A Liberal
Dose
September
30, 2021
Troy D.
Smith
“The Duties
of a Historian”
I am currently teaching one of my favorite classes:
historical methodology. It is taken by history majors, usually in their
sophomore year, to prepare them for upper division history courses. As you
might imagine, no matter who teaches it, there is a lot of emphasis on how to
do research, how to write papers, how to do citations, etc. I also focus on
different theoretical approaches they will encounter if they go to graduate school,
and the “history of history.” A lot of my approach is modeled on the professor
who taught me in this same course 20 years ago, Patrick Reagan. Like him, I
spend a lot of time at the beginning of the course exploring these two very
important questions: what is history, and what do historians do? History is
more than just studying the past, after all, because anthropology and
archeology do that. Heck, so do literary and economics classes.
Short answer: History is the study of the past using written
records from the time (newspapers, diaries, government reports, etc.)
Historians do not just tick those things off in a list of events and names;
they attempt to explain them. Not just what happened, but why, and what the
consequences were. Doing that requires a deep understanding of context and
connections. I also try to teach my students to be better writers, because I
think that the dense nature of most academic prose makes it inaccessible to the
public, which explains why most nonfiction books about history on the
bestseller lists are not actually by professionally trained historians. Those
authors often have many strengths, including an ability to write well, but lack
the training for finding that deeper historical context and connections with
things that might seem unrelated on the surface. I believe that many historians
have thereby abdicated one of their important responsibilities: not just
learning about the past, but explaining it to the general public in such a way
that they can learn from it, too.
Historians have to look, as much as possible, at every
angle. This does not mean they present everything as equal: my lectures, and my
writings, do not make excuses for Nazis or for slavery, for example, nor should
they, although they may include the excuses such people made for themselves. I
think that historians must not only help people learn about the past, but also
from the past.
I, myself, learned a lot about the potential impact of
historians when I was working on my doctorate. I learned principally from the
examples of my two co-advisers, Fred Hoxie and Vernon Burton, as well as the
other members of my dissertation committee, Bruce Levine and David Roediger. I came in
thinking I would just be learning (better) how to do research and teach, and of
course I did learn those things. But my eyes were opened by serving for years
as a research assistant to Hoxie (an expert in American Indian legal history)
and Burton (expert on race relations in the South). I learned that both those
individuals (and many others like them) also spent a lot of time writing
reports for, and often testifying live in front of, state legislatures and even
Congress and the Supreme Court, on behalf of oppressed groups. Because,
especially where civil rights are concerned, historians play an important role.
You see, by explaining what happened in the past, and how
and why, we shine a light on the present and help people understand what is
happening now. We can provide warnings to avoid past disasters and, yes, a
moral conscience to sway people from perpetuating past injustices.
Little wonder, then, that some politicians today want to
pass laws to keep historians, on all levels, from doing that. But it is not our
job to be cheerleaders. It is our job, our duty, to explain things honestly.
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE
Boy do I resonate with this post. Although not a trained historian, I've always felt that history, the people that were history, need their stories to be heard. Thank you for continuing to teach what needs to be taught. Doris
ReplyDeleteThank you, Doris!
ReplyDelete