Oh, so hysterical!

[winterbadger]

A poster to a community I read starts off...

"I recently entered an MA program in history..."

and, skipping forward, then complains,

"I'm feeling incredibly naive about how frustrated I am that our classes talk so much about the past..." and "...I'm finding I could care less what [historians] think [about history], I really just want my professor to lecture so I can get the basic outline of what happened in history."

This person would have been unhappy in my *undergraduate* history program. Fortunately, several people diagnose what (I think) is the problem and the direction in which the poster should be heading instead, and they actually make useful suggestions (with varying degrees of snark).

The full text and responses can be read here.

Comments

[brithistorian.livejournal.com]

Yikes. Definitely sounds like this person got on the wrong bus.

[winterbadger]

Yeah. I mean, I have some sympathy with the OP. They're really looking for an "applied history" degree. And I think that's an important role, and quite possibly one not served adequately by the current postgraduate educational field, which seems still to skew heavily toward training people to be academic historians--writers rather than educators. Or at best, educators in the higher learning arena, rather than secondary or broader public education. I rant about Bill Bryson, but *someone* needs to write good, accessible history for popular audiences as well as for other historians. There *are* people doing that now, but it wouldn't hurt to do more to make that an express goal of postgraduate education.

BUT, even if there were such a track, historiography is an essential part of being a historian, whatever one is going to use history for. The understanding that there isn't one version of history, a single narrative, but rather a universe of sources from which historians draw and from which historians try to distill an understanding of events, personalities, motivations; that the way historians do so is based on their own education, their background, their perspectives; that differing POVs will provide differing versions of history, none of which are "the truth" but all of which taken together represent our current attempts to reach towards the truth... That's the third degree of history. Without that, you're not a historian, you're someone who likes to read history. IMNSHO.

[brithistorian.livejournal.com]

I rant about Bill Bryson, but *someone* needs to write good, accessible history for popular audiences as well as for other historians.

I feel the way about Stephen Ambrose.

historiography is an essential part of being a historian

Definitely. When I was in the MA program at UNO, the historiography course (which doubled as the methodology course) was a requirement before getting into any of the graduate seminars or proseminars. At the beginning of the course, Dr. Johnson told us all "If you enjoy the work of this course, you should get an A here. If you don't get an A, then I strongly urge you reconsider whether you want to be in this program."

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

OP should read "The 48 Laws of Power". This relates history to power, and power to history, and thus history to modernity.

[rolypolypony.livejournal.com]

What, wait?? This person apparently hates history and somehow got into an MA history program?? Wacko.

[winterbadger]

Well, to be fair, he/she doesn't hate history--they just aren't interested in historiography. But that still makes (IMO) a graduate program in history the wrong place for them.

[ladymandrake.livejournal.com]

umm wow. I'm working my way through an MA in history and I could NEVER do it if I disliked the type of research I was doing/reading/discussing/sleeping/eating. Methinks this person is in the wrong program...

[winterbadger]

Yeah, I think so.

[reasdream.livejournal.com]

I can almost understand the one thing, if what they meant was "historiography is dull" but somehow I don't think that's what they were trying to say....

[winterbadger]

I think it was less "historiography is dull" than "I don't want to spend my time learning historiography--I just want to learn history so that I can then teach it". Which, IMO demonstrates a failure to understand the discipline of history.

[reasdream.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. Oy.

[winterbadger]

Indeed!