Scholar of the Month
August 2007
British Scholar is proud to present the August 2007 Scholar of the
Month William Kuhn.  Kuhn is Professor of History at Carthage
College in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  His published works include:

- The Politics of Pleasure:  A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli
(London:  The Free Press, 2006)

- Henry and Mary Ponsonby:  Life at the Court of Queen Victoria
(London:  Duckworth, 2002)

- Democratic Royalism:  The Transformation of the British
Monarchy, 1861-1914 (Basingstoke:  Macmillan, 1996)
1.  Where, when, and why did you become interested in British history?

WK:  My parents took me to live in London for a year when I was 11
years old in the late 1960s.  It was a huge trauma.  There was a Rolling
Stones concert in Hyde Park.  My mother wore a see-through blouse.  
My English schoolfriends asked me to defend American involvement in
the Vietnam War.  I have never recovered from this.

2.  Who most influenced your academic development?

WK:  Mark Kishlansky.  He taught Tudor-Stuart history at the University
of Chicago before he went to Harvard.  He had huge enthusiasm and
made us read the “gentry controversy.”  It was like an enormous wrestling
match between Trevor-Roper, Tawney and Stone.  I’d never thought
academic debate could be that much fun.

3.  If you hadn’t become a historian what career path would you have
chosen?

WK:  I worked at an advertising agency for a while after college.  I could
have kept doing that except that it would have sent me to an early grave.  
I admire people who work for the State Department, though I probably
would have been ejected during a witch hunt.  I like to write, so maybe I
should have given journalism a try.

4.  What project are you currently working on?

WK:  It’s top secret.  No publisher has agreed to take it yet.

5.  What projects do you see yourself working on in the near future?

WK:  Something that links British and European history to an American
icon.

6.  Of your academic projects, which one has proven to be most fulfilling?

WK:  Disraeli thought of his different books as if they were his children.  
He loved them and put something of himself into all of them.  I think that’s
true of my books as well, though they’re not as good as his.  When I think
of Democratic Royalism (1996) I think of all the exotic places it took me
to as a graduate student:  to the library at Lambeth Palace, to Arundel
Castle, to the old Public Record Office when it was just off Chancery
Lane.  With Henry and Mary Ponsonby (2002) I became friends with
some of the Ponsonby descendants whom I love and still see in the
summers.  With my latest on Benjamin Disraeli, I was writing about
Victorian sexuality and so that was frankly kind of erotic to work on.  I’ve
enjoyed them all.

7.  Where do you see the field of British history heading in the next few
years?

WK:  I think over the last century scholarly British history has generally
followed the preoccupations of the intellectual left in both Britain and
America.  In the recent past British history has concentrated on history
from below, the history of trade unionism and political radicalism, the
history of gender and sexuality, and lately on the history of the
environment and colonial oppression.  Whereas history written for a
broader, more general readership has generally been of a mildly
conservative character:  for example, the history of warfare, of the royal
family and on the glories of the colonial past.  Former Tory ministers
have recently been writing Victorian political biography in a big way.

8.  Do you think that British domestic history in the modern era gets
overshadowed by the study of the British Empire? Can the two subjects
be properly studied in isolation?

WK:  Sounds like a loaded question to me.

9.  What advice do you have for graduate students and beginning
academics about finding a topic of interest and publishing on it?

WK:  The relationship of Britain to major powerhouses of the economic
future, e.g. India and China, is likely to be important.  However, I would
stress that you have to find something to work on that you are genuinely
interested in and that will sustain you through long, slow dull periods
where you have insufficient funding, or are insufficiently employed.  It’s a
mistake to try and predict what sorts of topic will be fashionable,
because like dress lengths, they change quickly.  It’s never a bad idea to
meet and talk with academics who are editors of series of monographs
at major university presses.  Nor would it be a bad idea to meet with
editors who come to the major historical meetings just to find out what
sort of manuscripts they’re looking for.  Keep talking to people with
publishing connections and find out what makes them tick.  The main
thing is to like what you do.  Try and do whatever it is that you would do
on your own anyway even if you won the lottery tomorrow.
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