Click here for the full schedule of the 2011-2012 Past Tense seminar series

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First, Gardy suggests that there are two types of scientists in this world: those live, eat, and breathe their work and those who “make time for other activities, be they long walks on the beach, a good finger-painting session, or sculpting great scenes from the history of science in butter.” I would suggest that there are probably two types of historians who could be described in a similar manner: there are those who spend all day at the archives or at the computer and those who spend much of their time on creative projects, activism, teaching, or with their families. (Me, I fall squarely in the latter category: as soon as I meet my history-making goals for the day I move quickly onto cooking, gardening, creative writing, photography, or whatever my kids are up to.)

But Gardy’s aim isn’t simply to categorize scientists, she’s arguing that precisely because there are so many types of researchers, the need for collaboration is paramount in order to solve problems. She re-tells the fable of the blind men feeling the elephant and how they all needed to share their observations in order to understand the nature of the large animal that they were observing, underscoring the need for scientists (or let’s say, historians) to work together.

In closing she writes,

As the wise man in the tale explains, it is only when knowledge is shared that the complete picture emerges. This holds true for elephants, and it holds true for science. Our lab, for instance, studies a new class of therapeutics for the treatment of infectious diseases. There is simply no way we could test it on all of the major bugs in the world, and even if we could, would you really want to work in a lab that housed everything from Anthrax to Yellow Fever?* Instead, we focus on a couple of models that we’re experts at, and have our collaborators test the compounds in the other models that they specialize in. Everybody wins, especially those of us who get to visit our far-off collaborators every so often to compare notes in person.

Ask any respected researcher their secret, and I can guarantee that many – almost all, perhaps – will answer that it’s to surround themselves with good people, both in terms of who they bring into the lab, and who they choose to collaborate with. Those researchers who fail to foster at least a few collaborations are sentencing themselves to massive workloads, depriving themselves of important insights, and making it very difficult to get a complete picture of their subject. That, and they’re probably making a lot of elephants really mad. So unless you want a rampaging elephant trampling your lab members and stamping on your glassware, get out there and find a few willing folk to partner up with.

I’d like to do more collaborative work in history, but I struggle to know the best way to approach it (we historians tend to be wallflowers/loners), what tools to use for such work (blog, wiki, podcast, listserv?), and how to navigate the interpersonal issues related to collaborative efforts (me, I am always afraid that I come off as a bit too eager in such relationships).

But despite the possible pitfalls, I’m determined to forge onwards with my efforts. The podcasts will resume soon, the blog will have regular posts, and meanwhile I’m strengthening my ties to the various possibilities of Digital Humanities (even while I hone my skills at Second Life butter sculpting along the way).

Martha mentions some books that she recommends as inspiration for writing:

Erskine Clark, Dwelling Place
Clare Messud, The Emperor’s Children
Stephen Carter, New England White
Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million

Some questions for discussion:

• Martha says that she finds much of her writing inspiration from fiction. Do you find inspiration from fiction? If so, what books would you recommend to other writers?

• When conducting your own research, do you find yourself looking for good stories to tell?

• She notes that in The Sea Captain’s Wife she leaves out the sentence that says “I argue that…” because she feels that the argument is evident from the historical narrative. Do you, in your own writing, find the need to explicitly spell out your argument for your readers or do you find that you can write in a manner that makes the argument obvious?

In this episode Martha discusses her undergraduate class in “Experimental History.” This previous post links to her Perspectives article on this topic and offers links to the books and articles that she uses in the classroom.

• How do those writing about the past convey what they have learned and the arguments they want to make?
• What rhetorical devices do they use to try to enlighten, capture the attention of, provoke, persuade, or even amuse their reader?
• Why do we think of some academic historians as especially good stylists or practitioners of the craft of historical writing?
• What place, if any, should there be in non-fiction historical writing for techniques and approaches more often associated with one or another genre of fiction?
  
• Why do some book reviews stick with us while others are immediately forgettable?

Below are the texts that we’re reading for the seminar (with hyperlinks). The books were all paired with relevant readings on the class syllabus. However, for ease of posting here, I’ve disrupted the connections and chronology. Many apologies to Jeff in this regard.

It’s my hope that this list, and other material at the Making History site, will be a catalyst for future classes on the craft of writing history, particularly experimental history:

Books:

Robert Darnton’s The Great Cat Massacre
Vanessa Schwartz’ Spectacular Realities
Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City
Mary Beard’s The Parthenon
Natalie Z. Davis’ The Return of Martin Guerre
Jonathan Spence’s The Death of Woman Wang
Lynn Hunt’s Inventing Human Rights
Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian
Perry Anderson’s Spectrum

Articles:

Urban History, “Icons” issue multimedia companion
Mike Davis’ “The Flames of New York”
Jane Kamensky’s “Our Buildings, Our Selves”
Laura Mitchell’s “Beyond Tense: Encouraging Historians to Think Hard about Writing and Reading”
Martha Hodes’ “A House in Vermont, a Caribbean Beach: Beckoned by landscapes beyond the archive”
Jon Wiener’s “The Weatherman’s Temptation”
Mary Beard’s “A Don’s Life” blogposts
Hanchao Lu’s “The Art of History: A Conversation with Jonathan Spence”
Greg Grandin’s “Toward a Global New Deal”
Jill Lepore’s “No More Kings”
Martha Nussbaum’s “Body of the Nation”
Pankaj Mishra’s “Impasse in India”