When one thinks about history professors, the stereotype of ancient-looking men in tweed jackets who drone on about past events that seem to have little significance today usually comes to mind. San Diego State history professor Edward Blum challenges this perception.
"History is a profession that's being written by youngish folks with energy, new ideas, approaches and insights," Blum said. "They're dedicated to seeing the past connected to the present."
Blum, 29, began teaching at SDSU last semester. Although his primary concentration is on the American Civil War and Reconstruction, he's found ways to make history that is centuries old resonate with his students. He said he uses 19th-century music, pictures, historical simulations - in which students research historic figures and come together to debate - and even contemporary cartoons to give students a feel for those times. In one of his introductory classes, Blum showed part of the "South Park" episode in which the characters re-enact the Civil War.
Since 9/11, some of the familiar music from the Civil War era has taken on new meanings, Blum said.
"'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' is troubling," he said. "One of the lines is 'As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.' So I asked my students what that sounds like, and some of them said 'jihad.'"
The idea of what it means to say that "God is on your side" - as the North and the South did in the Civil War and the United States and terrorist groups have said in the current War on Terror - has become more complicated, Blum said.
Blum, who was recently named a "Top Young Historian" by George Mason University, said he is interested in the Civil War because he studies how race and religion interact and how it translated into a world that allowed slavery and segregation. Although it was more than 100 years ago, Blum said our country continues to be "racialized" and religion still plays a major role.
As a white man, Blum said his black friends and colleagues often ask why he is so invested in racial issues.
"I grew up in an environment that subtly, fiendishly taught me to prize the souls of white folks and not the souls of black folks," said Blum, who was raised in a predominantly white, upper-middle-class suburb in New Jersey and attended a Protestant church.
"All of my writing and research is about undoing that for myself," he said "It's about teaching me the value of all folks."
Blum said he was drawn to W.E.B. Du Bois - the subject of his most recent book - because his life seemed dedicated to the valuing of all souls. Du Bois was born during the American Civil War and died the day before the Civil Rights march in Washington, D.C. in 1963.
"At the end of his life he said, 'I own one thing and that is my soul, and no one can take it away from me,'" Blum said.
Blum's most recent book, "W.E.B. Du Bois, American Prophet," which is the first religious biography of Du Bois, was recently nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction. He is scheduled to read selections from his book at 7 p.m. on Friday at D.G. Wills Books in La Jolla.
Be the first to comment on this article!