301

Chair: Steven Reich, James Madison University

James Ralph, Middlebury College, “‘It is an Eternal Struggle’: The Pursuit of Civil Rights in the Land of Lincoln”

James D. Wolfinger, DePaul University, “‘The American Ideals of Justice and Equality’: The African-American Fight for Equal Rights in Levittown”

Kenneth Mack, Harvard Law School, “Race, Representation, and the Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer”

150 Years Ago

Randall Stephens

The Chicago Tribune marks an interesting anniversary. It was 150 years ago on May 18, 1860, that the Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln for its national ticket. "From the perspective of 150 years," writes Richard Norton Smith, "it seems providential that Republicans should hold their 1860 convention in Chicago; that they should pass over their young party's most prominent figures, choosing instead a one-term congressman and unsuccessful Senate candidate who would go on to set the standard for presidential leadership." Lincoln, the rail splitter, took on a mythical air to supporters, a monstrous "black republican" aspect to his many critics.

This from Life and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1860):

LETTERS OF ACCEPTANCE OF MESSRS. LINCOLN AND HAMLIN.

The following is the correspondence between the officers of the Republican National Convention and the candidates thereof for President and Vice-President:

Chicago, May 18, 1860.

To the Honorable Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois:

Sir:—The representatives of the Republican party of the United States, assembled in convention at Chicago, have, this day, by a unanimous vote, selected you as the Republican candidate for the office of President of the United States, to be supported at the next election ; and the undersigned were appointed a committee of the convention to apprize you of this nomination, and respectfully to request that you will accept it. A declaration of the principles and sentiments adopted by the convention, accompanies this communication.

In the performance of this agreeable duty, we take leave to add our confident assurance that the nomination of the Chicago convention will be ratified by the suffrages of the people.

We have the honor to be, with great respect and regard, your friends and fellow-citizens . . .

Sir:—I accept the nomination tendered me by the convention over which you presided, and of which I am formally apprized in the letter of yourself and others, acting as a committee of the convention, for that purpose.

The declaration of principles and sentiments, which accompanies your letter, meets my approval; and it shall be my care not to violate or disregard it, in any part.

Imploring the assistance of Divine Providence, and with due regard to the views and feelings of all who were represented in the convention; to the rights of all the States and territories, and people of the nation; to the inviolability of the Constitution, and the perpetual union, harmony, and prosperity of all, I am most happy to co-operate for the practical success of the principles declared by the convention.

Your obliged friend and fellow-citizen,

Abraham Lincoln

Pomp and Circumstance

Randall Stephens

It's that time of year. Seniors are practicing their graduation cap toss. Parents are wondering how long their sons and daughters will grown under a burden of enormous debt. Will they get jobs? Did those courses in "Script Writing," "Daytime Serials: Family and Social Roles," or "Exopedagogies and Diacritical Phallocentric Imaginations" equip them for our new economy?

All are preparing for a long, long day. Plenty of time for daydreaming. Garry Trudeau once quipped, "Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated."

Here in Boston today the weather is beautiful: 63 degrees and sunny. Today and in the next two weeks a series of glittery celebs and pointy-headed public intellectuals will be lined up to fill the podiums at areas schools. (See Tracy Jan, "Big Names at the Podium," Boston Globe, 14 May 2010.) A sampling:

ABC News correspondent Lynn Sherr, Wellesley College

US Attorney General Eric Holder, Boston University

US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Lesley University

Rachel Maddow, Smith College

Former Supreme Court justice David H. Souter, Harvard University

Governor Deval Patrick, Framingham State College

A few who took the dais in 1950:

Harvard University: Dean Gooderham Acheson, U.S. Secretary of State

Northeastern University: Frank W. Abrams, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey

Wheaton College: Erwin D. Canham, Editor, The Christian Science Monitor

Few speeches are memorable. Many are like long, de-deified, boring sermons. (Sometimes academics get the worst rap. W. H. Auden snarked: "A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.") Seldom do addresses rise to the level of oratorical art as did Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous "Address Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday Evening, July 15, 1838":

