HISTORICITY (was already taken)

As requested…

I’ve received a significant enough number of questions about what to expect from graduate school, and requests for general graduate school advice that I decided to just throw it all into a post. This post will be geared specifically to those pursuing an advanced degree in history, but a lot of it can be applied to the graduate school experience in general.

This post is based on my experiences, the experiences of people I’ve spoken with, and some of the literature written on graduate school and mental health. If you’ve had different experiences, want to add to this post, or feel that I’ve forgotten something, feel free to add to it/let me know.

-Learn how to read a book for argument. Professors generally won’t care how much you learned from the book; they care about your ability to grasp the thesis, main arguments, and construction of those arguments. The best way to do this is to read the introduction very closely, read the first and last sentences of every paragraph in a chapter, and read the conclusion very closely.

-Learn how to skim effectively. I said to learn how to read for argument; what I didn’t say is that you will often find yourself facing a 300 page book that you have to have read for 3:00 seminar tomorrow. No point stressing out or crying about it—you just have to do it. So start practicing early using the advice in the above bullet point.

-If you have enough time to plan, and if you study non-American or Anglo-related history, then learn a language. Now. Otherwise you’ll end up like me: freaking out over the fact that I don’t have enough time to learn Hebrew, Yiddish, and German. If you plan to pursue a PhD, then you’ll have a bit more time for languages. But still. Start ASAP.

-Understand that graduate school is not about learning; it’s about understanding. Don’t go to a seminar expecting to learn about the history of kittens; go to seminar expecting to understand the history of kittens. That means that your professors will care about your grasp of framework, historiography, and major theoretical underpinnings; they kind of assume that you know the facts.

-If you’re planning on pursuing a PhD, start learning the historiography now.

-Accept that you are not special anymore. Accept that this will be difficult to accept. You were probably a big fish in a small pond as an undergrad. That experience may have been what drove you to continue your education. In grad school, you will be surrounded by former big fishes. Some of them will be smarter than you. You will struggle with feeling average and stupid. You are neither average nor stupid, but you will feel like you are. I struggled with this so much that my step-dad had to take me aside and say “Look. You know how hard your program was to get into. You know that fewer students get into your program than into the PhD program. Frankly, you’re pretty stupid if you think you’re stupid after getting in and successfully finishing your first year.” I think that that’s a pretty good way to look at it.

-Understand that you will find it really hard to cope the stuff outlined above. You will find it hard to cope with the work load. You might feel lonely and isolated. You may feel depressed. The experience may trigger the return of mental and/or emotional health issues which you thought you had already dealt with, or which you thought you were effectively handling. Up to 60% of graduate students have reported struggling with depression and related mental health problems at various points in their education. A sizeable percentage has struggled with suicidal thoughts. If this happens to you, understand that you are not alone. Your university’s counseling center may be one of your best resources. They offer group and one on one therapy. The university level graduate student association may offer meetings and conferences about how to cope with mental and emotional issues. Take advantage of these.

-When it comes to your fellow graduate students, if your department gives the students a special place to hang out and hold office hours, spend time there. Attend social activities if your department has organized stuff. Make connections with people because often these people WILL be your support group (especially if you are so frenzied that the idea of going to counseling stresses you out even more). But also remember that those people are your colleagues and will always be your colleagues, so don’t make enemies. You never know who might turn up as an interviewer 20 years down the line.

-To make clear a concept from the above bullet point: don’t make enemies. Now that you are in graduate school, your peers and professors can, do, and will exercise great power over your career, inside and outside of academia.

-If you will be pursuing an MA in any capacity, understand that you are not inferior or less intelligent than your doctorate pursuing peers. The fifth year PhD’s will know more than you, but never allow yourself to think that you are less intelligent on the basis of the degree you are pursuing,

-Even if you don’t find yourself struggling with your mental health, you will still probably find yourself crying over something at least twice a semester. So you need a healthy coping mechanism. Mine is shopping (although ngl I may need an intervention soon…)

-If you are pursuing planning on pursuing a PhD and you’re not in a ~*~top four department~*~, don’t lie to yourself about job prospects and the state of the job market in the humanities. No matter how brilliant you are, how influential your adviser is, and how fabulous your dissertation is, it’s going to be really fucking hard to get an interview if you don’t a certain name on your diploma. Have a Plan B.

