What I Do
I’m Tom Cutterham, and my job is to teach and research history at the University of Birmingham in the UK. I started this newsletter mainly to talk about a book I wrote this summer, which is coming out next summer, called Empire Ablaze: The American Revolution and the Atlantic Working Class. But writing books is, to be honest, a pretty tiny part of what I do as a university academic. Today I thought I’d write about some of the rest.
Here are a few of the things I’ve done in the last couple of weeks:
Met one-on-one with final-year students to check in about their experience at university so far, and their plans for this last year and then the world beyond. I have twenty-one of these personal tutees, and I meet with each of them at least once a term in autumn and spring. It’s one of the relatively few chances they get to talk to an academic mentor outside the context of a specific class. Time-consuming, but when it works, it’s an amazing part of the job.
Interviewed a local journalist, one of the editors of The Birmingham Dispatch, in front of the twenty-odd students in my second-year journalism class. You may be wondering why that class is taught out of the History Department, and by me, and the short answer is that it was my idea: I think student journalism is crucial, I was looking for ways to support it on campus, and one answer I came up with was to make it part of the optional curriculum. I also recently co-authored a report on “Sustainable Student Journalism.”
Examined a PhD dissertation over at Nottingham University: a history of emotions among Loyalists in the American Revolution. It took a day to read the book-length dissertation, which I think was pretty good going. Then another half a day in Nottingham: two hours talking history with the successful candidate, and another over a pint with some colleagues from Nottingham’s beleagured American and Canadian Studies Department. Funding for PhD work in the humanities has all but dried up, but without it we can’t reproduce the skills and knowledge that constitute our disciplines.
Took part in a panel discussion for the second-year History in Theory and Practice course. Should historians aspire to objectivity? What use is thinking philosophically about our methods? It’s the kind of teaching that, if I didn’t have a bit of time in my job devoted to research (or in other words, just reading, writing, and thinking), I wouldn’t be able to do at all.
Attended an advance briefing for a redundancy hearing, at which I’ll be serving on behalf of my trade union, UCU. This year I’m the branch Vice President, devoting 20% of my time to union work. Each week I talk to colleagues at length about some of the worst stuff that can happen to you at work, and the onerous process of trying to resist and overcome it. One thing my historical work reminds me is that sometimes, together, we can resist and overcome those things.
This week, we’re half-way through term, and I’m nearly five weeks late on a 5,000-word review essay I’m supposed to be writing about books on Alexander Hamilton. I’ve also got to start updating “Land, Law, and Violence in the American West,” a course I designed before Stephen Aron, Elliott West, and Ned Blackhawk wrote their recent books. And I’ve got a book tour to try and plan for next summer, too!
In the next edition: I’ll write about Hamilton, the man and the musical, provided I’ve finished that damned essay. Oh, and if you have a good idea for a new title for this newsletter, do let me know: I recently discovered that the very interesting political economist Nathan Tankus calls his Notes on the Crises, so I’m in need of something more original.