In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay. Night brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. Through the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays. Man under them seems a young child, and his huge globe a toy. The cool night bathes the world as with a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn. The mystery of nature was never displayed more happily. The corn and the wine have been freely dealt to all creatures, and the never-broken silence with which the old bounty goes forward, has not yielded yet one word of explanation. One is constrained to respect the perfection of this world, in which our senses converse. How wide; how rich; what invitation from every property it gives to every faculty of man! In its fruitful soils; in its navigable sea; in its mountains of metal and stone; in its forests of all woods; in its animals; in its chemical ingredients; in the powers and path of light, heat, attraction, and life, it is well worth the pith and heart of great men to subdue and enjoy it. The planters, the mechanics, the inventors, the astronomers, the builders of cities, and the captains, history delights to honor. . . .

And now let us do what we can to rekindle the smouldering, nigh quenched fire on the altar. The evils of the church that now is are manifest. The question returns, What shall we do? I confess, all attempts to project and establish a Cultus with new rites and forms, seem to me vain. Faith makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its own forms. All attempts to contrive a system are as cold as the new worship introduced by the French to the goddess of Reason, to-day, pasteboard and fillagree, and ending to-morrow in madness and murder. Rather let the breath of new life be breathed by you through the forms already existing. For, if once you are alive, you shall find they shall become plastic and new. The remedy to their deformity is, first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore, soul. A whole popedom of forms, one pulsation of virtue can uplift and vivify. Two inestimable advantages Christianity has given us; first; the Sabbath, the jubilee of the whole world; whose light dawns welcome alike into the closet of the philosopher, into the garret of toil, and into prison cells, and everywhere suggests, even to the vile, the dignity of spiritual being. Let it stand forevermore, a temple, which new love, new faith, new sight shall restore to more than its first splendor to mankind. And secondly, the institution of preaching, the speech of man to men, essentially the most flexible of all organs, of all forms. What hinders that now, everywhere, in pulpits, in lecture-rooms, in houses, in fields, wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, you speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation?

I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty, which ravished the souls of those eastern men, and chiefly of those Hebrews, and through their lips spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the West also. The Hebrew and Greek Scriptures contain immortal sentences, that have been bread of life to millions. But they have no epical integrity; are fragmentary; are not shown in their order to the intellect. I look for the new Teacher, that shall follow so far those shining laws, that he shall see them come full circle; shall see their rounding complete grace; shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul; shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with purity of heart; and shall show that the Ought, that Duty, is one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy.

Historic Election

Randall Stephens

David Cameron, now at 10 Downing St., takes office after the failure of Labour to form a coalition government. The Guardian reports, in when-worlds-collide fashion: "Tories to form full coalition with Lib Dems."

All elections are historic. But this one has several interesting, unusual historical components. On May 11 the Conservatives were speedily putting together plans for the first Westminster coalition since Winston Churchill ruled over a Labour, Liberal, and Tory government during WW II.

David Cameron is also the youngest British PM since Lord Liverpool took office in 1812. America and Britain were at war. The British Empire had just abolished slavery 5 years before. Lord Liverpool headed the government (1812 to 1827) through rough waters following the Napoleonic wars. During his tenure it became easier to be a Catholic in England.

This from Chambers's Biographical Dictionary (London, 1898):

Liverpool, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of, statesman, was born 7th June 1770, the son of the first Earl (1727-1808). He was educated at the Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford, and entered parliament in 1791 as member for Rye. A Tory with Liberal ideas on trade and finance, in 1794 he became a member of the India Board, and in 1801 as Foreign Secretary negotiated the unpopular treaty of Amiens. In 1808 he was created Lord Hawkesbury and on Pitt's return to power he went to the Home Office. On the death of Pitt he declined to form an administration. In 1807 he again took the Home Office, and next year succeeded his father as Earl of Liverpool. In Perceval's ministry of 1809 he was Secretary for War and the Colonies. In 1812 he formed an administration which lasted for nearly fifteen years. The attitude of the government to Poland, Austria, Italy, and Naples, coercive measures at home, and an increase in the duty on corn were regarded as reactionary. Lord Liverpool himself was a Free Trader, and ultimately sought to liberalise the tariff. Notwithstanding the blunder of the sinking fund, his financial policy generally was sound, enlightened, and economical. He united the old and the new Tories at a critical period. In Feb. 1827 he was struck with apoplexy, and died 4th December 1828.

