Making Connections
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I want to use this column about crossing boundaries and making connections to focus on graduate student mentoring practices. But, first let me set the stage for this conversation by recalling a statement made by Progressive historian Carl Becker that historians cannot predict the future but we must anticipate it. In the same vein, John Hope Franklin reminds us that each generation must write its own history and is, indeed, compelled to do so. (By the way, 2002 OAH Program Committee Chairs Wilma King and Dwight Pitcaithley have arranged a plenary session at next spring’s annual meeting celebrating the life and work John Hope Franklin.) The cohort of historians to which I belong and that came of professional age in the 1970s and 1980s is variously referred to as the new social historians or the race, class, and gender set. Labeling notwithstanding and at the risk of oversimplifying, we were determined to write about ourselves and marginalized Americans much to the consternation of an earlier generation whose lived experiences certainly shaped an abiding interest in political, economic, and diplomatic history. Current trends indicate that the next generation is already developing new interests that include comparative methodology, a combination of social and political history, and American history from an international perspective. If the past is prologue then some of us will surely be discomfitted by the new histories and we may on occasion despair that the practice of history is in decline. This brings me to the point of this presidential column. Are there new or different ways we should be thinking to prepare and better equip the present generation of graduate students to practice the craft? Recently I crossed disciplinary boundaries to engage John Jackson, former chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Michigan, in lengthy conversations concerning graduate student mentoring practices in our respective disciplines. Here are ideas I invite you to consider and to join in this dialogue with your own comments and suggestions. 1. Publication. The pressure to publish is intense and many advanced graduate students begin to explore opportunities even before completing their dissertations. We can help prepare them by drawing upon our early experiences, particularly with rejection. Most of us have a file full of rejection letters. Perhaps we can use those letters to help mentor our graduate students by bringing them into the seminar or symposium to teach students how to read and to benefit from rejection. If we dwell on how racist, sexist, ageist, or down right obstructionist the critics and reviewers were at the time, we will not get very far. Thus, in addition to the rejection letters we must bring in the draft of the original submission as well as a copy of the published article, grant proposal, or monograph. A juxtaposition of the rejected and the published versions buttressed with a judicious critique of the reviewer comments may instruct students and junior colleagues how to refine arguments and sharpen methodology and render theory invisible. In any event, it takes the sting out of rejection if they learn early that this is all part of the profession. 2. Writing. How can we mentor our graduate students about the twin demands: to write rigorously intellectual studies for our professional audience and to communicate effectively, without condescension, with a broader general audience and our undergraduate students? Journal articles in flagship publications such as the Journal of American History, the American Historical Review, and the Journal of Southern History, just to name a few, will continue to comprise the major venues for our more detailed and specialized works. For the general audience, perhaps, it is a good idea to disseminate the new knowledge in short books, engagingly and compellingly written. Thus, from the outset, our graduate students must be encouraged to learn how to write for different audiences and be impressed with the importance of making accessible their new research findings and interpretations to diverse groups beyond the borders of our professional associations. 3. Institutes. Arranging annual two- or three-day institutes may be a good way to connect senior scholars with graduate students interested in developing expertise in a particular methodology, say comparative history, or a more sophisticated understanding of a particular historical question, like abolitionism. Perhaps we should encourage interested departments or groups of historians in a particular field to arrange annual summer institutes of two days duration during which advanced, senior, or retired scholars would be paired with a graduate student to read a chapter of a dissertation or an article in progress and to offer comments. Were senior scholars to collaborate with a graduate student on a particular project or article, and publish the same as coauthors, it would certainly facilitate the student’s professional development. Added benefits would be the better use of the accumulated expertise of senior historians and a bridge of the generational divide. We think it is feasible to create a mechanism whereby scholars, who teach at colleges and universities without graduate programs, can share in the collective mentoring of history graduate students. These are a few of the many ideas that John Jackson and I discussed while in residence at the Advanced Center for Study in the Behavioral Sciences. You, undoubtedly, have others and I would like to hear from you about how we can improve the mentoring of our history graduate students. Finally, I thank each historian who wrote and e-mailed a response to the first column. |
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