NYT: 9/11 leaves its mark on how American history is written and taught

[DeepModem Mom]

9/11 Leaves Its Mark on History Classes
By JANNY SCOTT
Published: September 6, 2006

The present has a way of changing the way that historians think about the past. The trauma of Sept. 11, 2001, is likely to be no exception: Five years after the attacks on New York and Washington, many historians say 9/11 and its aftermath are leaving their mark on how American history is written and taught.

American history is being studied less as the story of a neatly packaged nation state and more in a global context, as part of something much larger, many historians say. The idea of America as an empire, too, is in vogue. And historians are giving new attention to topics like the turbulent history of civil liberties in the United States.

There is growing interest in the history of terrorism, of Muslims in America, of international cultural conflicts and exchanges. The history of foreign policy is being rethought, some historians said, with less emphasis on the cold war and more on post-colonial politics. The Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis from 1979 to 1981 seem like significant turning points in ways that they had not before....

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Scholars disagree on the direction of the reframing of American history, sometimes along ideological lines. While many historians say 9/11 accelerated a push toward “internationalizing” American history — looking at what Thomas Bender, a professor of history at New York University, called “a common history with common causes for central events in American history” — some others said 9/11 had renewed their interest in an almost opposite idea, that of American exceptionalism....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/nyregion/06history.html

[RoyGBiv]

1. The re-framing of history ...

Let's go over how this works.

A friend of mine, a good friend, did his dissertation on a subject related to "international cultural conflicts and exchanges." His was defending this thesis during the latter part of August, 2001. He'd already been offered a job by a notable university and likely would have published his work. After 9/11 he was hit with a patriotic fervor that motivated him to enlist in the army. On his second tour in Iraq, he suffered a head injury that pretty much erased everything he learned and knew. He was a brilliant man, a budding historian who would have made a name for himself. He's now a shell of flesh.

There is a lesson in that his writing could have reflected and which mine is far too amateurish to convey in its necessary detail.

I am a historian. I cannot relate history in the way this man's story does.