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New Civil War Journal

February 18, 2011, 3:30 pm

By Nina Ayoub

Anniversary or no anniversary, Civil War scholarship—and publishing—continue apace. Yet it can’t hurt to launch your new Civil War journal on the eve of the sesquicentennial.

It’s an “auspicious moment,” agrees William Blair, writing in the inaugural issue of The Journal of the Civil War Era. The historian, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, is editor of the new quarterly, set to debut in March.

JCWE will be published by the University of North Carolina Press in partnership with the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at Penn State. The new journal has also been “adopted” by the Society of Civil War Historians and will be included as a benefit for members.

Blair and his associate editors, Judith Giesberg, Anthony E. Kaye, and Aaron Sheehan- Dean, hope to bring a wider national and global focus to the Civil War era, from sectional crisis through Reconstruction and the war’s aftermath in memory. “We hope to attract scholars across the many subfields that animate nineteenth-century history,” he writes, “providing a place where they can engage with each other.”

Leading off the articles for the first issue are Edward L. Ayers and Scott Nesbit on spatial and other notions of scale as they apply to slave emancipation. Following is Melinda Lawson on depictions of slavery on the Northern stage from 1776 to 1860. Next, LeeAnn Whites discusses Southern-sympathizing women as key figures in the supply line for guerrilla warfare in the Kansas-Missouri borderlands.

The journal’s book coverage will include reviews of individual titles, but also a review essay in each issue. The first such round-up reflects JCWE’s overall theme, with Douglas R. Egerton on “Rethinking Atlantic Historiography in a Postcolonial Era: The Civil War in a Global Perspective.”

Finally, each issue of JCWE will include “Professional Notes,” a section on topics of professional interest to historians. The first installment covers a scary subject: academic jobs. Aaron Sheehan-Dean’s “The Nineteenth Century U.S. History Job Market, 2000-2009″ analyzes data on job listings from Perspectives, an organ of the American Historical Association.

The news is not all grim, he promises.

He suggests readers will be intrigued by a break down of the data by field specialties.  One generality, he writes, is a preference for chronologically as opposed to topically defined jobs, in other words more postings in categories like Antebellum than Gender.

Wondering  about regions? Sheehan-Dean writes that “the regional distribution of nineteenth-century U.S. history jobs is concentrated in Middle Atlantic, Southeast, and Midwest states.” More than 60 percent of the jobs over the past decade came from one of those three. The scholar can’t resist: “At the risk of suggesting a kind of historical determinism,” he writes, “these were the regions that participated most robustly in the Civil War.”—Nina Ayoub

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  • jesor

    It’s entirely possible that this particular group of students did in fact exhaust all other remedies available to them (i.e. appeals processes and lobbying the NCAA), however the only way in our society to force an organization or individual to do something when they violate the law is to file a complaint in court. Calling foul on someone just because they point out a violation of the law and use the only method we have of fixing it is like yelling at the referee for calling unsportsmanlike conduct during a fight on the field.

  • lfathe1

    So students are complaining that having to complete a set number of English and math courses is overly restrictive? Two-year school students generally have to complete something like 60+ hours of in order to finish an Associates degree. So requiring them to complete all their general education math and English seems quite reasonable. This, of course, assumes they have any intention of ever completing a college degree.

  • scgoldy

    In examining the NCAA Publication “Transfer 101: Basic information you need to know about transferring to an NCAA college For Divisions I/II/III. 2009-10,” it would seem to me that this effort is misguided and not all the rules for transferring are being fairly represented. I will try to make this concise and skip laborious details. If someone happens to see an error in my reasoning or interpretation, please feel free to correct.

    Most of the general confusion regarding athlete transfers pertains to the NCAA Clearinghouse. The information from the NCAA Clearinghouse determines, based on grades in core courses, overall GPA and standardized testing scores, whether an athlete is eligible to play immediately or must make a preset academic improvement. If you registered with the Clearinghouse in high school and have met all the requirements and were declared a “Qualifier,” the road through a 2 year school is a normal progression, complete one semester or quarter 12 transferable hours at a 2.0 GPA. If you satisfy that requirement, you can transfer and play. If you miss one of those goals, you can still transfer, practice and receive aid, but cannot play.