And another historical, economic aspect at play as well:

Andrew Hough, "David Cameron becomes youngest Prime Minister in almost 200 years," Telegraph, 11 May, 2010.

After five days of uncertainty, Mr Brown finally accepted that he was unable to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Minutes later, talks ended between Liberal Democrat and Tory negotiators on a future government a few hundred yards away at the Cabinet Office. It ended unprecedented haggling among the parties after the inconclusive last week’s general election. It brought to a close 13 years of Labour rule, during which the longest economic expansion for 200 years was followed by the deepest recession in more than a century. . . .

Roanoke Roundup

Randall Stephens

William Stith, History of the Firft Discovery and Settlement of Virginia (Williamsburg, 1747).
This Colony chofe Roanoke, an Ifland at the Mouth of Albermarle Sound, for the Place of their Habitation; and their chief Employment was to reconnoitre and view the Country. Their fartheft Difcovery to the Southward was Seeotan, an Indian Town, by their Reckoning, eighty Leagues from Roanoke, lying up between the Rivers Pampticoe and Neus, in North-Carolina. To the Northward they went an hundred and thirty Miles to the Chefapeaks, a Nation of Indians, feared on a fmall River, to the South of our Bay, now cabled Elfabeth River, from whom, as thefe firft Difcoverers tell us, the Bay itfelf took its Name. >>>

Steven Morris, "Bideford Mayor Hunts US 'Lost Colony' Clues," Guardian, May 6, 2010.
A mayor in north Devon is attempting to help rewrite American history by proving that people from his small port town settled in the US 30 years before the Pilgrim Fathers set sail. Andy Powell hopes to find funds for DNA tests that might help demonstrate Bideford's "pivotal" role in the history of modern America. If he can find the proof, the town might find itself at the centre of a tourism boom. >>>

"Local Legacies: The Lost Colony," Library of Congress.
The mystery of the lost colony of Roanoke Island has been passed down from generation to generation since their discovered disappearance in 1590-three years after the settlers from England landed. Did the 120 men, women, and children assimilate with the friendly Croatoan natives or the Chesapeake tribe? Or were they massacred by the unfriendly Wanchese tribe? This legend gains more poignancy when you consider that Virginia Dare, the first child born of English parentage in America, was among these brave pioneers. >>>

Drew DeSilver, "A Kingdom Strange: A new look at the Lost Colony of Roanoke" (a review of James Horn's new book), Seattle Times, May 1, 2010.
For a people who celebrate success as much as Americans do, we have something of a romantic affinity for failure. The Confederacy may have fallen, but as the Lost Cause it inspired, among other things, "Gone With the Wind." The Chicago Cubs have legions of fans who've never set foot inside Wrigley Field; they love the team not despite its decades of futility but largely because of them. More than 400 years after it disappeared, the Lost Colony of Roanoke, in what is now North Carolina's Outer Banks, continues to fascinate. >>>

Greg Schneider, "Book review: 'A Kingdom Strange,' by James Horn," Washington Post, April 25, 2010.
In 1587, 20 years before Jamestown, English settlers founded a colony on Roanoke Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. This wasn't some hardened outpost of soldiers. It was families, husbands with pregnant wives, fathers with young sons -- 118 people in all. They built a fort, befriended some of the natives and produced the first English baby born in the New World: Virginia Dare. And within three years, they all disappeared. The fate of the Lost Colony is a mystery at the heart of the nation's founding, chock full of odd characters, conspiracy theories, strange turns of events -- even enigmatic carvings left behind on tree trunks. >>>

What is it Good for?

