Good news for reenactors

…who are worried about getting their butternut trousers sued off.  The Living History Association is now offering a liability insurance program.

‘Cause even if you have insurance, you could always use a little more.  Am I right or am I right or am I right?  Right?  Right?  Right?

Victor Davis Hanson: “Not all history is equal.”

I just ran across this interview with Victor Davis Hanson, who’s one of my favorite public intellectuals.  I had the honor of meeting him when he spoke at UT a few years ago.  Most of the interview deals with modern-day foreign policy, but check out Hanson’s remarks about the importance of military history.  Here are the highlights:

“Not all history is equal. If people are willing to wage their entire existence in a few brief seconds, those moments are more worthy of commemoration and study than others.…[W]hether we like it or not, strange things happen during wars that don’t transpire as often in peace time.”

When asked about Peace Studies departments’ attitudes about military history, Hanson takes the words right out of my mouth with an analogy that I’ve used myself:

“They think we feel that war brings out the best in people, that war is a ritual that’s necessary for society, or that war is a macabre interest like video games are for some people. It’s like assuming an oncologist must like cancer, because why else would he study cancer?”

Precisely.  In fact, the military historian should be less prone to glory in war than anyone but the soldier, since he knows what war is and what it can do.  Those who accuse military historians of glorying in war are badly in error.  You don’t study war because you like it; you study it because it’s important, instructive, and (by all indications) here to stay.

Doing write-ups on the sites

…that I’ve visited here in western Illinois has taken longer than anticipated.  There are some delicate and complicated issues involved with the interpretation at these places, and it’s taken me a while to formulate a response to them.  You’ll see what I mean when I get the posts up.

I’m headed home tomorrow, so it looks like I won’t get them done until I’m back.  Until then, check out this item I spotted in the paper this morning.  It’s pretty interesting.

We’re off to the Midwest

Starting tomorrow, a longtime friend of mine is heading up to Quincy, Illinois for a week of software training, as required by his employer.  I’m not sure why he has to make a ten-hour drive to Quincy to do this.  Nor am I sure why it takes five days to learn how to use this software.  It’s a little unnerving. 

If you ask me, people should steer clear of any software that requires forty hours of training to use.  That’s the kind of software that’s too powerful for its own good.  It’s the kind that might eventually become self-aware and try to eliminate mankind by triggering an all-out nuclear exchange, hunting down the survivors with an army of ruthless machines, and sending cybernetic assassins back through time to take out the future leaders of the human resistance.

Anyway, since it’s a long drive, he asked me to ride up there and back with him, and being the compassionate sort of chum that I am, I said yes.  The problem is that between the riding up and the riding back, I’ve got five days to kill.

Fortunately, there are some nifty things to do in the vicinity, so this will give me the chance to do some historical sightseeing.  Quincy’s got quite a slate of museums and historic buildings.  The important early Mormon settlement of Nauvoo is less than fifty miles away, and it’s loaded with what look like some really fantastic sites. 

Basically, then, we’re looking at any number of possibilities resulting from this software training thing.  The best case scenario is that I’ll be able to use the hotel’s Wi-Fi to post a few museum/historic site reviews and explore some interesting aspects of Midwestern history.

The worst case scenario is something like this:

The suspense is killing me.  Stick around to see what happens.

They’re vérité documentaries, you Philistine

The New York Times interviewed Nancy Dubuc, president and general manger of the History Channel, for a piece on their new “America” mini-series.  The conversation turned to the torrent of non-historical programming that has inundated the network.  Here’s an excerpt:

“The History channel under Ms. Dubuc has expanded what qualifies for its programming lineup, incorporating popular series like ‘Pawn Stars’ and ‘Ice Road Truckers.’ Ms. Dubuc, apologizing for being ‘testy,’ dismissed criticisms that the new shows take History away from its core mission, saying they aren’t reality shows but ‘vérité documentaries on people doing history today.’”

Oh, vérité documentaries on people doing history today.  Now I get it.

That reminds me, there’s a penetrating exposé on age disparities in American relationships that I need to TiVo.

Talking heads needed–apply within

Despite being buried in work, I managed to catch part of The History Channel’s new mini-series.  “America: The Story of Us” is a panorama of four centuries of the nation’s past, the first time in decades that such a project has been undertaken for television.

It’s a very worthy and ambitious effort, and I’m glad to see the network tackling something like this.  As I’ve said before, The History Channel can turn out some pretty good original programming when they tear themselves away from aliens, secret societies, and lumberjacks.

One thing that puzzled me, though, was the conspicuous absence of historians among the on-air commentators.  For the segment on the origins of the Revolution, the talking heads included Tom Brokaw, Brian Jennings, Colin Powell, Michael Bloomberg, and another fellow identified as a military expert and ex-Navy SEAL.  I’m not referring to the narration, mind you, but to the snippets of unscripted commentary interspersed throughout the program, which usually consists of excerpts of interviews with experts in the subject matter.

I’m sure all these guys are very good at what they do.  In fact, I try to make it a habit not to offend news anchors, former Secretaries of State, mayors, or Navy SEALs—especially the latter.  (One should never offend persons who can open one’s throat with a KA-BAR knife, or who can plant explosive charges near one’s sleeping quarters, if one can help it.)

Still, I can’t imagine why you’d hire a TV news anchor to provide insight during a documentary on early American history.  None of these off-the-cuff remarks cast any real light on the material.  They were the sort of fluffy, vague, sentimental filler that my students tack onto their essay exams when they’ve run out of anything meaningful to say.  Every single interview segment that I saw could have been left on the cutting room floor with no loss whatsoever.

