A Historian Getting Old

I turned 41 this weekend and it gave me reason to stop and think about this past semester and some of the little ways that I’ve come to feel my age. Our department has been reevaluating the history major and taking stock of current requirements. I ended up on the other side of some recent decisions and that’s fine. I figure you win some and lose some, but what was most interesting was the character of the changes and my reactions. This is has made me feel old both intellectually and personally.

1. World History versus Western Civilization. I’m a “Western Civilization” guy. I received my B.A. in Latin and History and my graduate work was mostly in this history of the ancient and Medieval West and Byzantium. So, the first thing that struck me is that I completed my graduate degree completely unqualified to teach a World History survey course, although I am sure I could imagine a way to teach it at the introductory level.

This is a bit shocking because the idea that our department would require World History for our majors as well as a introductory level survey makes sense. World History is increasingly taught in high schools and many graduate programs continue to see World History as a desirable teaching field. Moreover, we recognize that our students need to be comfortable negotiating the challenges of our globalized and international economy, politics, and culture.

What made me feel old was the consensus among my colleagues that Western Civilization could no longer provide a sufficiently cosmopolitan perspective for our students. When I reflect on my graduate training and my experiences as a historian, I’ve always found plenty in my Western experience that gives me a wider perspective on the world, and I feel relatively confident that the traditions of critique in the Western traditional ensure that these perspectives are critical. That being said, I was rather surprised by the attitude among my colleagues that we might easily replace Western Civilization with a World Civilization sequence without either recolonizing the world by projecting our Western perspectives onto a global stage, or by simply conceding the value of our own heritage (i.e. the West) to our students. Times have changed, and I am feeling old.

(At the end of the day, we decided to keep both Western Civilization and offer another introductory level sequence in World Civilization!)

2. Language. Over the same time, our department took some time to examine our language requirements. Right now we offer two different kinds of history degrees. One requires students to take four semesters of a foreign language; the other requires the students to take a minor. Every year our department returns briefly to the question of whether it is necessary to continue to require students to take a foreign language. The chief argument against this requirement is whether four semesters of a language does enough for our students to be worth the risk in enrollment numbers. Students it would seem are intimidated by learning a foreign language. About half of our students opt to take a minor which is actually more credit hours “to avoid” taking a language (or at least prefer to take a minor over taking a language). The fear is that we might be losing majors in this scenario, and as a result, we do an informal cost/benefit analysis on the utility of requiring a foreign language for out students.

I have always considered history to be a philological endeavor and knowing languages (both foreign and domestic!) is key to what we do. I can hardly imagine a history major without a rigorous language component, and here I follow Theodor Mommsen famous recommendation that aspiring historians focus their energies on languages and the law. I spent as much time taking languages in undergraduate and graduate school as I did taking history classes. The shift from a field grounded in languages to a field grounded in the more ecumenical perspectives offered by “method” has caught me off-guard even as I am the one responsible for teaching our undergraduate methods course. This severing of the discipline from its philological roots is more evidence that times have changed, and I am feeling old.

3. The Game versus the Discipline. I’ve always respected the need to play the game of academia as well as to defend the discipline intellectually. The Game for me has always involved “a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous” and managing things like enrollment in our major, attempting to retain faculty and even to expand our department, and tending our standing with the administration and our colleagues across campus (many of whom will not be particularly sympathetic or even interested in disciplinary concerns). The Discipline is grounded in patterns of thoughts, epistemology, and methods that validate the truth that history can produce.

As long as we exist in the real world, there is a balance between The Game and The Discipline. We can’t create a Discipline that no one finds relevant or offers classes in which no one enrolls. At the same time, it is difficult to stomach playing a Game that sacrifices the core values of the Discipline in the name of professional or academic development. These days, however, I wonder whether I am no longer sufficient engaged in my professional or disciplinary environment to locate the line between the Game and the Discipline. Times have changed, and I feel old.