A Conversation with Edward Linenthal

Editor's Note: John Dichtl, Deputy Director of OAH, met Edward Linenthal, the new editor of the Journal of American History, in the OAH executive office in Bloomington in October. Linenthal left the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, this summer to take up his new duties at the Journal office in Bloomington, Indiana, on August 1, 2005.

John Dichtl: How did you first get involved with OAH?

Edward Linenthal: I first got involved with OAH through my work with the National Park Service while writing about the contested places of American battlefields. At the time, the professional meeting I usually attended was the American Academy of Religion, especially the religion in America sections. When I began attending the OAH annual meeting I found it an even more congenial intellectual home. As I moved from thinking about contested public spaces in American battlefields to writing about the making of the United States Holocaust Museum and the Enola Gay controversy, then to my immersion in the cultural aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, I continued to work with the National Park Service on the problematics of interpretation of historic sites. OAH became a natural home, particularly, of course, given the very strong ties that OAH developed with NPS.

I had also written for the JAH on several occasions including an article on my work in public history and another on the Enola Gay controversy. When Tom Schlereth retired from editing the museum exhibition section of the JAH, Joanne Meyerowitz asked if I would be willing to become a contributing editor. I asked Kym Rice in the Museums Studies Program at George Washington to coedit this with me, and we enjoyed doing that enormously over those years. Kym is still a contributing editor for the museum exhibition review section, and she has been joined by Benjamin Filene at the Minnesota Historical Society.

JD: How has the field and profession of American history changed during your career?

EL: During my work with the National Park Service, I came to appreciate--from a nonacademic perspective--how important it is to have scholars and public historians working together to enrich the public presentation of American history. For example, new scholarship helped change the way that the significance of slavery is depicted at Civil War sites. While the Park Service initiated this, it was that push of scholarship that helped change things. I think that it can work the other way too. The absolutely stunning oral histories that NPS is collecting at Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site will become grist for the mill for historians. It is wonderful when the world of public history and academic history work together.

I think too, that there are always new stories that can help people look at something in a completely different way, taking what's familiar and making it strange again, or taking something strange and making it familiar. This is certainly the case, for example, with the Battle of Gettysburg, which I write about in Sacred Ground. There is a tremendous literature on the subject written by every kind of historical practitioner you can possibly imagine. One would think, "Well, what's new to say about Gettysburg?" And then Margaret Creighton's wonderful new book The Colors of Courage comes out in which she writes so movingly about women at Gettysburg not merely being acted upon by the battle, but being active participants in so many ways during and after the battle. She writes about the difficult, often frightening situation of the African American community in Gettysburg, and she writes a story I knew little about, the ethnic conflict in the Union army at Gettysburg.

I continue to appreciate, as the kind of generalist that I am, the ongoing richness of what the historical profession has to offer. For example, writing a disciplined narrative that does not exclude thoughtful readers has become more important to more people in the profession. One of the things in the mid-1990s JAH questionnaire that really struck me was how many historians simply felt that they didn't really count. Nobody paid attention to what they did, nobody paid attention to what they wrote. They felt insignificant. I simply have never believed that you couldn't both be a good, careful, conscientious scholar and also write for a thoughtful, general public. It is simply not correct to think that those two things have to be separate.

JD: Looking back over the past twenty to thirty years, has that ideal of accessible writing always been there or are scholars rediscovering it?

EL: Well, I don't know. It seems to me that I hear more discussion about the significance of narrative, although that certainly is not a new idea. People have been writing about the need for new syntheses and the value of narrative for some time. It seems to me that a lot of what I read is more open, more graceful, that if thoughtful readers want to find good, accessible American history, they certainly can. It's not clear to me how many do and how many are still reading the sort of simplistic and triumphalistic heritage literature that passes for history, and I think that we do not appreciate well enough the difference between heritage and history and the power of heritage sensibilities. This is a continuing challenge, both for academic historians, certainly in the classroom, and also in the world of public history as well.

JD: Why did you want to become the editor of the Journal of American History?