    It’s the case of the “Non-qualifier” that triggers the more stringent rules (3 semesters/4 quarters; Graduate from the 2-years school with 25% of earned hours at said school; 48 semester/72 quarter transferable hours with set hours in English and Math (transferable, not remedial). These are the standards one must meet to play immediately. Without meeting these requirements, the student may still attempt to transfer, but cannot be involved in athletics or receive aid until the NCAA rules for the progress towards degree requirements are met. At first glance as it relates to the Clearinghouse rules, these students are indeed, and these are my own words, an academic risk.

    However, there are some 2 year students who are “non-qualifiers,” but are academically sound students. Their cardinal sin was not registering with the NCAA Clearinghouse. If you do not register, you are automatically labeled a “non-qualifier,” and, as I understand it, once you enter college, the window for registration has closed. In my opinion, there are many high schools that are not taking care of their athletes and making sure that a) the student athletes are meeting the requirements of the Clearinghouse and b) that the student athlete is registering with the Clearinghouse.

    It should be noted, as an aside, that the other major 4 year athletic association, the NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics), of which the upper divisions also award scholarships has created its own clearinghouse. The one major difference is that student athletes at 2 year schools are required to register to be eligible to transfer to continue to participate in athletic competition.

    Just my two cents on the issue.

  • SophieMerry

    Bravo, Ms. Boboth! You’ve a positive, forward-looking attitude that will serve you well.

  • http://www.latinforpayattention.tumblr.com NotaBene

     Nice post, Laura.  I had the same challenges as a first-year admissions counselor.  And, though I am now 32, have a PhD and a tenure-track job, I am still often mistaken for a student–at least its for a college student this time!  People tell me I’ll be pleased if that is still happening when I’m 40 . . . 

  • richardtaborgreene

     Australia is filled with really imaginative research that counters biases and omissions in USA research and goes beyond US in design and bio and eco directions, interestingly.   I hope major resources behind these Aussie intellectual lights with brighten the entire world in the future.   PLUS Aussie intellectuals seem to compete with compassion-meditating Tibetan monks in having a permanently raised set point of personal happiness!   Perhaps due to tea time, if not koalas.  

  • manoflamancha

    In my days there, it was a quaint place to work with many self-defeating policies such as the power of the Professorial Board. Democracy and shared governance was a foreign concept. Many of the old boys from that era are now heading the major universities, and they are rewarded with million dollar salaries. It seems they are moving again toward  the American rather than the UK model, namely, a Corporate Model. They will, like their Yank brethen, set up big Alumni offices, and bug hell out of old grads to give more money ad nauseam. Suddenly, old grads formerly ignored are invited back to campus for Reunions, and there will be many clever people there to convince them to give all their retirement funds to the Uni. UQ is now filled to the brim with imported asian students who pay full fare, while the locals are stiffed. And richardtaborgreene thinks they have mastered the monks in the quest for personal happiness! Wrong! But “Tea Time” is a habit the Yanks should adopt, so they can finally get to know each other. I predict ordinary dinky die Aussies will turf out the current pretenders and take  back their universities from the invading Chinese. Then there will be widespread happiness! 

  • keis8427

    This is ridiculous on so many levels…

  • keke2873

    I’m not disageeing with you, but what has your criminal justice courses taught you about INDIVIDUALS (in general) who “show less than average intelligence by speaking improper grammar, look down, not making eye contact, who speak slowly, and use slang”? My point which is somewhat related to this article and to your point, is that a lot of chacteristics that we ascribe to African Americans are characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, that are exhibited by any individual, in any culture, any “race”. But we look for it and notice it more, shake our heads at it more and react differently when African Americans exhibit the things you mentioned. One thing society has yet to learn that a lot of things that we conclude are “race related” are really related to socioeconomic status and one’s perception or reality of inability of mobility.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Antsy-Kuhnwisse/100002159499682 Antsy Kuhnwisse

    Spike33, your hostility is apparent.  Liveyourlife might’ve done a whole lot of things to make the world a better place, even things that he *didn’t* get generously paid for, but going into all that could take the discussion seriously off-topic. 

    Whether cops start off with anger and prejudice, get it from their police training, or develop it as a result of “being lied to, assaulted, disrespected, etc.”, there’s no question in my mind that it generally appears eventually.

