Steven Ozment: Courses in Western Civ Are an Antidote to Contemporary Narcissism

From the newsletter of the Chronicle of Higher Education (1-17-05):

A glance at the winter issue of "The Public Interest": Defending Western Civ

It may smack of the old school, but the Western Civ survey course still fills a serious void in undergraduate history education, says Steven Ozment, a professor of ancient and modern history at Harvard University.

Western Civ, Mr. Ozment says, is a time-tested antidote to what he perceives as a reigning, narcissistic absorption with all things contemporary.

"For the reading public," he writes, "the study of the past often seems a search for forerunners and blockers of modernity, a parade of people, ideas, and crises either lauded for having prepared the way to truths we hold to be self-evident, or excoriated for having opposed them -- history as self-confirmation."

"The great strength of the Western Civ survey within the history curriculum," he continues, "is that it reads history chronologically forward, not backwards from a commanding latter-day event or popular modern theory, a strength that may excuse its sometimes plodding narrative."

That Western Civ traces a timeline that begins and ends with Europe is not so much an assertion of cultural superiority, Mr. Ozment says, as it is a concession to the practical limits of constructing a coherent historical narrative. By contrast, the latter-day alternatives to Western Civ, which Mr. Ozment identifies as "World Civ" and "Global Civ," often stretch narratives past their breaking point.

"If Western Civ is Eurocentric, World Civ and Global Civ seem to have no defining center at all," he writes. "And if World Civ and Global Civ are more inclusive, they are also far more elusive."

The article, "Why We Study Western Civ," is not online. Information about the journal is available at http://www.thepublicinterest.com