EL: Frankly, it wasn't clear to me that the kind of skills that I thought I had--as a writer and teacher--were immediately transferable to the editing of the JAH. I was persuaded to apply, still frankly being very cautious, by the enthusiasm of people here in the Indiana University history department, by the excitement of the people at the JAH, by going back and reading editors reports of various kinds and seeing how Dave Thelen and Joanne Meyerowitz had really thought about expanding the Journal's voice and reach in all kinds of exciting ways. Coming with an unusual background for a JAH editor, I thought it would be a new and interesting challenge. So, we'll see whether it's a good fit or not. I thought about it very hard, because I cherish my colleagues and my friends in the profession. I know how important JAH is and respect the quality of it very much, and so I finally decided that this would indeed be a new and interesting challenge and would keep me connected with a profession that I had grown to care about deeply. So it would be as Sidney Mead titled one of his books, A Lively Experiment!

JD: What are some other history journals or publications in other disciplines that you particularly admire, and what have you found most interesting about the Journal of American History?

EL: I think the first ones that come to mind, certainly, are American Historical Review, the Public Historian, and the Journal of Religion in American Culture. Reviews in American History is another journal that comes to mind.

It has been fun also to look back through the many issues of the JAH, from when it was the Mississippi Valley Historical Review up to the present, and to see its changing architecture over the years. There's a very stable architecture to the Journal now. I think any editor is going to try as honestly and conscientiously as she or he can to maintain the high level of quality of peer reviews of articles, roundtables, and shorter essays in special sections and special issues. Certainly, the expansion of the journal to offer review of various forms of history production have made the journal, in my opinion, more lively and interesting.

In the early Thelen years, the Journal was really transformed and, since that time, there have been lots of new features added to the Journal. Some things have kind of come and gone and may come again, like the oral history section, for example. I loved, in Dave Thelen's first report, his commentary on the first roundtable. He talked about wanting the Journal to be a meeting place, and that sense of conversation among historians--and maybe not just academic historians but other practitioners of history both here and abroad. I love that notion of conversation and of the Journal as a meeting place.

JD: A lot of what you've described is existing architecture, but each of those components started out as some editor's idea, as an experiment, and so it may be a little unfair to ask you to describe a whole new architecture you might build. Each new idea will really be an experiment, and if you think it works, then it might be something that you will continue and editors after you might choose to continue or not continue.

EL: You know, I'm not sure that an editor has to feel that to make their mark, whatever that means, they have to change the architecture. It may just be what you do within the architecture that's there is sufficient. I think it would be really presumptuous for me to think about major changes so early in my work. I certainly have some special projects that I would like to work on. Some will come to fruition, some may not.

JD: What are your new projects for the Journal or incremental changes that we can expect to see?

EL: I very much like the idea of working with other people in the field to think about what they would like to see covered in the journal, and what's exciting that's going on in a variety of fields: colonial history or diplomatic history, or business history, for example. Beyond individual articles, how do we get these voices into the Journal? My mother told me many, many, many years ago that one of the ways to be successful was to surround yourself with really smart people. Being at IU, and having access as editor to the riches of the field around the country, that's not much of a problem. I've already talked with Dwight Pitcaithley about coediting with me something fairly significant on the National Park Service in American history. I'm very interested in doing something in the Journal on both the history of and the current fierce contestation over issues of religious freedom. I plan to have the journal participate in the centennial reflections of the organization that is fast approaching.

And part of the learning process here is not just thinking of these special things but really learning, I think, the craft of being an editor, of what authors are trying to say in their essays, how you can help them open essays outward, putting together a good team of readers to help you do that, how to translate what thoughtful readers have to say to an author. I think this is a craft that at least for me is not second nature. It's a thing that you have to work hard at doing, and that's a significant part of this job. And I want to say that to appreciate from the inside the kind of fierce devotion that the staff has to the Journal, and the support they have extended to me is tremendously helpful. Members of the organization should be just very thankful and proud of the staff's devotion to the Journal. For the Journal staff and the editor it really is a team effort. And I also think the profession owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to David Nord, who now for a number of years has stepped into a variety of roles--acting editor, interim editor, associate editor. Now Dave has agreed to stay and work with me this year. His breadth of experience and his critical sense about articles is just invaluable, so the profession really owes him a tremendous debt of gratitude, and I think when people see him at the OAH meeting, they need to thank him for what he has given.