Headlines from History
A Newsletter from the Baruch History
Department
Fall 2004
Archive of past issues
Why Be a History Major or Minor?
by Julie Des Jardins
As an undergraduate student, I remember thinking I was out of my mind for wanting to major in the field of history. None of my friends were doing it, opting instead to major in fields that, in our minds, seemed more lucrative in the long run: pre-law, pre-med, and, of course, all areas of business. Their decisions made a lot of sense, especially when I sat and thought about what my professional options would be once I graduated with a history degree. So far as I knew, the only thing I would appear to be qualified for was teaching history, and I would likely need to go back and get even more credentials once I graduated. Rumor had it that there really weren't a lot of teaching jobs to go around even if I did get those credentials. And of course another consideration was just how well I was going to be able to afford living on my own on a teacher's salary, especially if I was going to live in a big city like I had always planned.
Indeed, as I neared college graduation the decision to major in history seemed almost imprudent in many respects, yet I couldn't deny that the history bug bit me. The truth of the matter was that history was what I wanted to study more than anything else; in no other classes did I get the chance to study real people doing such curious things. Growing up I was addicted to those "period" movies, always wondering if the clothes the actors were wearing were really authentic, or if the old cars they were driving were really what people drove, or if the food they were eating was really what people ate back then. Whether I liked it or not, I was fascinated by the lives of people in the past. I wanted to know what it felt like to be the historical figures I saw depicted on television or whom I read about in my favorite historical novels. So, despite what my friends were doing, I decided to stick with history anyway. I applied to graduate school and went on to get my doctorate in American women's history. In hindsight, following my heart was the best thing I've ever done.
Since my undergraduate years I have been better educated about all the doors that a degree in history can open. Indeed mine has put me in good stead for a career in teaching, but I was wrong to think that this was the only road I could take. In fact, I would argue that studying history in college equipped me with a versatile set of skills that can transfer to almost any field I can think of. My husband, a physicist now in law school training to become a patent attorney, often remarks how envious he is that I received the opportunity to hone my reading and writing skills as a student of history. Indeed the other history majors he knows in his classes tend to look at the assigned reading material with a much more critical eye, and he often asks me what it is about our training that allows us to analyze scenarios like we do. I tell him that it's really pretty simple: history majors do so much more than memorize dates, they practice the art of reading between the lines, looking for bias, understanding historical perspective, engaging multiple points of view, and discerning for themselves how reliable a given source is for a given purpose. Better yet, we're practiced in articulating our sophisticated thinking in analytic writing. Clear and insightful writing is a reflection of a clear and insightful mind-and history majors who have refined the ability to think and write insightfully about the past go on to apply such abilities to politics, social policy, and everything else going on in the world around them.
Perhaps my views on the special abilities of history majors sound idealistic, especially to students who hope to find intellectually fulfilling, yet also well-paying, jobs after they graduate from Baruch. To those students I can lend some assuring words. The skill sets of history majors do not go unnoticed in many professional sectors; the ability to read, write, and think critically will take you far in this competitive job market because these skills are universally needed and desired. Of course history majors can go on to teach, but since my college days I have also learned that history majors can easily enter careers in law, government, and public policy. I know historians who have gone on to become business consultants, political lobbyists, college administrators, and directors of non-for-profit corporations. Many friends of mine enjoyed history so much as undergraduates that they went on to graduate school-not to become history teachers, but rather to enter the field of "public history," broadly construed. Some became museum curators, while others became preservationists and editors of historical journals. Several who dreaded the monotony of a nine-to-five job have gone on to become successful freelance writers, while others have traveled the world conducting historical research.
If you're still not convinced of the possibilities that come with being a history major, I invite you to keep reading this newsletter. The faculty and alumni in these pages reveal the vast possibilities an education in history can offer. Studying history can be fun, but also very rewarding. So for those who love history and are considering a major or minor in it, the sky is the limit.
An Interview with Kathleen Waldron
College President, Business Executive---and HISTORIAN!!
Most of us know that Baruch's new President, Kathleen Waldron, was already a successful business executive and college administrator before taking on her presidency at the college. Along with fulfilling duties as president of Citibank International in Miami, she served admirably as dean of Long Island University's business school. But did you know that she was an historian before entering the world of business and attributes much of her professional success and outlook on world affairs to her background in the field of history? Julie Des Jardins sat down with President Waldron to talk more about how she feels her history training has impacted her personal and professional life.
