dr. t

...whelp. I don't know what reality you live in, but it's not one I recognize.

An aside: this would seem to fall into the category of social, economic, and political history.

No (few) academics are interested in military history. If historians paid more attention to what society wants, we'd be the History Channel. If we're not talking about methodologies, what are we talking about? The fact that people remembered that there were also women? What subjects have been "black-listed"? I'm certainly not taking time to read about the First World War, but I can say that if you've actually studied medieval historiography, you'd know that the greats from the 20s and 30s---Kantorowicz, Grundmann, Tellenbach, Pirenne---are still quite relevant to modern approaches. Moreover, along with those stodgy 1960s conservatives---Southern, Strayer, Brundage---they form the starting point for modern study. They're not disregarded, they're incorporated, refined, and challenged. So, I ask again, who exactly are we talking about?

Who exactly are we talking about?

Honestly? Because this whole thread seems to be about how you're grumpy that no one's interested in discussing the relative advantages of 1940s German field artillery any more. What exactly are these "old fashioned" historical methodologies that we have disregarded?

ಠ_ಠ

As XKCD put it:

I am not really sure the problem you posit is real so much as it is made up.

Yes, the social historians of the '20s and '30s were very good, particularly the German-trained ones. The Annales school has its problems, but it also provides valuable perspectives on the past. The methodologies and approaches of both are still in common use today. However, none of these things are "military history" as traditionally defined, so I'm wondering what the relevance of this is to our discussion.

Assuming this were true, why is it a problem?

Well, TMP defined it as an "example of non-operational military history", thus my question.

I blogged about this a while back. This is the relevant part of my answer: Your primary and secondary education probably taught you that history is about facts, and from the very beginning you were forced to memorize facts. “The American Revolution began in 1776,” things like that. Dates, information. Everything you learned provided a simple, neat answer in factual form, with little ambiguity. This is not history. Facts are the building blocks of history, its skeleton, but they do not give it life or purpose, because the practice of history is the practice of understanding someone who is not you. It is is an act of sympathy, of apology in the most fundamental and original meaning of both words. Correctly done, it is the full and unbiased understanding of the people of the past as they were and as they saw themselves. We are, to borrow the brilliant phrase of a terrible bigot, speakers for the dead, and our essential purpose is to cultivate a mental approach to those who are not ourselves which seeks to understand, rather than to categorize and judge. This is not the natural state of the human mind. To quote the late, great David Foster Wallace: The promotion of and indoctrination in a historical mode of thought is thus the indoctrination in a way of approaching the world that attempts to separate us from that basic impulse to understand the world based on our own preconceptions. Teaching this is what historians do. All that stuff with dates is just a side hobby. I study history so that I may teach this properly, both to undergraduates and to those who read my formal work.

Just not necessarily in the positive sense

Is this not a social or institutional history which has chosen the military as part of its subject? I feel like this is distinct from "military history" as it is traditionally understood.

First, "traditional" military history has fallen out of favor for several reasons, but the foremost among these is that the discipline of history has evolved. The type of history which recounts equipment types or the details of battles is much closer to antiquarianism---mere fact collecting---than it is to the modern practice of history. The useful pieces of the military subfield have been rolled into the analytical frameworks of social or cultural historians. To put it bluntly, military history properly speaking (as opposed to history which involves militaries) is dying because it is no longer considered interesting or useful. Second, different disciplines approach the same question in different ways. Let's take the example of bear hunting. A study of bear hunting could indeed by carried out in environmental sciences, but the methodology, approach, and conclusions would be fundamentally different than if the same study was conducted in a history department. If it's a historical study of bear hunting, it falls under the auspices of history. Similarly, a political scientist would write a book about Thomas Aquinas that would be very different from a theologian's, and a historian would write one which was different from both the political scientist's and theologian's. Third, by extension of the first two points, the "non-traditional" subfields in which we look at historical questions through the lenses of gender, sexuality, environment, or race have become popular because they provide useful perspectives on those questions. They improve our understanding of the past, and thus we use them. Military history does not, and thus we don't.

Sermons, monastic charters, devotional texts, that sort of thing. Definitely more towards formal book hands, but those can get kind of messy, too. I'm a pretty good "practical" paleographer, but I want some experience being able to discern different hands and a better background in the details of manuscript production.

Hm, I would try again. In my brief experience, he's a pretty friendly guy.

Here's another: http://www.bu.edu/history/faculty/phillip-haberkern/

Also, to save you the sticker shock now, most places will require 1st, last, and a security deposit (1 month's rent). Many others will have an agent fee in addition (1 month's rent). For those keeping score at home, that's 4 months rent up front just to move in.

Do you have a POI or other contact you could email?

Did anyone apply to the PIMS paleography certificate program this year ( http://www.pims.ca/academics/diploma-programme-in-manuscript-studies) ? Have you heard back?

I also made sure that my writing sample showed that I was proficient in reading Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and German, and that I had training in paleography (yes, I'm showing off ). I think it works much better than simply having it in your course record, particularly since I've come across several people who have really good language (specifically Latin) creds on paper but end up flummoxed quite quickly when put on the spot. Also, the UToronto Latin exams are something of a standard yardstick for the discipline, so I've found it helpful to have looked at them when trying to convey my skill to others, eg. "I could easily pass the Toronto level 1 test, but I need a firmer grasp on vocabulary before I could pass the level 2."

I got the same offer during my last application cycle, and I probably would have taken it had HDS not given me a 3/4 scholarship which meant that I didn't have to leave my wife in Boston for a year two months after our wedding. I did go to the visiting weekend (you should, too!), and found both the students and professors were really positive on the program. The history program in particular seems to like taking those who excel in MAPSS into the PhD. MAPSS is certainly a cash cow, but not nearly to the same degree as many other MA programs (or even the MAPH at Chicago). The partial scholarship is also a really good sign! Be aware that they'll want you to take a gap year before applying to PhDs if you want letters from UChicago profs.

My ideal course has several iterations because it revolves around texts, and each one would almost certainly take a semester to do correctly. It would ideally be a seminar in the classic mode, with several students slowly picking apart a short (ca. 10 pages) Latin text both historically and philologically, and pulling in readings to better situate it historically. Some texts I might center the course around would include: Pope Urban IV's rule for St. Claire The hagiography of Christina the Astonishing Several short papal texts - the Dictatus papae, the bulls Ad abolendam and Omnes utriusque sexus, etc. Some selections from the letters of Bernard of Clarivaux

Just got my formal tOSU acceptance letter from the graduate chair, with details about visiting weekend. Funding info to follow. Website still shows application as "pending".