http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_book_blitz/features/2005/that_barnes_noble_dream/academics_historians_vs_popularizers.html
The key to attracting more readers without sacrificing rigor lies in the ways that historians define their topics. If a book is conceived with only historiography in mind—with academic disciplinary debates and research agendas dictating the focus and the form—it's unlikely to succeed in the public realm. If it's conceived without historiography in mind, it's unlikely to succeed as scholarship. I'd propose what might be called a Goldilocks approach to historiography....
In short, professional historians select their areas of research not by looking at history but by surveying the historiography—the ongoing debates among scholars about what are often highly refined or technical points of a subject—and then staking out a new sliver of the established academic terrain.
This quasi-scientific approach grew out of the rise of social science, professionalism, and the research university in the late 19th century. As academic historians became a self-conscious guild, they endorsed the premise that as trained experts, operating dispassionately, they could build a base of knowledge to which subsequent generations would incrementally add. While few of us today consider history a "science," most share the belief—or hope—that the steady accretion of knowledge will over time broaden our understanding of the past. Assumptions like these lead scholars to fashion small bricks to be stacked upon the historical edifice.
Hofstadter's American Political Tradition
Eric Foner's Story of American Freedom
Nell Painter's Standing at Armageddon
John Demos'Unredeemed Captive
Gordon Wood's Radicalism of the American Revolution
Edmund Morgan's biography of Benjamin Franklin
Nicholas Lemann's The Big Test
Steven Weisman's The Great Tax Wars
The key to attracting more readers without sacrificing rigor lies in the ways that historians define their topics. If a book is conceived with only historiography in mind—with academic disciplinary debates and research agendas dictating the focus and the form—it's unlikely to succeed in the public realm. If it's conceived without historiography in mind, it's unlikely to succeed as scholarship. I'd propose what might be called a Goldilocks approach to historiography....
In short, professional historians select their areas of research not by looking at history but by surveying the historiography—the ongoing debates among scholars about what are often highly refined or technical points of a subject—and then staking out a new sliver of the established academic terrain.
This quasi-scientific approach grew out of the rise of social science, professionalism, and the research university in the late 19th century. As academic historians became a self-conscious guild, they endorsed the premise that as trained experts, operating dispassionately, they could build a base of knowledge to which subsequent generations would incrementally add. While few of us today consider history a "science," most share the belief—or hope—that the steady accretion of knowledge will over time broaden our understanding of the past. Assumptions like these lead scholars to fashion small bricks to be stacked upon the historical edifice.
Attending to historiography sometimes makes good sense: If the literature on the civil rights movement focuses on political leaders such as the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, look at the grassroots activists in North Carolina or Mississippi. If political history dwells on moments of great liberal achievement, examine the conservative revolution no one saw coming.
But too often this approach to conceiving a topic alienates readers unversed in historiographical debates—which is to say most readers, even within the academy. It discourages creativity, eccentricity, or straying outside the bounds delimited by the dominant figures in a given field. It places professional practices and disciplinary goals above intellectual ones.
Younger historians especially are encouraged to follow the terms other historians have set out—to borrow a favorite scholar's template (how one ethnic group or another "became white") or to dispute a reigning interpretation (a particular movement began a decade before commonly supposed). Either formula can lead to color-by-numbers history. Meanwhile, topics that don't fall squarely into any current historiographic niche may get overlooked unless a skilled amateur historian takes them on, as Nicholas Lemann did with his history of the meritocracy, The Big Test, or Steven Weisman did with his genesis of the income tax, The Great Tax Wars.
David Potter's People of Plenty But too often this approach to conceiving a topic alienates readers unversed in historiographical debates—which is to say most readers, even within the academy. It discourages creativity, eccentricity, or straying outside the bounds delimited by the dominant figures in a given field. It places professional practices and disciplinary goals above intellectual ones.
Younger historians especially are encouraged to follow the terms other historians have set out—to borrow a favorite scholar's template (how one ethnic group or another "became white") or to dispute a reigning interpretation (a particular movement began a decade before commonly supposed). Either formula can lead to color-by-numbers history. Meanwhile, topics that don't fall squarely into any current historiographic niche may get overlooked unless a skilled amateur historian takes them on, as Nicholas Lemann did with his history of the meritocracy, The Big Test, or Steven Weisman did with his genesis of the income tax, The Great Tax Wars.
Things to read referenced in this piece:
Hofstadter's American Political Tradition
Eric Foner's Story of American Freedom
Nell Painter's Standing at Armageddon
John Demos'Unredeemed Captive
Gordon Wood's Radicalism of the American Revolution
Edmund Morgan's biography of Benjamin Franklin
Nicholas Lemann's The Big Test
Steven Weisman's The Great Tax Wars
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