#34 - Slow History

 It's always interesting to me when I read or hear about something that can put words to an idea I have been thinking about but could not express. One such thing was written about in March’s American Historical Review. It is the idea of ‘slow history.’ The AHA Presidential Address in the March 2021 Issue of the AHR, written by Mary Lindemann covers this idea of savoring and marinating in the act of doing history as an interesting phenomenon appearing more often during Covid, and something that perhaps should be embraced more widely. 

I had been percolating on this idea over the past few months without knowing it was a thing historians have also been thinking about and defining. To me, it stemmed from a less-than minor amount of anxiety about how I can do enough history while working a completely separate job and handling routine Life Things. Can I even do history if I’m not employed as a historian or somehow funded to do research? If I can do history in such a state, how much doing of history do I need to do to be a historian? If, by nature of working 40+ hours a week to pay rent and then doing the normal chores and commitments of life, I have so little time to devote to research and writing, by going slowly, can I ever make an impact on and participate in the field? 

These thoughts led me to considering avenues and techniques I could potentially use to do history anway.  If I do not have a lot of time to devote to doing history, then I either need to find ways to work faster and with more efficiency or I need to adjust to slow progress with viable benchmarks and goals. I know from graduate school that this is possible, but maybe not healthy. I went to school full time, was a Teaching Fellow (a TA) for one class per term, worked at the library 15 hours a week, and was working with my mentor and my twin to write and edit our scale armor paper. I subsisted on 10-12 cups of coffee a day and barely 5 hours of sleep every night. But I did it! I got pretty good grades, my students got pretty good grades, I managed to not fall asleep at work, and our paper was accepted for publication before I graduated. ...But I did not pick up a book of any kind for almost 4 years, and I suffered from absolutely brutal caffeine withdrawal for months until I could subsist on a few cups of coffee every day. I want to do history despite my employment situation, I just need to figure out how. This article in the AHR shows that perhaps going slowly, even when forced to, can be a boon.

Mary Lindemann speaks of slow history as the lingering, savoring, stewing sort of process one can relax into when one has the luxury of time and the privilege of a research position. She is after all a professor of American history at the University of Miami. While she still probably has to juggle teaching with life, she does in fact get paid to research. Amazing! So, to her and to those in the professorial world, they do indeed have the luxury of time to do slow history but it is important to remember that those in academia are also extremely pressured to output history at a high rate. Their ability to get a job, or tenure, or a Chair is dependent on their ability to output articles and books. So, in that position, the idea of doing slow history becomes an ideal, a way to take a step back and reevaluate what doing history is to them, to take a chance to meditate and percolate on the impact of their research and writings. It's a way to disengage with the pressures of publishing and forced production. 

It's that push back against the norm that I agree with. I think the idea of slow history as a way to reevaluate the relationship between person - research - product, is like being mindful about what you do and why in relation to history (also so applicable to the rest of life!). As someone without funding, time, or a PhD, slow history to me is a way to rationalize and come to grips with my inability to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ aka, professors and professional historians. As someone with a PhD and a professorial role, slow history to Mary Lindemann becomes a way to take control back and conduct history in a meaningful way without burning out. 

Mary Lindemann and I both have concerns when slow becomes glacial or like molasses (to continue her food analogy). How slow can slow be in doing history before you are at a stand still? How fast is slow? Lindemann compares slow history to typical archival work (aka research on primary sources). Archival work is often extremely meticulous and time consuming. You are often looking for something that may not exist or documenting something you may never see again. So, you have to look carefully to make sure you do not miss anything important. This process, as Lindemann writes, is thus necessarily prolonged and slow. ...I do not necessarily agree with this assessment, as I find research, while sometimes frustrating to be incredibly exciting and addicting. In college I would wallow and luxuriate in the research and reading, until the threat of the deadline would push me to buckle down and write. Despite the number of papers I wrote in college at 3am the day they were due which still somehow got A’s (sorry former professors and TAs!), I just could not pull myself away from reading one more book or pursuing one more primary source.

Advice from a former professor has helped me think about this, he told me that at some point research and reading has to stop so processing can start because only then can there be writing. There are so many things to read and research that at some point you just have to stop. Continuing to research ad nauseum is not actually doing slow history. It can be a form of procrastination, or to continue again with food analogies, it is like over proofing a dough. Doing history is a process which must move from one stage to another. I think the key is knowing when to shift gears and when to cruise for a bit (oh good, car analogies now, sorry not sorry). It is also knowing and being mindful about when you can and/or should go slowly. 

So, small steps, dear reader. 

不怕慢，就怕站 - 孔子