I'm hoping my Africanist colleagues will come out of the woodwork on this one: /u/EsotericR, /u/profrhodes, /u/Commustar, /u/SisulusGhost, and probably a few I'm forgetting. The short scenario is this: I've been asked, in preparation for Fall semester 2017 (yes, yes, I know, lead time!) to put together an intake colloquium/seminar for our new African Studies graduate certificate program. It's got to be beyond history, but African history is certainly part of it. My graduate pedagogy in African history and African studies generally is now around 15 years old, with the result that I feel a bit like a fossil. If you had to introduce people to theoretical literature on Africa in a range of interlinked fields, what would you pick? I have ten meetings to fill, and interdisciplinarity is a huge plus. I have a few ideas, and I can figure out the history quickly enough, but nothing is so effective in African studies than discussion with others in the field as we become more and more compartmentalized. Any thoughts?

South African mining frontiers, cotton and wool landscapes as industrial peripheries, and the Opium Wars in today's Global Environmental History lesson. My job is pretty cool sometimes.

I don`t know if this is connected to theory Thursday but Is overspeclazation in history scholarship and histroy writing a problem in all disciplines or just the civil war era? journal of the civil war era

As Aaron Sheehan-Dean has recently noted in Virginia Magazine, the increasing volume and specialization of work on the Civil War has become a serious problem. “We are in danger of learning more and more about less and less,” Sheehan-Dean laments. “Civil War scholars need to write broader histories in both temporal and spatial terms.” I agree, and I would add that we need broader histories in thematic terms also (see below). Two factors militate against such needs being met. First, the book-buying public (to the extent that there still is one) rather likes hyper-specialized Civil War books. Second, in a business where it takes one book to get tenure and at least two to go up for full professorship, there is a perverse incentive to “go small.”[2]

Hey all, I've noticed that a huge amount of academic work in history is published in the form of physical books. Like for us hard science guys, if we want access to the latest academic work, if you're with a school you just get free online access to all the papers, and even if you're not, $100 a year or so will get you access to almost every paper you could want, all online.

But what do you guys in history do? Do you literally drop $50 just to read one book about the textile industry in 18th century Siam? Is there a better, cheaper way to read academic work in history I don't know about?

I picked up "The military history of Ancient Israel" by Richard Gabriel, although I found out from reviews that its not so good. Are there any good books that deal with the military aspects of Ancient Israel/Levant?

I'm trying to get a hold of Elliot Abrams' dissertation and article from 1984 on architectural energetics. The article is from the Journal of New World Archaeology which has no website and my library just doesn't have access to whatever database that may have all those articles. It's weird and I don't like it. I also hope that the interlibrary loan system looks at my note requesting the dissertation and gives me the book rather than the microform. I frickin' hate having to set up microform.