History looks to underclassmen

Yalie is right about exams/papers. History is losing out to Poli Sci and Econ, majors which have far, far more of an emphasis on exams as compared to papers than does history. In fact, I don’t think I ever took a history course that didn’t involve writing a paper (and I took a lot of history classes), and even many of my lecture courses didn’t have in-class exams.

As for the requirements, again the argument is pretty silly. History requires no specific classes (other than the thesis), unlike the vast majority of majors. All it asks is that you get a bit of geographic diversity in your education, learn how to do serious research (the seminar requirement), and take a couple classes not about the modern period. Every one of those requirements can be met by dozens of different classes, and nobody should have any trouble meeting them. As a history major, I got sick of hearing people complaining about the “rest of the world” requirement; the attitude toward most of the world implicit in those complaints is really troubling.

Finally, the reason you can’t count courses from other majors is clear; the history department already lists as history courses any class that actually should count; even those taught by faculty not in the department. This term for instance (just looking quickly at the area I specialize in), Jing Tsu, a scholar of Chinese literature in the department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, is teaching a course called “China in the World” which is listed as a history course (as well as a Humanities course, a Literature course, a Chinese course, and an ER&M course). And I’m sure there are plenty more of that sort. Poli Sci courses are almost never cross-listed because they don’t use or engage with the methodologies of historians. I shopped a few historically minded poli sci courses while at Yale; the ways they dealt with history were, without exception, shallow and insipid, and the history department would be doing its students a disservice to allow those courses to count in place of actual history.

I think it’s reasonable to say that history should be even more paper-based than it is (though I think you underestimate the extent to which it already is; again, I never took a history class that didn’t have a substantial home paper out of 15 or so history courses that I took at Yale, and I took multiple lecture courses that were entirely paper based). But I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that history is losing students because it isn’t paper-based enough. The disciplines that are growing instead have far less intellectually rigorous requirements than does history. As I recall when I was at Yale, there were even a couple poli sci courses that had multiple choice exams, which would be unthinkable in the history department.

I’m not protecting disciplinary boundaries; I’m simply commenting on my experience in poli sci courses when I was at Yale. I remember being disappointed on numerous occasions by showing up at poli sci courses that sounded like they would be interesting to me, as someone who cares about history, and discovering that they contained no actual engagement with history at a level deeper than a high-school level textbook.

Moving beyond coursework to actual scholarship, there are very few political scientists whose work historians in my field take seriously. James Scott is the obvious example, though even he has a joint appointment in Anthropology, which has a lot more work that people in my field take seriously. Other than that, there are a couple of political scientists in my field who do work basically indistinguishable from academic history (Elizabeth Perry springs to mind), but there isn’t anyone in Yale’s department who seems to do that, meaning Yale’s department is unlikely to offer courses that the history department should have any interest in giving credit to. Maybe it’s different for Americanists, I don’t claim to have a deep knowledge of scholarship in US History, but that’s how it works in the areas I know well.