In this latest episode of the podcast, historian Paul Longmore discusses the emerging field of disability history, offering recommendations to historians who are interested in pursuing research about disability.

Paul is a Professor of History and Director of the Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University, specializes in Early American history and the history of people with disabilities.  Longmore has written articles in scholarly journals and newspapers on themes related to Early American history and to the history of people with disabilities and their contemporary civil rights struggle. With Lauri Umansky, he co-edited The New Disability History: American Perspectives (New York University Press, 2001), an anthology of essays, and is co-editing a book series, The History of Disability, for NYU Press. A collection of his writings entitled Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability was published by Temple University Press in 2003.

In March 2005, Longmore received the Henry B. Betts Award, given annually by the American Association of Persons with Disabilities and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago to “honor an individual whose work and scope of influence have significantly improved the quality of life for people with disabilities in the past, and will be a force for change in the future.”

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At the end of this year, John Demos will retire from his position as Samuel Knight Professor of History at Yale University. For the past decade, Professor Demos has offered a course on “Narrative and Other Histories” for graduate students, and encouraged innovative writing and the conversation between history and fiction in the classroom, in academic journals, and after hours, through support for the Writing History colloquium at Yale.

Too modest by half, in this interview, Demos doesn’t describe his role in fostering the careers of Jill Lepore, Jane Kamensky, Jennifer Price, Aaron Sachs, Wendy Warren, and others who have trail-blazed innovative historical writing in recent years, nor does he mention the namesake John Demos Prize in American Studies, at Barnard College. But he does offer insights into how his career has embraced numerous historical styles, including the Bancroft Prize-winning Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England(1982) and The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (1994), winner of the Francis Parkman Prize and the Ray Allen Billington Prize and finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. And he discusses the openness and curiosity he considers essential to finding the best historical methods for a project and how to have confidence in one’s voice as a writer.

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With that off my chest, I do hope that you’ll take a moment to tune in to Patty’s reading of her essay “Dancing with Professors,” where she muses about the reasons behind the obtuse prose of most historical writing. Even if you don’t wholly agree with her assertion about wallflower historians, you will be inspired by her clear voice and her passion for accessible writing.

One reviewer said of Patty’s essays:

“If William Blake could see a world in a grain of sand, Limerick has the gift to find history in the small experiences of everyday life. She uses stories, anecdotes, and parables to introduce challenging ideas. She has great skill at finding ways to entice readers into her subject…[Her] skill is to take a solid historical fact or an everyday experience and twirl it around so that it catches light in new ways.

Patty is the author of Something in the Soil and The Legacy of Conquest. She is the Faculty Director and Chair of the Board of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, where she is also a Professor of History.

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Rachel begins this episode with a reading from her Social Text article, “Becoming a Bran Diaspora Within Spanish Slavery,” and then offers a “funding dissection” of her writing, showing how different portions of her finished work emerged from a variety of fellowships and travel grants. During the Q&A that follows the discussion of her research, Rachel explains several practical strategies for earning both internal and external research funds.

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This provocative Q&A with Ulrich includes her thoughts about the renaissance of women’s history, touches on the tensions she experiences as both a feminist and a Mormon, and gives some details about her new research projects.

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From a Booklist review:

“Ulrich never could have imagined that a comment she made in a scholarly article in 1976 would end up emblazoned on T-shirts, buttons, and coffee mugs. With that immortal line as the title of her latest inquiry into overlooked aspects of women’s lives, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian focuses on three accomplished women who behaved badly according to the standards of their times. She presents a fascinating profile of Christine de Pizan, the remarkable fourteenth-century author of The Book of the City of Ladies, a novel that advocates for women’s education. Picking up the thread of Pizan’s recounting of the myth of the Amazons, Ulrich portrays real-life women warriors throughout the ages, including today’s women soldiers in Iraq. Ulrich provides a bracing answer to Virginia Woolf’s pointed question––If Shakespeare had an equally talented sister, what would her life have been like?––after scrutinizing and shrewdly interpreting court documents of the time. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is the catalyst for a far-reaching analysis of the abolition and women’s rights movements. Ultimately, Ulrich amends her famous bon mot: Well-behaved women make history when they do the unexpected, when their actions produce records, and when later generations care.”

Coming next week in the second part of this interview, Laurel speaks about the field of women’s history, offers advice on choosing a dissertation topic, and discusses her writing of A Midwife’s Tale.

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Links to some of Jeff’s favorite reads:

• Jonathan Spence, The Question of Hu
• Amitav Ghosh, In An Antique Land
• Mike Davis, City of Quartz
• Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air
• The travel writing of Pico Iyer
• Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

Wasserstrom’s latest book, China’s Brave New World, was featured on a list of Pankaj Mishra’s favorite books of 2007. Mishra writes, “In this book Jeffrey Wasserstrom shows why he is one of the most sensible writers on a subject that most Western writers spoil with either paranoia or excessive awe.” Jeff is also a member of The China Beat blog team.

Stay tuned for next week’s episode of MHP with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, AHA president-elect and author of Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History.

From the Library Journal review:

“These nimble and knowledgeable essays from a respected historian…include commentaries on such recent events as the Tiananmen Incident, as well as light but erudite historical thought pieces, such as one on former President Grant’s world tour in 1879. Others look at the fate of globalized franchises such as McDonald’s and Marxism, the challenges of historical and cross-cultural analogies, and sympathetic critiques of reporting on China.”

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Tune in next week for Part 2 of the podcast interview with author Jeffrey Wasserstrom.

Martha mentions some books that she recommends as inspiration for writing:

Erskine Clark, Dwelling Place
Clare Messud, The Emperor’s Children
Stephen Carter, New England White
Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million

Some questions for discussion:

• Martha says that she finds much of her writing inspiration from fiction. Do you find inspiration from fiction? If so, what books would you recommend to other writers?

• When conducting your own research, do you find yourself looking for good stories to tell?

• She notes that in The Sea Captain’s Wife she leaves out the sentence that says “I argue that…” because she feels that the argument is evident from the historical narrative. Do you, in your own writing, find the need to explicitly spell out your argument for your readers or do you find that you can write in a manner that makes the argument obvious?

In this episode Martha discusses her undergraduate class in “Experimental History.” This previous post links to her Perspectives article on this topic and offers links to the books and articles that she uses in the classroom.

Following her reading, Martha discusses various stylistic choices she made in writing the narrative of Eunice’s life. Of particular interest are her thoughts about telling a “true” story.

Some questions for discussion:

• What part of this reading resonates most strongly with you?
• How do you feel about Martha’s discussion of the choices she made in quoting from Eunice’s letters?
• In what ways does telling the story of a remarkable figure like Eunice–a woman who married across the color line– help us to better understand the lives of other women in the nineteenth century?
• Will Martha’s example impact your own history writing? If so, how?

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Next Monday Part 2 of this podcast will be posted. Stay Tuned!