Piranhas, Whales, and Guppies

Transforming the History Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1965–1985

Dados Bibliográficos

ID16064809
AutoresWilliam Palmer (0000-0002-6071-4270, autor correspondente)
Ano2013
Volume75
Fascículo2
Páginas306-328
Data de publicação2013-06-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoHistorian (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0018-2370 • E-ISSN: 1540-6563
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/hisn.12009
OpenAlexW1932331004
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas22

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. William Palmer, From Gentleman's Club to Professional Body: The Evolution of the History Department, 1940–1980, Charleston, SC: Taylor & Francis, 2008, ix–xxviii.For some other works, not specifically on history departments, but which provide essential background on the development of the profession and research trends, see Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession, Cambridge: Taylor & Francis, 1988;James M. Banner, Jr., Becoming a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History, Taylor & Francis, 2012, 1–23;Ellen Fitzpatrick, History's Memory: Writing about America's Past, 1880–1980, Cambridge, MA: Taylor & Francis, 2002;Theodore S. Hamerow, Reflections on History and Historians, Madison, WI: Taylor & Francis, 1987.See also David S. Brown, Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography, Chicago, IL: Taylor & Francis, 2005,and David S. Brown, Beyond the Frontier: The Midwestern Voice in American Historical Writing, Chicago, IL: Taylor & Francis, 2009, which is in part about the Wisconsin history department;Jacqueline Goggin, “Challenging Sexual Discrimination in the Historical Profession: Women Historians and the American Historical Association, 1890–1940,” American Historical Review 97, 1992, 769–802. For some background on the development of the American university,see Laurence Veysey, The Emergence of the American University, Chicago, IL: Taylor & Francis, 1965;and Julie A. Reuben, The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Modernity, Chicago, IL: Taylor & Francis, 1996.2. Morton Keller and Phyllis Keller, Making Harvard Modern: The Rise of America's University, Oxford: Taylor & Francis, 2001, 22–26;on the process of professionalization generally, see Magali Sarfatti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis, Berkeley, CA: Taylor & Francis, 1977;and Mike Savage and Anne Witz, eds, Gender and Bureaucracy, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992.3. Palmer, From Gentleman's Club, 55–56.4. An exception should be made for the department at the University of California at Berkeley, where the struggle for reform was quite bitter (see Gene A. Brucker, Henry F. May, and David Hollinger, History at Berkeley: A Dialog in Three Parts, Berkeley, CA: Taylor & Francis, 1998;Palmer, From Gentleman's Club, 132–137).5. The history of UNC's history department has been undertaken primarily through the use of interviews with former and present members of the department who witnessed the changes. It should be noted that the University of North Carolina Archives has the personal papers of several of the leading figures in the story. In the spring of 2010, I went to Chapel Hill and examined the relevant materials, but found literally nothing concerning the struggle that took place. For example, the papers of James Godfrey, one of the key figures in the story, consisted mainly of his correspondence as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of British Studies. Nor did the papers of George Tindall, another key figure, yield anything of value. The papers may be accessed at the Southern Historical Collection in the Louis Round Wilson Special Collection Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). University Archives at UNC also has oral histories with Tindall and two other important figures in the department, Joel Williamson and Donald Mathews. None of the interviews, however, touch on departmental matters. The three interviews may be accessed online at the Southern Oral History Collection, part of the Southern Historical Collection in the Louis Round Wilson Special Collection Library of UNC.6. Although we always need to keep in mind the University of California at Berkeley as an exception.7. In 2009, the U.S. News and World Report ranked UNC in a tie for twelfth among history departments.8. William D. Snider, Light on the Hill: A History of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC: Taylor & Francis, 1992.9. Snider, Light on the Hill, 148.10. Snider, Light on the Hill, 218.11. C. Vann woodward, Thinking Back: The Perils of Writing History, Baton Rouge, LA: Taylor & Francis, 1986, 19.12. Link is quoted in Snider, Light on the Hill, xii.13. Snider, Light on the Hill, 246–248.14. Snider, Light on the Hill, 213, 267;Pamela Dean, “Women on the Hill: The History of Women at the University of North Carolina,” 4, 6, 9, 19, unpublished paper, available (as PDF) at: http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/unc/womenonthehill.pdf, accessed 13 February 2013.15. Art Chansky, Blue Blood: Duke‐North Carolina, New York: Taylor & Francis, 2005, 108.16. Information on Carl Pegg, J. Carlyle Sitterson, Hugh Lefler, and James Godfrey can be found in the Directory of American Scholars: A Biographical Directory, vol. I: History, New York: Jaques Cattell Press for the American Council of Learned Societies, 1969, 186, 299, 397, 472.17. The materials presented here on the career of George Tindall can be found in Dan T. Carter, “George Brown Tindall,” AHA Perspectives 45, 2007, 58–59.18. Carter, “Tindall,” 59;George B. Tindall, South Carolina Negroes, 1877–1990, Columbia, SC: Taylor & Francis, 1952.19. Carter, “George Tindall,” 59;George B. Tindall, The Emergence of the New South, 1913–1945, Baton Rouge, LA: Taylor & Francis, 1967;C. Vann woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877–1913, Baton Rouge, LA: Taylor & Francis, 1951.20. William Palmer, “Interview with Joan Wallach