Yesterday I wrote about the session devoted to the early American blogosphere at the joint OIEAHC/SEA conference in Chicago this week.
Today I want to call your attention to Joseph Adelman’s recent update on “The Octo,” the Omohundro Institute’s collection of early American history blogs. It has been a privilege to have The Way of Improvement Leads Home as part of the inaugural class of Octo blogs.
Here is Adelman’s report:
The Octo is now about six months old, which makes the timing right for some reflection on just what the project now looks like and what I’ve learned about the early American blogosphere. It began with a simple goal: create a space where the Institute can bring together some of the best online work discussing early American history and culture, including commentary on research, teaching, the relevance of the past to the present, and whatever else happened to be new and insightful.
At that mission, the Octo seems like a success. Since early December, we’ve highlighted work on about twenty blogs on a wide range of work about early America, defined broadly as per the Institute’s mission. In fact, we now have anOcto Archive, where we will keep a running list of all the blogs to which we’ve linked. However, two somewhat odd issues have arisen as I’ve worked to survey the landscape and keep an eye out for work that we might want to feature at the Octo.
First, it seems like the early American blogosphere suffers from East Coast bias. Now, it’s possible that the problem lies partly in the editor (I will admit that I’ve never lived further west than Baltimore, and currently live outside Boston), but I think it’s actually a more significant issue than that. There are a number of personal and individual blogs out there, but only one—Ann Little’s Historiann—is based geographically west of the Mississippi, and most hug the East Coast. Even group blogs like the Junto, of which I am a member, are predominantly staffed with historians who live in, hail from, or trained at schools on the East Coast of the United States.
In part, that reflects the field. The major graduate programs in early American studies are clustered in the Eastern time zone, as are many of the major archives, libraries, and affiliate organizations. But it surely doesn’t represent the totality of work being done out there, from the prominent institutions like the Newberry or the Huntington, to universities such as Stanford and USC (with its Early Modern Studies Institute), and beyond.
The second oddity about the field is that there is very little blogging about Native American history. I’ve actually had conversations with several scholars who work in Native American studies and they’ve agreed, but it’s a major omission for us as scholars of early America that there isn’t more work focusing on that issue. (Grad students: if you’re looking for a niche, there’s one for you!) That’s not to say there’s nothing, of course, and there are occasional posts on the various group and institutional blogs out there. But it’s a major area of early American studies, and it seems to lack a corresponding online presence.
As with most online products, the Octo is a work in progress, and we look forward to hearing any suggestions or comments you may have, either here, by email, or in person. If you’re interested in the early American blogosphere and would like to discuss these issues and more, please be sure to come to our workshop at the Institute-SEA conference in Chicago on Day 1 (Thursday, June 18) at 3:30pm. More info is available in a post I wrote at the Junto, and there are still spots available!
The second oddity about the field is that there is very little blogging about Native American history.
The question becomes “how vital is this knowledge?” Unfortunately, there isn't time to study Everything That Ever Happened, so it seems logical to emphasize the parts which contribute to out greater understanding of how we got to where we are today. It does seem unfeeling to point out that history has many dead ends, but it's a fact there are.
The Oneida Community and the Shakers are interesting, but mostly in the history of household items and bizarre social conceits.
I disagree about that, Tom. The Oneida as part of the Iroquois Confederation played a fairly large part in American History. Native American history played a major role in shaping the development of the US. While they ultimately were shoved out of their lands and onto reservations, they influenced the settling of the Midwest and West as well as how the Spanish took charge of the Southwest.
Also, studying the history of Native Americans can show how their cultures adapted to climate change in North and South America. As the climate continues to change today, we use history (well, at least some of us use history) to study its effect upon cultures to give us insight on possible ways to adapt.
Furthermore, without Native Americans the English colonies at Jamestown and Plymouth Bay would have failed in the first year. The Spanish would not have been able to explore the interior of the continent and might very well have ignored whole areas of the Americas for years including South America. Native American history is a major field of study with American History and deservedly so.
Thx, Mr. Dick. I was of course speaking of
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Oneida_Community
as a white European example of similar historical dead ends. As for your case for Native American studies, that it can help with the climate change angle seems rather a longshot. In fact, do they teach the un-PC account of how pace the 'Crying Indian” litter commercial, natives were rather unromantic toward the environment?
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/
More important are the implications of the new theories for today's ecological battles. Much of the environmental movement is animated, consciously or not, by what William Denevan, a geographer at the University of Wisconsin, calls, polemically, “the pristine myth”—the belief that the Americas in 1491 were an almost unmarked, even Edenic land, “untrammeled by man,” in the words of the Wilderness Act of 1964, one of the nation's first and most important environmental laws. As the University of Wisconsin historian William Cronon has written, restoring this long-ago, putatively natural state is, in the view of environmentalists, a task that society is morally bound to undertake. Yet if the new view is correct and the work of humankind was pervasive, where does that leave efforts to restore nature?
