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[Tory]

   A previous thread touched on the role of conservatives in academe.  Since it began with a discussion of Republicans and drifted into a discussion of conception, I'd like to start a thread responding to a point about traditionalists and conservatives in the humanities.

   Dominant trends in humanities, including history, leave very little room for those who do reject theoretical approaches or specialize in subfields that cut against the grain.  Political, diplomatic, and military history stands at a steep discount against a focus on race/class/gender.  Paul W. Schroeder and Marc Trachtenberg have lamented the trend, giving it as a reason for breaking with the AHA.  Cultural studies has similarly dominated literature and the arts to the exclusion of more traditional approaches.  Here the line is not partisan politics or questions like abortion and stem cell research, but field and methodology.  I've often seen traditionalist scholars mocked or dismissed as "not serious" for not following cutting ed trends.  Twice I saw military history dismissed as "not real history" and a scholarly working on Samuel Johnson mocked as not really wanting a job because he took on such a "dated" topic.  There really seems to be a pattern here and various scholars have noted it.  Is there a new rule that "traditionalists" need not apply?  

   Note that the focus here is not who someone votes for or what they think of abortion.  I've had a few socially liberal--pro-choice, sympathetic to feminism and gay equalify--scholars bitterly condemn trends in academic culture.  Several academics who identify themselves as liberal to moderate democrats in the Hubert Humphrey mode find themselves unwillingly cast as reactionaries when they defend traditional approaches or fields.  Outright conservatives of the Burkean mode find it very embittering.

  Is this considered just or a progressive development...or do others percieve a problem.

   What's the story

[anon]

I've found that people in English doing serious scholarship (intensive archival work without the gloss of new historicism) do have harder time getting hired. On the other hand, we have a somewhat easier time with grant applications, as our work usually has a good rationale for support and actually makes sense.

The bad part is that a great deal of badly-written, badly-researched, and ultimately empty work is quite popular. The good part is that because traditional scholars now must think through and justify our approaches, traditional scholarship has gotten much better. One can no longer get away with "types of butterfly in Shakespeare" without some reason why this might be significant.

[Prytania]

There's a problem. I tend to be a traditionalist, but there are some awesome women and minority writers in the traditional canon. I object to dragging in third-rate women and minority writers just for cultural diversity. Better to have fewer women and minority writers and have the really great ones represented.

[Tenured Feminist]

Of course, if you want to take a "traditional" line, there's plenty of work to be done in several of the social sciences, where identity, culture, and subordination are all that stuff done by people who aren't real social scientists (and no, I am not talking about sociology or cultural anthropology).

Maybe this is foolish naivete, but it seems to me that if we as a group of scholars really want to understand a phenomenon, we are best off looking at it through as many legitimate (i.e., rigorous scholarly) lenses as we can.  If I want to know something about how the constitutional category of citizenship operated in the antebellum southern United States, I'd darn well better think about race and gender.  But I could also learn useful stuff by doing dry doctrinal history, something different by bringing in the tools of political economy, more from systematically reviewing partisan newspapers, and even more by reading up on the politics, economics, laws, and cultures of other slave-holding societies.  Maybe I wouldn't be able to use all of this information directly to inform my own research, but I would think it a generally Good Thing to have all of that out there and recognized as real scholarship.

Oh, and it is possible to study race, gender, and class in a rigorous way.  It is even possible for a non-positivist to do so.

[Rina]

Tory wrote:

>     Political,
> diplomatic, and military history stands at a steep discount
> against a focus on race/class/gender.  

I don't see how you can meaninfully study any of those histories without focusing on race/class/gender dynamics.

>   Is this considered just or a progressive development...or do
> others percieve a problem.

On the whole a progressive development

[From Both Sides of the Pond]

Rina wrote:

> Tory wrote:
>
> >     Political,
> > diplomatic, and military history stands at a steep discount
> > against a focus on race/class/gender.  
>
> I don't see how you can meaninfully study any of those
> histories without focusing on race/class/gender dynamics.

It really depends on the material you're working with.  The military history I work on (medieval England) is far more dependent on dynastic and economic factors than it is on any type of racial or gender-based conflict.  If anything, those types of analysis are nearly irrevelant due to the particulars of what my work is based on.  Class plays a more important role, but r/c/g is secondary to a more 'traditional' examination of the subject.  I could try to use it... but frankly, it would completely miss the point.

R/c/g is one way of looking at historical matters.  But just one - one just as flawed when used on its own as any other particular method when used just on its own.  What tory appears to object to, as do I, is the throwing out of solid professional output simply because it does not fit into what is 'hot' at present.

