Foreword
Interpreting American History Series
To Joy
Of all the history courses taught on college campuses, historiography is one of the most challenging. The historiographic essays most often available are frequently too specialized for broad teaching and sometimes too obtuse for the average undergraduate student. Every day, frustrated scholars and students search for writings that offer both breadth and depth in their approach to the historiography of different eras and movements. As young scholars grow more intellectually mature, they remain wedded to the lessons taught within the pages of historiographic studies. As graduate students prepare for seminar presentations, comprehensive examinations, and dissertation work, they often wonder why that void has remained. Then, when they complete the studies and enter the profession, they find themselves less intellectually connected to those ideas of which they once showed a mastery, and they again ask about the lack of meaningful and succinct studies of historiography…and the circle continues.
Within the pages of this series, innovative young scholars discuss the different interpretations of the important eras and events of history, not only focusing on the intellectual shifts that have taken place, but on the various catalysts that drove these shifts. It is the hope of the series editors that these volumes fill those aforementioned intellectual voids and speak to the young scholars in a way that will supplement their other learning; that the same pages that speak to undergraduate students will also remind the established scholar of his or her historiographic roots; that a difficult subject is made more accessible to curious minds; that ideas are not lost among the details offered within the classroom.
BRIAN D. MCKNIGHT, The University of Virginia's College at Wise
JAMES S. HUMPHREYS, Murray State University