Interview with Paul Sweet

Paul R. Sweet is a retired Foreign Service Officer and professor emeritus of the Department of History at Michigan State University. Dr. Sweet received his B.A. degree from DePauw University in 1929 and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1934. He has taught at Birmingham-Southern College, Bates College, the University of Chicago, Colby College, and Michigan State University. From 1948 to 1959 he served with the U.S. Department of State and from 1953 to 1963 at the U.S. Embassy in Bonn; from 1963 to 1967 he was U.S. Consul General at Stuttgart. He co-authored The Tragedy of Austria (1948), and is the author of Friedrich von Gentz: Defender of the Old Order (1941), and Wilhelm von Humboldt: a Biography 1767–1808 (1978). He and his wife live in East Lansing, Michigan, where this interview was conducted by Linda Cooke Johnson in October 1996.     

INTERVIEW WITH ROGER ADELSON

Born in 1942 and reared in Kansas, Adelson received his B.A. degree from George Washington University, Washington, D.C.; his B.Litt. degree from Oxford University, Oxford, England; and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Washington University, St. his, Missouri, where he was a Danforth Fellow. He held a post-doctoral research fellowship at St. Antony's College, Oxford, and taught briefly at Harvard before joining the history faculty at Arizona State University in 1974. Adelson's publications include Mark Sykes: Portrait of an Amateur and London and the Invention of the Middle East: Money, Power, and War, 1902–1922. While editing The Historian from 1990 to 1995, Adelson has interviewed numerous historians; many will be republished this fall in Speaking of History. As a consulting editor for The Historian, Adelson will continue doing interviews. This one was conducted by Peter Iverson, associate editor, and edited by Joy Margheim, editorial assistant, in December, 1995.     

James E Byrnes and the Politics of Segregation

Born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1934, Thomas S. Morgan received his B.A. from Davidson College, his M.A. from Duke University, and his Ph.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill. He taught in high school in Baltimore, Maryland, and at Wake Forest University, and UNC-Chapel Hill, prior to coming to to Winthrop University where he has remained for the past 27 years. From 1978 to 1981 he was dean of Winthrop's College of Arts and Sciences. Morgan and his wife, Nancy, are parents of three sons. In addition, to publishing some scholarly articles, Morgan wrote the Study Guide for George Tindall's America: A Narrative History in its various editions. In 1972 he served as chair of the membership committee of the Southern Historical Association. Morgan served as president of Phi Alpha Theta from 1991 to 1993, presiding over the final years of service of Don Hoffman, the organization's secretary-treasurer, and the selection of Hoffman's replacement, Jack Tunstall. In April 1994, Morgan received an award for his "Outstanding Service and Exceptional Dedication" as Phi Alpha Theta president. This article is a modified version of his 1993 presidential address.     

Interview with Gilbert C. Fite

Born in 1918, reared and educated in South Dakota, Gilbert C. Fite took his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri. He is a historian of U.S. agriculture, particularly the impact of technology, economics, and politics on midwestern and southern farming since the late nineteenth century. He has written nine books, co-authored seven more, edited three volumes, and published over sixty articles. Former president of Eastern Illinois University, the Agricultural History Society and the Southern and Western Historical Associations, Fite has long been very active in Phi Alpha Theta and served as its president from 1981–1983. He taught at the University of Oklahoma for twenty-six years and held the Richard B. Russell Professorship of American History at the University of Georgia for a decade. He and his wife, June, were married in 1941, have two sons, and live in Bella Vista, Arkansas, where this interview was conducted by Roger Adelson in August 1993.     

THE VALUE OF HISTORICAL FIELD WORK

Born in Oklahoma City in 1939, educated at George Washington University, the University of Central Oklahoma, and the University of Oklahoma, Baird taught for a decade at the University of Arkansas, Fayettmille, and for another ten years at Oklahoma State University before accepting in 1989 the Howard A. White Professorship of History at Pepperdine University. He and his wife, Jane, are the parents of a daughter and a son. In addition to numerous articles, Baird has published eight books on the history of Native American peoples in Oklahoma and two on the history of medicine in Arkansas. He has been president of the Western History Association and chair of the Oklahoma Foundation for the Humanities. From 1989 to 1991 he served as president of Phi Alpha Theta, whose advisory council he now chairs. Bairds presidential address was delivered in December 1991 at the 70th Anniversary Phi Alpha Theta convention held in Chicago.     

