So interesting to me. I am very tempted by the Meek piece, myself, which I don’t think I’ve read before. But I’ve put that literature behind me now. Thanks for diverting me from doom scrolling for a little while, Tim.
So canny a perspective of a “moment” in the production of history. An aside on your commentary on the Walton piece. It reads like a reader’s critique which might have sent journal editors reading back to author a call for revision. And this led me to a second aside: has anyone worked on the archive of the editorial work on the JAH? There must be some sources there that magnify the crack-up on the Oliver-Curtin relationship, for one thing and on the fate of this strange idea of the “”African consumer.” PS and, Tim, you were working on this as we lost BA Ogot at age 95, an historian who had a deeper view of the emergence of the field than either Oliver or Curtin, at least in length of time in the field.
I saw Ogot's obituary--and I very much have in mind scholars like Ogot who don't seem to be fully envisioned within this point of 'founding' except in futureward terms, as the products of the creation of "African history". They're imagining Walter Rodney (whose doctorate is only six years in the future) but not locating themselves as part of a lineage that includes Eric Williams and Samuel Ajayi Crowther, not to mention people like Ogot.
The more peculiar thing, and I wonder if there will be an article in the next few issues I examine that lets me explore it, is that Oliver and Curtin both don't seem to know how to locate their 'founding' in relationship to Melville Herskovits. (Oliver does ask Herskovits whether there's some up-and-coming American who should be invited into this 'founding' of the field, but doesn't say who Herskovits might have suggested, I don't think.) Well, Curtin does also talk about Herskovits a bit in that he narrates the growth of African Studies at Wisconsin as a risky move with Northwestern being so close by, whereby he is sort of leaning into his self-image as a successful institutional "entrepreneur". I will have to look up Vansina's memoir and see what he has to say about it. Also makes me wonder what Jerry Gershenhorn's book about Herskovits has to say about it all, if anything. Presumably also when I get to the point where "oral history" and a certain modality of anthropology get into their super-weird feud this may also be something I can excavate.
So interesting to me. I am very tempted by the Meek piece, myself, which I don’t think I’ve read before. But I’ve put that literature behind me now. Thanks for diverting me from doom scrolling for a little while, Tim.
That's kind of the goal for me too--give me a day where I'm just putting down more tracks on something I know about.
So canny a perspective of a “moment” in the production of history. An aside on your commentary on the Walton piece. It reads like a reader’s critique which might have sent journal editors reading back to author a call for revision. And this led me to a second aside: has anyone worked on the archive of the editorial work on the JAH? There must be some sources there that magnify the crack-up on the Oliver-Curtin relationship, for one thing and on the fate of this strange idea of the “”African consumer.” PS and, Tim, you were working on this as we lost BA Ogot at age 95, an historian who had a deeper view of the emergence of the field than either Oliver or Curtin, at least in length of time in the field.
I saw Ogot's obituary--and I very much have in mind scholars like Ogot who don't seem to be fully envisioned within this point of 'founding' except in futureward terms, as the products of the creation of "African history". They're imagining Walter Rodney (whose doctorate is only six years in the future) but not locating themselves as part of a lineage that includes Eric Williams and Samuel Ajayi Crowther, not to mention people like Ogot.
The more peculiar thing, and I wonder if there will be an article in the next few issues I examine that lets me explore it, is that Oliver and Curtin both don't seem to know how to locate their 'founding' in relationship to Melville Herskovits. (Oliver does ask Herskovits whether there's some up-and-coming American who should be invited into this 'founding' of the field, but doesn't say who Herskovits might have suggested, I don't think.) Well, Curtin does also talk about Herskovits a bit in that he narrates the growth of African Studies at Wisconsin as a risky move with Northwestern being so close by, whereby he is sort of leaning into his self-image as a successful institutional "entrepreneur". I will have to look up Vansina's memoir and see what he has to say about it. Also makes me wonder what Jerry Gershenhorn's book about Herskovits has to say about it all, if anything. Presumably also when I get to the point where "oral history" and a certain modality of anthropology get into their super-weird feud this may also be something I can excavate.