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- Jan 7, 2013
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- Long Island, NY
Over on the academic history blogs, there has been a lot of discussion, sometimes contentious, over two articles appearing in Journal of the Civil War Era and Civil War History. The articles, by three prominent military historians, are being described as a counterattack by "military historians" on "social historians." (My use of quotation marks reflect the way these subfields are being described among the professors and teachers involved.) Megan Kate Nelson of Harvard has responded to the military historians with a blog post titled: "Military Historians Are Freaking Out."
I will look a little bit at the charges and responses in the blogs and in academic social media, but first I want to look at little at what the two articles in learned journals that started this whole thing say. Here is what Earl Hess wrote in the journal Civil War History:
In addition, despite the appearance of some top-quality memory studies by Carol Reardon, Brian Craig Miller, and Kevin Levin, a number of examples of this genre exhibit poor scholarship. Unfortunately, it is easy for a graduate student to research postwar newspapers and throw together a pale imitation of David Blight’s book. The most serious weakness is that the author, when writing the obligatory chapter or two about the war as background to their main effort, cannot get the larger story right. When encountering such manuscripts while reviewing them for university presses, I often compile a list of factual errors about the conflict, in addition to many conceptual errors about their subject. Ironically, many of these memory studies are focused on individuals whose sole claim to fame is that they commanded large armies in the field. Yet, the authors of these studies know next to nothing about what the general in question actually did during the war, and they know even less about how traditional military historians have interpreted his career. (pp. 391-92)
[Excerpt from http://cwmemory.com/2014/12/07/what-do-we-need-to-know-about-traditional-military-history/ Civil War Memory]
I am interested in what folks here think. We are the consumers of a lot of Civil War scholarship, everyone here probably spends a lot of time and money on Civil War books. Does Hess have a point?
I'll bring you more on this shortly.
I will look a little bit at the charges and responses in the blogs and in academic social media, but first I want to look at little at what the two articles in learned journals that started this whole thing say. Here is what Earl Hess wrote in the journal Civil War History:
In addition, despite the appearance of some top-quality memory studies by Carol Reardon, Brian Craig Miller, and Kevin Levin, a number of examples of this genre exhibit poor scholarship. Unfortunately, it is easy for a graduate student to research postwar newspapers and throw together a pale imitation of David Blight’s book. The most serious weakness is that the author, when writing the obligatory chapter or two about the war as background to their main effort, cannot get the larger story right. When encountering such manuscripts while reviewing them for university presses, I often compile a list of factual errors about the conflict, in addition to many conceptual errors about their subject. Ironically, many of these memory studies are focused on individuals whose sole claim to fame is that they commanded large armies in the field. Yet, the authors of these studies know next to nothing about what the general in question actually did during the war, and they know even less about how traditional military historians have interpreted his career. (pp. 391-92)
[Excerpt from http://cwmemory.com/2014/12/07/what-do-we-need-to-know-about-traditional-military-history/ Civil War Memory]
I am interested in what folks here think. We are the consumers of a lot of Civil War scholarship, everyone here probably spends a lot of time and money on Civil War books. Does Hess have a point?
I'll bring you more on this shortly.