Sunday Notes

by Cliopatria

Two reviews of new museum shows: Miles Unger,"A Mysterious St. John, Found in the Attic," NY Times, 18 February, focuses on the attribution of a long hidden piece that is a center of attention in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts'"Donatello to Giambologna: Italian Renaissance Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston"; and Chris Herlinger,"Tracing the Lines of Twentieth Century's Varied Influences on Religious Art," Washington Post, 17 February, reviews"Biblical Art in a Secular Century: Selections, 1896-1993" at New York's Museum of Biblical Art.

A major entry for the Carnival of Bad History:"Honest, It wasn't Abe's Comment," Washington Post, 16 February. A quotation, falsely attributed to Abraham Lincoln, gets attributed to him 18,000 times.

Robert Fulford,"How Bad Blood led to a Great Musical," National Post, 6 February, tells a remarkable history of Kurt Weill's and Berthold Brecht's Three Penny Opera. YouTube offers renditions of"Mack the Knife" by: Louis Armstrong on"Flip" Wilson's Show, Ysabella Brave, Nick Cave, Bobby Darrin, Ella Fitzgerald doing scat with Duke Ellington, and Mina.

Finally, I should point out two updates on yesterday's post, thanks to Warren Billings and David Fahey. Both updates speak well of the departments concerned. Providence College terminated its doctoral program in history in 1995. It remains in the AHA's Directory because it allowed students in the program to continue and three of them were still in process when the AHA last updated the Directory. The University of New Orleans has never had a doctoral program in history. The information in the AHA's Directory is simply incorrect. UNO has a very highly regarded M.A. program. That, it seems to me, should be the aim of most of the other departments I mentioned.

I fundamentally disagree with my friend, Jeff Vanke, about what a legitimate elitism is and what is an illegitimate elitism. Thinking that a doctoral program is the desired end toward which a state university department inexorably moves is, I think, an illegitimate elitism (to say nothing of a false teleology). Regardless of new access to remote archives, books in other libraries, etc., does anyone seriously think that North Dakota State or the University of Southern Mississippi can offer a student the quality of doctoral education comparable to that of any of the top 100 history departments in the country?

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Ralph E. Luker - 2/19/2007

Don't tell me what I don't know. Look at the data, Oscar; look at the map! Minnesota has only one doctoral program in history; South Dakota and Wyoming have no doctoral programs in history; and it's a long stretch for North Dakota to have two doctoral programs in history at its two state universities. The state's population has actually been in decline for the last 85 years. I doubt that either program has the constituency, the resources, the quality of faculty, or the quality of students to justify calling it a doctoral program in history. The burden of proof is on NDSU and UND -- not on me. When you bother to cite some evidence, you can tell me what I don't know.

Oscar Chamberlain - 2/19/2007

Ralph. I do have a friend at North Dakota State. I should have acknowledged, that. However, I would have made the same response whether you had named it or another institution. You and I have discussed (and on occasion disagreed) on this general issue several times, and I think that I have been pretty consistent.

In point of fact, I did not state that I knew that the program was good, simply that I did not think that you knew it was weak, and that you should not draw conclusions on things that you do not know. I stand by that.

Grant W Jones - 2/18/2007

The University of Hawaii-Manoa's PhD program in history is #75. I didn't know that. I hope they keep up the good work.

David J Merkowitz - 2/18/2007

I think Ralph is generally right that capping more programs at the MA level isn't a bad idea, however for many of the smaller PhD programs the doctoral component is not actually much of an investment. The doctoral students take the same courses as the MA students, do the same TAing, use the same resources, they just stick around longer (and take a nasty ugly exam and write a dissertation). And perhaps a lot of those grads do teach at CCs or branch campuses, but it leaves open the possibility that a diamond in the rough breaks through to become an important scholar. Mostly I would argue it takes discipline on the part of the small program to keep at a size they can fiscally support over the 5-7 years needed to complete the degree and not start taking students just to let the faculty out of grading papers in 200 student surveys. Take people with real potential.

