Readability

[khigh]

1 minute ago, Calgacus said:

Just know that while you may want to specialize in early modern Dutch history, you will need to be well-versed in all aspects of early modern Europe in a doctoral program. And you may even want to be aware of what the early modern era looked like in other parts of the world if you want to get an academic job.

It would be a comparative program- Mediterranean is the main focus of the cohort now, so I'm thinking about Dutch Republic-papal states.  I took 9 classes on various parts of early modern history in undergrad, mostly Europe focused, but some Asia and North Africa, nothing US (only took the required 3 classes, pre-1865, post, and one other; did Jacksonian Era, Women in Politics, and 1917-1945). 

[dr. t]

19 hours ago, khigh said:

I have read both of those, but they are typical of the field- economic histories.  

Hal would (and does) say that he wrote a history that happens to involve economies, and I think Lindemann would say much the same. But I would certainly pay attention to such trends, particularly, in light of @Calgacus' comment, in the ways in which both Lindemann and Cook's books reach outside of the Low Countries. Jobs are scarce, Early Modern Europe isn't exactly a growth industry even in the terrible context of academia, and I can't remember the last time I saw a Job posting for a Dutch historian. But rather than thinking of this as a temporary abnormality, consider why this is. If you want to "promote" the subfield, are there historiographic reasons why no one is currently interested in it?

[khigh]

1 minute ago, telkanuru said:

Hal would (and does) say that he wrote a history that happens to involve economies, and I think Lindemann would say much the same. But I would certainly pay attention to such trends, particularly, in light of @Calgacus' comment, in the ways in which both Lindemann and Cook's books reach outside of the Low Countries. Jobs are scarce, Early Modern Europe isn't exactly a growth industry even in the terrible context of academia, and I can't remember the last time I saw a Job posting for a Dutch historian. But rather than thinking of this as a temporary abnormality, consider why this is. If you want to "promote" the subfield, are there historiographic reasons why no one is currently interested in it?

The Dutch government itself is having a hard time promoting Dutch history/language/culture.  English history, English language, English culture, etc is and has been the norm in the Netherlands for a few decades.  They have strong French and German influences and a Spanish background (invasions and occupations of a small region does that sometimes). There has been a resurgence of the subfield, however, in the Netherlands from international applicants for two reasons- the government will fast track your citizenship/guarantee income for a specific period of time and funding is in the archives. It's not a popular field in the USA.

There are two post-grad tracks I would love to do, either teach at a small state school like St. Cloud State or Minnesota State Mankato OR move to the Netherlands and work in the archives (I do have a few years experience in museums, archives, and archaeology). I would add a second public history masters to the PhD if I did the second track through the Vrij Universeteit Amsterdam or Universeteit van Amsterdam because of their strong connections to the city archives and the Rijksmuseum.  I applied to and was accepted to both last year before I decided on a gap year and I have stayed in contact with both programs.

[hats]

One of my favorite articles in the "how did I stumble into reading this?" category is John Wills Jr's "Author, Publisher, Patron, World: A Case Study of Old Books and Global Consciousness." He's a scholar of China who's worked on the Dutch East India Company; the article considers how some early modern Dutch travel literature imagined the rest of the world. It's a stellar example of the sort of thing people are asking you about when they ask you to consider a) how the Dutch Republic existed in the wider world and b ) what was going on in the early modern world beyond Europe. One prevailing emphasis in humanities-and-anthropology academia these days is that Europe didn't exist, and has never existed, in isolation. So it's difficult for many Europeanists to succeed in those fields without considering emerging forces/processes of globalization. Being a scholar of the Netherlands today doesn't mean you'll have to know a lot about Dutch colonialism in all of early New York, South Africa, Indonesia, etc., or, for the Mediterranean, about the interactions the Dutch may have had with all of the Ottomans, the Berber states, and/or Egypt. It will help you on the job market and in the process of promoting Dutch historiography, however, if you have a serious interest in at least one of those topics. Not necessarily a publishing interest, but a reading and keeping up with the scholarship so you can ask intelligent questions at conferences interest. You mention Afrikaans, so I wonder if you have a solid foundation for such a minor field already. (In the sense of college majors and minors.)

In the context of the trading wars between the Portuguese, Dutch, and British in the 1660s and 1670s:

Meanwhile the adversary of God and man,

Satan with thoughts inflamed of highest design,

Puts on swift wings, and toward the gates of hell

Explores his solitary flight; sometimes

He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left,

Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars

Up to the fiery concave towering high.

