Your First Book

[Emerson]

If you're like me, you are anxious to come up with stuff to take you mind off of pending decisions. (Though I am not one of them, I'm sure Wisconsin applicants are at their wit's ends by now.) Even better, positive thinking always makes us feel good about ourselves, even if it makes the impending crash more painful.

Thus, I propose a fun distraction: After you are accepted at your dream school, work with your ideal advisor, and land a tenure-track position (or at least a serviceable post-doc), what will be the title and thesis of your first book?

(Necessary footnote before everyone jumps on me: yes, I know the statistics that very few--if any--of us will land in such an ideal situation. And yes, I am aware that it is almost certain that we will change once you make it through comps and progress in your dissertation. This is just a fun exercise in imagination, ok?)

Mine will be, (very) tentatively titled, "Romantic Democracy: Idealist Thought and the Democratic Tradition in Antebellum America." A very crude, brief, and simplistic summury is thus: It will explore the influence of British Romanticism and German Idealism during the middle nineteenth century America, and how it effected political thought and democratic discourse. While common sensism--especially biblical common sensism--had been the primary epistemology in the early republic, thinkers in antebellum America. Most especially, strains of neoplatonic thought that had heretofore remained latent began to appear more prominents, starting in religion but expanding into the political sphere. While the Transcendentalists are the most prominent example, the American adaptations of Romantic and idealist thought spread broadly, especially as empiricism began to fall apart as the rhetorical battles over slavery required new epistemological foundations.

What about everyone else?

[kotov]

I want to analyze the chain of command at Bogdanovka concentration camp in present-day Moldova, which was controlled by the Romanians. I want to see how far up the power structure in Romania the management of the camp went, and what role Antonescu played and how much he knew about the camp and what happened there. Kind of a take in the intentionalism vs. formalism debate, but in a Romanian context.

[natsteel]

I imagine that, if all goes according to plan, that my first book would be a reworking of my dissertation. However, I do think up "vanity" projects... the kind you couldn't do until you have tenure and can write about whatever you want... I'd like to do a popular biography of William Livingston. And, I think I'd also like to write a book of essays on American roots music (blues, folk, country, bluegrass, and jazz).

[qbtacoma]

As far as the content of my first book - psh, no idea. Like nasteel, I have a crazy vanity idea (which I will probably never do) on the history of property in the US. I like to muse about this because the topic has huge scope and would be a fascinating way to draw connections across all kinds of subfields. You have property as important to citizenship and politics (of course), and as central to philosophies such as libertarianism, etc. International relations from a perspective of land claims with Britain/Canada and Spain/Mexico, and later during nineteenth century conquest of the frontier and imperialism in the Pacific Rim/Latin America, could have a lot of fruitful discussion. Changing ideas of property put alongside changing relations with the many First Nations would be absolutely riveting. Women's property, women and children as property, women's rights and economic well-being, and describing women's lives through their property is another interesting area (I just read Ulrich's Good Wives, which I highly recommend ). Defining African Americans as persons/property is an obvious area. Legal property ownership and various moments in time when squatting is common/acceptable and the tensions between government crackdown and individual or community property control. Immigration and property ownership, especially in the west, and how that affects the incorporation of immigrants into the common national identity. Etc and so on and so forth.

It would be a big book.

Edited February 1, 2011 by qbtacoma

[history_PhD]

As far as vanity projects go, views on Black Codes in the South restricting gun ownership in light of the Second Amendment; given the emphasis on this amendment now, it would be interesting to see if 19th c. individuals cited it. Also perhaps entrepreneurism during the Great Depression; we have a tendency to focus either on Wall Street or FDR's projects during the Depression, but I would think that there is some middle class scholarship that is just waiting to be done!

For the book-- my dissertation, which will potentially be on racial and possibly gender aspects of Reconstruction.

[StrangeLight]

at this point, i'd just like to finish my MA thesis. never mind my dissertation, never mind my first book, never mind any other book. but... since i don't want to read EP thompson anymore...

the dissertation will be looking at land and resource access in two caribbean central american cities and their surrounding rural areas from the 1930s to 2010. it will be a structural political/social/legal history that examines the construction and employment of culture to navigate access to land and resources (and in a very material sense, to power). i won't say more 'cause... i'm actually gonna write this. by the time i (try to) turn this into a book, i might even add a third or fourth city.

