Channeling Clio: Archives, Lecture Halls, and Western Canadian Conservatism* Brian Froese Introduction In the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna hangs Johannes Vermeer’s “The Art of Painting.” It portrays a man with his back to us painting a portrait of a young woman. Her head is adorned with a laurel wreath; in one hand she holds a book and in the other a trumpet. Though to all appearances she is a well-to-do woman of the 17th century, she has been with us since the Classical era. We find her in a long line of paintings, engravings, statues, vases, and drawings. Her name is Clio, the Muse of History. Many representations of Clio portray her as a winged woman, bearing a trumpet, surrounded by books, parchment, or scrolls, often writing upon or reading one.1 Such a fortuitous lineage to the ancient past brings several significant themes into the present. Clio not only reads history but writes it, and with her trumpet proclaims it. History, in the image of our Muse, is, from the artistic record, a mixture of contemplation, reading, writing, and proclamation. For the 21st- century university, where historians are trained professionals often working in narrowly defined fields and writing on rarefied topics, Clio has much to offer as we probe two questions: What is the purpose of history? Why study and teach the past? A constant tension for the historian in the university is the relationship between research and teaching. In part, the tension is creative, as these two key elements of scholarly practice inform and interrogate each other. This essay accordingly asks two related basic questions: What is the purpose of * Some of the research in this essay was funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) grant. I wish to thank Norma Jones for commenting on an early draft of this essay. 1 Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. with assistance by Mari Griffith, “Johannes Vermeer: The Art of Painting,” pamphlet, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1999. www.nga.gov/ exhibitions/verm_pref.shtm, accessed October 16, 2011. The Conrad Grebel Review 30, no. 3 (Fall 2012): 236-256. Channeling Clio: Archives, Lecture Halls, Conservatism 237 teaching history? In teaching history, why is it important to keep teaching and research close together? First, based on an examination of professional historians reflecting on teaching and research in Perspectives (published by the American Historical Association [AHA]) and presidential addresses for both the AHA and the Canadian Historical Association (CHA), I will identify recurring themes emerging over the last century that provide a starting point to assess how the profession in North America sees itself and its role in society. Second, from a personal perspective, I will discuss how some of my recent research in religion and politics in the Canadian west fits with the mission to teach my survey course in Canadian history. Presidential addresses may seem a peculiar place to start. What these at times sermonic deliveries represent, however, is an annual snapshot of an aspect of the professional discipline. They are an opportunity for the head of the CHA or AHA to speak on any topic. Such talks are prepared for the broad swath of historians present and reflect broadly upon the discipline and profession. Many speakers have chosen to focus on their own research interests, others on historiography or the association itself. However, when the subject of teaching and research is addressed, a discernable set of themes has consistently appeared over the last century. These themes also assert the goals of a Liberal Arts education: inspiration, character shaping for an educated citizenry, and preparation of the next generation of educators at all levels. In CHA’s earliest years, classroom teaching was assumed to be as significant as scholarly research. Lawrence Burpee, delivering the presidential address in 1924, spoke primarily on the role of historians in public school education. He asked CHA to prepare “a series of outline lectures” for high school teachers on Canadian History, complete with slides, so teachers could build upon them for their own needs. The pedagogical value in the lecture outlines went beyond strengthening history in secondary schools; they were also “a very useful and patriotic piece of work” designed to correct “mistaken ideas” people entertained about Canada’s past.2 Though the teaching of history received more attention earlier in the 20th century than later, it was never absent and it would appear again. In 2 Lawrence J. Burpee, “Presidential Address,” Report of the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Historical Association 3, no. 1 (1924): 9. 238 The Conrad Grebel Review 2007, Margaret Conrad brought teaching, scholarship, and the deepening digital realities of information sharing into her address. Though not as explicit as earlier speakers on the matter of history education and uplift of the citizenry, she defended the study of history based on its “connectedness” to what precedes us. History gives depth to our understanding of the present and our thinking about the future. Yet her conviction about teaching history as “disciplined inquiry” locates us in more than the sweep of time; history locates us in our country and world; it places us in the range of human actors exercising agency.3 Despite sincere pieties of connection, location, and agency, Conrad reveals that, while channeling Carl Becker’s “Everyman Thesis” (see below), she displays professional anxieties common to many in the guild: if everyone is an historian, where does that leave those of us who spent upwards of a decade in graduate school? Rightly concerned about standards of the profession—such as locating the past in context, understanding the passage of time, adherence to limitations of evidence—Conrad related the issue of connectedness to that of training. This is important, for “History” is a multi- billion-dollar industry in North America. Not only are we virtually alone among academic disciplines in having an ancient muse, we also have our own television channel.4 In an expanding marketplace, society demands that history be both an educational subject and a range of consumer products including movies, video games, biographies, novels, and sweeping romantic tales. If secondary schools too often assign the teaching of history courses to those without formal historical training, consider how much thinner is our presence in commercial enterprises.5 However, professional historians have something vital to offer. They often do the research and analysis on which much of the activity in the historical economy and teacher training is based. Thus their insistence on integrity of evidence, faithful and just interpretation, proper citation, acknowledgment of source materials, and understanding the 3 Margaret Conrad, “2007 Presidential Address of the CHA: Public History and its Discontents or History in the Age of Wikipedia,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 18, no. 1 (2007): 4. 4 Ibid., 10. See also Carl Becker, “Everyman His Own Historian,” American Historical Review 37, no. 2 (January 1932): 221-36. 5 Conrad, “2007 Presidential Address,” 10. Channeling Clio: Archives, Lecture Halls, Conservatism 239 particular in the larger context serves not only the discipline but also public education and the economy.6 Despite these important functions, more is at work here than just standards and economic activity. History shapes character, as many historians asserted over the last hundred years. In the addresses of both AHA and CHA presidents, three main themes emerge around teaching. Though these themes shift as the decades pass, they all speak to the current context: the nature of historical education for individual development, the ideal of an educated citizenry, and pragmatic modeling of the discipline through research and communication for students and new generations of teachers from the primary levels to graduate school. Why Study History? When considering the relationship of teaching and research in the academy, we can hardly divorce it from reflecting on the nature of education itself. US President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican who turned Progressive in 1912 at the time of his AHA presidency, delivered a tour-de-force address titled “History as Literature.” Criss-crossing the western world and millennia of history from Virgil to Gettysburg, he tells a tale of historical writing as heroic deed.7 Despite his inclination to view history as Homeric heroism, Roosevelt is pragmatic: “a utilitarian education should undoubtedly be the foundation of all education. But it is far from advisable, it is far from wise, to have it the end of all education.”8 His philosophy of education, mixing utilitarian needs with history, literature, and poetry, takes on a nearly mystical hue as it invokes the character of the citizen. “Side by side with the need for perfection of the individual in the technique of his special calling goes the need of broad human sympathy,” he says, “and the need of lofty and generous emotion in that individual. Only thus can the citizenship of the modern state rise level to the complex modern social needs.”9 For Roosevelt, education uplifts the individual, develops qualities of 6 Ibid., 25-26. 7 Theodore Roosevelt, “History as Literature,” American Historical Review 18, no. 3 (April 1913): 473-89. 8 Ibid., 480. 9 Ibid. 240 The Conrad Grebel Review citizenship, and raises the nation state to a level of nuance and complexity to tackle its problems effectively, all while training the individual in a trade. Yet there is more to this vision. Education must also “rivet our interest and stir our souls.” That is, in educating men and women, poets and historians should “inspire heroic deeds.” To demonstrate, Roosevelt rhetorically asks which is “on men’s minds more”: Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address, or legal and constitutional justifications for slavery and federal intervention.