As when far off at sea a fleet descried

Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds

Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles

Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring

Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood

Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape

Ply stemming nightly toward the pole. So seemed

Far off the flying fiend.

—Paradise Lost, 2.629–43

[khigh]

2 hours ago, hats said:

One of my favorite articles in the "how did I stumble into reading this?" category is John Wills Jr's "Author, Publisher, Patron, World: A Case Study of Old Books and Global Consciousness." He's a scholar of China who's worked on the Dutch East India Company; the article considers how some early modern Dutch travel literature imagined the rest of the world. It's a stellar example of the sort of thing people are asking you about when they ask you to consider a) how the Dutch Republic existed in the wider world and b ) what was going on in the early modern world beyond Europe. One prevailing emphasis in humanities-and-anthropology academia these days is that Europe didn't exist, and has never existed, in isolation. So it's difficult for many Europeanists to succeed in those fields without considering emerging forces/processes of globalization. Being a scholar of the Netherlands today doesn't mean you'll have to know a lot about Dutch colonialism in all of early New York, South Africa, Indonesia, etc., or, for the Mediterranean, about the interactions the Dutch may have had with all of the Ottomans, the Berber states, and/or Egypt. It will help you on the job market and in the process of promoting Dutch historiography, however, if you have a serious interest in at least one of those topics. Not necessarily a publishing interest, but a reading and keeping up with the scholarship so you can ask intelligent questions at conferences interest. You mention Afrikaans, so I wonder if you have a solid foundation for such a minor field already. (In the sense of college majors and minors.)

In the context of the trading wars between the Portuguese, Dutch, and British in the 1660s and 1670s:

Meanwhile the adversary of God and man,

Satan with thoughts inflamed of highest design,

Puts on swift wings, and toward the gates of hell

Explores his solitary flight; sometimes

He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left,

Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars

Up to the fiery concave towering high.

As when far off at sea a fleet descried

Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds

Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles

Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring

Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood

Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape

Ply stemming nightly toward the pole. So seemed

Far off the flying fiend.

—Paradise Lost, 2.629–43

Luckily, my sophomore seminar class was focused on New Netherland, so i got travel journals that way.  Mediterranean history, I concentrated on De leven van Admiraal de Ruiter, which was a travel journal and what got me interested in the Mediterranean. His descriptions of the people he encountered was the focus of that paper. I also did some work with travel documents of a Dutch merchant in Japan for French Revolution. A little explanation on that one because it may sound weird, but for that class, the prof wanted to try something new, so our paper was cited historical fiction- a memoir chapter of someone experiencing the Revolution from the outside or from the inside not in a "bougie" capacity.  My memoir was a Dutch silk merchant living with his son in Paris and how the revolution affected their trade.  His son got guillotined because it added depth.  The French Revolution is actually why the Dutch lost exclusive trading rights with Japan.

  I was looking at doing South Africa as a minor field because of the Afrikaans and because it does add depth.  I also love reading about the Dutch Antilles and colonialism off the coast of South America, but I don't have any background languages from the region and would probably need Spanish or Portuguese.  I love how the Dutch would capture ships leaving the mainland and hold them for ransom.  And then there is the Dutch/British technology wars over the processing of herring on ships versus needing to take them into port.  And don't get me started on the East Indies spice trade and the Anglo-Dutch Wars.  Indonesia supremacy for New Netherland was an amazing trade.

And, I could go on and on about Dutch travel.  It's my true passion.

I'm going to have to look up that article. It sounds very interesting and there is never enough to read. 

Edited December 15, 2017 by khigh

[dr. t]

21 hours ago, khigh said:

The Dutch government itself is having a hard time promoting Dutch history/language/culture.  English history, English language, English culture, etc is and has been the norm in the Netherlands for a few decades.  They have strong French and German influences and a Spanish background (invasions and occupations of a small region does that sometimes). There has been a resurgence of the subfield, however, in the Netherlands from international applicants for two reasons- the government will fast track your citizenship/guarantee income for a specific period of time and funding is in the archives. It's not a popular field in the USA.

If Dutch citizenship or a public history job is what you want from a PhD, then OK - nolo contendere. For the latter, though, you should really start thinking about publicly-accessible prose styles.

