Anglo-American Networks and the Early Academic Profession,1815 - 1861.

详细信息   

• 作者：Mikulski ; Richard Michael.
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2014
• 毕业院校：State University of New York
• Department：History.
• ISBN：9781321263886
• CBH：3640818
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：3657224
• Pages：337

文摘

This project argues that the modern Anglophone academic community,and the British and American academic professions,developed between the War of 1812 and the American Civil War in 1861. Historians often overlook this early Anglo-American community of scholars,as it was built upon the interactions of individuals,not institutions. American and British universities did not establish institutional links until the end of the century,when degrees and international affiliations became more standardized. Individual British and American scholars,however,were already corresponding,collaborating,and teaching at the same universities early in the century. These connections,and similar education reform movements in each country,created a core of professional attributes that British and American scholars shared. By the middle of the nineteenth century,interconnected academic communities were forming in British and American universities. At the end of the century,an Anglophone academic community had been established,extending even into the settler colonies of the British Empire. This project concludes that the roots of the modern academic profession are based on the efforts of individual scholars,whose interactions mark the origins of our transatlantic academic community. The origins of the academic profession are found within the eighteenth-century republic of letters,from which it inherited its emphasis on publication and international scholarly exchange. To this traditional were added new values of middle class professionalism,public service as intellectuals,and a belief that institutionalized certification was a prerequisite for authority and social status. Combining these values,a new "professional scholar" emerged during the nineteenth century. Professional scholars in the United States and Britain came to be defined by four general characteristics: First,scholars were expected to publish scholarly materials. Second,they held university or college teaching positions,which became their primary source of income. Third,they expected full university membership,which would entitle them to a voice in university governance and policy. Finally,they were expected to serve as public intellectuals and authorities in their fields of specialization. In addition to distinguishing them from the "gentleman scholars" of the previous century,these shared professional values facilitated transatlantic interactions between British and American scholars. This transatlantic dimension was significant in shaping the resulting academic profession. It created a system in which transnational exchange was a professional commodity,used to demonstrate a scholars authority,success,and social standing. Establishing interpersonal networks based upon a set of shared professional values,these scholars developed a system of intellectual exchange unique to the first half of the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth-century republic of letters,the intended audience for scholarly publication was a narrow and closed elite. The intended audiences of the professional scholars,by contrast,included middle class readers. Unlike transnational exchanges at the end of the century,which were based upon institutional links,the nineteenth-century academic community based upon by individual connections. Scholars communicated and collaborated with transatlantic counterparts to demonstrate their professional authority,but they did so without institutional assistance. The network of personal connections they established would ultimately lead to the Anglo-American academic profession,but the actual conceptualization of their community was a distinctive feature of the early nineteenth century. At a broader level,the transatlantic activities of early professional scholars demonstrate the changing shape of Anglo-American intellectual exchange during the nineteenth century. Though Americans are viewed as unequal partners in early academic and intellectual exchanges,their status and influence within the partnership grew as the century progressed. Even after two centuries of change,the early nineteenth-century characteristics of the profession remain at the core of the Anglo-American and Anglophone academic communities. Abstract shortened by UMI.).