    You say cops are stereotyped, too — maybe that’s as a result of so many of them flagrantly ignoring rules and courtesy on the road, littering, parking in handicapper spots at donut shops, etc.  Not to mention news reports of overly aggressive “subduing” of suspects … or abusive behavior in their homes.

    Further, police choose their jobs — their identity — as police, and that choice can certainly be taken to express something about their personality and beliefs.  The race one was born with was not chosen, so it says nothing about the person behind the skin.

    I visited Atlanta last summer, for a conference.  I spoke to two police officers, asking directions.  Both advised me not to go where I wanted to go, for my safety.  Both used the “n-word.”  (I went anyway, on foot, and had no trouble.)

    If your city is Atlanta, I assure you that your ranks are not yet rid of racist cops.

  • chicoescuela

    In reply to Antsy Kuhnwisse: Interesting, but I didn’t find anything “hostile” in spike33′s comments. Actually, just the opposite.

  • katisumas

    There is no point in arguing against the white supremacist ideology spewed by realangel (an ironic moniker if ever say one!)

    But do you actually agree that you can tell the intelligence of a person by the amount of melaning in his/her  skin?

    Would you actually advise a black man to look at a cop in the eye when stopped for DWB (driving while black)?  Don’t you know what happens to black people when they lood at a white cop in the eyes?

    Up to the early seventies, black men and women AND CHILDREN were lynched for the crime of looking at  any white person in the eye.  You really think that a black men or women looking straight in a cop’s eye will not risk being pepper sprayed or beaten and/or hauled off to the police station?

    As for the insane belief that someone speaking a different dialect of English than your own shows a lack of intelligence, why don’t you read a Linguistics 101 textbook?  Good grief!  How ignorant can you be. 

    Of course that would be useless.  Racists listening to Obama actually “heard” black  English. 

    The gist of this white supremacist argument is that intelligence is measured by the amount of melanin you  have in  your skin…   Does that seem intelligent to you?

  • traneman

    Well, I feel compelled to jump in here. Each of you have very valid points in your comments. I am an African American male and I have been racially profiled all of my life, in all of the instances mentioned below–and more. I was chased and shot at by a police officer when I was 10 years old for throwing a snowball that accidentally hit his personal car. I have been followed around in stores, stopped and frisked on the street, taken in for questioning about crimes I knew nothing about, and pulled over on the road more times than I can remember. I was used as a human shield by a cop while he had the barrel of his pistol pressed against my neck, because he felt threatened by some of my teenage friends. And the list goes on, many times with weapons pointed at me. And no, I was never charged with any crimes by these “well-trained” officers. And growing up in the inner-city, I have watched officers who were otherwise nice guys take bribes from people I knew who ran the illegal numbers racket. Yet, I get the point from spike33 that officers are not “trained” to be afraid of non-whites. But realangel21′s point that there is socialization to distrust non-whites is also valid. Such socialization may not take place at a police academy. It happens by simply living in our society. And it remains embedded in people’s psyche. It does not matter that I have 3 college degrees, dress professionally, speak, walk and act intelligently. I am still treated the same as mentioned above. White women still clutch their purses, some gasping audibly if they happen to turn and catch me walking behind them, day or night–in my own neighborhood. I have friends and family in law enforcement, so I agree with spike33 that cops are also stereotyped, however, they certainly don’t go through what I have experienced. I applaud all good cops for their service and I also commend those who try to weed out the bad ones.

  • katisumas

    Not all white persons are afraid of black persons.  But that false fear was inculcated to most white people in the South.  Don’t you remember the time when black folks were expected to get off the sidewalk to let a white person pass without risk of touching them (which did not prevent white men from raping black women without any fear of consequences).  Don’t you remember Jim Crow?

    It would appear from your post that you might be from the same generation as I am, so what happened to your memory? 

    And of course, not all white people are afraid of black folks.  Many white people participated in the Civil Rights movement.  Many white people are still aware of the historically deep rooted racism in our country and are still trying to fight it.  Yes they are  trying “to make the world a better place” and some have lost their lives  doing it

    PS: perhaps you might be interested in the SPLC website which keeps track of hate crimes and hate groups in the county, including the couple of black hate groups (in contrast to the hundreds of white hate  groups).  Perhaps you might also read a few books or talk to a few people who experienced Jim Crow and the terror of whites it created in ALL black people? 