-Learn how to do simple math. This will come up after you embrace social drinking (unless you abstain on religious or health related grounds). Trust me on this one. You will end up in a situation when you and 5+ other history nerds will have to tipsily split a check and calculate tips.

-You’ll probably gain ten pounds and not understand where they came from. If this is a thing that matters to you (not to imply that it should, only that it might), then you should probably start eating quinoa; that stuff keeps you full for a long time after meals and reduces your cravings. It has all of the nutrients and vitamins and things AND it is seriously low maintenance. And take advantage of your institution’s gym; you’re paying for it in some way anyway so you may as well check it out.

FINALLY

-Don’t let this post scare you away from graduate school. I just want you to be prepared for the stuff they don’t tell you about on the website. In my second semester, I posted as my facebook status “Is it normal to feel like graduate school is ruining your life?” and I got a chorus of resounding affirmations. And you know what?-knowing that I wasn’t alone cheered me up way more than anything else could have.

ask historicity-was-already-taken a question

Historical Bias: Perception and Reality pt. 5

Introduction
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

IN CONCLUSION of course there is bias in the writing of academic history; it’s just not the kind of bias you think it is.

As for how to fix these problems, I’ll start with the academic system of checks and balances.

I don’t know how the issues perpetuated by this system should be handled. That system was put in place to protect the intellectual freedom of academics, and to keep them from being fired for things like pissing off the government. I honestly think that this system is a primarily positive one; the problem is that people are imperfect and can mess up even the most well-intentioned and well-developed of systems. Another way of saying this is that the system is flawed as a result of academic culture, not in and of itself.

Academic culture is an extremely insular one. The insular/ivory tower image of academia is largely self-perpetuated, and that is part of the reason academics have such a minimal impact on the mainstream understandings of their disciplines. I think historians could have a greater effect on the mainstream historical canon if they were to engage in some form of independent outreach, and learn how to talk to people from varied backgrounds on multiple levels of discourse. The public isn’t going to go to them, and they should not assume that museum professionals, public historians, archivists, librarians, and digital humanists are going to the job for them (although they are doing an amazing job), and they cannot assume that k-12 teachers are going to have the time or ability to do the job for them.

I obviously greatly admire and respect the hard work that professional historians do, and I fully understand that they are under intense pressure to churn out publication after publication and that they thus have very little free time to spend arguing with people on the internet. But I also think that they, as experts, have a responsibility to the humans in the stuff they study to make sure that those lives aren’t lost in the hatred of the Arizona Board of Ed and other such bodies. I certainly feel a responsibility towards some of the women I study, and I know that many of my academic peers feel the same way about the people involved in the stuff that they study.

Two other issues I discussed were the problems of the over-reliance on theory, and the over-specialization of many historians. I was actually kvetching to one of my friends (a PhD student) in my department about this a few weeks ago, and he told me that the over-reliance on theory has been “trendy” for a while, and that it is now on the way out. He also told me that intersectionality is becoming trendier with historians, leading to the falling out of favor of the practice of over-specialization. I am going to take his word for it, because, to be perfectly honest with you, the time PhD students use to keep on top of those sorts of historiographical trends is the time I allocate to the viewing of cat macros and Jim/Pam gifs.

So basically, my answer to these problems is that there are some structural issues within academia which need to change, and change does not come quickly in academia; I’m pretty sure it was only a few years ago that Romanists agreed that it was ok to theorize about the effects of PTSD on ancient militaries. This pre-existing resistance to change combined with the fact that many universities have frozen hiring indicates that structural change will not quick in coming.

