Part One: An Interview with Modern American History Editors, Darren Dochuk and Sarah B. Snyder

We caught up with Modern American History’s new editors, Sarah and Darren, about their background and the exciting future of the journal.

What is your background & your areas of specialization in research and teaching?

Sarah: I’m a historian at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC. My research focuses on the history of U.S.  foreign relations. I’ve written about the Cold War, about human rights activism and U.S human rights policy, and I’m currently writing a book about expatriates and their influence on U.S foreign relations. In order to explore those themes, I’ve utilized the methods of international history by looking at the records of foreign government records to understand how human rights became an issue in Cold War-era diplomacy. I’ve also adopted transnational history methods in that I’ve worked deeply in the records of nongovernmental organizations based inside and outside the United States to understand how they shaped U.S foreign policy.

Darren: I’m a historian based at the University of Notre Dame. I write on and teach a variety of subjects in 20th century U.S. history, but my focus is on the intersection of religion and politics in modern America. My first book looks at the rise of conservatism in post-World War II Southern California. I have continued to explore related themes at the intersection of religion, region, and politics, and most recently in the contexts of energy and environment. My latest book tells the history of religion and oil in American life, from the Civil War period to the present. I remain committed to exploring the historical ties between religion, politics, and energy, both in North American and on a global scale.

What first sparked your interest in the field of modern US history and your interest in the journal?

Sarah: For me, there were a lot of influences when I was very young. I grew up in New England, which (like many parts of the United States) has a very distinct understanding of its own history. That’s something that I was quite interested in, both in class and outside of school. As a family we did countless trips to places like Plymouth Plantation and the Freedom Trail in Boston; my father had been a history major and cared very deeply about U.S history, so it is no surprise that our family loved these types of excursions. And then I was really fortunate to have some wonderful teachers in high school who broadened my interest in other parts of the world. I took a fascinating class on Eastern European history, which likely sparked my interest in the Cold War and led me on the path that my research interests have followed. I think those are the sort of formative experiences that made me attracted to studying history and then made me think that history was something that I wanted to do professionally.

In terms of the journal, I was really struck by the innovative features that the journal’s editors were developing; they seemed to me to be quite radical and new, not just in the field of modern U.S history, but across journal publishing more broadly. I remember reading a visitor’s corner feature with some of the leaders of the Equal Justice Initiative who shared how they came to develop the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum, and I thought their discussion of the previous absence of those types of memorials and  museums in the United States was really powerful. It made me interested in the journal, and it also made me interested in going to the memorial, which I think was very important for my understanding of modern U.S history.

Darren: Like Sarah, personal experiences shaped my interest in modern U.S. history. As a Canadian, growing up in Alberta, I was always fascinated with American history and happenings south of the border—they seemed exotic. I’m sure you can imagine, a young boy growing up reading history, I was more interested in the drama of the American Revolution and Civil War than Canadian history, which I saw as dull and boring. Even as a young kid I was always interested in reading deeply, and as I spent more time traveling with my family throughout the United States, I grew to love not just the history of the place but also its geography. It was because of that curiosity that I focused on U.S. history as an undergraduate student at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia. There I had the chance to take courses with Michael Fellman, a prominent historian of the U.S Civil War, and ultimately write a senior thesis under his direction that explored religion and politics in the United States, with particular focus on evangelical Protestantism in the nineteenth century. At the time I was writing my thesis, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, politics and religion were becoming more entangled and heated in the United States—evidenced in the rise of the Republican religious right. I wanted to make sense of these very current dynamics by looking at their roots in the Gilded Age and Progressive era.

That initial foray into the origins of American fundamentalism proved to be the foundation of my current research interests. I went to grad school convinced I would study the 19th century U.S. But as I became more immersed through coursework in other facets of American history—urban history and political history in particular, I started to gravitate towards the 20th century. Reading the leading urban and political historians who were publishing big books in the 1990s and early 2000s, I thought that it would be good if I could contribute to the conversations (about post-WWII suburbanization, for instance) by bringing religion into the mix. It just so happens that some of the historians I admired as a grad student have contributed to Modern American History, by publishing pieces in the journal or serving on the editorial board. So, things have kind of come full circle. Inspired by these historians I made the choice to focus my scholarship on the relationship between religion and politics in recent U.S. history; and now I find myself privileged to be working for a journal that has also benefited from the groundbreaking work of these same scholars.

How has your scholarship positioned you to lead the journal for the next five years?

Sarah: In comparison to some of the disciplines that my colleagues at the School of International Service are trained in, history is often a very solitary endeavor. Archival research and writing can be isolating; but one of the things that is really fortunate as you progress in your career is that over time, as the research and professional opportunities continually increase, you develop strong networks of scholars who are interested in similar topics and geographies. In my case, that has been a network of scholars whose focus, like mine, is on the history of the United States during the Cold War period and twentieth century as a whole. So, I feel like what my scholarship has done for me in terms of positioning me to lead this journal is that it has allowed me to become part of networks of people we can now turn to, as editors, when soliciting new and innovative features and first-rate research articles, and as we grow the journal’s profile through recruitment and marketing.

