Nick Sarantakes has a blog titled “In the Service of Clio.” The point of it is clear by the subtitle, “Essays on Career Management in the Historical Profession.” He has a series entitled “Eight Questions,” in which he poses the same eight questions to different people from different subfields of history. He contacted me a few weeks ago to give some advice from the perspective of an early career person in Intellectual History. I was surprised to be chosen, but pleased to offer a few of the things I’ve noticed having traveled thus far through the profession. Several of the things I noted came from my experience writing for and reading this blog. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts. Here‘s my column.
U.S. Intellectual History Blog
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3 Thoughts on this Post
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As a writer, I like your historical focus on the individual. (Tolstoy would like it, too.)
Annette Gordon-Reed writes “There has been a tendency throughout American history and into the present day, to see black people as symbols or representations rather than as individual human beings. Even when specific details about an individual life are available for interpretation, those details are often ignored or dismissed in favor of falling back on all the supposed verities about black life and black people in general. For African Americans social history almost invariably overwhelms biography, obscuring the contingencies within personal lives that are the very things historians and biographers normally rely upon toe create meaningful depictions of events and lives in the past.” The Hemingses of Monticello, page 290
As a literary scholar whose work has often been described as intellectual history, I found your column illuminating.