The Legend of Marcus Whitman and the Transformation of the American Historical Profession

This article explores the secularization of the American historical profession through the lens of an early twentieth-century historical controversy: the debunking of the legend that nineteenth-century missionary Marcus Whitman saved the Pacific Northwest from becoming a British possession. The Whit...

全面介紹

Saved in:  
書目詳細資料
主要作者: Koenig, Sarah (Author)
格式: 電子 Article
語言:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
載入...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
出版: Cambridge Univ. Press [2018]
In: Church history
Year: 2018, 卷: 87, 發布: 1, Pages: 99-121
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Whitman, Marcus 1802-1847 / USA / 基督新教 / 歷史觀 / 神話
IxTheo Classification:CD Christianity and Culture
KAH Church history 1648-1913; modern history
KBQ North America
KDD Protestant Church
在線閱讀: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
實物特徵
總結:This article explores the secularization of the American historical profession through the lens of an early twentieth-century historical controversy: the debunking of the legend that nineteenth-century missionary Marcus Whitman saved the Pacific Northwest from becoming a British possession. The Whitman controversy was a key skirmish in an ongoing, and still unresolved, debate about what constitutes right practices and ideations of history in the American academy, what counts as undue historical bias, and what place (if any) appeals to religion should have in academic historical discourse. Through the Whitman debate and other early twentieth-century historical battles, Protestant providential narratives of history were purged from academic textbooks and providential historians marginalized from the academy. Taking a cue from the evolutionary schemas of religious studies scholars, professional historians cast tales like the Whitman legend—and the providential narratives that undergirded them—as primitive myths unfit for a modernizing society. The Whitman controversy thus serves as a case study into the American historical profession's transformation at the turn of the twentieth century, a transformation that remains contested and incomplete.
ISSN:1755-2613
Contains:Enthalten in: Church history
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S0009640718000070