This is a review of "The Journal of Social History" which I wrote for my Introduction to Historical Methods class at MSUM. Red marks courtesy of Prof. Nathan Clarke.

1. Haley Shoemaker
Prof. Clarke
Introduction to Historical Methods
Review of The Journal of Social History
In The Journal of Social History, history is examined with an emphasis on social interaction,
social conflict and modes of thought. Accompanying this is an emphasis on attempting to view
past events within the social and cultural framework of that time period.
The Journal of Social History in 1990 discussed pretty limited topics, at least culturally
speaking. Most of the subject matter covered was European and American. One article discusses
a culture other than Europe or America, but even then it’s the Portuguese colony Brazil.1
Colonialism seems to be a popular topic of social history, unsurprisingly, and several articles are
devoted to different colonial examples. In each there is a prevailing focus on the colonized,
rather than on the colonizers. Another area of particular fascination is the social unrest that
attended industrialization.
Many articles from The Journal of Social History published in 1990 and especially in the
first issue seemed hell-bent on dispelling a perceived myth in the existing historical record or
focused tightly on a “neglected” aspect of the given topic. It was almost as if the writers had set
out to revise revisionism. Another noticeable trend from this year was to focus on one factor of
society, such as class, race, or gender, and excluded all others from consideration. For example,
some of the articles in the first issue focused on upper class groups: merchants, power
companies; yet in those same articles the information gleaned from examining said groups was
then applied to the society as a whole. Seemingly, the authors ignore the issue of class entirely,
1
Alida C. Metcalf, "Women and Means: Women and Family Property in Colonial Brazil ," The Journal of Social
History, vol. 24, no. 2 (1990): 277-98, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3787499 (accessed March 14, 2012).

2. while other articles from that year focused solely on the role of class within a single society,
excluding the possible effects of gender, age, race, and countless other factors. None of the
authors identified themselves either as holding a doctorate or being a professor, though most
come from American universities. Topics discussed in the Journal tended to be very narrowly
defined, such as Victorian upper-class sexuality or the London police force in the late 1800s.
In the first issue of The Journal of Social History published in the year 2000, several
“fashionable” parts of history stood out. Russia was the topic of many articles, competing with
the United States in pervasion. “Gendered history” grew in popularity as “women’s issues,”
which ranged widely from motherhood to sexual and physical abuse to female monasticism, and
became more common topics of serious historical study. There was also a sudden and intense
focus on postbellum America and race relations throughout the country. While the vast majority
of the articles focused on Europe and America, China and Japan are examined in one article
each, though it’s unclear whether this was a publishing whim, a nod to their ascendency within
the “Western world,” or a rise of interest in more varied cultural foci. Articles contained in the
2000 issues of the Journal began to include the interplay of multiple social factors in their
assessment, and some “new” factors were examined, such as the role of unions in society or the
principles of eugenics that spread like wildfire through Europe and America, though they were
perhaps best espoused by Stalinist Russia.2
Again, the drive to “correct” existing history was still
strongly in evidence.
In the 2000 issues of The Journal of Social History there seems to be more emphasis on
the “fads” of history, as both the choice of topics and the formulation of titles seemed more
interested in catching the eye than their 1990 counterparts. Sensational topics such as the Wild
2
David L. Hoffman, "Mothers in the Motherland: Stalinist Pronatalism in Its Pan-European Context," The Journal
of Social History, vol. 34, no. 1 (2000): 35-54, http://www.jstor.org.trmproxy.mnpals.net/stable/3789509 (accessed
March 14, 2012).

3. West, the French Revolution, and even the occasional haunting3
took pride of place, and
buzzwords like “Anglo-Marxism,” “unionism,” and “historicism” began popping up, where
before the writing was less full of jargon. Technical language is of course a necessary part of any
academic journal, but the language seemed specialized to a ludicrous and needless extent.
As Journal of Social History enters 2010, the range of “accepted study” is considerably
wider than that of other issues. Mental illness, disability, drug use, infanticide and dieting are just
some of the areas studied, and each title is hyped to be more eye-catching and also more
accessible than the last. The use of jargon is replaced by still more buzzwords, and the
prevalence of narrative history in the 21st
century is easily visible here. Focus seems to flit back
and forth between the microcosm of a single story to the macrocosm of Western civilization, and
there is more focus on that homogenized cultural identity that has arisen particularly in the last
decade. The sources cited begin to vary much more, encompassing letters, photographs, music
and other more culturally centered fountains of information. Also, perhaps dovetailing with the
rise of the babyboomers to power, there is a sudden focus on America after World War II and all
its attendant cultural and social changes.
However, some things remain entirely unchanged: still obvious is that constant and
unrestrained love of criticism, as article after article offers “reimaginings,” “reinterpretations,”
and a “reexamining” of the facts; and the articles still deal overwhelmingly with Europe and
America.
Overall, the evolution of The Journal of Social History very closely and unsurprisingly
follows the current trends that can be seen in history as a whole. Topics of interest are widened
from a more Marxist obsession with class and economics to an interdisciplinary view
3
Kathryn A. Edwards, "Female Sociability, Physicality, and Authority in an Early Modern Haunting," The Journal
of Social History, 33, no. 3 (2000): 601-21, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3789213 (accessed March 14, 2012).

4. encompassing everything from gender to class to politics to race to the latest fads. The articles
are written in differing styles, but an overall shift takes place from the extremely tedious, such as
18th
century merchants to the more accessible and sometimes trendier areas of discourse such as
beer advertising in the 20th
century.

5. Works Cited
Hoffman, David L. "Mothers in the Motherland: Stalinist Pronatalism in Its Pan-European
Context." The Journal of Social History. 34. no. 1 (2000): 35-54. ,
http://www.jstor.org.trmproxy.mnpals.net/stable/3789509 (accessed March 14, 2012).
The Journal of Social History, nos. 1-4 vols. 23-4, nos. 1-4 vols. 33-4, nos. 1-4 vols 43-4.
Carnegie Mellon University Press, Pittsburg PA. 1990-2010.
http://www.jstor.org.trmproxy.mnpals.net/action/showPublication?journalCode=jsocialhi
story, (accessed March 14, 2012).
Edwards, Kathryn A. "Female Sociability, Physicality, and Authority in an Early Modern
Haunting." The Journal of Social History. 33. no. 3 (2000): 601-21.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3789213 (accessed March 14, 2012).
Metcalf, Alida C. "Women and Means: Women and Family Property in Colonial Brazil ." The
Journal of Social History. 24. no. 2 (1990): 277-98. ://www.jstor.org/stable/3787499
(accessed March 14, 2012).