Historically Thinking

People of every place and time deserve a history. Only local and regional history satisfies the need to remember the most intimate matters, the things of childhood…

–Joseph Amato, Rethinking Home: The Case for Local History 

These are the words today's conversation partner, Joseph Amato. Dr. Amato is a Professor Emeritus of History at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota. Called (I think rightly) “a maverick historian of the first order”, Amato in his decades there was a principal founder of the Society of Local and Regional History, and authored numerous books on his region and locality. But he also has written histories of suffering, dust, walking, and surfaces, and to this list he will soon add a history of everyday life. He is a historian with probably a deeper philosophical and literary sensibility than most other historians think is quite right–he has even knowingly committed poetry.

In the course of our conversation, we talk about how a nice boy from Detroit ever made it to southwest Minnesota, which even Minnesotans think of as far from everywhere else; why muskrats are more important than buffalo on the plains of southwest Minnesota; and what the "clandestine" is in local history. I also challenge him to explain why the local and regional matter in an era in which professional historians seem unable to come up with a reason to care about either.

I hope you enjoy it, especially because next week we'll be having another conversation with Joe Amato, this time on family history and its importance. Have a good week!

For Further Investigation

In Episode 24 we first discussed local history, that time with Bob Beatty of the American Association of State and Local History.

For something completely the opposite you might listen to Episode 26 with Peter Stearns on World History, or Episode 43 with Craig Benjamin on Big History.

Joseph Amato has written and published a lot of books–too many to list here! But fortunately he has his own webpage and listing, which you can find here.

People of every place and time deserve a history. Only local and regional history satisfies the need to remember the most intimate matters, the things of childhood… –Joseph Amato, Rethinking Home: The Case for Local History  These are the words today’s conversation partner, Joseph Amato. Dr. Amato is a Professor Emeritus of History at Southwest […]

In case you’ve been living in some sort of media-deprived isolation–an isolation so intense that it would make the Amish elders and Carthusian hermits feel sorry for you–it has probably come to your attention that we are living through a period of strange, yet exciting, political campaigns. In recent years, historians seem to be called upon by TV […]

In case you've been living in some sort of media-deprived isolation–an isolation so intense that it would make the Amish elders and Carthusian hermits feel sorry for you–it has probably come to your attention that we are living through a period of strange, yet exciting, political campaigns.

In recent years, historians seem to be called upon by TV hosts predominantly to rate presidents, compare presidents, or explain how a bill becomes a law. While we at Historically Thinking obviously believe that historians can do a lot more than that, from time to time we like to do that whole Doris Kearns Goodwin/Michael Beschloss thing. (The old-fashioned verb for this was "slumming.")

With us to look at campaigns past, and to explain all the ways we've chosen presidents in days gone by is Professor Michael Connolly who studies 19th century political culture, and has forgotten more about obscure presidents than many of us would ever want to know. He joined us in Episode 2 for a conversation about presidents and their legacies. Today he's here to explain all sorts of things  we didn't know but should have ... such as why primaries are no more found in the Constitution than mandatory  beard length. Enjoy!

Someone, somewhere, supposedly said, “it’s not the things that we don’t know about the past that are the problem. It’s the things we know that just aren’t so.” Engraving is another term for the “things we know that just aren’t so.” It applies to those ideas that are almost engraved on our brain, that even […]

Someone, somewhere, supposedly said, "it's not the things that we don't know about the past that are the problem. It's the things we know that just aren't so."

Engraving is another term for the "things we know that just aren't so." It applies to those ideas that are almost engraved on our brain, that even education doesn't always remove. Perhaps a belief that the Earth gets warmer in the summer because it's getting closer to the Sun; or that heavier objects really do fall faster than lighter objects.

Some engravings persist even after taking courses that teach the exact opposite of the engraving. While some claim that it takes years of advanced study to eliminate engravings, I think that may be optimistic. Engravings are powerful things

This week Lilian Calles Barger and I discuss liberation theology, a movement arising in the 1960s ... but I'll stop there.  I'm not sure that our conversation replaced the liberation theology engraving I've been carrying around. I have some more reflecting and studying to do about this aspect of the past. Lillian provides a thoughtful introduction, which I hope you'll enjoy!