President Waldron's interest in history goes back to her days as a university student. She received her Ph.D. in Latin American history from Indiana University in 1977 and earned a Fulbright Scholarship to teach history in Venezuela. She eventually went on to become a professor of Latin American history at Bowdoin College in Maine, and though teaching was personally fulfilling, she found it difficult to find the opportunities she wanted to research history in Latin America. Her chance to live and work in that region of the world finally came when she matriculated in a program at New York University that offered promising standouts in the humanities the opportunity to train for the business sector. Upon completion of the program she had immediate job offers in Latin America, and hence the beginning of an extended tenure of travel and a successful business career.
By no means did the launching of her business career mean that her skills as an historian went by the wayside. President Waldron feels strongly that her earlier training prepared her well to succeed in business. "I think I had such fast success because of the specific skill set I acquired as an historian...In the business world it becomes important to be able to piece together a story without all the facts. In my first job I received financials for a privately owned oil company in Argentina and was asked to write an analysis. These financials were eighteen months old-they offered an incomplete picture at best of the management risks I was supposed to analyze. Suddenly I had to hearken back to my ability to construct a 'story' when all I had were fragments of this potential story in front of me." Luckily, she was better trained in archival research than her colleagues. "This was before the Internet," she explains, "and so much of the research I had to do was in the company library." Once she discovered documents germane to risk management, she had the analytic skills to evaluate her sources, synthesize what they offered, and write a coherent assessment-much like an historian would. "In business, you really do have to be good at selecting sources and knowing their limitations. I think this really applies to all business fields-marketing, finance, or whatever. And now that we have the Internet, we find that there are too many sources available, and, like an historian, the savvy business analyst has to be able to discern between sources and decide what to extract from them."
President Waldron continued to wear her historian's hat as she worked her way up the corporate ladder. "In the business world one cannot underestimate the importance of being able to communicate ideas both orally and in writing," she insists. Undoubtedly, her teaching of history strengthened her ability to communicate on both fronts. "In business you can always tell who has experience teaching," she laughs. "They know their audience and know how to convey information in a limited amount of time. There is always structure and flow to their ideas when they give their presentations." Indeed she and her interviewer were in unwavering agreement that this is why history professors stress the significance of historical writing: writing is the window into the mind; clearly organized writing is a reflection of clear thinking, and historians sharpen their ability to do both successfully.
In the end, President Waldron does not regret the decisions she has made in her professional life-in part because she has never really abandoned her mindset as an historian or her love of history: "I may have Fortune and the Wall Street Journal on my desk at work, but when I'm home you'll find history books on my nightstand."
Baruch History Students Do Amazing Things
This past year Baruch history student Izaz Rony completed an internship in Egypt sponsored by the U.S. State Department. He also worked for the U.N. and an NGO called "Friends of the Environment," managing local school programs that dealt with the social and economic issues of the poor. Izaz traveled extensively throughout Egypt and visited sites with doctors, teachers, and media personnel to increase public involvement in the program. Why Egypt? Izaz explains that he chose this destination "to get a cultural understanding of the region and see all the sites I read about in history books." Not too many internships give one the opportunity to visit the ancient pyramids on horseback, but Izaz insists he has his history professors to thank for sparking his "desire to see the world and explore the unknown."
Baruch junior Laura Simao is a Communications major and History minor who is also part of the college's Honors Program. Laura is not a typical undergraduate student-unless it's typical to have a virtual career in corporate responsibility non-for-profit work while going to school fulltime. She works at the Weissman Center for International Business as an internship coordinator; as a legal assistant at a large international law firm; as an organizer of the Baruch chapter of Mercado Global, a non-profit, fair-trade association; and for a variety of legal and human rights organizations. Laura has organized internships for Baruch students with Human Rights First's Asylum Department researching living conditions around the world, and she is currently in negotiations to do the same with InMotion, an organization that provides legal representation for low-income and minority women victims of domestic violence, and the Legal Aid Society. Currently Laura is organizing a seminar on Corporate Social Responsibility, which will take place at Baruch October 13th and will include high-profile speakers from the corporate world. She insists that her studies in history are directly applicable to her long-term goals of completing a thesis and working with corporate social responsibility, either in profit or non-profit sectors. "My history education has certainly been invigorating in the course of my academic life," she writes. "It has influenced my current work as well as my projects for the future...The learning of history helps us understand current economic and social issues much more than one may think. To paraphrase a point made by Professor Berkin in one of her lectures, historians are very much concerned in understanding what events led to the conditions of the world today...[Historians] supply much of the material needed to understand the present and, perhaps, to re-shape the future."