  • wendyxqm

    How do you equate “Less than average intelligence” with speaking improper grammar (according to white standards, but which aligns perfectly with the roots of West African languages as per Ebonics), looking down, not making eye contact….? Those are not signs of lack of intelligence.

  • wendyxqm

    One of the greatest omissions of the study is that in the African community it is widely known that there is a war on the black community and police officer shoot unarmed blacks with impunity. Then later, suddenly these black become “armed”. There is a separate protocol used by police when dealing with the black community. Time and time again, witnesses to police shooting will state that the victim had no gun, but somehow, a gun always shows up when needed.

  • traneman

    The issue of the “plant gun” is an old one and for the most part is not as widely used as it was years ago. I know about this “plant gun” problem because I had a friend and also my next door neighbor who were police officers. They admitted to me that in situations where a shooting may be questionable and their jobs may be on the line, they kept an old pistol that they carried for that purpose. Two people I knew had guns taken from  them by police officers, but they were never arrested for them. My guess is that those guns were going to be used as “plants” if needed. I also had police friends who carried knives for the very same purpose. You may have always wondered why, in news reports, the victim “attacked or threatened” an officer–with a gun–with a knife. The knife also appeared after the shooting. I am not making  this stuff up.  But I thought it was an outdated police practice.

  • deshun bolden

    It would have been nice to have you as a police officer in St Louis 3 of my boys are dead and the police are not interested in them because it was just another black they were all educated the police use to harass them so bad and in each crime one was robbed. doctor killed one he was white and he fled St Louis they let him go .the other son was caught in a random shooting one I buried 7 months ago and the white authorities treat me so bad because I want justice they snap at me and they are uncaring but all the white young men that get murdered they do everything to solve the murders can you come work here as far as white officer are concerned that’s just another dead black I will leave the other word out black no justice all were college men

  • deshun bolden

    I looked up history how true 

  • deshun bolden

    I told my son that while he was in the first thing they see is his color he was in high school at 12 but in their eyes he was still just a black an honor student but after his death the college did a beautiful honor the president of the college did attend the honor at the college but you no a black honor student kicked it off with a beautiful newspaper article.I know you are being real in your comment the police here in St Louis act like the KKK

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Antsy-Kuhnwisse/100002159499682 Antsy Kuhnwisse

    Read realangel’s post again.  I interpreted it quite differently.  Other than that, I’m in total agreement with you.

  • demisty

    “Q. Based on these results, is there anything officers (and others) should do?
    “A. One of the key questions that these
    results raise is: What can police officers and police departments do to
    increase accuracy in shooting decisions?”

    Really?  That’s the “key question” this researcher thinks of in response to the interviewer’s question?  Not, “How can we address these societal prejudices in our officers during these stressful situations?”  Not, “How can we train law enforcement personnel to treat citizens fairly based on their attitudes and actual threat levels and not their skin color?”  Maybe I’m missing something here.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Antsy-Kuhnwisse/100002159499682 Antsy Kuhnwisse

    The bitterness in the description of relations with the public, the expression of the feeling of being treated as “a second-class citizen,” followed by the confrontational “What have YOU done to make the world a better place?” … sounds like hostility to me.  (True, I added the capital letters in that last quote, but that’s what I was hearing in my head while reading that comment.)

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Antsy-Kuhnwisse/100002159499682 Antsy Kuhnwisse

    Now I have to take the other side, just for a moment, because part of your post reminded me of people’s behavior toward me when I first moved to Chicago.

    Actually, the first incident I recall was after my interview for my current job.  I was just roaming the streets, looking for a place to eat, and saw two young black guys walking in the opposite direction, apparently veering left to enter a fast food place.  I was in their way, so I broke into a brief trot to get past the door more quickly (as I always do whenever I think I’m in someone’s way).  To my astonishment, they interpreted what I did as an act of fear, and said so, shouting loudly and derisively at me.

