Historically Thinking

In our continuing tour of the sub disciplines of historical study, today we reach intellectual history–or at least that part of intellectual history that focuses on America. Our guest is Tim Lacy, who among other things is the author of The Dream of a Democratic Culture: Mortimer Adler and the Great Books Idea and one of the group of people who in 2007 founded a blog devoted to intellectual history that grew up to be the Society for US Intellectual History.

Tim and Al Zambone talk about the basics: what is intellectual history? what makes it different? What's the history of intellectual history? What has American intellectual history traditionally focused upon? And what's the current "state of the art"? They talk about Tim's book a little, too, because that's just good manners. Enjoy.

For Further Reading

Daniel Burris at the University of Rochester has a splendid reading list available for those who want to dig deeply into the subject.

The preeminent collection of primary sources in American intellectual history is The American Intellectual Tradition, edited by David Hollinger and Charles Capper, and now in its sixth edition. If you are interested in American history, this needs to be on your shelf. It's not just one, but two volumes.

While this is a podcast about history and historical thinking (you’ve noticed, right?), it’s also a podcast that emanates from the second floor of Old Main at Augustana College. So everyone connected with it is concerned, with varying degrees of frenetic energy, about higher education. It hasn’t escaped anyone’s notice that higher education is not only […]

While this is a podcast about history and historical thinking (you've noticed, right?), it's also a podcast that emanates from the second floor of Old Main at Augustana College. So everyone connected with it is concerned, with varying degrees of frenetic energy, about higher education. It hasn't escaped anyone's notice that higher education is not only very expensive, it's gotten ever more complex to figure out. Hence our decision to do occasional episodes which, taken together, will form "An Audio User's Guide to Higher Education".

With us again to dispel myths and hack apart rumors is Dr. Mark Salisbury, Assistant Dean and Director of Institutional Research and Assessment at Augustana College. He and Al Zambone josh, kibitz, blow air, and also discuss the crucial first three weeks of college. Why are they crucial? What happens in them? What can Professors do in those first three weeks to change the entire college experience of first year students? What can first year students do change the direction of the next four years of their lives? It's a podcast chock full of News You Can Use. Take notes and enjoy.

Is this really college?

For Further Reading

The Office of Institutional Research and Assessment at Augustana offers a wide variety of links.

If you can't get enough Salisbury Ham, read his blog Delicious Ambiguity

In August 1973, officers of the soviet secret police seized a draft typescript of the dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. On September 5 he gave instructions for it to be printed in Paris; and on December 28 it was announced to the world. This “experiment in literary investigation” (which could as easily have been […]

In August 1973, officers of the soviet secret police seized a draft typescript of the dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. On September 5 he gave instructions for it to be printed in Paris; and on December 28 it was announced to the world. This "experiment in literary investigation" (which could as easily have been called an experiment in historical investigation) had many consequences, among them Solzhenitsyn's arrest and expulsion from the Soviet Union in February 1974. In exile he continued to work on a different way of investigating the past—a series of novels, or one enormous novel, that Solzhhenitsyn called "the Red Wheel".  

With Al Zambone this week to discuss Alezander Solzhenitsyn, his work, and particularly his views of memory and history, and repentance and collective guilt, is Daniel J. Mahoney, Professor of Political Science at Assumption College in Massachusetts, and author of several books and articles on Solzhenitsyn (which you can find below). They discuss Solzhenitsyn's tumultuous life, and what the Gulag Archipelago and "the Red Wheel" provide us in the way of a philosophy of history that emphasizes moral judgement. 

This the first "request episode" of Historically Thinking, done according to the desire. It won't be the last! If you're interested in listening to a discussion with a certain historian, or about a particular book, join the Historically Thinking Facebook group and make a request...and start a conversation.

For Further Reading

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914: The Red Wheel—Knot I, translated by H.T. Willetts (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014). 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, authorized abridgement, Foreword by Anne Applebaum (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2007).

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, November 1916: The Red Wheel—Knot II, translated by H.T. Willetts (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014). 

The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005, edited by Edward E. Ericson, Jr. and Daniel J. Mahoney (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2008—paperback edition).

Edward E. Ericson, Jr. & Alexis Klimoff, The Soul and Barbed Wire: An Introduction to Solzhenitsyn (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2008).

Daniel J. Mahoney, The Other Solzhenitsyn: Telling the Truth about a Misunderstood Writer and Thinker (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2014).

Daniel J. Mahoney, “Solzhenitsyn’s Red Wheel” in First Things (May 2015), pp. 41-46.