Contemporary academic work has a purpose. It's no longer considered sufficient, either in the US or Europe, to simply know something, to merely accumulate facts as a self-evident good. As I keep repeating, much to my students' despair, yeah, that's true; so what? And that requires engagement beyond the narrow confines of "Dutch history", at least as you've constructed it.

[dr. t]

Also, re: musing styles, I would take a look at the work of Paul Fussell, particularly The Great War and Modern Memory. Fussell is British-trained, and definitely muses (his work is more literary criticism than history than l'histoire proprement dite), but his musing is concise, and always drives to a point.

For example, Fussell argues that trench warfare killed the romantic epic; the reality of trench warfare would not allow it. There was a collision “…between events and the public language used for over a century to celebrate [them]… Logically, there is no reason why the English language could not perfectly well render the actuality of trench warfare: it is rich in terms like blood, terror, agony, madness, shit, cruelty, murder, sell-out, pain and hoax, as well as phrases like legs blown off, intestines gushing out over his hands, screaming all night, bleeding to death from the rectum, and the like. Logically, one supposes, there’s no reason why a language devised by man should be inadequate to describe any of man’s works.” 

Compare this to what you've written, and see how Fussell's "musing" and bloody digression only serves to further the precise point he wants to make, that the First World War caused a crisis of literary expression, a crisis that writing about warfare had hitherto not encountered. This musing drives the point home more quickly and concisely than any long, dusty academic exegesis could.

Edited December 16, 2017 by telkanuru

[khigh]

5 minutes ago, telkanuru said:

If Dutch citizenship or a public history job is what you want from a PhD, then OK - nolo contendere. For the latter, though, you should really start thinking about publicly-accessible prose styles.

Contemporary academic work has a purpose. It's no longer considered sufficient, either in the US or Europe, to simply know something, to merely accumulate facts as a self-evident good. As I keep repeating, much to my students' despair, yeah, that's true; so what? And that requires engagement beyond the narrow confines of "Dutch history", at least as you've constructed it.

I worked in a children’s history museum as a facilitator for a few years (and volunteered in the archives and archaeology) and love it. The Rijksmuseum would be my dream job. Leiden would be choice #2 if I can talk the boyfriend into another European move. 

I am going to work on my prose. I want to improve. I’m thinking about applying to Columbia’s summer program for this year, but that is more languages and paleography with some writing. I would have the boyfriend help with the prose because he has his PhD, but his writing is very similar to mine. 

[khigh]

2 minutes ago, telkanuru said:

Also, re: musing styles, I would take a look at the work of Paul Fussell, particularly The Great War and Modern Memory. Fussell is British-trained, and definitely muses (his work is more literary criticism than history than l'histoire proprement dite), but his musing is concise, and always drives to a point.

For example, Fussell argues that trench warfare killed the romantic epic; the reality of trench warfare would not allow it. There was a collision “…between events and the public language used for over a century to celebrate [them]… Logically, there is no reason why the English language could not perfectly well render the actuality of trench warfare: it is rich in terms like blood, terror, agony, madness, shit, cruelty, murder, sell-out, pain and hoax, as well as phrases like legs blown off, intestines gushing out over his hands, screaming all night, bleeding to death from the rectum, and the like. Logically, one supposes, there’s no reason why a language devised by man should be inadequate to describe any of man’s works.” 

Compare this to what you've written, and see how Fussell's "musing" and bloody digression only serves to further the precise point he wants to make, that the First World War caused a crisis of literary expression, a crisis that writing about warfare had hitherto not encountered. This musing drives the point home more quickly and concisely than any long, dusty academic exegesis could.

I will definitely check it out. Thank you again for your suggestions. 

[dr. t]

33 minutes ago, khigh said:

I would have the boyfriend help with the prose because he has his PhD, but his writing is very similar to mine. 

If you want to go the PH route, look more towards journalism than academics for inspiration (Fussell, for example, was originally training for journalism).

Edited December 16, 2017 by telkanuru

[khigh]

1 hour ago, telkanuru said:

If you want to go the PH route, look more towards journalism than academics for inspiration (Fussell, for example, was originally training for journalism).

I'll have to look into that.  I'm rereading a few articles now and trying to catch up with what was released in the past few months in my semi-hidden other obsession- baseball history and sabermetrics. That's actually what my senior paper was on, but we were relegated to studying the American West and that's the only topic that could hold my interest.