historying

Henry Jenkins recently announced he would be leaving MIT for sunnier and smoggier USC. Jenkins is a pioneer in the field of media studies, having been termed a modern-day Marshall McLuhan for his visionary and highly influential work. Having helped found the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, one of the few graduate programs of its kind in the country, Jenkins termed his feelings at leaving for USC as “Brutal-Sublime” (instead of “bittersweet”).

I know very little about Jenkins’ decision to move to Los Angeles, but I do know about him as a scholar and a thinker. He is, in a word that he would probably rightfully view as a compliment, a complete nerd. His blog is titled “Confessions of an Aca-Fan,” he encouraged his son to dictate fan-fiction at the age of 4, and counts a conversation about Star Trek as one of the early formative discussions he had with his wife. However, Jenkins also describers himself as “a humanist with a math phobia.”

And what a humanist he is. He is a prolific scholar, seemingly involved in endless numbers of projects and interests, which he blogs about with a truly jaw-dropping degree of thoughtfulness, eloquence, and creativity. He is even more impressive when speaking, as podcasts of lectures, talks, and presentations aptly demonstrate.

One of my favorite aspects of Henry Jenkins is his willingness to engage with such a wide audience. As the author of Convergence Culture and a proponent of the power of participatory culture, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Quick story: in one of his talks, Jenkins discusses how pop culture fans remix media. As an example, he pointed to the ability of internet and hip-hop musical phenom Soulja Boy to build a phenomenally widespread fan base through Youtube and MySpace largely through encouraging other users to remix and remash his work. Jenkins somehow managed to discuss it in a down-to-earth, incisive, and unpatronizing way. Too often commentators of pop culture, especially academics, come across as far too removed and clinical. Jenkins managed to turn it into a conversation that beautifully demonstrated the point he was making.

I am a scholar of history, first and foremost. But as one with a strong interest in how technology can enhance our approaches to studying history, I count Henry Jenkins as a strong intellectual influence. In history circles, USC’s graduate program is seen as up-and-coming. While I can’t speak to how accurate this perception is, I can say for certain the school as a whole just landed itself a remarkable catch. I wish Henry Jenkins all the luck at USC, and am confident he will continue his leadership in contributing to how we understand media and culture.

Stanley N. Katz and James Grossman recently led a working group backed by the National History Center and the Teagle Foundation, and drafted a thought-provoking report titled, The History Major and Undergraduate Liberal Education. The paper got some decent play on the history and education blogosphere, and with good reason. It brought up a variety of interesting issues, but chief among, from my perspective, is one of methodology.

In the report, Katz and Grossman point out that the history academy tends to be moving away from traditional methodological categories – “political history, economic history, social history, intellectual history” – and towards categories of people and places. I would tend to agree, although the line between these two methodological approaches tends to be rather blurry and fluid (and I’m guessing the authors would not imply a distinctive break between them). It makes me wonder – are historians truly engaging in a large-scale shift in methodologies? Or is the academy coming up with new phrases to describe pre-existing approaches? A work such as Erskine Clark’s Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic, could be read as a traditional work of “social history,” or it could be read as (obviously) African-American history, family history, rural history, or some combination of all three. Do “traditional” methodologies simply imply broader, umbrella categories?

Instead, I would argue (with freely admitted bias) that an equally important shift will take, and is currently taking, place within the academy: the transformation of analog to digital scholarship on a methodological level. Tom Scheinfeldt wrote a particularly incisive blog post on this topic provocatively titled, “Sunset for Ideology, Sunrise for Methodology?”: “I believe we are at a similar moment of change right now, that we are entering a new phase of scholarship that will be dominated not by ideas, but once again by organizing activities, both in terms of organizing knowledge and organizing ourselves and our work.”

Unfortunately, many in the academic blogosphere took the post as an attack on the validity of cherished theoretical “-isms” in the field. Too much focus rested on this aspect of the post, which Tom admitted in its comments was not the aim or intention. Instead, what gets lost is the bold assertion that the next big change in historical scholarship will come from the nuts-and-bolts of how we “do” history.

Katz and Grossman touch upon this change: “Liberal learning in the twenty-first century must include an emphasis on information sifting, the ability to work through massive quantities of data and references to identify what is useful and reliable.” While they offer a few other references to this new paradigm, they don’t spell out exactly how the skills of a history major relate to a liberal education in a specifically digital context (this is not the point of their paper).

I’d like to look at Katz and Grossman’s conclusions through a digital lens, and spell out specifically how I believe some of their observations and suggestions can be specifically linked to Tom’s “sunrise of methodology”:

- “History is thus inherently (though not necessarily for any individual historian) a multidisciplinary field and one in which inquiry begins with the problem and the historical context, not the discipline or dominant theory.”