Before I came to American University in Washington, D.C., I taught in the United Kingdom for a number of years. That experience is now a real asset, as it will enable me to tap into a community of colleagues that reaches beyond the United States, all to enhance our vision for the journal, which includes a broadening of its appeal to non-U.S. based scholars and readers. On a more direct level, I mentioned that I’m working on a book about expatriates and their influence on U.S foreign relations. This project has really stretched me chronologically, thematically and geographically, which will enhance my work on this thematically and chronologically broad journal. In the next five years, I welcome the opportunity to meet other experts in areas of study I’m trying to gain a better grasp of; on the other, the breadth of my book project will better prepare me to shepherd a diverse group of writers working on dynamic research topics and their pieces into the journal.

Darren: My primary goal as a historian has been to embed religion in “mainstream” American history. Still too often, I think, religion is marginalized, cordoned off by historians of modern America or downplayed as a secondary agent of historical change—hardly warranting the type of attention larger, structural (secular) historical agents deserve. This tendency does a disservice to us as students of the recent American past. If we want to understand how and why religion seems to be such an obvious force in our contemporary politics, we—as historians—need to trace longer histories that detail and assess how matters of faith have shaped American development, right from the nation’s founding but also (and of more interest to us) from the late nineteenth century forward.

In an effort to mainstream religion in American history, I have made a concerted effort to read widely in political, environmental, urban, and and more recently energy history to better understand wider historical trends and how religion might fit in. I think that initiative will serve me well as I join Sarah in co-editing Modern American History. I get really excited about reaching out to historians (most of who I don’t know) working in different subfields and drawing on their expertise, learning from them and finding ways to bring them into conversation with one another. Recruitment for MAH’s Features section will certainly benefit from this type of engagement, but I also think that my prior efforts to read and write broadly about religion and politics will help make our assessment of MAH research article submissions run smoothly and effectively. I certainly look forward to seeing what exciting research trends emerge over the next few years—and to helping ensure that MAH is the perfect venue for testing these new ideas.

What makes Modern American History distinctive and important to the field?

Darren: Modern American History serves a really important purpose in the historical guild. While there are several excellent journals in U.S. history that target specialists in particular subfields (ranging from environmental history to urban history), other than the Journal of American History (JAH), MAH is the only major periodical that reaches a general audience of academic historians working on the modern era. And unlike the JAH which covers the entire chronology of U.S. history, MAH focuses on the post-1890 period, meaning it provides much more room for authors to tackle a range of subjects that readers drawn from a variety of specializations can find stimulating and instructive. Modern American History also fills a methodological gap. It provides a venue for creative and innovative scholarship with plenty of room for historians to ask big questions in order to provoke and raise issues of currency that affect our own political moment. While its substantial Features section makes room for more innovative and pointed scholarly assessment of our field in the context of contemporary times, it also encourages authors to share with readers how they write and teach history, or apply history to their art. I know that this more personal dimension of the Features section has been instructive as well as inspirational to a lot of our peers.

What are your plans for Modern American History in this new phase?

Sarah: Firstly, we want to begin by acknowledging and honoring the work that Sarah Phillips and Brooke Blower, the founding editors of Modern American History, along with a founding editorial board and the whole team at Boston University, have done to get this journal off the ground and running—what a daunting task. Sarah and Brooke created an incredibly innovative journal, for instance by utilizing the “below the fold” section of each issue to allow different voices to be heard on diverse topics that wouldn’t exactly have fit into a conventional research article. I think that we are all richer for the ways in which they really expanded the idea of what a journal could be; the notion that a top-tier academic journal can engage and provoke with extended think pieces as well as provide access to first-rate research is a model other journals are now trying to adopt.

Secondly, everyone I’ve spoken to that has published in Modern American History has said it provided them with the best interaction with a journal team they’ve ever had. They talk about the personal touch, the personal care and attention that Sarah and Brooke and others on the editorial team gave to them. The way Sarah and Brooke mentored them and helped the journal’s early authors bring their ideas into print is what impressed them most; that has been an enormous gift to scholars in our field, particularly more junior ones who are anxious to build careers. Darren and I hope that we can continue providing this same level of mentorship.

Finally, one of the other things that we really want to build upon is the journal’s strong emphasis on inclusivity. This means continuing to expand its leadership by diversifying and internationalizing its editorial board. But where the journal itself is concered, it also means making sure that authors from a variety of backgrounds and institutions are being published and that a wide range of topics are being addressed; and it means using the Features section of the journal—its Q&A format, for example—to highlight other ways in which the field of history raises unique challenges as well as opportunities for its practitioners. For example, we want to continue to shed light on issues of gender and race as they affect one’s ability to work in the archives, navigate the publishing world, and manage career development. In other words, we want MAH to be a central place for historians to reflect on the general health of the discipline and of their profession, and not just from an intellectual point of view. I think they’re really important issues for historians of modern U.S. history to be talking about and I think that the journal has done an incredible service to the profession in this respect, and we hope to continue generating these types of discussions.

In terms of our own vision: MAH is already a wonderful journal, and in many ways we’re enormously fortunate to be taking over such a well-established operation. So quite simply, what we want to do is to build on the successes of the journal—we want to continue to enhance and promote its creativity, and involve more voices from a range of personal and professional backgrounds and perspectives. This also means including scholars from outside of the Ivory Tower who work in a range of institutions, private and public, across the continent and even the Atlantic. This is something we have already paid a lot of attention to when composing our new editorial board; and we will continue to heed where recruitment of authors is concerned. In sum, we hope to continue facilitating the innovation and spirit of inclusivity that Brooke and Sarah and everyone who helped create Modern American History so brilliantly installed at its very beginning.

Check out the full interview now on YouTube or read part 2 on the Cambridge Core Blog.

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