    What a shock.  This was Chicago?  Indeed, the segregation in housing is extreme, and racism isn’t hard to find, but was it so bad that black people had come to see racism in a minor gesture of courtesy?  Never again did I *hear* any black person misinterpret an action of mine as racist, but I’ve often wondered how often they might be *thinking* it.

    Also, your remark about women clutching their purses reminds me of my walk to the train during my first few years here.  I saw women do the exact same thing when *I* approached them … and I’m a tiny little white female!  Both men and women (generally white) avoided my eyes, looked down, and refused to respond even to a “good morning,” even after I had seen them most every morning for a year.  I remember writing to my parents about this bizarre behavior.  I must have been living in an unusually paranoid neighborhood; once I moved out of it, my new neighbors behaved much more normally.  If I had been black, I certainly would have perceived racism in their behavior, but since I’m not, I know that people sometimes just act weird, and the reason is sometimes unfathomable.

    Being shot at and having guns pointed at me by policemen, though … nothing like that ever happened to me!  One can hardly argue that there’s any misunderstanding about that!

  • rod2312

    First, I’m grossed out by any “experiments” or research that involve intentionally stressing people out regardless of what is expected to be learned from them.  That being said, police officers are people and members of society.  In general, society here has deeply imbedded racism.  That should be apparent but some are obviously in denial – despite statistics on economic and social disparities, historical narratives, or whatever people need to see for “evidence.”  The fact that there was ANY racial disparity in the results of this research is indicative of the fact that appearance in terms of predetermined “racial” categories is an issue.

  • wberrymendes

    It is interesting to read these impassioned comments. I am a co-author on the study – the lead author, Modupe Akinola completed this research as part of her dissertation at Harvard, which I supervised. I do think it is important to point out that the interview and the comments don’t quite cast the results correctly. What we found is that police officers were *more* accurate (made fewer errors) in their shooting decisions when the targets were African American compared to when the targets were White. As someone who has studied racial discrimination for the past 15 years, I can tell you that in much of our research we find evidence of stereotyping and discrimination especially when using implicit measures like physiological responses or reaction time measures, but in this example, we did not observe more shooting errors with black targets. Indeed, we had some difficulty getting this work published initially, and I would speculate it was, in part, because the results were less newsworthy due to the finding that the police officers did not make more errors when targets were African American. This finding doesn’t sit with news accounts of police officers mistakenly shooting unarmed African Americans. I will note that non-police officers do tend to make more errors when completing this task, and do tend to shoot more unarmed African American targets than White targets, but that was not the case in our sample of police officers.
    Wendy Berry Mendes
    Professor, Department of Psychiatry, UC San Francisco

  • pianiste

    Uh, how come nobody asks if there were any black (or Latino or Asian or female) police officers in the shooting study? All of the commenters seem to assume that the officers in the study were white. Lots of black cops out there, you know.

    I’d be most interested to know if there was any difference in the responses in the study between black and white officers, or between male and female officers.

  • wberrymendes

    Pianiste, this is a good question. The majority of the officers were White (56%), 29% were Black, 14% were Latino (there was 1 Asian officer). The pattern of decision making looked similar between White and Black officers — meaning both groups made fewer errors when making shooting decisions with Black targets compared to White targets. Latino officers also showed the same pattern, but note that we are now talking about 10 officers so the numbers are really too small to be confident about the results.  In short, in this sample there were no officer race differences in shooting decisions.  

  • pianiste

    Thanks to Prof. Mendes for the answer. Commenters can speculate on whether the black officers were a) conditioned by the same racism–in their training and without–as their white counterparts, or b) simply responding like the Rev. Jesse Jackson:

    “There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” (1996)

    Now, were there any differences in the shooting patterns of female officers? Lots of women cops with guns out there, too, you know.

  • wberrymendes

    Though there was reasonable (not great) racial diversity there was not good gender diversity. Only 2 female poice officers so we can’t conclude anything about their shooting decisions.

    I agree it is unclear why there were no race differences and it may be due to training, cultural stereotypes or some other factors.

  • pianiste

    So, The Great Police Shootout greatly considered the targets of the shooting, but not really so carefully the particulars of the shooters. I’m not a psychiatrist, nor do I play one on TV, but it sounds like this study was designed with a sledgehammer. Back to the ol’ drawing board, methinks.

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