And there is my response; I hope it adequately covered the basics.

ask historicity-was-already-taken a question

Historical Bias: Perception and Reality pt. 4

Introduction
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I’ve addressed common views of historical bias, what academia does in order to stem the influence of this bias, and the types of biases which are fostered by that very same academic system. Now I will discuss the most glaring and unchecked form of bias which may be detected in works of academic history. It is perpetuated by those who enjoyed Critical Thinking 101 a little bit too much.

For historians, the study of philosophy and theory are really intended to help us organize and analyze our own thinking, not to provide us with guidelines by which to construct our work. And on that count, they are effective; Gender Trouble—in addition to making me cry blood and scream WHYYYYY a couple of times—really helped me to organize my thoughts about gender history and was thus incredibly valuable to me as a historian.

Theory and philosophy are not, however, supposed to supply the outline of our theses and the guidelines of our thinking. We cannot assume that events were caused by the means of production, or the sexed body, or the ideological state apparatus, or the….whatever Foucault was talking about, and we cannot approach the historical record with the intent to make that record fit into the framework of our pet theorist/philosopher. That’s just crappy, irresponsible scholarship.

This happens a lot, and it is a problem. Some fields, particularly modernist fields like Latin American history, need theory more than others because some of those theories overtly shaped the trajectories of the stuff they study. However, some subfields are guilty of consistently using the work of theorists as guidelines rather than thinking aids and this dependency is perpetuated by the academic system of checks and balances.

This post originally included a discussion of modern history and certain modernist fields, but I soon realized that I was derailing my own post with that discussion (the material I removed was over 600 words long). Because of this, that material will be discussed in a separate post.

Historical Bias: Perception and Reality pt. 3

Introduction
Part 1
Part 2

While the academic system of checks and balances is effective in weeding out social biases and works to actively sustain a culture of cooperation and collaboration, it also serves to rigidly enforce its own status quo. It can and often does function as a means by which to keep certain fields and arguments marginal.

To succeed as an academic you need the scholarly support of a lot of people. As a graduate student you need the support of your adviser, of your cohort, of the people reviewing your papers, and of your thesis committee. Once you have your degree, you will need the support of hiring committees, of peer reviewers, of your academic peers, and of your tenure committee.

I will present an example to illustrate how this can become a problem. You study women in colonial Argentina. The historian who founded this subfield made an argument which forms the foundation of that field. Further, everyone in this subfield either studied under the scholar who founded it, or under one of that person’s former students. This includes your adviser.

You, however, a precocious fourth year doctoral student, disagree with that argument; you think that the historical record says something completely different, and you decide to make this the subject of your dissertation. You present this argument to your adviser. Your adviser might then say “If you write your dissertation based on that argument, I will personally make sure that your dissertation committee fails you.”

Or perhaps you are already a professor in a tenure track position when you come to this conclusion about your subfield. You try to publish on your findings, or maybe you report your findings at a conference. Perhaps some people will give your findings and argument serious thought, but others may feel angry and scared, as if you are a threat to their jobs (and if their career is based in the existing framework, then you kind of are). You might be denied tenure in reprisal. You may be blacklisted among departments which value research in your subfield.

Academics can and do have their careers destroyed over this sort of thing, sometimes before their career can even begin. This happens in all fields, and tends to occur more in the Sciences than in the Humanities. Even when it does not overtly occur, new scholars in any field will always have some level anxiety before challenging the work of an established scholar, and there is no way of knowing how many of these people self-censor.

There is also the issue of specialization. I specialize in gender and Jewish history, right? Other people specialize in just gender history, or just labor history, or just immigration history. So let’s say we’re all looking at the people who worked in the garment industry in early twentieth century Manhattan. A labor historian would look at these people as workers first and foremost. A gender historian would focus on the fact that most of these workers were women. A Jewish historian would focus on the fact that a huge amount of these people were Jews. An immigration historian would focus on the fact that most of the workers were Jewish and Italian immigrants.