Randall Stephens

Standards, standards, impact, impact. In recent years historians in the UK have had the Research Assessment Exercise to contend with. (Sorry, your publications with Yea-oh University Press and Oxfort College Press don't pass muster.) Administrators and the public also push for disciplines in the humanities to prove their "usefulness" and "impact."

"As with philosophy," writes Ann Mroz in THE, "it is hard to show history's value beyond an intellectual pursuit. Any moves to make it demonstrate 'impact' risk pushing it down the heritage trail . . ." Your knowledge of Medieval tax law will help you to . . . ? Your study of child rearing in the Elizabethan Age equips you to . . . ? Start training to become a reenactor. Polish up your English Civil War "armour." Get that pike out of the closet.

Richard Overy's April 29 essay in THE, "The Historical Present," has created a stir. He throws down the gauntlet with these words:

Historians have always generated impact of diverse and rewarding kinds, and will continue to do so without the banal imperative to demonstrate added value. There is no real division between what historians can contribute and what the public may expect, but the second of these should by no means drive the first.

Nor should short-term public policy dictate what is researched, how history is taught or the priorities of its practitioners. If fashion, fad or political priority had dictated what history produced over the past century, British intellectual and cultural life would have been deeply impoverished. Not least, the many ways in which historical approaches have invigorated and informed other disciplines would have been lost.

Over at the NYRB, Anthony Grafton worries about the results of this utilitarian calculus. England's Slow Food academy has morphed into McDonald's. "Have it your way." Scholars working in fields that administrators deem useless--paleography, early modern, and premodern history, philosophy--have landed on the chopping block. "From the accession of Margaret Thatcher onward, the pressure has risen," writes Grafton. "Universities have had to prove that they matter. . . . Budgets have shrunk, and universities have tightened their belts to fit. Now they are facing huge further cuts for three years to come—unless, as is likely, the Conservatives take over the government, in which case the knife may go even deeper."

Historians working in America, too, struggle with the burdens of constrained budgets, reduction in full-time positions, eliminated raises, and the push for "relevant" curriculum. But, if the buzz in THE is any indication, what's happening in the UK is something else. Surely, the field of history won't vanish into thin air, as Overy imagines. (More doubtful are his comments on Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan, who "in her 2008 book, The Uses And Abuses of History, called on her peers to reduce their commitment to theory and to write shorter sentences. To do so would be to dumb down what history as a human science is doing." Really?) Still history across the pond may suffer much in this new climate.

Roundup: More on Writing in the Humanities

~
Gordon Wood, "In Defense of Academic History Writing," Perspectives on History (April 2010)
Instead of writing . . . narrative history, most academic historians, especially at the beginning of their careers, have chosen to write what might be described as analytic history, specialized and often narrowly focused monographs usually based on their PhD dissertations. . . . [A]cademics have generally left narrative history writing to the nonacademic historians who unfortunately often write without much concern for or much knowledge of the extensive monographic literature that exists. >>>

Rachel Toor, "Bad Writing and Bad Thinking," Chronicle, April 15, 2010.
Many people—publishers of scholarly work, editors at higher-education publications, agents looking for academic authors capable of writing trade books—who think about the general quality of scholarly prose would admit that we're in a sorry state, and most would say there isn't much to do about it. >>>

George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946. Posted on Mount Holyoke's website.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. >>>

John L. Jackson Jr., "Just Bad Writing," Chronicle, April 13, 2010.
I actually enjoy reading certain kinds of "bad writing," at least some of the time, especially from the scholars who often get hammered for their impenetrable prose. That's usually anybody who invokes the notion of "performativity" or cites the work of Michel Foucault or gets described as a disciple of Cultural Studies. >>>

Keith Hopper, "Aidan Higgins, The Writer's Writer," TLS, March 31, 2010.
Aidan Higgins is often regarded as a “writer’s writer”, which is usually code for contrary, experimental and out-of-print. Derek Mahon, writing in the TLS in 2007, called him “an austere and often difficult writer, more than a touch old-fashioned, with an astringency that can stir the bile of whippersnappers.” >>>