Ralph E. Luker - 2/18/2007

I'm sorry, Andrew, but Oscar's got a friend at North Dakota State, a point that he doesn't acknowledge here. Oscar and I disagreed when she was accused of plagiarism some time back. She survived and Oscar will defend her department against any supposed slight. Look, it's no slight, supposed or otherwise, to say that a department ought to cap its offerings at an M.A. If Oscar's argument held, every history department in every community and junior college ought to offer a doctorate in history if it could get by with doing so. There's simply an unwillingness on Oscar's part to recognize that there are lots of real reasons that Harvard is a stronger institution than North Dakota State and that the former ought to do doctoral work in history and North Dakota State shouldn't.

Andrew D. Todd - 2/18/2007

I'm inclined to agree with Oscar Chamberlain. I came into History out of Anthropology. You understand that Anthropology is a much smaller discipline than History, and a large Anthropology department is often smaller than a small History department. Anthropology departments tend to cover their limited number of course offerings with tutorials, in the grand Oxbridge manner. The student reads something each week, writes about it, and comes in to talk about it for half an hour, and then answer questions about it for half an hour, with an emphasis on big questions, which have obscure answers. In the full tradition, you do this for a couple of years with a single tutor. This is a method for learning a body of literature, or "reading greats." In the end, of course you are reading things which your tutor does not know. George Bailey, an American journalist who experienced the tutorial system at Oxford with C.S. Lewis called it "being smoked at." The tutorial system is not common in American history departments, even at the graduate level, but, as I said, it is rather more common in American anthropology departments, which are usually smaller and more intimate. The way the system worked at Oregon, in the late 1980's was that, after the first-year reading seminar core courses, you had your tutor, who was not necessarily your adviser. Your adviser taught you to write a masters thesis, which was something altogether different. Your tutor introduced you to the literature. You took undergraduate courses with the rest of the department, in which not too much was expected of you, or you could take courses in some other department. Once you have been properly smoked at, you not only know one body of literature, but you can, as a matter of course, learn the literature of almost any liberal arts field with no more assistance than a published bibliography. Judging by the comments of undergraduate program hiring decisionmakers which are periodically published in Perspectives, this is a fairly rare ability among historians. I suspect it isn't something you can learn in half a dozen or a dozen reading seminars.

Oscar Chamberlain - 2/18/2007

"does anyone seriously think that North Dakota State or the University of Southern Mississippi can offer a student the quality of doctoral education comparable to that of any of the top 100 history departments in the country?"

Does anyone seriously think that one can make a generalization like that without analyzing the programs?

Ralph, the problem you point to is real. And I agree with you that universities should not start doctoral programs in any subject without looking clearly at the market for graduates and their capacity to offer a strong program.

But that is not the same thing at all as assuming that the top 100 programs are--and will remain--better.

After all, what is better?

An example: some of the largest doctoral programs are shark pools; they toss doctoral students in and see who can successfully swim through the course work (legitimate) and the politics (ugly) with very little help.

Such programs are often little concerned with teaching. They put their pride almost exclusively in research. But, as you well know, most PhD's don't end up at research institutions.

A small program often does not have the range of course and field offerings that a large program has. That's a real disadvantage, and I think that is what you were referring to in your "top 100" generalization. But they have a capacity (and a necessity) to provide individualized attention.

And someone going through such a program is rarely under the illusion that he or she will end up at a research institution. In short, the graduates of a smaller program may be better prepared for the market that you so accurately describe.

A final point. I know that there are great and responsible research institutions who train their doctoral students for the world as it is. And I have no doubt that some small programs are crap.

But you made a generalization that I don't think that you support, and you named institutions that I do not think you know and you called them inferior.

If you can provide evidence for any of your points do so. But if not, then I think you should reconsider them.