vanity project #1 is a social and environmental history of cocaine. from its growth to refinement to transportation to usage. no idea on the parameters of this one, but i'd probably start in the late 19th century. and i'd like to extend it beyond the manufacture and trafficking to do a social history of drug use and abuse. as long as we're assuming we'll be big shots with vanity projects and not lowly adjuncts or drop-outs (see the "officially grads" subforum for the litany of "i want to quit" threads), i'd like to write the sweetness and power of cocaine. lots of people talk about bits and pieces (andean coca usage, colombian cocaine-trafficking and violence, cocaine and crack usage in american cities, etc.) but as far as i know, no one has tried to put it all together. someone will probably beat me to this.

vanity project #2: history of nicaraguan boxing. look at how it unified the country, functioned under a discourse of mestizaje, connected nicaragua transnationally, served as an opiate for the masses under the somoza regime, blah blah. most of the stuff i really want to do combines environmental history, cultural history, and social history, with a bit of transnational/atlantic/migration theory thrown in. this project on boxing doesn't really do that at all, so at best it'll probably end up as an out of place journal article some day.

vanity project #3: a project on water privatization in latin america. this is a big'un. good work has already been done on cochabamba, not sure what i'd add to it, but i have a couple decades to figure that out.

[qbtacoma]

vanity project #1 is a social and environmental history of cocaine. from its growth to refinement to transportation to usage. no idea on the parameters of this one, but i'd probably start in the late 19th century. and i'd like to extend it beyond the manufacture and trafficking to do a social history of drug use and abuse. as long as we're assuming we'll be big shots with vanity projects and not lowly adjuncts or drop-outs (see the "officially grads" subforum for the litany of "i want to quit" threads), i'd like to write the sweetness and power of cocaine. lots of people talk about bits and pieces (andean coca usage, colombian cocaine-trafficking and violence, cocaine and crack usage in american cities, etc.) but as far as i know, no one has tried to put it all together. someone will probably beat me to this.

Oooh! I want to read this right now!

[natsteel]

I'd be interested in both StrangeLight and qbtacoma's projects...

@history_PhD Writing on the 2nd amendment can get a bit dicey, if not downright dangerous. Do you remember Michael Bellesiles??

[rsldonk]

I want to do a biography of John Moses Browning, the American gun inventor. I am not really good with titles, so I'll let my editor deal with that.

Once I get tenure, I want to do a history about the Equal Rights Amendment and the religious backlash and campaign against it. Mostly I want to expose the Mormons' role in it. My basic thesis would be that their role in Proposition 8 in California came about because of how the ERA fight turned out and that they experienced almost no long-term consquences for what they did with the ERA, and believed that Prop 8 would be the same thing.

[history_PhD]

I'd be interested in both StrangeLight and qbtacoma's projects...

@history_PhD Writing on the 2nd amendment can get a bit dicey, if not downright dangerous. Do you remember Michael Bellesiles??

I do remember this story; of course, his scholarship was at fault. He made up records! His is a cautionary tale in the perils of falsifying/ conjuring evidence.

[qbtacoma]

I do remember this story; of course, his scholarship was at fault. He made up records! His is a cautionary tale in the perils of falsifying/ conjuring evidence.

In high school my history teacher brought him up and we had a good class conversation about research ethics, etc. The most interesting part of the discussion was about whether librarians should buy the book at all - whether the importance of the scandal itself was enough to offset the author's profit/the unwitting trust of the library patrons. We decided that the best option was that they should keep it available for specific requests but off the shelf so uninformed patrons wouldn't think it was a factual account. Another solution would be a note on the scandal inserted into the book, I suppose.

[diogenes]

Oooh! I want to read this right now!

Strangelight, have you read Paul Gootenberg's work, especially "Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug"? Sounds pretty similar to what you're talking about.

[StrangeLight]

Strangelight, have you read Paul Gootenberg's work, especially "Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug"? Sounds pretty similar to what you're talking about.

i'm aware of it but haven't read it yet. i've read some of his articles and they're great. for this book, my understanding is that, in his commodity history, he focuses more on production than consumption. most commodity histories do that, actually. the bulk of his discussion stops around 1975, too, so (i think?) he misses crack. it's on my summer reading list for sure. i'll be interested to see how much of it is economic or political history and how much is social, cultural, or environmental.

[kungfuzi]

Possibly something on transnational anti-communism during the Cold War, centered on the World Anti-Communist League; I'm hoping to shift the focus away from the US government's actions and examine the agency of non-state actors and other, non-Western governments in tackling Communism. (This was what I talked about in my personal statement.)

Edited February 14, 2011 by kungfuzi