Fall 2012 Applicant Chit Chat

[New England Nat]

i'm sure he's a cool guy, though.

Every day he wears a white dress shirt, a sweeter vest, a cortroy jacket, and those hiking pants you can unzip at the knees. He doesn't do the kind of history I do, but he makes me think outside my comfort zone and even if I disgard the thoughts it is always productive.

[virmundi]

Every day he wears a white dress shirt, a sweeter vest, a cortroy jacket, and those hiking pants you can unzip at the knees. He doesn't do the kind of history I do, but he makes me think outside my comfort zone and even if I disgard the thoughts it is always productive.

I only saw him the one time, but that was a heck of an enjoyable performance! I was fairly amazed when he more or less told Professor Naquin (albeit in reference to Thompson) that he doesn't really believe in the viability of the kind of history that she does. Ouch!

[StrangeLight]

awesome. his work seems really fascinating, which was how i found my way onto his princeton profile in the first place. one of my favourite profs wears jeans, slip-on ankle boots (winter) or sandals (summer), and a slightly different blue plaid button up shirt EVERY DAMN DAY. i think there's a causal relationship between brilliance and casual dress.

[StrangeLight]

I only saw him the one time, but that was a heck of an enjoyable performance! I was fairly amazed when he more or less told Professor Naquin (albeit in reference to Thompson) that he doesn't really believe in the viability of the kind of history that she does. Ouch!

.... is he tenured?

[crater21]

I actually totally agree that the culture at some of these history departments is very intellectually conservative (though, I'm sure there are exceptions as some of you have pointed out). This was certainly the case at my undergrad institution, where the postmodern view of history is still seen with some distaste.

[New England Nat]

.... is he tenured?

Yes, he's tenured, and yes, they love each other. The two of them bickered good naturedly all semester. But performance is a good way to describe him. The first time he sat on a table or stood on his chair I think she might have had a heart attack. She's a brilliant in her own right historian of China but very formal. He's ... not.

Hendrick Hartog is probably the most casually dressed historian in the department. So perhaps there is something to your theory.

[crater21]

I don't know if they have either, Crater! I think that what many historians have become very good at is creating a sort of straw-man of postmodernism and then explaining why they can knock it down (or at least avoid its problems) with their particular argument... I feel like I am joining in that very fine tradition with my methodological/theoretical section in my M.A. -- but it is sort of what is expected of me, so . . .

Yeah, I completely agree. Knocking down a straw man of postmodernism is exactly what you see some of these people doing, without really addressing the issues it raises.

[StrangeLight]

i have a prof that flails madly as he speaks. he's brilliant. i think there's something there...

Edited February 15, 2012 by StrangeLight

[New England Nat]

The lights in Dickinson Hall are on motion sensors and in some rooms if the class is still enough as they talk the lights will turn off. I saw one professor just casually wave her hands over her head to get them to turn back on without breaking her train of thought.

One thing I will say about my department, is that it's super dressy and formal. I've seen a couple of people go to class in a tshirt, but it's very rare. Only place I've ever been where a university sweet shirt wouldn't be appropriate to wear to class. On the other hand.... in the sublevels of Firstone Library in the middle of the summer... that's another story.

[Abbott]

Yes, he's tenured, and yes, they love each other. The two of them bickered good naturedly all semester. But performance is a good way to describe him. The first time he sat on a table or stood on his chair I think she might have had a heart attack. She's a brilliant in her own right historian of China but very formal. He's ... not.

Hendrick Hartog is probably the most casually dressed historian in the department. So perhaps there is something to your theory.

I am enamored of Dirk Hartog. Pigs and Positivism warms the cockles of my intellect.

[New England Nat]

I am enamored of Dirk Hartog. Pigs and Positivism warms the cockles of my intellect.

Dirk puts up with a lot of pig jokes to this day. And I love that paper too.

[CPetersen]

So to get back to the original intent of this thread ("chit chat") a bit, what is everyone planning to do this summer? Traveling? Trying to prepare in some way for their first semester of a PhD? Language study? Vacation? A combination of these?

I'm hoping to intern with a yet-to-be decided NGO in Europe, plus do some grammar review for language exams. Some of my friends want to travel around Spain in May as well, so that might happen.

I think this summer I'm going to be pretty busy trying to get caught up on this whole 'history' thing, as I've never taken an American history class in my life, and I only took one history class at all in college (which was seven years ago). My background is in literature and philosophy — which I'm told is not that unusual for people in intellectual history, but, well, I'm going to be spending the next five years or so hanging out with historians, so I don't want to embarrass myself too badly. Any ideas for where I should start, assuming that I mostly just want to not sound too much like an idiot when I walk into my first history seminar? I've read plenty of people in my field (William Cronon, Richard White, Patty Limerick, Kerwin Klein, Donald Worster, John Mack Faragher, et al), but beyond that I'm kind of an historical idiot...

[pudewen]

damn... are any of you being taught that postmodernism was a much-needed and necessary intervention into our field?! where are all the cultural turn historians at your schools? i mean, there are plenty of objectivist professors that subscribe to the harvard-princeton echo chamber at my program, i just don't talk to them. hahahaahah.