It is not everyday that members of the Baruch history department are greeted by a student taking their courses simply "for the love of it," but this is indeed the case with Shirley Gerstel. She is currently auditing "History of American Women" and never misses a lecture (except for the rare occasion when an episode of Law and Order is being filmed in her building). Before this semester Shirley audited "Ethical Theories," "Writing by and about Women," "Theater Arts," and "The Culture and Religion of Islam," but her love outside the classroom has always been history. "I watch History Channel and am very interested in real events and real people...You know how history courses were in my day (dates of battles for tests), etc. But real history has always interested me, anything real." Shirley's "day" was back in the 1940s, when she last took history courses before completing a commercial diploma. She didn't take history courses again until the 1960s and 1970s, when she registered at Washington Irving High School and took night courses at Baruch. Shirley worked in a number of secretarial positions and eventually moved on to publicity and promotion in the film industry. And yet despite her varied professional life, her greatest accomplishment, she feels, was graduating magna cum laude from Baruch in 1980. Retired since 1995, Shirley continues to take history at Baruch because she cannot get enough.
Experience History Here in New York
(and on a student budget!)
New York City has lots of history that is readily accessible outside the classroom and the library. We've listed a few of the goings-on around town-and all of these we list upon the enthusiastic recommendation of faculty and students.
The New York Historical Society is sponsoring a show and accompanying exhibit on Alexander Hamilton and presidential campaign materials. According to our resident expert in American colonial history, Professor Carol Berkin, this exhibit will display materials that date back to the first presidential election of George Washington.
On Staten Island Historic Richmond Town offers a full fall lineup of events, including an exhibit of the photographs of Isaac Almstaedt, presented by the Staten Island Historical Society as part of the national celebration of the 350th anniversary of the Jewish community in America. Almstaedt was an entrepreneur and photographer of Staten Island's landscapes and culture from 1875 to 1915. For information on Historic Richmond Town's twenty-five acres of domestic, commercial, and civic historical buildings, call (718) 351-1611.
Professor Veena Oldenburg thinks that one of the best ways to explore international history close to home is to go and visit the ethnic neighborhoods right here in New York City. She has generously offered to lead student tours of Little India in Jackson Heights to give a better sense of "food, clothing, and other cultural riches." Interested students can contact Julie Des Jardins or Professor Oldenburg directly.
Has anyone watched the new program "History Detectives" broadcasted by
PBS? Despite its flashy publicity, Professor Alfonso Quiroz likes the program for its use of real historical research to uncover historical "mysteries" posed by ordinary citizens.
He thinks students will enjoy its interesting details about
American history and the methodologies used by historians.
The Morris-Jumel Mansion, Manhattan's oldest house, located in Harlem Heights, is sponsoring an exhibition called "Shrines and Spinning Wheels" from September 9th to December 31, 2004. Curators at the house will be displaying rare vintage photographs from the museum's archives and objects from the original museum, which opened its doors one hundred years ago. The house was headquarters to George Washington in 1776, and it played host to British and Hessian military leaders during the Revolutionary War. Students in Julie Des Jardins' American women's history course highly recommend taking the guided tour of the mansion, which is reasonably priced for students. (General admission is 10 am-4 pm Sunday, Wednesday - Saturday. The exhibition is $2 for students, and $3 for house tours. For reservations, call (212) 923-8008)
The Sidney Mishkin Gallery at Baruch College is sponsoring "Underground Art, 1925-1950: A Centennial Celebration of the New York City Subway," October 1st through November 4th. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, Noon to 5:00 pm, and Thursday, Noon to 7:00 at 135 East 22nd Street.
The Max Weinreich Center of the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research is sponsoring several free public lectures this fall. On Monday, November 29, 2004 Sima Beeri of the Department of Jewish History and Culture at University College, London will give the lecture, "Litarische bleter, a literary publication in Yiddish (Warsaw, 1924-39)." Marcin Wodzinski, Director of the Research Center for Polish Jewry at the University of Wroclaw, Poland will speak on "The Government of Congress Poland and the Hasidic Movement" on Tuesday, December 14, 2004. On January 10, 2005 Eliyahu Stern of the Department of Judaic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley will speak on "The Gaon of Vilna." These public lectures are free, but reservations are required. All lectures begin at 7:00 pm. (Box office phone: 917-606-8200; email: boxoffice@cjh.org)
Enjoy history right around the corner-literally!
Many buildings near campus are of historic interest and can usually be viewed for free (at least from the outside if nothing else). Right near Baruch is the mansion built by Samuel Tilden, the New York Senator who lost the Presidency in 1876. It houses the National Arts Club and isn't generally open to the public, but check out the remarkable outside decoration and keep your eyes open for art exhibits inside that occasionally are free. Another great building near Baruch is the Roosevelt home, currently under the management of the National Park Service. Admission is free and it's often not crowded. (We have it on the authority of Professor Bert Hansen that the park service staff members love to talk about history if you get them going.)
