Microhistory and defining rights in the post-revolutionary Caribbean

This talk at the University of Puerto Rico (Q&A in Spanish) features Rebecca Scott, Charles Gibson Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of Law at University of Michigan.  It encapsulates some of her latest research following individuals from one St. Domingue family who ended up playing a key role in Louisiana's constitutional convention in order to gain that state's readmission to the Union after the Civil War.  I've heard Dr. Scott talk before, and her ability to bring the lives of lesser-known individuals to light through microhistory mirrors what we learned about in Landers' book.

Links to the news

Last class we talked about David Brooks' most recent editorial, "The Materialist Fallacy," and the new book by Charles Murray, Coming Apart--both of which try to explain the "weakening of the social fabric" in late 20th/early 21st-century America.  In our examination of the revolutionary era, we often think about how war and economic upheaval led to a "weakening of the social fabric," while new nations attempted to build institutions that could repair those fissures.  In the works we've read so far as a class, what "lessons" might you apply from the past to our own times--or do these social commentators help you think about the past in a new way?

On the value of political understandings of the past

Rich sent me two links last week: one to a commentary by Stanley Fish on the academic (versus the political) debates over constitutionalism/originalism, and another to a review of Gordon Wood's latest book lamenting the decline of political history.  Like it or not, what we write about as historians is deeply embedded in the "culture wars" of our day.  Since this week's class is considering what makes a "good" article discussing "Revolutions in Thought and Society," it may be useful to reflect in your process journal about ideas raised in one or another of these pieces. What does it mean to you to study "traditional" political or intellectual history topics, or to bring into the conversation ideas of contemporary concern such as race?  What role do your own politics play in defining what's "important" to study, or in how you define what you do as a historian as opposed to an educated voter/conversationalist?