Gerda Lerner: Interviewed about the study of history
Twenty-six years ago, at the behest of OAH President Gerda Lerner, the organization began a new and exciting Distinguished Lectureship program. Today it stands as one of the organization’s most engaging accomplishments, as it brings leading scholars to audiences across the country, both to impart a greater understanding of the American past and to raise money for the OAH. Gerda Lerner is widely recognized as a major force in the creation of Women’s History. She was only the second female president of the OAH, the first in fifty years. Last month, I had the opportunity to speak with Professor Lerner about her thoughts on graduate education, the OAH, and the future of the profession.
Graduate education in history remains a topic of heated discussion among scholars, and it has received significant attention recently from the AHA’s report, The Education of Historians for the Twenty-first Century (2004), to the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate initiative. Through her long career, Lerner has been an integral part of changes in the profession. I asked her for her thoughts regarding changes in graduate education that are needed to better prepare future historians.
“The first thing I have to say is that we are always being questioned as though there were two different aspects of what historians do—teaching and research—two really separate things. I don’t believe that, and I don’t believe in coming out with anything that says do one OR the other. I think, however, many improvements can be made in what we do in the training in research. Historical training should impart to the future historian a deep and abiding passion for presenting the past to the present. It seems to me that if we don’t make students feel that history matters and matters profoundly, we are missing the essence of what we are doing. Many people are so busy with career-building strategies that they never get to think about the larger and deeper meaning of what it means to be a historian. I feel that if you don’t have that and you don’t impart that, there is no point in doing what we do.”...
Read entire article at Lee Formwalt in the OAH Newsletter
Graduate education in history remains a topic of heated discussion among scholars, and it has received significant attention recently from the AHA’s report, The Education of Historians for the Twenty-first Century (2004), to the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate initiative. Through her long career, Lerner has been an integral part of changes in the profession. I asked her for her thoughts regarding changes in graduate education that are needed to better prepare future historians.
“The first thing I have to say is that we are always being questioned as though there were two different aspects of what historians do—teaching and research—two really separate things. I don’t believe that, and I don’t believe in coming out with anything that says do one OR the other. I think, however, many improvements can be made in what we do in the training in research. Historical training should impart to the future historian a deep and abiding passion for presenting the past to the present. It seems to me that if we don’t make students feel that history matters and matters profoundly, we are missing the essence of what we are doing. Many people are so busy with career-building strategies that they never get to think about the larger and deeper meaning of what it means to be a historian. I feel that if you don’t have that and you don’t impart that, there is no point in doing what we do.”...