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I went to a talk yesterday given by either an archaeologist or art historian from a major, unnamed university in Southern California which currently has a quarterback in the running for the Heisman (nudge nudge, wink wink). The professor gave a talk on artifacts from ancient Greece and Rome which were defaced by early Christians. It became clear from the beginning that the professor did not have a high view of Christians of antiquity. Pretty much throughout the talk, he used words that described the Christians who occupied the post-imperial world of the Mediterranean, words such as "intolerant", "hateful", "violent", "narrow", "superstition". This played into his discussion, which involved a look at case studies of works which showed marks of having been smashed or altered by Christians. At one point he brought up antique pagan sculpture which had its genital areas smashed, adding a comment (I'm paraphrasing here) that the early Christians had certain hangups about sexuality, hangups which continue into the present age. He also brought up a point that under the Christians, the number of things people could be executed for increased compared to the Romans (difficult to believe, at least when left unqualified) and that the kinds of damage inflicted on statues by Christians probably reflected the torture they imposed upon "bad" people of the day. His conclusion from all of this was that these Christians were intolerant, and that intolerance is bad, etc. etc. I was on the verge of unleashing a line of criticism during the Q&A, though I realized that would not have looked good given different factors. Why didn't he raise the context in which the early Christians lived, one in which they had just emerged from 250+ years of oppression, torture, and executions under the Romans? How did his own personal socio-religious biases influence his work? And how did he feel qualified to speak about matters which he spoke about?To me, any scholar who studies history is qualified to speak about history - events, people, trends, practices, beliefs etc. What they are not qualified to speak about is the veracity of such beliefs. That is, a historian can speak about what a group believed, but not about whether that belief was true or not. Therefore, using words such a "superstition", especially in regard to religious belief which is still practiced today, suggests an overreach on the part of the academic which is out of place at best, and downright offensive at worst.In addition, calling the practice of defacing statues "intolerant", and therefore "wrong" is not something the historian should really be doing either (at least not as part of an academic conclusion). One man's "intolerance" is another man's "good deed". Defacing images is only bad so long as you disagree with the person doing the defacing, and this leads us to the world of values and morals - something in which the historian has no scholarly expertise.Needless to say, this was the most troubling lecture I've ever been to in my field. I find it hard to see how a person of this professor's stature can get away with such a biased and subjective thesis, and I have to wonder how such biases affected the rest of his work.
When I was younger I would have made a scene and showed myself listening to that garbage. I did so quite often whenever my professor/instructor tried to pull such a stunt. Now that I'm older, I can let it roll off my back. I understand that people have their petty agendas and they aren't fooling anyone. Just grin and move on because what they say and believe is inconsequential.
When I was younger I would have made a scene and showed myself listening to that garbage. I did so quite often whenever my professor/instructor tried to pull such a stunt. Now that I'm older, I can let it roll off my back. I understand that people have their petty agendas and they aren't fooling anyone. Just grin and move on because what they say and believe is inconsequential.
Donnie, that is where you are wrong. This kind of post-modernist agenda has infected the academy and is destructive quality study. W have had this argument again and again. So long as academics are not objective or at least attempt objectivity (and this is particularly important in history), then the academy is doing a disservice. What point is served by not saying anything? We have to say something or the post-modernists win and they will eventually drag us into a society totally different from what exists now, much less what was before. One I fear we will not like at all.Before you ask what have I done I will throw an example out there of the kind of garbage I am talking about. This is minor but as the saying goes, the longest journey begins with a single step. You all know that I had my first peer reviewed paper accepted for publication not long ago. Well, I had a copy sent back to me for revision with the comments of the 2 anonymous reviewers attached. I could accept the edits/suggestions or not and if I did not I needed to comment on why I did not. The paper itself is an annotated bibliography about Frederick the Great and one of the reviewers (reviewer #1) stuck to making substantive comments and suggestions most of which I took because I felt they really made the paper better. They were such things as discussing a particular episode in more detail or pointing out facts I had missed or resources I was not aware of. I was pleasantly surprised at the constructive nature of reviewer #1's comments. His final comment was that it was a good paper but it needed just a little polish, I felt his edits and suggestions were fair and cogent to the paper.Reviewer #2 on the other hand was someone who I would love to meet in a dark alley. He/she (I suspect she but can't prove it) had nothing really substantive to add but boy did he take umbrage at some of my positions, word usage, and choice of convention. I did not like the snide tone of some of their comments either, I felt it was unprofessional but chose not to say anything about that. The first thing and what got under my craw the most was this comment, "Does he really deserve the epithet of “the great”? Sounds a bit old-fashioned and inappropriate." Next was a complaint about a section heading, I had "The Rennaisance" they wanted 18th Century Culture instead. This reviewer also was bothered by my choice of several source books and wanted me to replace them with newer material. Several of the books they recommended I had avoided because of their post-modern bias and I reluctantly included them but noted that the more recent work tends to be more biased than the works from the mid 20th Century. The final complaint was my use of AD instead of CE when noting dates. I refused to change either referring to Frederick as Great or dating conventions and said so and why in my reply. I did however include the newer post-modern material with caveatsMy question to Donnie then is what was the proper course of action, to refuse some things on principle and compromise on others as I did, or to accept biased edits and changes that I think are BS on their face?. You know what I did, what would you do in the same position? I think you are advocating rolling with it and not trying to rock the boat but am not sure If I am reading you right.Phid, I would have said something. I probably would not have called him out in public. Well, yeah I would have, but I would have tried to couch my questions such that they were not antagonistic but rather trying to get him to explain the logic behind his judgement calls. The guy sounds like one of those militant atheists that have been popping up like weeds everywhere.
