Thursday's Notes

Patricia Cohen,"Great Caesar's Ghost! Are Traditional History Courses Vanishing?" NYT, 10 June, picks up on a discussion at H-Diplo and the recent Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations conference. It was precipitated by a proposal to change the title of Diplomatic History, the field's only journal. Unsurprisingly, the chart accompanying Cohen's article reports that diplomatic, economic, and intellectual history have declined and women's and cultural history have increased in the last 30 years. The surprise -- to me, at least -- is that, in the same period, military history has marginally increased its representation in American history departments.

Paula Fredriksen,"The Nazi of Nazareth," Tablet, 10 June, reviews Susannah Heschel's Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany.

Robert O. Paxton,"Occupied Minds," BookForum, June/August, reviews Frederic Spotts's The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation, Kirrily Freeman's Bronzes to Bullets: Vichy and the Destruction of French Public Statuary, 1941-1944, and Art of the Defeat, France 1940-1944 by Laurence Bertrand Dorleac, Jane Marie Todd, and Serge Guilbaut.

Ron Rosenbaum,"Save the Salinger Archives!" Slate, 5 June, speculates that there may be something important in J. D.'s papers.

Stan Katz,"Jim Leach at NEH," Brainstorm, 10 June, shares my enthusiasm for the former Iowa congressman's nomination to head the National Endowment for the Humanities.