Anthony Grafton and Robert B. Townsend, “The Parlous Paths of the Profession,” Perspectives on History 46:7 (October 2008) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Rich Tokens": The Recruitment and Retention of Women-of-Color Historians
Journal of Women's History, 1993
The "double-minority'' label has created certain challenges for the woman-of-color historian which has had an undeniable impact on her role in the academy as a scholar, teacher and colleague. While this discussion addresses some of the pressing issues surrounding the preparation, hiring and retention of women-of-color faculty, it is not a canvass of all of them, nor does it originate from a dehberate, systematic compilation of documentary information. Rather, it is derived from personal and impressionistic sources, informal surveys of students and faculty, and varying evidence of recruitment strategies and priorities. Some of the most significant problems women-of-color faculty face center on popular perceptions of them as double-minority professionals. For scholars, the indictment begins early. I do not recall, for example, the number of times I was informed that I would have no problem finding a job once I had completed my graduate studies, regardless of my qualifications, because I was an African-American female, a "double minority." Suddenly, or so my colleagues would have me believe, to be black and female no longer meant having two strikes against me. As far as they were concerned, it meant my automatic success on the job market. Even then I was struck by the great irony this situation presented. While I endeavored to work as hard as possible in order to eliminate racist and sexist obstacles that were obvious to me, others, who did not face these same road blocks, angrily assumed that I was less capable or less diligent than they, but would acquire greater rewards. Bigotry again had raised its ugly head in the minds of supposed friends and foe alike.
Anthony Grafton and James Grossman, “Plan C,” Perspectives on History 49:8 (November 2011)
Perspectives on History, has already stimulated more discussion on the web than we expected, and its reappearance in the Chronicle of Higher Education seems to be kindling a few more res. It has also brought us a great deal of mail-much of it from people trained as historians who now work outside the academy. We were especially encouraged by a letter from a historian who is employed by the military and has just completed his rst book, on a nonmilitary topic, soon to be published by a university press. "The greatest problem I have seen," he noted, "is the need for those of us inside the academy to interact with those outside." The di culties are clear: though he has "worked with several graduate students over the years to assist them in seeking employment in the federal government," and some have succeeded in their quest, still his "academic colleagues and friends tend to see my non-academic status as an interesting and entertaining quirk. I don't think they would consider a similar career for their students."
International Public History
With apologies to Charles Dickens, "It was the worst of times, it was the best of times." 1 It was the mid-1970s, a time of misery and disappointment for hundreds of new PhDs in history in the United States, virtually all of them groomed for college and university teaching, and competing for far too few jobs. But it was also the beginning of public history as a field of graduate history education, a development that would revitalize both the teaching and the practice of the discipline and which continues to expand its horizons to the present day. Public history came into my life in the spring of 1977 when I saw an advertisement in the AHA Newsletter announcing a search for a project coordinator who would staff a new initiative sponsored by the American Historical Association (AHA), the Organization of American Historians (OAH), and several regional and specialized history groups. 2 The aim of this new effort was to address what had come to be considered a crisis in the employment market for new PhDs in history-a crisis fueled by unprecedented growth in the number and size of history doctoral education programs created as a part of the expansion of American higher education after World War II. By the mid 1970s, however, that growth in higher education had run its course, ending with a sharp drop in the need for new faculty in history and many other fields. The National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History (NCC), as the new effort was inelegantly named, was meant not only to identify and publicize existing employment opportunities for newly minted PhD historians in and around the academy, but also to explore what were called "non-traditional" positions or "alternative" careers as well. Curious, and in need of employment myself, I sent a letter of application to AHA's executive director Mack Thompson, landed an interview, and ultimately a job-the best job I ever had because, as it turned out, I had to invent it. Other than the initial job advertisement for a Project Director of the NCC, there was little structure and budget for this position. I was provided decent but modest salary, a desk in a renovated bathroom on the top floor of the American Historical Association headquarters at 400 A Street on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and telephone numbers of several historians in the Washington area who had agreed to chair resource groups in possible employment areas like federal government, state and local government, business, and historic preservation. But what exactly was the problem? Too few jobs? Too many historians? Or historians insufficiently prepared for positions that might actually exist? A book on the shelves of the AHA library yielded a partial answer to the first two questions, and the contacts I had been given for the resource groups shed welcome light on the third. The Education of Historians in the United States, published in 1962, was the work of an AHA Commission on Graduate Education in History, established in 1958 with support from the Carnegie Commission of New York to investigate issues of supply and demand for PhD historians in the near future. Under the leadership of Tulane University historian John Snell the Graduate Education Commission undertook a detailed examination of past production of history doctorates and projected likely needs for the near future, based on population trends. The resulting report was relatively conservative. It did not, for example, advocate for new outside sources of support for graduate study in history, recommending instead that some history departments not currently offering graduate education consider doing so, and calling on existing graduate programs to modestly increase their enrollments. 3 Throughout the report, however, the focus was on the PhD as a preparation for college and university teaching, not careers in museums, corporations, archives, government agencies and elsewhere. The lesson it drew, for example, from considering an earlier era of unemployment of young historians during the Great Depression of the 1930s, was simple: "In 1939, probably no more than two-thirds of the history PhDs of 1931-35 were engaged in teaching in universities, colleges, and junior colleges but others would have been teaching if they could have found positions." 4 Clearly the historical profession was not going to be prepared for what happened in the 1970s, when there were academic job openings for scarcely more than half of new doctorates.
American Historical Review, 2014
HISTORICAL SCHOLARSHIP IS RARELY a purely intellectual exercise. Our inquiries take place within national and institutional contexts that influence careers and research agendas, thereby shaping our development in ways that encourage and enable or discourage and sometimes even prevent our research endeavors. Most scholars, we suspect, would acknowledge this general claim. Yet we rarely pause to reflect on the intimate relationship of these conditions to research itself, which is too often assumed to exist on a separate intellectual plane. Historiographical debates, when they stray beyond the internal logic of the field, generally discuss the social or political relevance of new paradigms or approaches, but rarely do they examine the extent to which our scholarship may be shaped by the institutional makeup of our profession. This is the question we explore here, from the specific perspective of European Europe-based historians of early America and the United States. 1 Viewpoint and situated experience matter in approaching this topic, and we believe that our particular situation offers some valuable insights to reflect on the larger issue of the impact that professional conditions and structures have on the history we write. The following thoughts-more tentative clues than definitive statements-arise out of shared professional experience as much as our understanding of our field. We are situated at the intersection of two sets of scholars who do not engage in routine communication: historians of the colonies and United States (mostly Americans) and our respective national peer groups of historians (rarely Americanist). 2 To become and remain successful academics within our field, we need to interact with both sets. This communication involves more than intellectual exchanges in both worlds, in the form of books and articles, conferences, and public debates. It also requires that we have a voice and are in a position to be heard: that we secure the necessary training, have access to a critical audience for our work, and are able to develop careers over 1 Throughout this essay, we use "American history" as a shorthand for the history of colonial North America and of the United States-recognizing that, even with the many redefinitions of the field, it is a professional reality that those are often institutionally bundled together.