He also mentioned he has written a screenplay about pirates and pirating, and that he had tried to give it a more historical foundation than, say, Disney’s version – but he was also forthright in saying he did not see such an effort as scholarship.

Ms. Jenkins is not a historian or a scholar, and is, pretty obviously, looking for the big score in Hollywood; she was hired, after all, to write what amounts to the novelization of a yet-to-be-produced screenplay.

What seems really questionable to me in Dr. Stauffer’s involvement; whether he was brought aboard to give this effort a scholarly gloss or not, it appears he may be not have thought it through…his involvement seems more questionable than Jenkins’ in my eyes.

Caveats: I have yet to read either book (but am very interested now in doing so before the fall semester begins), but have to say Dr. Bynum’s POV (and Kevin’s opinion of the situation) both seem legitimate; I also say this as someone with more than decade in daily journalism, some personal experience in academia, and with at least a passing aquaintance with the entertainment industry.

I think Faulkner’s observation about Hollywood and serious writers (academic or otherwise) still holds true.

Thanks for clarifying.

I started to watch it, but as soon as Jenkins started to babble on and on about how historians have ignored this story I checked out. I’m not surprised that Bynum’s name wasn’t mentioned since Stewart would have no interest in doing such a background check. I don’t even think he read the book, which would be no surprise. I agree that writing for the general public is different than for fellow academics, but in both cases the authors are making claims about the past. In both cases I believe it is the responsibility of those in positions of authority to speak up when such egregious errors are committed. I to am pleased that more people have now been exposed to Bynum’s book and I hope she sees an increase in sales.

Finally, what do you mean by “the book is banned in Richmond”? Did I miss something?

Excellent points. I do think we have to distinguish between Jenkins and Stauffer here. As I pointed out in the post, Jenkins is clearly not capable of dealing with these challenges. She is unfamiliar with the relevant historiography and seems not to understand what goes into an analytical discussion about the process of writing history. Notice how many times she says something along the lines of, “These facts are indisputable…”

I am now beginning to see that even Stauffer is out of his league in terms of the relevant historiography. How else can we explain his resorting to personal jabs against Bynum. It comes down to both not knowing what to say in response to Bynum and others because they haven’t really thought through many of the issues that have been raised. Still, he was trained to do research and engage in serious dialog with other scholars. That is why I believe he is more culpable in this particular instance.

Reading Stauffer and Jenkins’ response to Michael Ballard this morning, my first reaction frankly was annoyance. Like Professor Bynum, Ballard is both an excellent scholar and a gracious person. Then a rather amorphous thought I ‘d been wrestling with finally gelled. When Bynum and Ballard firmly but respectfully raise what they see as problems with the book, Stauffer and Jenkins’ counterattack. They paint Bynum and Ballard as bad scholars who “ignore evidence” that strikes me anyway as supposition, heritage, or disputed memory. They re-anchor their interpretations in sources others have questioned. They garble or ignore gray areas in the antebellum and Confederate South, notably but not exclusively in regard to race and slavery. They dismiss Bynum simply as a defender of “turf,” but in another response, Stauffer goes on to read Sean Wilentz’s mind, asserting that this “presentist” historian is attacking another work because of a nefarious, agenda-driven, Hillary Clintonian political philosophy.

Aren’t these the same, sad, familiar tactics used in defense of “black Confederates” or the notion of Lincoln as a proto-Hitler?

Ken

Great post, insightful, fair, authoritative. If only you had been around in 1861, we could have avoided the whole damned mess.

Great post. Personal swipes should have no place in legitimate scholarly debate — one would think that an author (or authors) sincerely interested in advancing the field would welcome criticism and not resort to debasing another’s work and then “skedaddling”, to use a period term. I can certainly understand why someone would feel passionate about their work — after all, when you spend vast chunks of your life researching and writing a book it sort of becomes your “baby”. But when you sign your name to a work, you should be fully confident that you have done the best job of researching your topic and offering sufficient analysis based on your research. Criticism sharpens historians and hopefully makes them better at what they do. To think that this dispute has led to newspaper articles is…depressing. My wife will be ecstatic to learn that there will be at least ONE new Civil War book that I won’t be buying…

You should read it and decide for yourself. The problem is not simply the concerns raised by Bynum, but that Jenkins and Stauffer have resisted responding directly to them. Since they are legitimate concerns I have to assume that the authors are incapable of dealing with them.