INTERVIEW WITH

Born in 1903, in north central Mississippi, Clark received his B.A. from the University of Mississippi, his M.A. from the University of Kentucky, and his Ph.D. from Duke. Clark has collected thousands of documents, edited a dozen volumes, and written over 30 books and 60 articles, many of them about the South since the Civil War. Clark has served as president of Phi Alpha Theta, the Southern Historical Association, and the Organization of American Historians. He and his wife, Martha Elizabeth Turner, were married in 1933 and have a son and a daughter. Retiring in the 1970s after four decades at the University of Kentucky and Indiana University, Clark remains active in such historical circles as the Filson Club, where this interview was conducted in April 1991 by Roger Adelson.     

Henry Herbert Donaldson’s (1857–1938) contribution to an organized approach to the experimental study of the mammalian central nervous system

ABSTRACT

This article shows that the academic and research careers of Henry Herbert Donaldson (1857–1938) were directed to provide basic information about the growth of the vertebrate nervous system and to provide standards and the means to make such research efficient. He earned the reputation of making the albino rat a standard laboratory animal. His academic career began when he was an undergraduate at Yale University in 1875 and concluded with his death as Professor and Head of the Department of Neurology at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology of the University of Pennsylvania in 1938. During that period, pivotal experiences occurred, including research in physiological chemistry with Chittenden at the Sheffield School at Yale, graduate study at Johns Hopkins University, postgraduate study in Europe, and professorial positions at Clark University and the University of Chicago. It was at Johns Hopkins University that Donaldson learned about the need for physiological, anatomical, and psychophysical research and about the techniques to allow such research. It was at Clark University that he had first-hand and detailed experience with the anatomy of the brain of a deaf-blind-mute woman, as he attempted to correlate her sensory deficits with her brain development. It was at Clark University that he clearly recognized the need for standardization in neurological research. At the University of Chicago, he developed administrative skills and began a coordinated research effort to delimit the growth of the nervous system. It was at Chicago that he learned that the albino rat could be a reasonable subject for such research. It was also at Chicago that he was able to formulate ideas about the future organizational needs of human neuroanatomy. It was at the Wistar Institute that his research program and his professional career matured. He organized a research effort to elucidate the growth of the nervous system. He contributed to the coordination of neurological research in the United States and Europe. It was while at the Wistar Institute that he became well-known for making the albino rat a standard laboratory mammal—a convenient living material for research.     

AN ESSAY BY DAVID THELEN: HISTORY MAKING IN AMERICA

Born in 1939 in Berkeley, California, Thelen received his B.A. from Antioch College and his master's and doctoral degrees in U.S. history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, during the 1960s. In 1985, he moved to Indiana University, Bloomington, in order to become editor of The Journal of American History, published by the Organization of American Historians. Besides being an innovative and imaginative editor, Thelen has been actively involved with the Committee on History-Making in America and its new center that opened at Indiana University in September 1990. Anyone interested in this project is invited to write to Lois Silverman, Director, Center on History-Making in America, Indiana University, 203 Education Building, Bloomington, Indiana, 47405.     

Virtual Forum: Archaeology and Decolonization

In this forum, patiently achieved through months of cyber-work, participants Nayanjot Lahiri (India), Nick Shepherd (South Africa), Joe Watkins (USA) and Larry Zimmerman (USA), plus the two editors of Arqueología Suramericana, Alejandro Haber (Argentina) and Cristóbal Gnecco (Colombia), discuss the topic of archaeology and decolonization. Nayanjot Lahiri teaches archaeology in her capacity as Professor at the Department of History, University of Delhi. Her books include Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization was Discovered (2005) and The Archaeology of Indian Trade Routes (1992). She has edited The Decline and Fall of the Indus Civilization (2000) and an issue of World Archaeology entitled The Archaeology of Hinduism (2004). Nick Shepherd is a senior lecturer in the Center for African Studies at the University of Cape Town, where he convenes the program in public culture in Africa. He sits on the executive committee of the World Archaeological Congress, and is co-editor of the journal Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress. In 2004 he was based at Harvard University as a Mandela Fellow. He has published widely on issues of archaeology and society in Africa, and on issues of public history and heritage. Joe Watkins is Choctaw Indian and archaeologist Joe Watkins is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. He is 1/2 Choctaw Indian by blood, and has been involved in archaeology for more than thirty-five years. He received his Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma and his Master’s of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Anthropology from Southern Methodist University, where his doctorate examined archaeologists’ responses to questionnaire scenarios concerning their perceptions of American Indian issues. His current study interests include the ethical practice of anthropology and the study of anthropology’s relationships with descendant communities and Aboriginal populations, and he has published numerous articles on these topics. His first book Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian Values and Scientific Practice (AltaMira Press, 2000) examined the relationships between American Indians and archaeologists and is in its second printing His latest book, Reclaiming Physical Heritage: Repatriation and Sacred Sites (Chelsea House Publishers 2005) is aimed toward creating an awareness of Native American issues among high school students. Larry J. Zimmerman is Professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies and Public Scholar of Native American Representation at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. He is Vice President of the World Archaeological Congress. He also has served WAC as its Executive Secretary and as the organizer of the first WAC Inter-Congress on Archaeological Ethics and the Treatment of the Dead. His research interests include the archaeology of the North American Plains, contemporary American Indian issues, and his current project examining the archaeology of homelessness. Originally published in Spanish in Arqueología Suramericana 3(1), 2007     