From Both Sides of the Pond

[Rina]

From Both Sides of the Pond wrote:

>> It really depends on the material you're working with.  The
> military history I work on (medieval England) is far more
> dependent on dynastic and economic factors than it is on any
> type of racial or gender-based conflict.  If anything, those
> types of analysis are nearly irrevelant due to the particulars
> of what my work is based on.  Class plays a more important
> role, but r/c/g is secondary to a more 'traditional'
> examination of the subject.  I could try to use it... but
> frankly, it would completely miss the point.


I don't think anybody makes the claim that race, class and gender, all the three, have to be equally important for every study. It would depend on the area under investigation and the questions that are being asked. As you say, class is an important element in what you study.  Basically I'd be suspicious of any scholarship (outside the sciences) that says that power inequities is not a relevant factor. What do you mean when you say "r/c/g is secondary to a more 'traditional' examination of the subject "? Using the label "traditional" cannot fortify you against answering questions that have to do with power structures and inequalities. For most of us thinking in terms of class or gender dynamics is not a matter of "choice," or of follwing a"trend" as has been suggested. It is the only meaningful way to make sense of the world.

[sidey]

Rina wrote:

> "choice," or of follwing a"trend" as has been suggested. It is
> the only meaningful way to make sense of the world.

There's only _one_ meaningful way to make sense of the world?  

Glad somebody told me...

[alternative]

I'd second Tenured feminist...
It's not innovation for innovation's sake to argue that one must be conscious of the choices one makes in research, how power works, who had access to what resources, who uses what sorts of language to use what, etc.
The theory wars are mostly over. Jargon lost. Questions won.
For example, people who do diplo do get jobs today if they can connect to our current understandings of cause and effect. They fail to be of interest to anyone but antiquarians if they simply talk great men, timeless powers, etc. Since almost no one (in the academy) does that anymore, what's happened is that people who write what once would be called diplomatic history now call it something else, and only the out of touch continue to label themselves the old way.
In the humanities, there are mainly two things that are considered problematic about the older models:
--the narrowness
--the assertion of professorial power
Flexibility, versatility, connectivity, and questioning are professional virtues these days, I'd argue.
If you believe conservatives must oppose these qualities, then I suppose conservatives would be embattled. It is true that when students say they want to go to grad school because they like to imagine themselves with summers off, dressed in tweed, declaiming the truth to acolytes, I discourage them.

[%sig%]

[Mix It Up]

Maybe you can't mix the approaches, but I don't see why.  I was trained in high theory and cultural studies, and went on to do old fashioned research for my dissertation, and even learned some philology along the way.  I truly believe in research and erudition, and dislike much of what passes for theory in the U.S. humanities.  Still, I dare say that much of the old-school empirical work I do would be meaningless to me without all the insights of what you people are calling "cultural studies" (but is really much bigger than that).  Intellectual curiosity ought to lead you across boundaries of these kinds of camps, nu?

[From Both Sides of the Pond]

Rina wrote:

> I don't think anybody makes the claim that race, class and
> gender, all the three, have to be equally important for every
> study. It would depend on the area under investigation and the
> questions that are being asked. As you say, class is an
> important element in what you study.  

Sure... but not the major factor - economics is by far the greatest element of my work, though in a military vein.

> Basically I'd be
> suspicious of any scholarship (outside the sciences) that says
> that power inequities is not a relevant factor. What do you
> mean when you say "r/c/g is secondary to a more 'traditional'
> examination of the subject "? Using the label "traditional"
> cannot fortify you against answering questions that have to do
> with power structures and inequalities. For most of us thinking
> in terms of class or gender dynamics is not a matter of
> "choice," or of follwing a"trend" as has been suggested. It is
> the only meaningful way to make sense of the world.

Why do you appear to think that most power inequities are expressed along race and gender lines, or that those play a major role in every area of inquiry?  I also think the accusation that 'traditional' is a copout is well, a copout and a way to ignore it.  How does 'traditional' scholarship not highlight power inequities, or differences?

To give far more personal details than I normally do: my work is on the formation of English armies in the medieval period - how they are raised, how they are equipped, how they are supported.  Where does gender play any meaningful role in that question, barring some ancillary involvement in the economic support of the men?  Where does race play a factor when the forces I refer to are entirely English?  Neither of those avenues would provide anything fruitful compared to an analysis of economics or the recruitment methods used to put those troops into the field.  Class does play a major role - but not the other two.  So I have to use 'traditional' means - economics, family interactions, legal obligations - to provide that 'meaning' that gender or race analysis simply cannot.

Getting locked into the power inequities prism that you describe would be just as bad as any 'traditional' or hidebound view that it might replace, in my opinion.

From Both Sides of the Pond

[%sig%]