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Can David Starkey be called a historian?

August 25, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

History Time (http://www.sxc.hu/photo/731835)David Starkey should not be referred to as a historian when he makes media appearances as a pundit on matters outside his area of expertise because it brings the “profession into disrepute”, according to a letter signed by 100 of his peers.

In the letter in today’s Times Higher Education, academics criticise the “reductionist argument” made by Dr Starkey during his recent appearance on BBC Two’s Newsnight, when he said that the UK riots were caused because “the whites have become black”.

Such a claim is “both evidentially insupportable and factually wrong”, the letter says.

Particular ire is reserved for the BBC for introducing Dr Starkey as a historian when inviting him to comment on matters outside his historical specialism, which is British constitutional history in the Tudor period.

“The problem lies in the BBC’s representation of Dr Starkey’s views as those of a ‘historian’, which implies that they have some basis in research and evidence,” the letter says. “As even the most basic grasp of cultural history would show, Dr Starkey’s views as presented on Newsnight have no basis in either. His crass generalisations about black culture and white culture…would disgrace a first-year history undergraduate.

“It appears to us that the BBC was more interested in employing him for his on-screen persona and tendency to make comments that viewers find offensive than for his skills as a historian.”

Read full story.

Filed Under History Tagged With David Starkey, Times Higher Education, What is history?

Why Work? Dorothy Sayers

July 20, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

Can you remember – it is already getting difficult to remember – what things were like before the war? The stockings we bought cheap and threw away to save the trouble of mending? The cars we scrapped every year to keep up with the latest fashion in engine design and streamlining? The bread and bones and scraps of fat that littered the dustbins – not only of the rich, but of the poor? The empty bottles that even the dustman scorned to collect, because the manufacturers found it cheaper to make new ones than to clean the old? The mountains of empty tins that nobody found it worthwhile to salvage, rusting and stinking on the refuse dumps? The food that was burnt or buried because it did not pay to distribute it? The land choked and impoverished with thistle and ragwort, because it did not pay to farm it? The handkerchiefs used for paint rags and kettleholders? The electric lights left blazing because it was too much trouble to switch them off? The fresh peas we could not be bothered to shell, and threw aside for something out of a tin? The paper that cumbered the shelves, and lay knee-deep in the parks, and littered the seats of railway trains? The scattered hairpins and smashed crockery, the cheap knickknacks of steel and wood and rubber and glass and tin that we bought to fill in an odd half hour at Woolworth’s and forgot as soon as we had bought them? The advertisements imploring and exhorting and cajoling and menacing and bullying us to glut ourselves with things we did not want, in the name of snobbery and idleness and sex appeal? And the fierce international scramble to find in helpless and backward nations a market on which to fob off all the superfluous rubbish which the inexorable machines ground out hour by hour, to create money and to create employment

Do you realize how we have had to alter our whole scale of values, now that we are no longer being urged to consume but to conserve? We have been forced back to the social morals of our great-grandparents. When a piece of lingerie costs three precious coupons, we have to consider, not merely its glamour value, but how long it will wear. When fats are rationed, we must not throw away scraps, but jealously use to advantage what it cost so much time and trouble to breed and rear. When paper is scarce we must – or we should – think whether what we have to say is worth saying before writing or printing it. When our life depends on the land, we have to pay in short commons for destroying its fertility by neglect or overcropping. When a haul of herrings takes valuable manpower from the forces, and is gathered in at the peril of men’s lives by bomb and mine and machine gun, we read a new significance into those gloomy words which appear so often in the fishmonger’s shop: NO FISH TODAY….We have had to learn the bitter lesson that in all the world there are only two sources of real wealth: the fruit of the earth and the labor of men; and to estimate work not by the money it brings to the producer, but by the worth of the thing that is made.

Read the full article here.

Filed Under History, second world war Tagged With Dorothy Sayers, Faith, LICC, Work

White Paper: rules may favour the humanities

July 12, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1161602The government’s new higher education policies could cut student places in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects and create extra places in cheaper arts and humanities disciplines, vice-chancellors have warned.

A number of senior sector figures are concerned that the core-margin system, unveiled in the government’s higher education White Paper, will deduct places from high-cost STEM subjects and allocate them to cheaper institutions more likely to offer lower-cost arts and humanities places.

Critics also argue that the proportion of AAB students is higher in arts and humanities subjects, creating a further incentive to weight provision towards those disciplines under the new market for elite students.

Some vice-chancellors raised the issue with Prime Minister David Cameron during a meeting at 10 Downing Street last month.

Under the system, universities will lose an average of 8 per cent of their student places, creating a 20,000-strong margin to be auctioned off to institutions – including further education colleges – that offer average fees of less than £7,500.

