On two
distinct and equally inspiring ways Francis Jennings modeled a career and life
in American Studying.
The Creation of America was
published by Cambridge University Press in July 2000; in November of that same
year, Francis Jennings passed away. While of course academic press books take some
time to reach the publication stage, it’s still entirely accurate to say that
Jennings was working on this book in the final stage of his life, as
illustrated by the opening sentences of his Acknowledgments:
“In first
rank of essential debts, I owe deep gratitude to the staffs of the James C.
King Home, which is my own home. They literally saved my life with surgery and
watchful care during recuperation, and they made possible the rest periods
during which this book could be completed.”
It’s
difficult to overstate how inspiring I find those sentences. I suppose they
could be read a sign of someone who couldn’t let his work go, who wasn’t able
to adequately relax or the like; but I would read them entirely differently and
much more positively: as evidence of the deep significance of the work Jennings
was doing, and of his profound commitment to do that work for as long as he
possibly could and not a moment less. That he obviously took great and
continuing pleasure from the work as well (a pleasure reflected in every ornery
and impassioned sentence of the book) only adds one more inspiring level still,
one more career and lifelong goal to which all of us American Studiers can and
should aspire.
But
Jennings did more than just continue to do and take pleasure in his scholarly
work until the end of his life; he also allowed that work to go in directions
he didn’t expect, as evidenced by his book’s brief but crucial final three
paragraphs:
“Perhaps
it may seem to some critics that I have written to sensationalize the subject.
If so, I respectfully disagree. This book is not at all what I intended except
in its effort to include all the people involved in the Revolution. That was what sensationalized the book,
rather to my discomfort.
Given the
options of reporting my sources straightforwardly or producing what John Mack Faragher
has called (in another connection) ‘an exclusionist reading of the past,’ I had
no real choice.
My book undoubtedly
contains error; it is certainly not definitive. Yet I hope this inclusionist
reading will inspire new understandings and initiate new explorations by
readings as it did for me.”
“Rather to
my discomfort”; “as it did for me.” In his early 80s, after a lifetime of
American historical investigations and scholarship, Jennings remained open
enough in his ideas and his perspective to allow the sources and the evidence
to take him in different directions, to amplify and reshape and shift and
strengthen his understandings and analyses. In my own research and in my
teaching I consistently argue for inductive reasoning, for examining the
evidence and then trying to induce our arguments and ideas from it (rather than
the deductive, argument-first approach that I believe many scholars employ and
many teachers teach). And here is one of our most senior and established
scholars practicing that approach in his final book, literally from his
deathbed, in one more effort to inspire other scholars and American Studiers.
Mission accomplished, Dr. Jennings.
Next guest
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Scholars and/or books that have inspired you?
7/27 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two unique artists whose creations helped define
late 20th century American culture
and society, Norman
Lear and Gary Gygax.
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