Introduction: Danto and His Critics: After the End of Art and Art History

In Bielefeld, Germany in April, 1997 an author conference was devoted to Arthur C. Danto's 1995 Mellon Lectures After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (Princeton,1997). This essay provides an introduction to seven essays given at that conference and expanded for this Theme Issue of History and Theory . Danto presented his view of the nature of art in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981). He then added in the Mellon lectures a sociological perspective on the current situation of the visual arts, and an Hegelian historiography. The history of art has ended, Danto claims, and we now live in a posthistorical era. Since in his well-known book on historiography, Analytical Philosophy of History (1965), Danto is unsympathetic to Hegel's speculative ways of thinking about history, his adaptation of this Hegelian framework is surprising. Danto's strategy in After the End of Art is best understood by grasping the way in which he transformed the purely philosophical account of The Transfiguration into a historical account. Recognizing that his philosophical analysis provided a good way of explaining the development of art in the modern period, Danto radically changed the context of his argument. In this process, he opened up discussion of some serious but as yet unanswered questions about his original thesis, and about the plausibility of Hegel's claim that the history of art has ended.
Hegel . . . did not declare that modern art had ended or would disintegrate. . . . his attitude towards future art was optimistic, not pessimistic. . . . According to his dialectic . . . art . . . has no end but will evolve forever with time.     

Leo Fouché and history at Wits University, 1934–1942

Leo Fouché, the first Professor of History at Pretoria University, was the surprise choice to replace W.M. Macmillan, the first Professor of History at Wits University, following his resignation in 1933. Fouché served at Wits from 1934 to 1942, departing to take up the post of chairman of the South African Broadcasting Corporation. His tenure at both Pretoria and Wits was assessed negatively in the official histories of the two universities. In Ad Destinatum: Gedenkboek van die Universiteit van Pretoria 1910–1960, A.N. Pelzer ignored Fouché’s major contribution in building up history at Pretoria and focussed instead on his failure to serve the Afrikaans movement. In Wits: The Early Years, B.K. Murray represented the conservative Fouché as a major disappointment, both as a researcher and as a teacher, following his productive and progressive-minded predecessor. In this article, an attempt is made to present a more detailed and rounded assessment of his tenure at Wits. While he published little, and his syllabus changes, with their narrow focus on white South African history, did not outlast him, his tenure was generally a positive one for the Department of History. Student numbers grew substantially, an additional staff post was secured, and postgraduate research was actively promoted. Three of his postgraduate students went on to distinguished academic careers in history.     

INTERVIEW WITH

Born in 1937, reared and educated mainly in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Demos is a leading social historian of early America. He has published a widely known account of early Plymouth, an anthology of primary sources on colonial culture, a co-edited collection of essays on family history, and numerous scholarly articles on social history and psychohistory, some of which he included in a volume on family history and public policy. He received the Frederic Bancroft Prize for his book on witchcraft. Since 1986, Demos has been Samuel Knight Professor of American History at Yale University, where he has recently completed a book on colonists and Indians. He and his wife, Virginia, were married in 1963, have two daughters, and live in Watertown, Massachusetts. This interview was conducted in Demos' office at Yale by Roger Adelson in October 1992.     

