BY AARON BARLOW

Since the beginning of my academic career, I have intertwined the personal with my objects of study. After tentative moves toward some nonsense dissertation related to literary theory, I chucked it all and wrote on my favorite science-fiction writer. That, as they say, was my ‘defining moment.’

At the time, there was little scholarship on Philip K. Dick and no dissertations. Mine would prove to be the second, beaten out by Kim Stanley Robinson (later an extremely successful science-fiction writer in his own right). I didn’t know that Dick would become, over the next 30 years, a favorite in academia (as elsewhere) and didn’t really care. I simply loved his work and wanted to revel in it.

My first book, however, had nothing to do with Phil Dick. It was on home viewing of movies. I wrote it because, well, I love watching movies at home and always have.

After that, I combined a look at the development of blogs (the term “social media” wasn’t yet in use) with a history of American journalism—for I was a blogger and had been a journalist and believed (still do) that an obsession with “objectivity” had nearly destroyed the profession–a belief that, I was learning, applies to academia as well (the scientific method need not be the alpha/omega of scholarship).

I once heard Stephen King say that he had no more of a valid voice about his books than he might among those looking at his fingernail clippings. He was wrong (though that makes him no less the brilliant writer). The history of his person, even in examination of something as mundane as nails, contextualizes the discussion and adds precision to conclusions. And the fact that it was he who made the observations allows future fingernail scholars to orient their judgments of his comments.

When I got interested in genealogy, it was natural that I would incorporate that into my scholarship. As I had earlier moved from study of literature and was already entering into study of culture, this proved quite easy. The book that resulted, on the legacy of the Scots-Irish in American culture, is also part of the story of my own family, something I make clear in at least one of the chapters. A later collection of writings from World War One that I put together stemmed from a desire to know more about both of my grandfathers’ experiences in that conflict.

So immersed am I in the subjective approach to scholarship (and journalism) that I was rather pleasantly shocked this morning when an op-ed in The New York Times reminded me that few of my fellows in the academy see my approach as little more than that of a dilettante. The real work of the scholar (or journalist, for that matter), they believe, is done by those who can put aside personal prejudice and approach their subjects dispassionately. An essay such as this one would be dismissed as simply the silly output of a navel-gazer. Of someone more interested in himself than in the object of his study.

Be that as it may, I was delighted to see John Sedgwick’s article, “The Historians Versus the Genealogist.” Here we have someone who claims to be a “real” historian (most in that field look down on cultural-studies types like me—we aren’t rigorous enough, meaning we don’t strain to look objective, so we aren’t “real”) coming to the conclusion that there’s a great deal of value in combining personal and the general history.

Sedgwick learns of a real family connection to a subject he was studying and finds himself now drawn to imagine events much more vividly than he might otherwise have. He writes:

For a historian, such a leap of imagination amounts to malpractice. But it delivered a more felt connection to the story than straight historiography had been able to provide. Obviously, history can’t depend on genealogy. But history shouldn’t scorn it, either. History can make use of the genealogical perspective and its transporting empathic power.

But let’s broaden it out — not just to identify with one character selected by family lineage, but with all the characters by virtue of our common heritage…. Try to see and feel life as each of them did. We’ll never fully succeed, but the effort can help collapse time and make for a history we can all relate to. This is the lesson of America: We are all family here.

Sedgwick is right. Not only that, but the Cornwall, Connecticut he mentions as an early 19^th century family home is not far from Fairfield, where my family had lived since around 1640 (though my branch split for Ohio in 1804). There is a good chance we are, as anyone who has studied genealogy would tell you, distantly related. Yes, we are all family here.

As Tip O’Neill said, “All politics is local.” So is all scholarship. Or, at least, it is personal at its best–as well as including the more general or abstract.

Or so, as Sedgwick argues, it should be.