Who Could Possibly Organize American Historians?
Larry Cebula over at Northwest History has an interesting post with some suggestions for reforming the OAH.
Read the whole thing, but I’ll boil his suggestions down to the nuggets:
- Make the JAH into an exclusively electronic publication
- Shake up the conference (he prefers discussions and e-discussions to roundtables and traditional panels)
- Establish an open, moderated blog (sort of like a Metafilter for historians)
- Reach out to people interested in American history in various local venues
- Provide database access to historians outside the academy
- Take a firm hand in wrangling grants.
I agree with point 1, I’m in sympathy with point 2, I’d skeptically welcome 3, I’d be all for 4 if it could be proved feasible, and I agree with 5 and 6 in principle, at least.
I shared Professor Cebula’s post on Facebook, and got various responses. I’ll let Jeff weigh in himself, but my favorite comment was from another senior scholar: “The rot set in when they changed the name of the journal. What was wrong with The Mississippi Valley Historical Review?” (Date of name change: 1964.)
I’m an OAH member, and I feel lucky every time the annual conference is held at a nearby town (I like seeing American historians outside my subfield and hearing a few interesting papers, although they always seem to schedule all the early American history panels to run concurrently), or every time the JAH has articles that interest me.
I’m not so selfish as to demand that the organization feature more early history at the expense of, say, the twentieth century (although the twentieth century would probably win a contest for Most Depressing Century Ever), but I admit that I sometimes regard the organization with something of a shrug. As long as early American history has its own journals and conferences, I’m prone to feel a bit complacent about what the OAH puts out. On the other hand, not everyone has the luxury of such specialization (and I myself teach at least through 1877), and it’s good to have an organization that can take a broader view.
Anyway, I’d be intrigued to see the OAH put some of Cebula’s ideas into play.
Hey Benjamin!
I love your quote about when the rot set in! The trouble with any organization in decline is that the people who remain are the ones who like it just fine the way it is and resist the changes that are needed to bring in new members. But the last thing a declining organization can afford to do is alienate the members it already has. The logical path leads to a smaller and smaller organization more and more resistant to change.
No, wait, let me set that up in an answer-and-question format:
ANSWER: The people who remain are the ones who like it just fine the way it is and resist the changes that are needed to bring in new members. But the last thing a declining organization can afford to do is alienate the members it already has. The logical path leads to a smaller and smaller organization more and more resistant to change.
QUESTION: In what way is the OAH like the Republican Party?
Comment by Larry Cebula — September 22, 2009 @ 12:06 am
I enjoyed the full version that you posted on Facebook, Ben, and like the way that you’ve boiled them down here. Re: point 1, I’m also entirely in agreement, and this goes to the larger question of why any academic journal (outside of those that focus on print-specific subjects, like typograhy) issues a hard copy version at all. Many journals in the sciences have been electronic-only for a while now; the romantic attachment to paper and ink in the humanities is no reason to keep on issuing dinosaur editions of print journals.
Regarding point 5 (and points 4 and 6, too), organizations like OAH have to figure out a way to provide actual benefits to their members beyond sending them the journal and letting them present at the conference. An organizational subscription to certain databases is a great example; providing possible group health insurance rates for unaffiliated or adjunct scholars is another (along the lines of what the Freelancers’ Union does). I like most of the professional organizations I’m a member of (including OAH), but I don’t feel that I get all that much out of being a member of any of them, aside from getting a slightly reduced registration rate at the conference.
Comment by Mr. Sidetable — September 22, 2009 @ 9:59 am
I don’t think the OAH’s problems have come from being overly resistant to change or too committed to boring old journal articles and droning conference papers. If anything they have been too eager jump on to new trends, usually with such thundering overkill as to remove most of the benefits that might have accrued. (For instance, I am sympathetic to the ideas of acknowledging Americanists around the world and encouraging an international perspective on U.S. history, but I wonder if recruiting a masthead line for every member of the U.N. General Assembly was really the way to go about that.) Trying to jazz things up, they have let empty roundtables and movie reviews and stunts like publishing reader’s reports crowd out seminal, every-Americanist-should-read-it scholarship.
I have not plowed through their current Lincoln issue, but it looks to have perhaps two substantial articles on Lincoln (only one of which seems to be based on someone’s monographic primary research), another decent-sized historiography piece, and a large package of additional material that might best be summarized as: “Look, kids, it’s Abe Lincoln, but online.” The package is complete with the required JAH string of 3-5-page squibs by well-known names that could not possibly be worth enshrining in that limited space. The cutesy titles let you know that these senior historians down are with the social networking youth of today: “Lincoln’s America 2.0,” “Lincoln 2.5.” I do see where Larry Cebula is coming from reading that kind of thing: these ought to be blog posts to be read immediately and then pass away, not printed pages filed away forever.
Obviously someone needs to do more to provide legitimate venues for historical scholarship and discussion in Web 2.0 formats, and break through some of the resistance to accepting this kind of thing as valuable academic work. But I really doubt that the OAH/JAH is the entity to pull that off. They are both too trendy and too old-fashioned at the same time, in ways are going to be self-refuting in different ways for different scholarly age groups.
Comment by Jeff Pasley — September 25, 2009 @ 1:35 am
Jeff: I guess you are right that fundamentally I asking the OAH to become something different from what it has been. Where the organization has served to promote academic scholarship, I am suggesting a far broader mandate of promoting public interest in history by engaging academic historians with the public.
I don’t know that the OAH is the right organization to pull it off either, but they are the best-positioned of anyone.
Comment by Larry Cebula — September 25, 2009 @ 11:24 am
Why some people seem to have size, whereas others destined for mediocrity? Is this some kind of investment people are born?
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Comment by dini videolar — August 4, 2011 @ 2:34 pm