Bunk, Debunk, and Rebunk
First, let’s address this name. When I was in graduate school my advisor, Alonzo Hamby, used to tell us that historiography and the study of history occurs in a series of cycles. Tongue planted half in cheek, he’d say, “History is a process of bunk, debunk, and then rebunk.” For some reason this always stuck with me. Given that the three charter members of what we hope will become a larger stable of Rebunk-ers all met in graduate school at Ohio University, I thought that an homage to this concept would be fitting for a title for our blog. But more than that, we are three young historians who probably are catching the historiographical wave at a point where we are at the rebunking phase of Professor Hamby’s evolutionary process.
We are good friends. This (and Ohio University) is the one thing we have in common. Beyond that, do not look for a lot of intellectual or ideological conformity. Although I am starting this blog, and I am the ringmaster of this little circus, I am actually in the minority. While I am a liberal, Steve and Tom, my partners in punditry here at Rebunk, are conservative. I am a Democrat. One of them is a Republican, the other an Independent. I am an immense, neurotic, haunted fan of Boston sports. They root for crappy teams. This has led to many an interesting, spirited, and heated discussion. And that is something we expect to bring to Rebunk. In fact, one of the names that we considered for the blog was “Anger Management.” Another was “The Alienators.” Yet a third was “Tootle’s Giant head,” though that in fact has little to do with contentiousness. It is funny, though. And we do hope, in the midst of our fits of anger, outrage, self righteousness, and pique to instill humor as well as insight and our own particular strengths as historians and as informed observers of politics, sports, current events, pop culture, foreign affairs, and whatever else it is about which we see fit to delight, annoy, frustrate, amuse, and harangue one another and most importantly you, the reader.
In the end we believe not only that history matters, but that historians who also pay attention to the larger world should be able to bring their skills (and in the case of this group, we’d like to think intelligence, wit, and writing ability) to a range of issues, scholarly and otherwise.
We hope that our particular strengths are complementary, even when we are insulting one another. We hope that we entertain and inform. We hope that we make your regular blog reading list, and maybe that we become one of the first places you come to. Above all, we hope you enjoy this blog and that you become participants through the comment boards. Feel free to take us to task. We’re aggressive. But our bark is generally worse than our bite. Generally.