Joseph Pearce, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile, Revised and Updated Edition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011).

From the very small to the very large: having tackled Local History in Episode 24, we now turn to World History. And to guide us through this relatively recent sub-discipline of historical studies we turn to Peter Stearns. He’s an eminent historian and academician. Now a Professor at George Mason University, he has served as GMU’s Provost. […]

From the very small to the very large: having tackled Local History in Episode 24, we now turn to World History. And to guide us through this relatively recent sub-discipline of historical studies we turn to Peter Stearns.

He's an eminent historian and academician. Now a Professor at George Mason University, he has served as GMU's Provost. Prior to coming to George Mason, he was a member of the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon, and the Dean of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at that institution. While at Carnegie Mellon he founded the Journal of Social History, for which he has served as editor for decades. He has also written or edited over one-hundred books. In the process, he has moved from social history, to being one of the key innovators of the field of world history. We can't think of anyone better able to teach us about this subject.

We hope you enjoy the podcast. If you do, please write a review on iTunes! And do join the Historically Thinking group on Facebook.

For Further Investigation*

Patrick Manning, Navigating World History 

"The single best introduction to the field..."

Edmund Burke II, David Christian, and Ross Dunn, World History: A Compact History of Humankind for Teachers and Students

"A good overview.."

Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas, and Sam Wineburg, Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History: National and International Perspectives

"A useful general work..."

Lawrence Besserman, ed., The Challenge of Periodization: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives

David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History

THE introduction to Big History–the subject of a future podcast.

Jerry H. Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times

Greg Dening, Beach Crossings: Voyaging Across Times, Cultures, and Self

Two "good resources on cross-cultural interactions..."

Patrick Manning, Migration in World History

Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik, The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy, 1400 to the Present

A good resource not only on trade but on "world-system analysis"

Robbie Robertson, The Three Waves of Globalization: A History of Developing Global Consciousness

The World History Association

World History Matters

*All of these resources and their descriptions come from Peter Stearns in his World History: The Basics

Mark Twain supposedly said (he's misquoted for a lot of things, because he's so quotable; think about that) "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."  That's certainly true, about a lot of things; and it's certainly true of the hard truths of American slavery.

This week Al Zambone is joined by Bob Elder, Assistant Professor of History at Valparaiso University and, like Al, a historian of the American South. It's the first time on Historically Thinking that there is a book discussion without the author present. The book is one of the most acclaimed and discussed titles in American history in quite some time: Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. While agreeing that the half may not have been told, and if it was a lot of people were holding their fingers in their ears, the two historians also think that...well, listen for yourself.

For Further Reading

Edward Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

Trevor Burnard's Review of Baptist, and Baptist's Response

Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History

Robert William Fogel and Stanley Engermann, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Slavery

Herbert G. Gutman, Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of Time on the Cross

This week there’s a little something for everyone when Al Zambone talks with Bob Beatty of the American Association for Local and State History. They were supposed to talk about Local History. But they spend a lot of time talking about place, a preoccupation at Historically Thinking, and a lot of other things besides. It’s a […]

This week there's a little something for everyone when Al Zambone talks with Bob Beatty of the American Association for Local and State History. They were supposed to talk about Local History. But they spend a lot of time talking about place, a preoccupation at Historically Thinking, and a lot of other things besides. It's a podcast that careens and weaves and bobs, and hits the median a couple of times as it drives down its forty or so minutes of highway. We hope you enjoy it, and we hope to have Bob back some time to talk about Local History, if Zambone promises to control himself in the future.

Note that because of the constant talking over each other, the audio quality isn't all that could be desired. Moreover, in the course of the conversation they refer to A Lot of historic sites. We're not sure that we've include all that were mentioned, and we'll be including more after we give another listen to the podcast. If you want to make sure the list is inclusive, leave a comment here, or on the Historically Thinking group on Facebook. In fact, why not mention your favorite local historical site on our Facebook group? It can be the beginning of a Historically Thinking Approved List of Historic Places. 

For Further Investigation

Carol Kammen and Boby Beatty, Zen and the Art of Local History.

David E. Kyvig and Myron A. Marty, Nearby History: Exploring the Past Around You (3rd edition).

Tammy S. Gordon, Private History in Public: Exhibition and Settings of Everyday Life.

Berkley W. Duck III, Twilight at Conner Prairie: The Creation, Betrayal and Rescue of a Museum.

Carol Kammen and Amy H. Wilson, Encyclopedia of Local History (2nd Edition)

The Virginia Historical Society

The Strong–National Museum of Play

Cliveden–a historic home in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Germantown