I think even at my "intellectually conservative" anti-postmodern institution, it's basically undisputed that the cultural turn was necessary (particularly as a reaction to a social history that was far too willing to accept social scientific data as objective fact and failed to interrogate the processes by which the raw data of social history was originally produced) and that postmodernism forms a powerful critique of objectivity that we all have to deal with. And I think (contrary to what crater says) that we've all internalized a lot of the necessary lessons of postmodernism as Strangelight described them. The reason that I (and a lot of historians both here and elsewhere) see ourselves as opposed to postmodern history is that at this point most historians who present their work in explicit relation to postmodern theory go far beyond those valuable lessons. In particular, I think of people writing in the tradition of the linguistic turn have denied not merely the historian's ability to be objective but the very notion that there is a physical reality that is important. When I read people like Lydia Liu (a practitioner of this particular sort of work in my field) claiming that the violence of "indexicality" is more terrifying than actual physical violence, I find it hard to take their work very seriously. It seems in the end like a means to take all of the moral force out of history; slavery becomes nothing more than the language used to construct and support it, rather than the violence and abuse that was necessary to maintain it, imperialism becomes discourse, rather than actual military occupation, etc. Obviously, historians' increasing ability to recognize the power of language and discourse is important, but it can't be our only focus. And this is a real problem in the work of theorists who historians take very seriously; Foucault, for instance, in Discipline and Punish basically ignores that the modern prison only functions through the threat of real, physical violence against inmates who don't comply.

Anyway, the basic point is that postmodernism changed the profession for the good, but many of those still trying to push history further in that direction have taken it too far.

[StrangeLight]

i agree in principle with everything you're saying, pudewen, except this part:

Foucault, for instance, in Discipline and Punish basically ignores that the modern prison only functions through the threat of real, physical violence against inmates who don't comply.

i think foucault's discussion of the body in relation to power-knowledge left plenty of room for physical violence in the panopticon. his point, as i read it, was that constant surveillance kept the threat of violence alive at every moment for every transgression, which is why it didn't actually need to be exerted. but in any case, i find foucault an invaluable theorist whose own historical case study was so sloppily argued that even some of his biggest champions wouldn't defend the method. even then, i have yet to read a cultural or intellectual history published in the last decade that didn't use discourse analysis (granted, this is what i'm being assigned, not necessarily representative of the work being done in my field). i don't think we can do gender or sexuality without engaging with the concept of bodies that he (and those that wrote in response to him) built. and i don't think we can do good intellectual history without power-knowledge.

one of the things i like about foucault (in addition to him being an unapologetic asshole) is, when he was challenged with theoretical inconsistencies between one work and the next, his answer was that theory is a toolbox, and you take out the best tool to tackle a given issue. need a hammer, grab a hammer, need a wrench, grab a wrench. i think that the scholars that have seen postmodern theory as an important tool among many others (structuralism, marxism, etc.), to be used when the case at hand needs that type of engagement, are the ones that have been the most successful with it. the ones that go down the rabbit hole, as you described,.... yeah, i'm not defending that. but i'm actually more alarmed that texts on theory, historiography, and method from the 1980s and mid-1990s are being taught as current (or, at least, absorbed as current, even if that's not the instructor's intention) than i am that some po-mo historians have gone off the deep end.

i actually think that the scholars who refuse to engage postmodernism when it makes sense for their project are more dangerous/problematic than the postmodern historians that are handcuffed by the linguistic implications of their theory.

[taybaxter]

So it begins again. Congrats to the Rutgers admit!

[cooperstreet]

So to get back to the original intent of this thread ("chit chat") a bit, what is everyone planning to do this summer? Traveling? Trying to prepare in some way for their first semester of a PhD? Language study? Vacation? A combination of these?

I'm hoping to intern with a yet-to-be decided NGO in Europe, plus do some grammar review for language exams. Some of my friends want to travel around Spain in May as well, so that might happen.

Middlebury!

[uhohlemonster]

Who heard from Rutgers and how?

[cooperstreet]

Who heard from Rutgers and how?

Not me! But this question needs answered. My application status reads 'no decision' still.

[uhohlemonster]

Mine too!

[2012hopeful]

I posted the Rutgers admit for a friend. Apparently the website status hasn't changed. Waiting for word from Rutgers myself!!!

[Kelkel]

Thanks for the reading suggestions guys!!

[cooperstreet]

I posted the Rutgers admit for a friend. Apparently the website status hasn't changed. Waiting for word from Rutgers myself!!!

How did they find out? Was it an email from a POI or an official one from the DGS? What's their field? Thanks!

[2012hopeful]

How did they find out? Was it an email from a POI or an official one from the DGS? What's their field? Thanks!

Email. Not sure. Americanist. Hopefully we're all about to hear some good news!

[uhohlemonster]

I'm honestly freaking out about Rutgers. I know that the chances are soooo slim and it kills me because the perfect POI for me is there! Ah! She said she'd advocate for me... but... mmm... heart is beating real fast if today is the day.

[cooperstreet]

Another rutgers one is up!