Review of James M. Banner, Jr., Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). By Jim Cullen. History News Network, February 24, 2013.
Cullen:
Though
he has enjoyed a series of elite perches in his career, which have circled
around elite research universities, the core argument of Being a Historian is a strongly ecumenical one: there are many ways
to unselfconsciously claim that identity. Yes: being a historian always
involves writing – but not necessarily monographs, much less books, in an age
of blogs, video and other new media. Yes, historians are always teachers – but
not necessarily at colleges, much less classrooms, at a time when “students” of
history come in all shapes, sizes, and walks of life. Unfortunately, he notes,
far too many people absorb the message that a meaningful career turns around
the circumscribed compass of tenured professor. The reasons for that, he
explains, are largely historical (and he duly traces the emergence of the
profession in the last nineteenth century and its solidification in the first
half of the twentieth). But the last few decades in in particular have
witnessed a vastly expanded scope and reach for Clio in ways that its
practitioners have failed to recognize, much less prepare for.
Among
his more provocative observations are those that note the diminished role for
style and voice in contemporary historical writing. “When have we read, as we
do in literary and art criticism, of the literary
influences on a historian, of the other historians from whom a scholar seems to
take inspiration for argument, evidence, and style in addition to ideology and
research approach of the shaping of traditions of historical writing and form
rather than method or subject?” he asks in a footnote. “Historical knowledge is
impoverished to the degree that question must be answered with silence.” To put
the matter more succinctly: “One often summons great respect for works of
history without taking much pleasure in reading them.”
All
this said, there is an air of the unreal surrounding Becoming a Historian, because Banner seems to understand the
principal problems with the profession in terms of misplaced perceptions and
overlooked training opportunities, when its real crisis is grounded not in the
preparation of scholars or in longstanding arguments about epistemology, but
rather its economic foundations. He does take note of longstanding
controversies like unionization efforts among graduate students or the growing –
even dominant – role of adjuncts in most history departments. At one point he
describes the reduction of institutional reliance on part-time faculty as “an
effort broadly under way,” which seems out of touch, because there is little
discernible success in this regard among historians or anyone else in higher
education.
Banner
seems to conceive becoming a historian in terms of talented and ambitious
people assessing it as a possible career in the way they might finance or
health care. (Until recently, one might
have said medicine or law, but these two fields are undergoing the kind of
upheaval aspiring professionals might have hoped to avoid – upheaval of the
kind workers in other sectors of the global economy have taken for granted for
a generation.) Instead, a decision to embark on a career as a historian today
is a little closer to that of deciding to become an actor, musician or
professional athlete, an ambition likely to instill concern if not terror in a
parent's heart. As even the most insulated senior scholar now says as a virtual
incantation: “There are no jobs.”
Of
course, this is not literally true. Baby Boomers are leaving the profession all
the time, and someone will get that
tenure-track job -- for a while longer, anyway. And yes, there's probably more
of a demand than ever for certain kinds of public history professionals, albeit
on a much shakier pecuniary basis. Amid the growing power and appeal of foreign
universities (which will increasingly retain their own students), the
proliferation of alternative online learning opportunities (whose existential
threat to smaller liberal arts colleges is quickening), and the shrinking government
role in financing research and subsidizing tuition (which is forcing schools to
refocus their priorities, a.k.a. reduce their program), change is coming to the
historical profession – academic or civic, public or private – whether scholars
want to acknowledge it or not.
To
invoke a distinction Banner is careful to cultivate at the outset of this book:
history will survive as discipline,
as it has for thousands of years. But as a profession?
That’s a lot less clear. A more likely scenario would seem to involve history
as a disposition or focus for an individual teacher in a larger humanities
field, which has shrunk as a locus of student interest amid well-founded
anxieties about finding well-paying job (never history’s strong suit in any
iteration). I happen to chair the history department of a private high school
where roughly half of the teachers I supervise hold doctorates, most, though
not all, refugees from the university world. But if I have my way, our
department will be evolving in a significantly interdisciplinary way in which
history will become one color on a palette from which students will practice
the arts of reading, writing and thinking. I’ll always consider myself a
historian, even though my own doctorate is in American studies. But that’s a
matter of personal loyalty, not livelihood.
