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Um, this doesn't describe what's actually going on in the discipline. Just because \there are other subfields doesn't mean that historians are "neglecting" political, military, and diplomatic history. This is the same tired conservative argument that's been trotted out for years.
I swear, if I read one more white dude political/military historian point towards the existence of gender and social history as proof we've buried the "traditional" subfields, I'm gonna hurl.
I love how Boot quotes Jill Lepore's lamentations that there's no master narrative any more, as if there hasn't been a ton of ink spilled about Lepore's newly-published master narrative. Or, as if a master narrative isn't the type of oversimplification he decries in the essay.
Boot's given us the same song we've heard for years. "I studied under [eminent white male historians]. The field no longer exclusively focuses on [the white people said eminent historian studied] so the field is in decline. And it's all y'all's fault, you highfalutin gender folks
I also think it's precious that Max Boot is lamenting the decline in historical literacy when his party has gleefully led the way in eviscerating education for decades. We can have a good discussion about the decline in History majors, but this ain't it at all.
Max Boot: No one knows history! A simplistic and erroneous understanding of our past has created havoc in the present!
Also Max Boot: We need a grand narrative that recenters white guys at the fulcrum of historical agency!
Also Max Boot: We need a grand narrative that recenters white guys at the fulcrum of historical agency!
You want to restore History and historical literacy to its proper place, Max Boot? COOL! A lot of us do. Here's what we can do:
-PAY TEACHERS
-stop diverting educational funding to foreign interventions. I mean, yeah you'll have to write a book on something else, but hey
-PAY TEACHERS
-stop diverting educational funding to foreign interventions. I mean, yeah you'll have to write a book on something else, but hey
But most of all, stop writing this lazy tripe and catch up on what the field is actually doing. Some of the best work you'll see in political, military, and diplomatic history has been published in the last 10 yrs.
What Boot's really lamenting is the diversification of academe, both in terms of the scholars *and* the research/intellectual lenses they're using. You can do damn good political history w/o always centering elite white men, but it might as well be invisible for Boot.
Anyway, maybe Max and Gordon Wood can ho grab a drink and bitch and moan about how the ladies and colored folk are taking over their precious domain. Hell, that's all this tired-ass manifesto is, anyway.