Read full story.

Filed Under History Tagged With Higher Education, History, Humanities

Public history centre hopes to get the records straight

July 11, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

Digital archives must balance outreach, financial viability and scholarship, Matthew Reisz hears

Researchers at a new centre devoted to public history have warned that spending cuts and ill-conceived digitisation programmes pose a major threat to the archives essential to much academic work.

Kingston University’s Centre for the Historical Record was launched with the aim of promoting “collaborative research, knowledge exchange and discussion between historians, archivists, curators, heritage providers and the public”.

A conference held to mark the opening was devoted to the challenges and opportunities of preserving and presenting public history in the 21st century.

Nicola Phillips, a lecturer in history who co-founded the centre, said that libraries, archives and heritage organisations that faced budget cuts were often tempted to allow commercial companies to “snap up” the rights to archive data.

Although these businesses make the material available to anyone who is interested, it is often at a considerable price and in a form “more geared to people looking to investigate their family trees rather than academics looking at more in-depth trends such as occupations or migration”.

The effect, Dr Phillips said, is to “restrict their full education and research potential”, while any royalties to the archives tend to dry up quickly.

Read full story.

Filed Under Digitisation, History Tagged With Digital History, History, Kingston University

Fancy a p/t job as Web Manager for History Workshop Online?

May 21, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

A friend sent this to me, as it fits my skillset, but I’m already over-subscribed with work for next year, but keen to see someone who’ll be good at this take post!

NEW JOB AT HISTORY WORKSHOP JOURNAL

History Workshop Online: Web Manager

The editors of History Workshop Journal are looking for a part-time web manager and administrator to help establish and run a new website, History Workshop Online<http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/>. This WordPress website is intended to reach beyond an academic audience and to be both a discussion forum and a resource for radical historians and for those interested in the interplay between past and present. The job involves an average of six hours work a week at an hourly rate of £16.50.

The post-holder will:

  • assist editors in commissioning material for the website and sub-edit contributions for publication
  • post material on the website, including picture research and layout
  • ensure the website is refreshed regularly, with the best use of images and design
  • maintain the noticeboard and forthcoming events sections of the site
  • ensure that the website is compliant with copyright, legal and other requirements
  • generate traffic to the site through search engine optimisation, posting of links on other relevant sites, and arranging mutual click throughs with other appropriate sites
  • use social media, including Facebook and Twitter, to promote the site
  • organise and attend meetings of the web committee (roughly every six weeks)
  • attend general meetings of the editorial collective (roughly every six months) and  prepare for these a brief report on the progress of the site
  • liaise with the web designer as appropriate
  • seek approval and account for any expenditure required for the upkeep and improvement of the site

We are looking for someone who:

  • has experience in website management and administration
  • can work independently
  • has good IT and design skills
  • has an interest in history
  • can attend evening and occasional weekend meetings, usually in London
  • has good oral and written communication skills
  • is very organised

To apply for the post please send your CV with a covering letter, plus links to any websites on which you have worked, to historyworkshopjournal@gmail.com. The deadline for applications isJune 10th.

For further information about this post, email Barbara Taylor on b.taylor@uel.ac.uk

 

Filed Under History Tagged With History, History Workshop Journal, Job Vacancy

Words as weapons @timeshighered

May 6, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

But something more urgent presses upon the day. It seems to me to be the case that a new, drastic hiatus impends in our civilisation, matching two of the great historical splits of the past, those of the 17th and 19th centuries. The old order is breaking down, economically, environmentally, meaningfully. The official forces will fight to the end to restore things as they were; they will fail.

In these circumstances, it will prove the responsibility of university teachers of the humanities – philosophy, history, literature – and like-minded allies in social science to rediscover a language capable of speaking of matters of life and death, whether in lectures, books for the risible research excellence framework, seminars and conferences or, indeed, in the long, drawn-out disputes with management about the whole horrible hoo-ha over balancing the rigged books as handed over by the government. The language to hand is Leavis’, and we had better learn to speak it again before it is too late.

Read full story.

 

Filed Under History Tagged With History, Humanities, Times Higher Education

Who speaks for historians? #YestoAV

May 5, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

Twenty-five historians, coordinated by Conservative MP Chris Skidmore, have written to the Times, claiming that AV would be a betrayal of the sacrifice of past generations of democracy campaigners. But claiming to speak for the dead on a referendum they never contemplated seems to us a betrayal of academic standards that we as historians hold dear.

They claim to speak for historians, indeed for history, in defending FPTP. But as on any such serious political question, historians are as divided as the population at large. The notion that “History teaches us to vote ‘No to AV’”, as the Times headline put it, or that it gives any such clear lesson on the rightful configuration of the voting system again leads us to question the signatories’ scholarly acumen in supporting this petition.