As you reflect on our conversation, I'd be interested to hear about engravings you might carry about this, or other, aspects of the past. Contact us here on the website or join our Facebook group, and suggest a topic for a future show!

For Further Reading

Secondary sources:

Burrow, Rufus. James H. Cone and Black Liberation Theology. Jefferson: McFarland & Co, 1994.

Smith, Christian. The Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Gross, Rita M. Feminism and Religion: An Introduction. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.

Primary sources:

Cone, James H. A Black Theology of Liberation. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1970.

Gutiérrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1973.

Ruether, Rosemary Radford. New Woman, New Earth: Sexist Ideologies and Human Liberation. New York: Seabury Press, 1975.

Historians have a pretty hard time figuring out the past; why should they also try to forecast the future? My guest on today’s podcast, Professor David Hochfelder, believes that, in fact, historians are uniquely qualified to forecast what comes next. In one recent interview Professor Hochfelder is quoted as saying that he’s never believed in “studying the past […]

Historians have a pretty hard time figuring out the past; should they also try to forecast the future?

My guest on today's podcast, Professor David Hochfelder, believes that, in fact, historians are uniquely qualified to forecast what comes next. In one recent interview Professor Hochfelder is quoted as saying that he's never believed in “studying the past for the past’s own sake." He observes that, “The major rationale for studying history is to figure out how we got here, and if we answer that question, if we have that mind-set, the very next question is, ‘So where are we going after this?’”

David Hochfelder is associate professor of history at the University of Albany, part of the SUNY system. An electrical-engineer-turned-historian, Dr. Hochfelder has written on the histories of technology and business, combining both in his book The Telegraph in America, 1832-1920. We're very pleased to have this provocative thinker as our guest this week on Historically Thinking. Join us as we talk about why the 19th century, not the 20th, experienced civilization's greatest technological leap; the difference between predicting and forecasting; what terms of art savvy forecasters like to use; and why.

For Further Investigation

"Are historians the ideal futurists?" from Inside Higher Education

H.G. Wells, "Wanted–Professors of Foresight!"

Jason Pontin, "Why We Can't Solve Big Problems", from MIT Technology Review, November 2012

Paul Sabin, The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble Over Earth's Future

In our continuing series on great historians we come, inevitably, to the Greek historian Thucydides.

Sometimes it seems as if you have to pick a side: Which do you prefer, Thucydides or his predecessor Herodotus? Critics of Thucydides say that his history of the Peloponnesian War focuses too much on politics and war. Some have charged that he built  "Thucydides' Tower," a kind of prison in which historians were confined in front of a window from which they could only see politics and war, and the actions of so-called great men; until a jailbreak was staged by Jacob Burckhardt in 1860, or the Annalistes in 1929, or the social historians in 1971 (opinions vary on the convicts' leader and the date).

Our guest today, Barry Strauss, doesn't believe you have to choose between the two; he also thinks that there is a lot more in Thucydides than politics and battles. Last heard on Episode 11 of Historically Thinking discussing his book The Death of Caesar. He is the Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies at Cornell University, and a prolific author on classical history. Among his many notable books are The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter that Saved Greece—and Western Civilization, and The Spartacus War. (And, at the risk of sounding odd, if your significant other loves a good murder mystery, then Death of Caesar would make the perfect Valentine's Day gift. Really.)

Enjoy!

For Further Investigation

The Death of Caesar

Essay on Thucydides from the great Perseus Digital Library

An excellent edition of Thucydides' history–The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War

It’s the New Year, and Historically Thinking is back from an extended Christmas-New Year’s Break. With Al Zambone this week is Rachel Laudan, author of the fascinating Cuisine and Empire. Once a historian of science and technology, living and teaching in Hawaii made her a historian of food. In her book she describes the development and decline of […]