Departmental History Introduction

The History of the Department

An Introduction

The project was undertaken largely to satisfy my service obligations to the department. I prepared the first chapter over the course of the 2006-7 academic year and completed chapters two and three in the summer of 2007. Owing to my research and teaching obligations each chapter shows the signs of haste and is a working draft. Copies of this text circulated among my colleagues, but they are in no way responsible for the content, and they have not properly endured the scrutiny of individuals like Gordon Iseminger, Playford Thorson, and Jerome Tweton who were in the department during some of the period covered by this history. Consequently, I expect that there will be numerous sins of omission and inevitably the occasional sin of commission as I struggled with the fragmentary records preserved in the university archives. In addition to flaws in content, is will be regrettably obvious that I have neglected to follow the example of the best kind of modern history which captures the personalities of the main characters in the narrative; for long stretches this history reads like the worst kind of prosopography, where individuals fade away behind an endless litany of credentials, accomplishments, and dissertation advisors.

Much of the mechanical or institutional nature of my history derives from the reality that I am not an expert on history of the University, the state, or the developments within academia or the discipline over the course of the 20^th century. Numerous names, events, and historical developments sent me scrambling for my copy of Robinson’s, History of North Dakota,[1] L. Veysey’s, The Emergence of the American University,[2] P. Novick’s, That Noble Dream: The "objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession,[3] and above all, L. Geiger’s History of the University of the Northern Plains.[4] The shadow of works with both their compelling and their problematic assertions looms large behind all my chapters.

Whatever the faults in my research and analysis (and with apologies to Elwyn Robinson) there do appear, quite distinctly several “Themes in the History of the Department of History”. Most of these themes have come to light only with the benefit of hindsight and, consequently, are not as prominent in my chapters as they perhaps could have been. In the interest of transparency, it must also be said that these themes may have resonated in my sources largely on account of their presence in the contemporary departmental discourse.

1. Lack of Resources. Hardily a report of the department lacked a cry for more resources. The requested resources might be earmarked for the library, for the seminar room, faculty salaries, office space, or even equipment. With the understanding that no department is likely to claim itself well-funded and that administrators are more likely to provide grease for a squeaky wheel, the is almost no question that the study of history ranked low on the University’s list of priority even from its earliest days.

2. High Turn Over of Faculty. Closely related to the first theme, the turn over of faculty both junior in rank and occasionally senior in rank is a constant factor in the departmental discourse. It is clear that the typically high quality of junior faculty made it possible for them to move on to better positions at typically more research oriented universities (often in warmer climes). It is also clear that the departmental culture has not always been a happy one with faculty leaving because they perceived the opportunities to be limited at the University or the environment to be damaging to their career or even health.

3. Animosity with Administration and Perceived Neglect. The third theme is closely tied to the previous two, yet nevertheless deserving of its own place. The clashes between the department and the administration have occasionally be sensational (as in the clash between President Kane and Orin G. Libby), but what is perhaps more striking is the constant attitude of distrust and at times out-and-out dislike for members of the University administration. In some instances this distrust, such as between Libby and Kane or between Dean William Bek and Clarence Perkins or between various members of the department and Bonner Witmer, appears to be mutual, but far more striking is the almost total lack of attention from the administration on the Department. Perhaps by the Tweton Era (post 1965) the attitudes in the department began to change as the late 1960 and early 1970s were particularly productive times for the department.

While my first three themes are largely negative in character, the next three are more positive. They tend to reflect the profound sense of commitment felt by many of the scholars who have chosen to make their careers (or even just part of their careers) at the university.

4. Regional focus: From the time of Libby, if not earlier, the department has focused a large part of its energies on regional and local history. This is characterized by both institutional developments in the department and the intellectual predilections of its individual members, and is most visible in the development of the Orin G. Libby Manuscripts collection, the department’s intermittent commitment to the North Dakota Quarterly (and its predecessors), and the seeming inevitability for its faculty members to be drawn into writing local history.

5. A Department of Great Men: Libby, Robinson, Wilkins, and Tweton. The identity of the department for long stretches in its history was closely tied to its “great men.” Until the 1990s, the department heads have always been male and even now the majority of members of the department are male. This trend follows larger trends in not only in American academic, but also in the field of history. The veneration of these Great Men, Libby and Robinson, and the tendency to see their personalities as essentially synonymous with the department itself, is perhaps a trait more idiosyncratic to our department. While there is no denying the importance of these individuals, their exceptional place in the department’s history needs to be balanced against more general trends in the history of the field, the university, and the department as well.

6. Balance between teaching and research. Finally, the department has always explicitly sought to balance its emphasis between teaching and research. The department held a consistent reputation as a productive department beginning in the 19^th century despite its relative isolation for traditional scholarly resources and the overwhelming emphasis at the University through most of that time on teaching. This balance, which has characterized the field of history in general, developed in the department owing to a very high level of professional engagement throughout its history. Members of the department regularly attended regional and national conferences, produced peer reviewed scholarship for a discipline-wide audience, and generally kept abreast of trends in pedagogy.

This introduction, like most of history, is provisional and will undoubtedly be modified. Please feel free to send along comments on this chapter or any of the other chapters on this site to william.caraher@und.edu.