Historian
I can think of no better use of resources than to mess with the people of the future.
From the Believer:
This explains menhirs and moai better than anything else, I think; though I may be the only historian who attributes major monuments to whimsy and irony. h/t
Image Cite: flow14, “Carhenge @ Sunset,” Flickr, CC License
I never spoke to Professor Howard Zinn, though I did hear him lecture once, in college.
It was a disappointment; I felt I had grown since getting fired from my first job at fourteen for reading The People’s History at work (his books among others, hiding in a stopped elevator between floors), but that he had not grown with me. His arguments were still the same, the world still very simple.
Even more boring were the sad attempts at rhetorical fireworks my fellow audience members made, kowtows with nine syllables instead of nine bows. I’ve only grown further apart from his work as I’ve continued to hoe my own row in history, for reasons that Michael Kazin’s 2004 piece on it in Dissent, which many have cited this week, explain better than I could.
But that doesn’t mean his work — especially A People’s History — isn’t important, either to me or to the profession or to the American public. If you’ll excuse my borrowing yet another writer’s words to explain myself, I think Scott Eric Kaufman’s take is entirely the right one. Zinn’s book “…isn’t meant to replace traditional histories so much as supplement them.” Kazin’s right in a thousand ways, but despite his strident totalizing tone, Zinn is really only one ingredient in a big stew; at least, he explained himself in those terms occasionally.
Furthermore, A People’s History:
…represents a stage in one’s intellectual development.
It was never intended to arrest it.
Unlike, say, Ayn Rand.
And that — even more than the content of the work itself, though that too is important, if incomplete — is what makes Zinn such a great writer of history, to me and so many others.
Rest in peace, Prof. Zinn. And thank you.
Image cite: Austin Kleon, “‘If you don’t know history…’,” Flickr, CC License
It’s a wonderful thing.
…
No, but actually, I spit out coffee I was laughing so hard.
Image cite: sea turtle, “Caution: Jazz Hands When Wet!,” Flickr, CC License
Just look at it.
Rob MacDougall has some words of wisdom for a rainy morning:
I’ve been trying to come up with a mission statement for this blog: to figure out if and why I want to keep writing it, to boil what it’s all about down to one or two sentences. I haven’t gotten there yet, but one thing I’ve always known is this: History ought to be awesome.
And may I say: it always is when he does it.
He also has some awesome ideas about history t-shirts.
Image Cite: Stuck in Customs, “Comfortable on the Fourth,” Flickr, CC License
Update: Here’s a link to the orig. post for FB readers.
Some links:
Curating finds on the web is the new black. Everyone’s doing it.
Steam engine references are like catnip to me, so of course this one I couldn’t let go. The analogy here doesn’t quite work — steam doesn’t help us understand the meaning of the industrial revolution, and anyway it’s arguable that steam wasn’t what the IR was about, per se. But the claim that the Info Age doesn’t make any damn sense without the tools the humanities offer is one that rings true.
An interesting piece, if a tad condescending and a bit fuzzy on what “the humanities” are. Suggestions 1 (“slash doctoral programs”) and 2 (“increase masters programs”) are good as far as they go, but what exactly is going to get universities or departments to act? And get enough of them to act in concert to have an effect? Has an orgtheorist really forgotten about incentives? Suggestion 3 is less helpful, as a commenter (more kindly) points out, because it is ill-informed about the problems with the idea of reclaiming ‘the canon.’
I love, love, love this acronym, it’s the first non-French-yet-cool-and-military-industrial-complex sounding humanities org I’ve heard. Sadly, it’s pronounced “hay stack,” instead of rhyming with a primary component of the Goa’uld fleet, which — and trust me on this — would make it way cooler.
Image cite: ian murchison, “59:365 Hot steaming cup of awesome,” Flickr, CC License
Dael A. Norwood 