Scott,” 8 January 2010.21. Palmer, “Interview with Scott.” Scott of course became a major figure in the profession. For more information on her, see Joan Wallach Scott, “Finding Critical History,” in James M. Banner, Jr., and John R. Gillis, eds., Becoming Historians, Chicago, IL: Taylor & Francis, 2009, 26–52.22. William Palmer, “Interview with Donald Mathews,” 21 December 2009; idem, “Interview with Peter Filene,” 1 December 2009; idem, “Interview with Scott.” Some of the UNC faculty members quoted or paraphrased in the article may be contacted at [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]. Emails for other UNC faculty members can found online (available at: http://history.unc.edu/people/faculty/, accessed 13 February 2013). Sadly, Gillian Cell died September 9, 2010. Transcripts of my interviews with UNC faculty are available upon request at [email protected]. William Palmer, “Interview with Lamar Cecil,” 14 July 2011.24. Palmer, “Interview with Cecil.”25. Constance B. Schulz and Elizabeth Hayes Tuner, eds, Clio's Southern Sisters: Interviews with Leaders of the Southern Association for Women Historians, Columbia, MO, and London: Taylor & Francis., 2004, 38;see also Anne Firor Scott, Making the Invisible Woman Visible, Urbana, IL, and Chicago: Taylor & Francis, 1984, xix–xx.26. Schulz and Turner, eds, Clio's Southern Sisters, 38.27. Schulz and Turner, eds, Clio's Southern Sisters, 54–55.28. William Palmer, “Interview with Gillian Cell,” 17 January 2010; for some background on women in the historical profession,see Julie Des jardins, Women and the Historical Enterprise in America: Gender, Race, and the Practice of Memory, Chapel Hill, NC: Taylor & Francis, 2003;Eileen Boris and Nupur Chaudhuri, eds, Voices of Women's Historians, Bloomington, IN: Taylor & Francis, 1999;Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, New York, 1988, 278–298;Goggin, “Challenging Sexual Discrimination.”29. Gillian T. Cell, English Enterprise in Newfoundland, 1577–1660, Toronto: Taylor & Francis, 1970.30. For Greensboro, see William H. Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom, New York and Oxford: Taylor & Francis, 1980.31. Events in Chapel Hill are recounted in Snider, Light on the Hill, 268.32. Ibid., 271.33. Ibid., 276–277.34. Ibid., 280–284.35. Ibid., 283.36. Palmer, “Interview with Mathews.”37. Palmer, “Interview with Filene.”38. Palmer, “Interview with Mathews.”39. Palmer, “Interview with Mathews.”40. Information on the department's staffing changes in the next few paragraphs comes from Palmer, “Interview with Filene.”41. Williamson and McVaugh in particular achieved genuine distinction in their specialties.42. Palmer, “Interview with Mathews”;Palmer, “Interview with Cecil.”43. Palmer, “Interview with Mathews”;Palmer, “Interview with Cecil”;Palmer, “Interview with Filene.”44. Palmer, “Interview with Cecil.”45. Palmer, “Interview with Mathews”;Palmer, “Interview with Cecil.”46. William Palmer, “Interview with George V. Taylor,” 5 November 1999.47. For the classic statement of the Marxist interpretation, see Georges Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution, Princeton, NJ: Taylor & Francis, 1947;for an early critique, see Alfred Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution, Cambridge: Taylor & Francis, 1964.48. George V. Taylor, “Types of Capitalism in Eighteenth‐Century France,” English Historical Review 79, 196, 478–97;George V. Taylor, “Non‐Capitalist Wealth and the Origins of the French Revolution,” American Historical Review 72, 1967, 469–496.49. Daniel Mornet, Les origines intellectuelles de la Révolution Française, 1715–1787, Paris: Taylor & Francis, 1933;George Taylor, “Revolutionary and Non‐Revolutionary Content in the Cahiers of 1789: A Preliminary Report,” French Historical Studies 7, 1973, 479–502.50. Palmer, “Interview with Taylor.”51. Palmer, “Interview with John Headley,” 8 December 2009.52. Palmer, “Interview with Hall”;Palmer, “Interview with Filene.”53. Email communication, “Donald Mathews to Author,” 10 October 2011.54. Palmer, “Interview with Filene”;Palmer, “Interview with Cecil.”55. Palmer, “Interview with Mathews.”56. Palmer, “Interview with Mathews”;Palmer, “Interview with Cecil.”57. Palmer, “Interview with Cell.”58. Palmer, “Interview with Filene.” Others, however, remember Baxter as an obstacle to reform (see Palmer, “Interview with Scott”).59. Palmer, “Interview with Cecil”;Palmer, “Interview with Hall.”60. Palmer, “Interview with Mathews”;Palmer, “Interview with Cecil.”61. William Palmer, “Interview with Jacquelyn Dowd Hall,” 4 February 2011.62. Palmer, “Interview with Hall.”63. Palmer, “Interview with Mathews”;Palmer, “Interview with Cecil.”64. Palmer, “Interviews with Michael Hunt,” 10 February 2010;Palmer, “Interview with Filene.”65. E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, New York: Taylor & Francis, 1966 [original English edition, 1963].66. William Palmer, “Interview with Leon Fink,” 3 March 2010.67. Leon Fink, Workingman's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics, Urbana, IL: Taylor & Francis, 1983.68. Palmer, “Interview with Fink.”69. Snider, Light on the Hill, 309–311;Palmer, “Interview with Filene”;Palmer, “Interview with Cecil.”70. Palmer, “Interview with Fink”;Palmer, “Interview with Lloyd Kramer,” 28 December 2009.71. Email Communication from Leon Fink to Author, 13 September 2011.72. William Palmer, “Interview with Peter Coclanis,” 10 August 2010.Additional informationNotes on contributorsWilliam PalmerWilliam Palmer is Professor of History at Marshall University. He is the author of four books and nearly thirty articles, which have appeared in such journals as the Journal of British Studies, Renaissance Quarterly, Historical Journal, and The Historian. He would like to thank all the people cited in the notes for permitting him to interview them and Peter Filene, Leon Fink, Jacquelyn Hall, Donald Mathews, the late Gillian Cell, Howard Segal, and James Banner, Jr., for commenting on earlier drafts. The standard disclaimers apply

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