Gilfoyle, Timothy J

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Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons History: Faculty Publications and Other Works Faculty Publications and Other Works by Department 5-1-2006 Urban History: A Glass Half Full or Half Empty?: Comments on Clay McShane's “The State of the Art in North American Urban History” Timothy J. Gilfoyle Loyola University Chicago, tgilfoy@luc.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/history_facpubs Recommended Citation Gilfoyle, Timothy J.. Urban History: A Glass Half Full or Half Empty?: Comments on Clay McShane's “The State of the Art in North American Urban History”. Journal of Urban History, 32, 4: 602-605, 2006. Retrieved from Loyola eCommons, History: Faculty Publications and Other Works, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0096144205284160 This Response or Comment is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Publications and Other Works by Department at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in History: Faculty Publications and Other Works by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact ecommons@luc.edu. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. © Sage Publications URBAN HISTORY:A GLASS HALF FULL OR HALF EMPTY?Comments on Clay McShane's"The State of the Art in North American Urban History"TIMOTHY J. GILFOYLELoyola University ChicagoClay McShane offers much food for thought. He raises provocative ques-tions, provides useful and deep quantitative data in parts, and challenges manyassumptions regarding the study of urban history. The five databases he reliesupon represent an approach that assumes the sum of the analysis will be greaterthan the individual parts.McShane, like many urbanists today, is searching for a broad historical nar-rative to comprehend the complexity of the American city. Just as CharlesTilly and Howard Gillette in the past fifteen years have urged urban historiansto move toward centrality and away from particularity, McShane laments theabsence of wide-ranging historical urban thesis. I For those of us who study cit-ies, such a synthesis remains attractive. More specifically, synthetic worksmake the teaching of urban history an easier task. The publications of LewisMumford, Sam Bass Warner, Thomas Bender, and Kenneth Jackson remainpopular among urbanists, in part because of their expansive sweep of time andthe comprehensive coverage of their subjects.'The search for a synthesis, however, is hardly unique to urban history.Indeed the topic has been part of an ongoing debate among American histori-ans for over a decade, in part because of the declining interest in the publica-tions of professional historians by the so-called "educated lay reader."Historians in general and urbanists specifically can do little to change thisstate of affairs. J question whether they should. Since 1970, urban historianshave abandoned the "Mumfordian" metanarrative, replacing that syntheticapproach with a wide array of methodologies that remain divorced and segre-gated from each other. Historians in certain subfields and proponents of vari-ous methodologies and subfields barely know, much less debate, other inter-pretations. Fragmentation defines the way historians now envision the urbanpast. Urban history, perhaps more than other subfields, is largely a case-studyJOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY. Vol. 32 No.4. May 2006 602-605001: 10.1177/0096144205284160e 2006 Sage Publications602Gilfoyle I A GLASS HALF FULL OR HALF EMPTY? 603driven field. This explains urban history's "temporal parochialism" cited byStuart Blumin.But cities are complex phenomena, requiring urbanists to break them downinto constituent parts in their attempts to make sense of them. Cities defy easygeneralization and definition. Urban history thus remains a topic absent anytotalizing theory, hegemonic interpretation, or universal paradigm. In place ofsuch models is a plurality of microtheories and city biographies that character-ize the state of American urban history.' McShane's data and conclusionsconfirm such conclusions.Some might even question the need for a new urban orthodoxy. For nearlytwenty years, urban history has flourished in "interdisciplinary chaos," even ifmany of those works are written by individuals who do not define themselvesas "urbanists" or "urban historians." This state of affairs is hardly surprising.Nor is it necessarily bad. In the end, I think urban history benefits from theabsence of a canon, or a "Turner thesis" for each generation to refute. Whilethat means the field lacks a certain glue to hold it together, the multiple meth-odologies and subjects encompassed by "urban history" make for a moreinvigorating field, albeit a more difficult one to teach or promote.From this perspective, certain parts are McShane's evidence are problem-.atic. Syllabus assignments are a poor measure of any field. Professors assignbooks for many reasons, some of which have little to do with the importance orquality of a book. I know of colleagues who assign books they have not read inorder to force themselves to finally read the text. Others assign works withIwhich they disagree so they can refute an important argument or hypothesis. Inmy own United States survey course, for instance, I regularly assign FrederickJackson Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," inlarge part because I think Turner's thesis is wrong. Some assign books becausethey generate thoughtful and provocative discussions in class, even if they arepoorly researched or argued. I was successful in this regard when I assignedAllan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind in a history of educationclass. Some good-even canonical-books are not assigned because they aretoo long or too difficult for undergraduates to read. Mumford's The Culture ofCities, or Olivier Zunz's The Changing Face of Inequality are noteworthyexamples.' Other important books are never read in the classroom because ofnegative student evaluations. Combined, all of this renders course syllabi aquestionable source of data to measure influence in the field.Relying upon prizewinning books presents similar problems, some ofwhich McShane acknowledges. All too often, influential books are initiallyignored by prize-selection committees. Lawrence Levine's Black Culture andBlack Consciousness (1977) and Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence ofCul-tural Hierarchy in America (1988), and Arnold Hirsch's Making the SecondGhetto (1983) are such examples." Conversely, the selection of prizewinningbooks are based on inconsistent and subjective criteria. The potential impacton a field or path-breaking interpretation are rare measures in determining if a604 JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY / May 2006text is prize-worthy. How