UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #28
CURTIN, PHILIP D.

CURTIN, Philip D. (1922- )
Professor of History
At UW: 1956-1975

Interviewed: 1975		 
Interviewer: Donna Taylor
Indexed (time code) by: Haochen Wang
Length: 1.5 hours (01:31:41)
Transcript: 42 pages

Circumstances of coming to UW; African Studies program; Comparative World History program; Department of African Languages and Literature; History Department; Ambivalence to growth; Teaching; Quality vs. quantity in teaching; Necessity of publishing; UW as research institution; Reasons for leaving UW. 
 
Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:28	UW History Department situation (Knaplund having just stepped down) when Curtin was appointed as British Empire-Latin American historian in 1956; paucity of candidates for such a narrowly-defined position.

00:03:26	Background in African history in Curtin's education despite absence of it formally in universities; intention of teaching African history at UW and first courses.

00:06:18	Informal beginnings of de facto African studies program, formalization in 1961; attitudes against teaching all world cultural areas at University; Ford Foundation study and support for three other university African studies programs.

00:11:04	Developed program informally by encouraging departments to hire Africanists and advantages of such an arrangement in avoiding cross-departmental tensions and financial crises.

00:15:05	Early interest in comparative world history approach, Harrington's support for putting ideas into action via outside money, acceptance by Carnegie Corporation.

00:19:23	Basic concept of Comparative World History Program; turning out broad-based specialists in some non-Western area; where program's graduates are now teaching.

00:21:39	Teaching of non-Western languages generally as linguistic examples, and need for study of them as an introduction to literature as well.

00:25:00	Decision that they must be taught by people who knew language; limitation to major languages; setting up full description of department in two hours; absence of imitation of department at other universities.

00:29:30	End of side.  

Tape 1/Side 2  

00:29:32	Flexibility in University administration in PC's early years here; especially Fred Harrington's attitude.  

00:31:43	Harrington's handling of sudden opportunity to bring Jan Vansina to UW for a year by back stopping funds; rapid offer and acceptance.

00:37:05 	Growth enabled outstanding development, e.g. of world history at UW; but eventually killed innovation because of over-bureaucratization.

00:42:09	Flexibility in History Department in early sixties; conflict of conservatives vs. innovators; battles over setting up Comparative World History Program.

00:46:27	Questions of whether to divide department in early sixties and support by non-Western historians in order to avoid outside interference; later implementation and tendency of non-Western historians to try and influence other divisions.

00:49:22	Controversy over outside money being brought into department; faculty vote prohibiting it if it involves department, unless approved ahead of time.

00:50:38	Vote as last gasp of conservative opposition to broader conception of history; desire of innovators to avoid ethnocentrism (viz short-lived American-European comparative history program) and elitism; eventual acceptance of these ideas.

00:55:52	Movement in own teaching career from British Empire and Latin American, to African and comp1arative world history, to exclusively last.

00:59:10	Heavy load of African studies graduate students per professor.

00:59:28	End of side.  End of tape.

End of Mp3 File.

Tape 2/Side 1

00:00:01	Graduate student teaching in department.

00:00:29	PC feels too many graduate students in department and as a result undergraduates suffer.

00:01:09	Student faculty ratio is far too large to give good undergraduate teaching.

00:03:40	An advantage of the scale is ability to offer more specialized classes.  A disadvantage of it is that it is difficult to assist undergraduate students in which courses they should take.

00:05:24	Research vs. teaching.

00:06:01	Administration and government want emphasis put on teaching rather than research.

00:06:47	Need to justify to tax payers.

00:06:57	Administration emphases quality of teaching numbers.  Faculty is treated with growing in nominate by Administration.

00:08:00	Inflation of grades as a result.

00:08:29	Governor probably right that tax payers are more interested in teaching than research.

00:09:17	PC feels that if government did more about educating the public to the benefits of research the public would understand why monies should be directed to it.

00:11:00	Benefits to nation and state from research.

00:12:11	Good teachers are also good publishers as well as researchers.

00:13:00	A historian is someone who writes about history.

00:13:35	Need to publish to become known.

00:15:24	If a history professor is not publishing (writing history), he cannot do a good job of teaching his students how to write history (be a historian).

00:16:02	Discusses his discouragement with the UW.

00:22:29	Reasons he is leaving UW for Johns Hopkins.  New position is mainly research oriented and he is also going to receive a substantial increase in salary and fringe benefits.

00:28:43	PC feels that the UW must consider its competition if it wants to retain its quality professors and image.

00:30:20	Lack of broad contact with scholars in other fields and also less contact between persons within department upsets PC.

00:32:13	End of side.  End of tape.
END