[This coming weekend, Vaughn and I will lead a workshop entitled “Improvisation & Innovation: New Possibilities for Public Scholarship” at the American Studies Association conference in Chicago. So this week I wanted to engage with a few questions about and examples of this vital work, leading up to a weekend post with some further details about that workshop!]
On a few of the many ways to respond to criticisms of public scholarship.
I don’t want to get too inside baseball with this series, so I’ll keep this paragraph brief: in early July, The New Republic published a controversial essay by Christian historian Katherine Kelaidis—I don’t mean a historian of Christianity (although she is that too), I mean that her religion motivates her scholarship, by her own admission—arguing that historians have “taken over liberal punditry,” to the detriment of the profession. Tellingly, one of her main examples was folks arguing that the United States was not founded as a Christian nation, and let’s just say I’m not convinced by her rebuttals to that claim. But as unimpressive as I found this particular article (much of which, to my mind, boiled down to sour grapes jealousy toward the scholars who have gained the most prominence in this arena), I do hear potential critiques or concerns about public scholarship, and so wanted to start this series with a few quite thoughts on why I believe it’s vital for all of us who have any interest to be doing this work:
- People don’t care about silos: I’ve had the chance to share my work with a wide variety of audiences, from elementary school kids to retirees, book clubs to museums/historic sites, undergraduate and graduate students to professional peers from other disciplines, and perhaps my number one takeaway is that the categories we use in academia (History, English, American Studies, academic vs. public scholarship) don’t mean a damn thing to any of them. I know those categories have some utility in terms of organizing institutions, hiring, and so on, but at the end of the day, it’s about (as it should be) the work we’re doing, not the arbitrary frames for it.
- Peer review happens in multiple ways: One distinction between academic and public scholarship that does have a bit more weight is that the former tends to go through a formal peer-review process, while the latter doesn’t. (This became a focus of the conversations around the mysterious mid-July dustup over Kerri Greenidge’s book on the Grimke sisters, which has way more going on than I can engage in a few lines.) I value that formal process, especially for more specialized scholarly subjects (more on that in a moment), but I would also argue that public scholarly work is reviewed by many, many peers, far more in fact than academic articles will ever get. Some of my most important feedback has taken place in those public conversations, in fact.
- We need work on the big questions: Every scholar relies heavily on the work of other scholars, and those of us doing public scholarship rely specifically on the more specialized work done by scholars of all the specific subjects with which we’re engaging (to be clear, that more specialized work also can and should be shared publicly if and when folks want!). But it’s almost inevitable that such specialized work, at least when it’s done for academic publication and it’s peer-review process, tends to shy away from questions that are seen as too big for any one such publication to grapple with. And as a guy whose last two books have focused on definitions of American identity and the contested history of American patriotism, let’s just say that I am very committed to grappling with the biggest questions, the kinds that are perfectly suited for public scholarly conversations, communities, and work.
Next reflections tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Examples of great public scholars or scholarship you’d share?
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