Invoking the spirit of Winston Churchill on account of his 1931 objection to AV is a cheap bid for public resonance and bad use of historic example. His opposition to votes for women and to the introduction of direct elections in India make him a poor guide to future voting systems.

It is misleading to claim that under AV one citizen’s vote could be “worth six times that of another”. Instant run-off voting, of which AV is a form, retains the equal vote which the signatories of the Times letter fear is under threat. Further research would have shown that its compatibility with the principle of voter equality has already been tested in court in the US, where it was found that “no voter is given greater weight in his or her vote over the vote of another voter”.

Simon Szreter
Pat Thane
Daniel-Joseph MacArthur-Seal

 

Filed Under Election Campaign, History Tagged With #yestoav, History

Let’s Dig a Little Deeper @timeshighered

April 28, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

For academics in the arts and humanities, efforts to digitise large archives of books, folios, images, artworks and sound recordings have opened exciting new research opportunities unthinkable just 20 years ago.

But the wealth of digital material available is also posing problems. How can researchers make sense of the vast amount of data?

In 2009, Jisc – UK higher education’s IT consortium – launched the Digging into Data Challenge, which offered funding to researchers and technologists who could propose ways of working together to tackle the “data deluge”. The scheme sparked 90 projects at universities across the world.

Now the project, managed by Jisc but jointly financed by research councils in Canada, the US, the Netherlands and the UK, is calling for bids for a second round of funding.

“Lots and lots of stuff has been digitised from archives, museums, libraries and collections,” said Alastair Dunning, programme manager for digitisation at Jisc. “Academics who have used collections (in the past had to) try to search through them and find particular documents that they were interested in.”

However, the growth of high-performance computing has led to a new era of “cyber scholarship”. It is now possible to curate large quantities of digital data previously available only in hard copy – such as images, artworks and sound recordings on cassette – allowing humanities researchers to pose the kind of questions formerly the preserve of their colleagues in the sciences.

“What we wanted to do was get humanities people together with librarians and computer scientists and start (accessing) all those documents. We can ask new questions, and we can ask old questions in new ways,” Mr Dunning said. “Instead of searching for one document out of 3 million, they can start to do an analysis of the whole 3 million.”

Importantly, the second tranche of funding is not being issued to digitise new archives, but to help researchers exploit existing digital data through new computing techniques.

Read full article.

Filed Under Digitisation, History Tagged With Digital History, Digital Humanities, Digitisation, Funding, Times Higher Education

Hume’s diffuse effects cannot be reduced to Hefce’s narrow vision @timeshighered

April 21, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

David Hume was born 300 years ago this month. Prompted by the anniversary, many philosophers worldwide will be reflecting on his great works. In the UK this comes at a cost, since doing so deflects us from scrambling to find activities with more immediate and measurable “impact”. We can nevertheless find a kind of justification in his writings.

Speaking of the different species of philosophy, in the first part of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), he wrote that “though a philosopher may live remote from business, the genius of philosophy, if carefully cultivated by several, must gradually diffuse itself throughout the whole society, and bestow a similar correctness on every art and calling”.

I find it interesting that it is the idea of diffusion that appealed to him here. It did so to George Eliot, too, when in the wonderful final sentence of Middlemarch (1874), she contrasted Dorothea’s quiet future with the idealistic visions of doing good with which she had started life: “But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

Incalculably diffusive processes are real enough. Education is one of them. Sending a book or an idea into the marketplace may be the datable beginning of a diffusive process, but then there may be no datable end product. William Shakespeare’s works diffuse after more than four centuries; Hume’s after three. Their works are tributaries into the vast stream of thoughts and ideas and writings and political changes that made the modern world. But nobody can calculate the effect that just one work had, any more than they can calculate just how much of the growth of a flower, or how much of its beauty, was the result of any one raindrop falling on any one day. Yet nobody doubts that rain makes the garden grow. It is an incalculably diffusive process.

Read full story.

Filed Under History Tagged With Times Higher Education

Challenges To Biography (AHRC)

April 19, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

Why the network?

Clearly academic biographers from different disciplines, freelance biographers, and theorists of biography can and do meet – but too often their engagement with each other is haphazard. A research network can consolidate fragile lines of communication across disciplines, between practitioners and theorists, and between scholars and non-academic writers.

How easy to join in?

That was incredibly simple to do. I went to ‘comment’, which prompted me to register. Before too long I was in the WordPress interface (which I’m used to using/is incredibly straightforward anyway), and had posted  short entry re: my artist biographies (always great to be able to share the knowledge that has been collated more widely).

Filed Under Artist, History Tagged With AHRC, Artist, Biography, History
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