Have you ever noticed the New Deal Murals right there in the post office on 23rd Street? The history department welcomes anyone to go see them and write a 400- or 500-word piece to publish in the next department newsletter. If any student has visited a great New York historical landmark, we'd love to feature you in our next newsletter. Please see Julie Des Jardins if you'd like to be our next guest contributor.
Happenings in the History Department
The Friedman Fund of the Department of History is sponsoring an essay contest on the topic, "Who's Going to Win?: A Forecast of the Presidential Election of 2004 Based on Historical Precedents." Submissions are due October 13, 2004. Essays should be 1500 to 2500 words, notes included. The first place winner will receive $500, the second place winner, $300. All undergraduate Baruch students are eligible to enter.
With the sponsorship of Robert A. Friedman and the Gilder Lehrman Foundation, the Department of History and the Baruch College History Club will be hosting a Symposium entitled "Post Mortem: Journalists Look at the 2004 Presidential Election." Gail Collins of the New York Times, Barbara Raab of NBC News, Wayne Hoffman of The Forward, and Professor Carol Berkin of the Baruch History Department will be the featured speakers. (Thursday, November 4, 2004 at 12:45 pm in the Baruch College Vertical Campus, Room 3-150.) Students, faculty, and other guests are welcome.
The Bildner Center at the Graduate Center organizes many lectures and conferences. In October it is hosting a conference on "Cuba Today" and another on "Alexander von Humboldt: From the Americas to the Cosmos." Check its web page: www.bildner.org
The History Department and Dean Myrna Chase want to know of any students who are thinking about going to graduate school and applying for Fulbright Scholarships. We would also like to know of students who do not plan on going to graduate school immediately but would be interested in applying for the James Madison Award, which covers graduate school for prospective teachers. If you're interested, please contact members of the Baruch history faculty or Dean Myrna Chase.
Baruch History Faculty News
Professor Carol Berkin will publish the article, "So You Want to Be in Pictures," in the winter newsletter of the Organization of American Historians. This article offers her insights on what is entailed in being a "talking head" for historical documentaries. Professor Berkin's new book Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for Independence (Knopf) is due out in January of 2005. In addition to her publications, Professor Berkin gave the keynote address at the Rhode Island Historical Society Annual Meeting September 19th, and with the sponsorship of the National Constitution Center and WXPN in Philadelphia, she has filmed a program on political parties with high school students.
Professor Vince DiGirolamo has just completed the essay "Such, such were the b'hoys..." in the Fall 2004 issue of Radical History Review. He also recently published the essay "'Heralds of a Noisy World': Carrier Boys, Post Riders, and the Print Revolution in Early America," in The Worlds of Children, 2002 Annual Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife (Boston: Boston University Press, 2004), 171-84.
The history department welcomes new professor Clarence Taylor to Baruch College. Before university teaching, Professor Taylor spent many years teaching in the New York public school system, followed by positions at Le Moyne College and Florida International University. His most recent of three books is Black Religious Intellectuals: The Fight for Equality from Jim Crow to the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2002), and currently he is working on a book that examines unionism in New York schools.
In 2004-2005 Professor Bert Hansen is on sabbatical, working on a book about the image of medical progress in American popular culture from the mid-19th to the mid-20thcentury. His sources include daily newspapers and popular magazines, Hollywood films, and children's comic books.
The history department welcomes new assistant professor Julie Des Jardins to Baruch College. An historian of gender and American women, she comes to Baruch after teaching in the History and Literature Program at Harvard University. Professor Des Jardins has recently published Women and the Historical Enterprise in American: Gender, Race, and the Politics of Memory (University of North Carolina Press, 2003). In 2005 she plans to present a paper at the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians on women and the New Negro History Movement and a paper on women historians of the American West at the annual meeting of the Association of Western Historians.
Professor Alfonso W. Quiroz has co-edited a book on Cuban intellectual Fernando Ortiz, an ethnologist, historian and social scientist who wrote
classic books on Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. The book is entitled
Cuban Counterpoints: The Legacy of Fernando Ortiz (Lexington Books,
2004). Professor Quiroz has also published an article on the history of Cuban corruption in the nineteenth century in the Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 35 (2003). He continues working on his book on the history of corruption in Peru and participates in seminars and lectures on the history of civil society in Cuba and Latin America
at the Graduate Center.
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