Digital historians are necessarily engaging in interdisciplinary (or multidisciplinary) studies, as they not only need to know technical skills (programming, statistics, GIS, etc.) but also the broader issues prevalent in these fields. When creating maps for my history thesis in GIS, I not only had to learn how to import shapefiles, but also the background of coordinate projections, issues with small-scale vs. large-scale mapping, and basic tenets of cartographic design and layout. When utilizing a wide range of tools and techniques, a digital humanist is forced to learn not only “hard” skills, but their accompanying “soft” skills as well.

- “History places a premium on the capacity of synthesis.”

I couldn’t agree more. I feel that this will truly be one of the distinct advantages a history major might have over other scholars: the ability to efficiently and effectively sift through mountains of source material in order to extract content, recognize broader patterns, and evaluate their metadata (both traditional and digital). These skills form the basis of historical inquiry, and as our collections of digitized sources grow ever larger the proper utilization of these skills will be placed at a higher and higher premium, especially when paired with new media tools and techniques.

- “The single most important contribution that training in history can make to the liberal learning of undergraduates is to help students to contextualize knowledge, offering an antidote to naive presentism.”

One hallmark of the digital age is the ephemeral nature of information. Lacking the inherent stability and traditional gatekeeping of the analog era, it becomes more and more difficult to “pin down” knowledge. Without assurance that a website will exist tomorrow or next week or next year, knowledge and authority become much more fluid, and users will be even more inclinated towards presentism (whether naive or not). Historians will need to offer their skills in contextualizing and framing a constantly shifting corpus of information, at the very least in order to provide a sense of temporal perspective.

-”We need to be more thoughtful in locating history in relation to other disciplines, and in relating to the ‘historical turn’ in other humanities and social science disciplines.”

History has a lot to learn from other disciplines, and vice-versa. Just as digital humanists use a multidisciplinary toolbox, their utilization of these tools also tends to blur the traditional lines between disciplines. When a historian engages in complex statistical analysis using computer software to examine tax records, where does the line fall between economics and history? There needs to be a dialogue about how to most effectively employ and engage history within these other disciplines. In industry terms, the academy needs to figure out a “value-add” system of mutual benefit. And one key to this process (which Katz and Grossman describe) is that of cross-departmental collaboration, both in research and in teaching.

All in all, this is an excellent report that brings into focus far more important issues than I touched upon here. I would highly recommend it to anyone with an active interest in the current state and possible future of the field.

It’s been three days since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. I won’t delude myself into thinking I can contribute anything particularly unique to the mountains and mountains of reflection and analysis, but that doesn’t mean I won’t at least try. My initial reactions:

Historic. That is the word that I’ve been using with greater and greater fervor over the past week. This election was quite simply the second most historic single-day event of my politically conscious lifetime (narrowly behind 9/11, for now). From freshman year of high school onwards, my entire reality has been Bush Administrations I and II. Torture. Iraq. Guantanamo. Katrina. In political terms, this has been my status quo. To go from the “norm” of divisiveness, fear-mongering, and cynicism to the “Yes We Can” hope and inspiration of a Barack Obama presidency is a truly mind-blowing and radical shift. That is the reason why thousands of young people descended on the White House in celebration Tuesday night, that is why the streets of our nation’s capitol were flooded with joyous, delirious mobs of youth whose adult existence has been arguably one of the most destructive presidencies in our nation’s history.

History tends to happen both gradually and in fits and starts. It cannot and should not be overlooked that a mere four decades ago, our nation’s racial landscape looked like this:

Now, this very same country decided to elect Barack Obama to its highest political office, during a time of staggering unrest and uncertainty. This transformative national progress, sometimes lost amidst Obama’s purposefully post-racial rhetoric, is truly incredible. And speaking of that spine-tingling, goosebump-raising, tear-inducing rhetoric (starting around 6:00):

I don’t believe I’ve ever personally witnessed a more important or touching speech in my lifetime. He brilliantly wove in Lincoln in order to extend a the olive-branch to a nation in a time when conciliation and cooperation have never been more important. His use of 106 year-old Ann Nixon Cooper to deftly sweep through the 20th-century America was a brilliant and apt use of history to build into a crescendo of optimism. His delivery wasn’t even up to his usual oratorical standard. But reading those words imparts a sense of overwhelming historical weight – one could very easily picture these on the side of a monument one day, being memorized by our grandchildren:

“And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world – our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.  To those who would tear this world down – we will defeat you.  To those who seek peace and security – we support you.  And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

For that is the true genius of America – that America can change.  Our union can be perfected.  And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”

To echo our new first-lady in waiting, I’ve never been prouder of my country in my adult lifetime.