Each of these historians takes the subject and, based on their specialization, rips it into parts. In reality, most of these workers were Jewish and Italian women, and they need to be evaluated with those identities, along with their statuses as immigrants and members of the working class in mind because all of those factors and identities informed their experiences in America.

Thus, specialization can lead to the erasure of aspects of a population’s identity. And this is getting lengthy, so the next post will be about the form of historical bias which is slightly less structural than the ones discussed here.

Historical Bias: Perception and Reality pt. 2

Introduction
Part 1

After reading part 1, I am sure that many of you remain unconvinced. Historians are part of the general public as well, and are just as deeply affected by socialized racism, sexism, and other forms of learned bigotry as everyone else. But here is the thing: history programs and the people who develop them are well aware of this. That is why all entering graduate students in all History graduate programs are forced to take a class with a name like “History and Contemporary Theory,” or something similar.

In this class students have to read the works of the major philosophers of the last 200 or so years, and the work of influential theorists from the last 60 or so years. This class is designed to force students—through exposing them to complex and contradictory ideas—to think critically. It’s basically Critical Thinking 101.

You honestly don’t get very far as a graduate student if you don’t have the ability to think about why you think the things that you think. You may get as far as writing the first draft of your thesis, but then your adviser will hand it back to you and say something like “You need to familiarize yourself with the works of Butler and Said because this draft is contains unacceptable levels of Orientalism for the work of a graduate student.”

In short, you’re pretty much not allowed to not think critically about the things which will end up in your published work. There is a system of checks and balances embedded within the academic system—stemming from your adviser to your reviewers—to ensure that no social biases may be found in your work of history.

And that segues rather nicely into the next post: the discussion of the biases which do exist in the historical discipline.

Historical Bias: Perception and Reality pt. 1

Introduction to this post series (includes breakdown of post topics and relevant disclaimers)

The most glaring accusation lobbed at historians is the mantra “history was written by the victors.” I wrote a long post about this back in March 2011, but what it boils down to is that primary source documents—especially ones written at times when only the elites were literate and had access to writing supplies—were probably written by the victors, while history—the writing of arguments based on informed analysis of those documents—is written by historians.

Many would read that argument and think to themselves “Okay, but the majority of people conducting those analyses are white men.” However, this is an inaccurate assertion.

The discipline of history was run and populated primarily by white men up until the mid-60’s or 70’s, but these days historians aren’t just a bunch of white guys writing about Caesar, Jefferson, and FDR (although those guys definitely exist). Today, historians are Muslim women writing about the eugenics movement; historians are Jewish women writing about the Reconstruction period; historians are Asian men attempting to reconstruct the pre-colonial history of South Africa; historians are black men writing about the experiences of Indian women under the British Raj.

The statement that all historians are white men and thus that history is an inherently flawed discipline erases the huge body of literature written by professional historians who are not white men, and it erases the existence of historians who are not white men. Which is a tad ridiculous when we consider that the people who tend to loudly assert that history was written by the victors/white men are the same who oppose the erasure of women and minorities from the general social consciousness.

What most people are actually objecting to is the mainstream historical canon; the general body of historical knowledge which most Americans have absorbed through a combination of k-12 education, pop culture, required university courses, the History Channel, magazines, et cetera. It is in that body of knowledge that the lives of people who aren’t white men are erased. And believe me when I say that historians are just as pissed off about it as you are.

Unfortunately, historians have no control over that body of knowledge. We are not the ones who decide what goes into textbooks, we are not the ones who create the k-12 “Social Studies” curricula, and we are not the ones working for the History Channel (although sometimes we are sometimes featured in their programs…and then edited to make it seem as though we agree with everything the host is saying about aliens or Jesus or whatever.)

The problem is that the United States of America (like many other nations) is a nation with a government and a people who are deeply unwilling to look honestly at racial and gender relations in their society. In fact, the American public and certain sectors of the American government often react with anger and scorn when confronted by stories of the lives of the people oppressed and marginalized by our national heroes. Until this changes it is very unlikely that even a fraction of what professional historians understand will make it into the mainstream historical canon.