many of us remember, much less read, Paul Horgan'sLamy of Santa Fe, Leonard D. White's The Republican Era: l869-1901, orOliver Larkin's Art and Life in America? All of them were recipients of Pulit-zer Prizes in history.'I am also skeptical that "old books" reflect poorly on the field. In writing onCrabgrass Frontier, McShane writes: "It is hard to imagine another disciplinewhere commonly adopted books are that old." Well, that's history! Many fieldsin history assign books even older than Jackson's. Again', Turner is the mostnotable example that comes to mind. But I can think of other areas where the"canonical works" are even older: Edmund Morgan's The Birth ofthe Repub-lic (1956) and American Slavery, American Freedom (in two entirely differentfields, no less), Eric Foner's Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men (1970) or LindaGordon's Women's Body, Women's Right (1976).8 I could go on, but why bela-bor the point? The continued popularity of certain books might be interpretedas a product of meticulous research and powerful argument, not themoribundity of a subject area.McShane ends on a pessimistic note. No core or canonical texts dominatethe field of urban history. The publications that come closest-Jackson'sCrabgrass Frontier and Warner's Streetcar Suburbs-appear in less than halfthe surveys or course adoptions he examines. I am less pessimistic, in partbecause McShane's conclusion is partly a function of his sources. Many of thetexts discussed in McShane's analysis appear more frequently in courses andsurveys outside of urban history. George Chauncey's Gay New York (1994) isnow a classic in classes ranging from the history of sexuality to queer theory.William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis (1991) is must reading not only for his-torians of the American West, but also for environmentalists. Adam Rome'sThe Bulldozer in the Countryside (2002) is probably more frequently assignedin environmental history classes. And Christine Stansell's City of Womenremains one of the most popular, influential, and assigned works in women'shistory." This hardly represents decline; rather, these examples reflect howurban history has become increasingly integrated into other fields and sub-disciplines in the academy.Finally, McShane's argument implies the existence of a golden age of urbanhistorical writing, that where there was once organic unity is now replacedwith fragmented isolation. Urban historical writing was always fragmented,and "professional" urbanists were "marginalized" in a certain way. How elsecan we explain the influence and popularity of the two most influential writersbefore 1970-Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford-neither of whom weretrained historians? In this respect, rather than being "out of step" as McShanequeries in his final step, the influence of nonhistorians and nonurbanists (evi-denced by the popularity of books by Nicholas Lemann, Mike Davis, and JoelGarreau) in the field of urban history represents an ongoing and historictradition.Gilfoyle / A GLASS HALF FULL OR HALF EMPTY? 605NOTESI. Charles Tilly, "What Good is Urban History?" Journal ofUrban History 22( 1996): 702-19; HowardGillette, Jr. and Zane L. Miller, eds., American Urbanism: A Historiographical Review (New York, 1987);Gillette, "Rethinking American Urban History: New Directions for the Posturban Era," Social Science His-tory 14 (1990): 203-28.2. Lewis Mumford, The City in History (New York, 1961); Sam Bass Warner, The Urban Wilderness: AHistory of the American City (New York, 1972); Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Sub-urbanization ofthe United States (New York, 1985); Thomas Bender, Nell' Yc,rk Intellect: A History ofIntel -lectual Life in Nell' York City, From 1750 to the Beginning ofour Own Time (New York, 1987).3. Bender, "Whole or Parts: The Need for Synthesis in American History," Journal ofAmerican History73(1986): 126-36; Olivier Zunz, "The Synthesis of Social Change: Reflections on American Social His-tory," in Zunz, ed., Reliving the Past: The Worlds ofSocial History (Chapel Hill, 1985).4. I have argued this point in greater detail in Timothy J. Gilfoyle, "White Cities, Linguistic Turns, andDisneylands: Recent Paradigms in Urban History," Reviews in American HistOly26(March 1998): 175':"204;and Louis P. Masur, ed., The Challenge ofAmerican History (Baltimore, 1999), 175-204; reprinted as "TheNew Paradigms of Urban History," in Howard Chudacoff and Peter C. Baldwin, eds., Major Problems inAmerican Urban History, second edition (Boston, 2005).5. Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (New York, 1938); Olivier Zunz, The Changing Face ofInequality: Urbanization, Industrial Development, and Immigrants illDetroit, 1880-1920(Chicago, 1982).6. Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Thought from Slavery toFreedom (New York, 1977); Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence ofCultural Hierarchyin America (Cambridge, MA, 1988); Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chi-cago, 1940-1960 (New York, 1983).7. Paul Horgan, Lamy ofSanta Fe, His Life and Times (New York, 1975); Leonard D. White, with assis-tance from Jean Schneider, The Republican Era: 1869-1901 (New York, 1958); Oliver W. Larkin, Art andLife in America (New York, 1949).8. Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth ofthe Republic, 1763-89(Chicago, 1956); Edmund S. Morgan, Ameri-can Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal ofColonial Virginia (New York, 1975); Eric Foner, Free Soil,Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology ofthe Republican Party before the Civil War (New York, 1970); LindaGordon, Women's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History ofBirth Control in America (New York, 1976).9. George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World(New York, 1994); William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York, 1991);Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise ofAmerican Environmental-ism (New York, 2002); Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1790-1860 (NewYork, 1986).Timothy J. Gilfoyle is a professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, He is mostrecently the author of A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-CenturyNew York (W. W. Norton, 2006) and Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark(University of Chicago Press and Chicago Historical Society, 2006).

Urban History: A Glass Half Full or Half Empty?: Comments on Clay McShane\u27s “The State of the Art in North American Urban History”

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Urban History: A Glass Half Full or Half Empty?: Comments on Clay McShane\u27s “The State of the Art in North American Urban History”

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