It seemed for all the world like one of those pop culture shows which feature snippets of comedians and D-list celebs commenting on old music videos or offbeat news stories.  They’re on the show because they’re recognizable and because they have the gift of gab, not because they’re bringing any expertise to the table.  Think “I Love the ’80′s” with a different set of eighties.

I hope the series succeeds.  It’s got serious potential, and it’s the kind of large-scale, meaty project that a lot of history buffs would love to see the network do more often.  It seems to me, though, that this approach to on-air talent is a misfire.

Remembering King’s Mountain

Let me encourage those of you who are interested in the American Revolution, historical memory, or the mountain South to pick up a copy of the Fall 2009 issue of Tennessee Historical Quarterly, which is just now off the press.  The first article is by yours truly, based on some of the research I did for my master’s thesis.  I’m very honored to have some of my work in THQ.

In this piece, I examine some nineteenth-century accounts of the Battle of King’s Mountain by historians, antiquarians, and orators to explain how some of the popular traditions about this event developed.  The battle was undeniably significant for a number of reasons, but today it’s especially important in the history of the Tennessee mountains.  I argue that many of the popular notions we have about the battle’s relationship to Appalachian Tennessee can be traced back to re-tellings of the late 1800′s, a time when there was great interest in the region’s Revolutionary-era past.

On a related note, check out the latest of Gordon Belt’s series of posts on John Sevier.  Before he became Tennessee’s first governor, Sevier was one of the backcountry militia officers who planned and commanded the expedition that ended with the Whig victory at King’s Mountain.  Gordon looks at the movement of Sevier’s remains from Alabama to Tennessee in the late 1880′s, during the same wave of remembrance and regional pride I discuss in my article.  I’m looking forward to his further posts on this fascinating historical figure.

A matter of some note–er, notes

In the past, when doing research for some specific project, I’ve taken notes by hand on old-fashioned notebook paper, index cards, or some combination of the two.  This system has its advantages and disadvantages.  Pen and paper are always handy; I can just fold a few sheets into whatever book I’m consulting and carry it with me and get a little work done whenever I have a free minute or two. 

I don’t write as quickly as I can type, though, so if I’m doing research in an archive and I need to record a lot of information, handwritten notes can be very problematic.  Photocopying is always an option, but it’s also expensive, so I try to do it sparingly.

Not too long ago, my mom decided to get a new computer, so she gave me her miniature Dell laptop.  It’s about two-thirds the size of a standard laptop and very lightweight, perfect for stuffing into your bag.  Here, I thought, was the answer to a dilemma.  From now on, if I planned on going to an archive or library where I needed to take lots of notes efficiently, I could bring my wee little computer along and type them into a word processing program, saving me the laborious effort of writing them out by hand.  Handwritten notes, I figured, would still work fine when gleaning from my own books or on other occasions when I didn’t have the pressure one is under when going through an archival collection.

Then I got another idea.  If I’m going to be taking and storing some of my notes on a computer anyway, maybe I should try a program designed specifically for research and note-taking, such as Scribe.  It’s free, and designed with historians in mind.  (Given my Luddite proclivities, though, I doubt I’ll use such an approach.)

Judging by these notes he jotted down on the history of the slave trade, Abraham Lincoln was a pen-and-paper kind of guy. Maybe the fact that laptops weren't around had something to do with it. From the Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress

Of course, it’s possible that juggling handwritten notes from some sources and digital notes from others could turn out to be a real headache, so maybe I should be relying principally on computer-composed notes for research projects, and save the written ones for general reading.

Normally, I’d have the luxury of experimenting a little to see what works best.  It just so happens, however, that I’m starting a fairly large research project, one that will require lots of data from a wide range of both archival and published material.  I want to ensure that I can record and organize my notes for this as efficiently and sensibly as possible, since this will differ in scope and intensity from all my previous research endeavors.

I know that some of you who read this blog have quite a bit of experience in conducting large-scale historical research projects in both archival and published sources.  I thought that I might be able to benefit from your collective advice. 

What’s the best way some of you researchers/writers/blog readers have found to take notes for your research projects?  Do you find paper or index cards more workable?  Do you ever use a computer, and if so, how?  Do you mix and match different note-taking approaches depending on the source, the location, or some other factor?  I’d appreciate whatever recommendations or success/horror stories you can offer.

Dr. Ernest Freeberg on Eugene Debs

I walked past a newspaper machine in Knoxville yesterday and saw a familiar face on the cover of Metro Pulse: Dr. Ernest Freeberg.  I was in a graduate seminar on American religious history that he conducted at UT, and he was one of my favorite professors.

His latest book, a study of Eugene Debs and his critique of U.S. involvement in World War I, is the focus of the cover story.  You can read the online version here.

An interesting tidbit

…from the Boston Globe‘s obit on Howard Zinn: “On his last day at BU, Dr. Zinn ended class 30 minutes early so he could join a picket line and urged the 500 students attending his lecture to come along.” 

If you ask me, this sums up the man about as well as anything could.  I don’t doubt that he’s left quite a footprint on the American conscience, but the historian gig was somewhat incidental.  It was the activism that informed his history, not the other way around.

Here’s a little exercise for those who disagree with me.  Zinn wrote some twenty books in addition to A People’s History.  Name one.

When I was in grad school at UT, Zinn came to deliver a speech on “The Uses of History.”  What we got instead was a jeremiad against the Iraq War with a brief, passing, and largely irrelevant reference to the Continental Army.

Nobody seemed to mind the misleading advertising except for me.  That’s what I deserved for assuming that one of America’s most prominent historians might actually say something of substance about history.