You misunderstand me. I'm talking about making a scene in a public gathering. I've done it on numerous occasions and it did no good but get my blood pressure up and give more attention to the person's agenda than it deserved. In a paper though, you have to make your case and not give one inch. I think you should have included all scholarship especially most recent works because that is objective scholarship. The AD or CE thing is your call and both are acceptable. If it is that important to publications who might consider publishing your works, then do whatever they want because the goal is getting published. Everything else you and I agree on.
I did include recent scholarship in my original submission, I just eliminated what i considered to be the most biased publications regardless of their bias. I have railed about bias here often enough that I don't feel the need to repeat that here.I think I still would have said something because idiocy like that deserves to be put on the spot. If you cannot defend your position on anything but biased grounds then dont make the point in the first place is my position.
I did include recent scholarship in my original submission, I just eliminated what i considered to be the most biased publications regardless of their bias. I have railed about bias here often enough that I don't feel the need to repeat that here.I think I still would have said something because idiocy like that deserves to be put on the spot. If you cannot defend your position on anything but biased grounds then dont make the point in the first place is my position.
The thing is you are showing your bias by excluding works that do not agree with your world view. You cannot do that if you want to be regarded as unbiased yourself.
I don't think you heard. I was limited in the number of entries I could include per section. Therefore I eliminated what i considered the worst, I still had some post-modernist type works in there.But you do have a point. I had not considered it from that angle before.
I don't think you heard. I was limited in the number of entries I could include per section. Therefore I eliminated what i considered the worst, I still had some post-modernist type works in there.But you do have a point. I had not considered it from that angle before.
Still you have to include a cross section of all scholarship views. You needed to eliminate some redundant ones in favor of the liberal ones just to show you are accounting for all views. Especially in a bibliography piece you should do this every time.
Still you have to include a cross section of all scholarship views. You needed to eliminate some redundant ones in favor of the liberal ones just to show you are accounting for all views. Especially in a bibliography piece you should do this every time.
I think that might depend, though. If you had to write a list of the top ten books on the Civil War, would you include flake-o books just to include "variety"? Probably not. However, if you are trying to write a list of ten recent books on the Civil War as a means of showing the different directions that Civil War scholarship is going, you might have more flake-o books on that list. It all depends on the type of bibliography that Scout was writing. I do agree that if the bibliography is supposed to give an overview of the scholarship in general and is wide in scope, some more important works will have to be left out in favor of the flaky works. If the bibliography is primarily supposed to cover the most important works across the board, the flaky books will be left off.
I try to represent all sides but I am not going to include works which I feel have no academic value solely for the sake of balance. That is idiocy and taking the notion of fairness too far in my opinion. The point of the paper was to provide students a bibliography of the most significant works about Frederick the Great. A book that spends two chapters discussing his supposed sexuality and psycho-analyzing his achievements based on sexual repression has no academic value for me. Also another book that condemns him throughout for being a violent war monger serves no purpose, Frederick was a creature of his time and aggressive war was an accepted thing in 18th Century Europe to condemn him because the author finds war immoral is also a false position.There is fair and then there is stupid, I strive for the former and try to avoid the latter.
