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Z 1 — s. ZC g Mtfj"HistoriansAttempt to ReconstructHistory: A Reportfrom the Second THS Conference He THE 2000 CONFERENCE by Donald A. Yerxa .egreeted me with afriendly embrace that confirmed the warmth ofhis missives over the pastyear. David Krikun and I arefrom two different worlds. Son ofa Polish immigrant, he was born in Cuba and moved to Brooklyn as a boy; Igrew upjust blocksfrom the cold waters ofCasco Bay in South Portland, Maine. He studied at City College and then the University of Wisconsin and teaches history at SUNY New Paltz; I went to Eastern Nazarene College, and did mygraduate work in naval history at the University ofMaine, only to return to teach at my undergraduate alma mater. We met lastyear at thefirst national conference ofThe Historical Society. He saw me reading something before a session, and we struck up a conversation. As it turned out, we both teach courses in historiography andphilosophy ofhistory. There was something very winsome about David that invitedfurther communication, so in the weeL· and months thatfollowed, we shared syllabi and articles ofmutual interest, gave each other booL·, and connected as persons. Now we had returned to Boston Universityfor the second national THS meeting. Following the opening session that featured distinguished historians Bernard Bailyn and Martin MaIu, David and I made our way to the banquet .uva. Without knowing it. we selected a table with Australian historian Keith WindschuttIe. author of Th Killing of History. He was on the last leg of a publicity tour in the States and had decided to check out The Historical Society himself. The resulting dinner conversation was wide-ranging and fascinating. Afterward, wc adjourned to a large auditorium and heard Nobel laureate Robert W. Fogcl give a ppr "Copng with Leisure," based on his recently published book, The Fourth Great Awakening. We were relieved that things had gotten off to such a good start. Since last year's first THS convention was such a huge success, both E)avid and I had feared that the sequel might be disappointing. On Day Two.we joined a New York economist for breakfast at Boston University's faculty club, and I was treated to interesting stories about the mysterious world of City College, known only to me as the place where Stalinist and Trotskyitc factions once gathered in different alcoves of the cafeteria . Thereafter. I left David for a stimulating morning of sessions. Highlights for mc were Dale Vm Kiev speaking to the issue of religion and Revolution in 18th-century France, and John Patrick Diggins responding to a pper by Peter Onuf on "The American Revolution and the Making of the Modern World." As engaging as the morning sessions wen?, the interactions at lunch were more memorable. David invited a well-known Lincoln scholar along with a prominent sociologist to join us, and soon wc were conversing about THS and the state of professional history. A couple of my lunch partners were put off by the reticence of one panelist in a session that morning to offer an opinbn as to which was the best among compting interpretations . No doubt in another setting this would be viewed as an appropriate recognition tliat all interpretations have a measure of validity, and that to select one would be an unwarranted exercise of "privileging" one's own views. But at a THS conference, this historian liad committed a cardinal sin. Humility is fine, but failure to discriminate on the basis of plausible premises, logical reasoning , and appals to evidence is not. So here in friendly conversation was. an indication of the ethos and raison d'etre of The Historical Society. Though only two years old, already over a thousand members strong, THS is emerging as a very significant force in the historical profession. It has been utterly fascinating to watch THS forge its own identity. Like any group, the identity-building process occurs on two fronts simultaneously: the intentional efforts (mission statements, public pronouncements , etc.) and the unscripted messages and interactions that collectively become the ingredients of a new academic subculture. The Historical Society is the institutional manifestation of a deep dissatisfaction of a growing number of historians with the state of historical scholarship in...

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