Herbert Heaton and Five Principles of The Yorkshire Coal-miners

Abstract

'Herbert Heaton and Five Principles of the Yorkshire Coal-Miners'. Herbert Heaton, born in 1890, was the son of a Yorkshire coal-miner. He obtained his schooling with scholarships from the age of twelve, including an undergraduate career at the University of Leeds. He went on to become a leading economic historian. He taught on three Continents, spending the last thirty years of his career at the University of Minnesota in the United States. His father was not only a coal-miner, but also a lay preacher in the Primitive Methodist Church and active in the governance of his local co-operative. Heaton wrote and lectured about five principles he had learned and adopted as his own, growing up in the Yorkshire coalfields. The five principles reflect how many coal-miners before 1914 believed economic and social justice could be achieved. While the miners changed their beliefs after 1918, Heaton, who never lived in Britain after 1914, retained the Yorkshire principles of his youth.     

On Meng Sen’s teaching and lecture notes of Ming and Qing history at Peking University during the 1930s

ABSTRACT

While teaching the histories of the Ming and Qing dynasties, Meng Sen (1869–1937), developed three textbooks in the 1930s: Lecture Notes on the Ming History (明史讲义 Mingshi jiangyi), Lecture Notes on the Qing History (清史讲义 Qingshi jiangyi), and Lecture Notes on the History of the Founding of the Manchu State (满洲开国史讲义 Manzhou kaiguo shi jiangyi). In these book titles, the term “history” refers specifically to “standard history.” In tracing Meng Sen’s original intention in producing these textbooks, all three works suggest the author’s desire to write history. He wrote Lecture Notes on the Ming History to prepare a future revision of the History of the Ming (明史 Mingshi); similarly he wrote Lecture Notes on the Qing History and Lecture Notes on the History of the Founding of the Manchu State with the intention to revise the Draft History of the Qing (清史稿 Qingshi gao). Meng Sen summarized Sima Guang’s (司马光, 1019–86) view of history as “imitating the good and avoiding the bad,” which he believed represented the “essential meaning of history.” Meng followed Sima Guang’s model in compiling the Lecture Notes on the Ming History and Lecture Notes on the Qing History, as shown in their style and format. By comparison, his writing of the Lecture Notes on the History of the Founding of the Manchu State attempted to merge the traditional annals–biographic style with narrative history from the West, or to pour old wine into a new bottle. Meng Sen presented his innovative efforts at Peking University, introducing young scholars to standards for history writing, and doing his utmost to guide and encourage his students; some of whom became noted scholars in the study of Ming and Qing histories.     

Advancing the occult standard

History, Prophecy, and the Stars: The Christian Astrology of Pierre d'Ailly. By Laura Ackerman Smoller (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), xii + 233 pp., $35.00 cloth.

The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Sourcebook. By Raphael Patai (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), xv + 617 pp., $35.00/£29.95 cloth.

Access to Western Esotericism. By Antoine Faivre (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), x + 369 pp., $19.95 cloth.     

Interview with Frederic Wakeman, Jr.

Born in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1937, reared and educated in the United States and abroad, Wakeman earned his bachelor's degree in European History and Literature at Harvard University, did graduate work in Soviet Studies and Political Theory in Paris, and completed his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Oriental Languages and East Asian History at the University of California, Berkeley. A member of Berkeley's history faculty since 1965, he became the Haas Professor of Asian Studies in 1989 and Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies in 1990. Many of Wakeman's award-winning books on Early Modern, Modern, and Contemporary China have been translated into Chinese. He has held numerous advisory and leadership positions in the American Council of Learned Societies, American Historical Association, Asia Society, and Social Science Research Council, and has facilitated educational and scholarly exchanges with East Asia. The father of two sons and a daughter by a former marriage, Wakeman lives in San Francisco. This interview was conducted on the Berkeley campus in November 1996 by Roger Adelson.     

Imagining Anthropology's History

Hager, Lori D., ed. Women in Human Evolution. New York: Routledge, 1997. xiii + 214 pp. including index. $69.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.

Morbeck, Mary Ellen, Alison Galloway and Adrienne Zihlman, eds. The Evolving Female: A Life History Perspective. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. xix + 332 pp. including literature cited and index. $60.00 cloth, $27.95 paper.     

Macedonia and the Coming of Rome

EUGENE N. BORZA. In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Pp. xvii, 333.

N.G.L. HAMMOND and F.W. WALBANK. A History of Macedonia: Volume III: 336-167 BC. New York: The Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp. xxx, 654.

PETER GREEN. Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Pp. xxiii, 970.     

A scientific luther

Francis Bacon. By Perez Zagorin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998) xvi + 286 pp. $29.95, £19.95

Francis Bacon: The History of the Reign of King Henry VII. Edited by Brian Vickers (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 1998) xlv + 284 pp. £40.00 cloth