I cannot speak for other instructors. I do not teach the pristine state because that is just a myth. Humans have always altered the landscape around them which is the key theme of my World Regional Geography course.
The longshot is not a longshot. It is a reality. By studying how past civilizations have collapsed we gain insight and clues as to how to possibly prevent it from happening again. Climate change has played an instrumental part in many collapses in the past. It could do so again. Ignoring the past and its lessons concerning this climate change issue is perilous. Unfortunately, we have people that reject science, reject history, and in my opinion reject common sense.
No doubt. Everyone who disagrees with me lacks common sense too. 😉
Even stipulating the claim that climate change brought down ancient Egypt, tying that to the necessity of studying the Iroquois seems a bit of a stretch, esp in a country that can barely name the vice-president.
I can't help but see a similarity to the upcoming political move of bouncing Alexander Hamilton from the currency in favor of some female [any female!] yet to be determined. The ideology of identity trumps actual historical significance. That ideology pollutes civics is unremarkable, but the social sciences are becoming more social than science.
Look up Chaco Canyon and see what happened in the American Southwest to the Native Americans there. That is what I am referring to. It is not a stretch at all.
You may want to place historical significance to things that you identify with. Others may choose otherwise. History is valuable because of everything in it. If you want to study civics, go study civics. That is not the study of history. Civics is the study of citizenship. There is a historical element present in the study of civics, but in the study of history civics is just one part.
Here in the US civics also has to include Native Americans and where they historically were placed in the racist American society. It also involves the Reconstruction Era because it may have impacted the concept of American citizenship more than the Revolution era. It certainly was its equal in impact.
It is funny that you see the social sciences becoming more social than science. They weren't seen as actual science for many decades. As the field became more professional it grew more scientific, but it always has remained social.
As for ideology, it has always been involved with civics. You can't separate the two. In fact, you can say that ideology drives how civics is explained.
Yes, you quite admit here that your use of history is in service of an agenda. So let's not clutch our pearls when David Barton does it.
Here in the US civics also has to include Native Americans and where they historically were placed in the racist American society. It also involves the Reconstruction Era because it may have impacted the concept of American citizenship more than the Revolution era. It certainly was its equal in impact.
Um, no, and this is where any possibility of engagement ends. The place of native Americans in the Reconstruction era is a footnote to the millions upon millions of blacks and whites who were affected. To give them equal standing is naked ideology, tokenism.
The possibility of engagement ended with your first post on the subject. You have a fantasy version of history that is the usual white bread, great man version of history. It shows through with your posting history as does your failure to comprehend history on a large scale. Apparently you think the events in the American West from 1860 to 1890 have nothing to do with took place east of the Mississippi River during the same time. That is as with most your opinions concerning history, erroneous. They are interlocked.
You like to focus on narrow segments of history and label them important. That is your opinion, the opinion of someone who is not a historian. You keep coming up short, Tom.
Blogger Jimmy Dick said…
The possibility of engagement ended with your first post on the subject.
True, since you are the interlocutor. But perhaps the disqualification was yours.
You have a fantasy version of history that is the usual white bread, great man version of history.
2 pejoratives, then a lie.
It shows through with your posting history as does your failure to comprehend history on a large scale.
3 pejoratives.
Apparently you think the events in the American West from 1860 to 1890 have nothing to do with took place east of the Mississippi River during the same time.
Not remotely a fair or accurate summary of my argument.
That is as with most your opinions concerning history, erroneous.
#4.
They are interlocked.
“Interlocked” is a slippery word: It does not address the question of what is the main text and what are the footnotes. Any story and its footnotes are of course “interlocked.” However, the story of Reconstruction is quite intelligible without the native American dimension. In fact, injecting the Indians dilutes rather than clarifies the narrative, more heat than light.
You like to focus on narrow segments of history and label them important.
A 5th smear against me as a person, well done. Some things are indeed important, some less so. To assign higher importance to some yet-to-be-named female over Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill is ideology and symbolism, not history. Like that.
That is your opinion, the opinion of someone who is not a historian.
#6, implied argument from authority, as though a community college instructor has the stature to dis anyone. I don't flatter myself enough to call myself a historian; neither do I think a diploma makes a person a historian either.
You keep coming up short, Tom.
#7, the victory dance, as the litigant presumes to be judge and jury as well, and renders a verdict in favor of himself.
Court adjourned.
Once again, Tom, the only thing you do is reject reality in favor of fantasy. You can run along and play in the sandbox you created for yourself now. Let's face it, you don't like change. It shows strongly in your posting history. I would tell you to go run back to Warren's boards but you can't post there as TVD can you? Wonder why?
The bottom line is that you want a history that fits your beliefs. It doesn't exist. Nothing you say will change that. Until you learn that you will not be able to progress mentally.
I don't even need to debate you, Mr. Dick. I just let you talk. Rock on.
That is because you cannot debate me, Tom. You lose every time. You have a limited grasp of history and it shows. The sad thing is you choose to make it a limited grasp.
Keep digging, professor.
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