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Name that crisis!

31 July 2008 in 1930s, Polls, Words by Brett Holman | 17 comments

Here’s a question of terminology which has been bugging me for some time. The Munich crisis in September and October 1938 is a well-known historical event. But the name ‘Munich crisis’ is misleading, because the crisis was building long before the word Munich was ever associated with it. Munich had nothing to do with the Munich crisis at all, except that it just happened to be the place where Chamberlain, Hitler, Mussolini and Daladier met to resolve it. (So ‘Munich conference’ is fine, as is ‘Munich’ as a shorthand for the betrayal of Czechoslovakia.) ‘Czech crisis’ would be better, but that’s usually reserved for an earlier flap around March 1938. I tend to prefer ‘Sudeten crisis’, which has the virtue of indicating what the crisis was actually about. On the other hand, nobody at the time seems to have spoken of the Sudeten crisis; usually they referred to the Czech crisis, and very occasionally, after the crisis had passed, the Munich crisis. And Munich crisis is certainly the preferred term today.

So what say you? Feel free to make arguments in comments.

What is the best name for the European crisis of September-October 1938?
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Next up: ‘Crisis’ vs ‘crisis’. You be the judge!

Advice to young (well, mid-PhD) writers

21 January 2007 in Blogging, Polls by Brett Holman | 13 comments

Jack McGowan of Smashing the Window has some very interesting reflections on his experiences in seeing his first paper through to being accepted for publication (congrats!). A timely read for me, as I start to think about doing this myself.

While I’m on the matter of writing advice, here’s a chance to use the WordPress Democracy plugin I installed the other day. Near the start of chapter 3, I have a sentence which begins ‘In this chapter, I will briefly examine …’ ‘I’. ‘I’! While I use the personal pronoun all the time on this blog, and have already done so once this sentence, I find that it really cuts against the grain to do so for academic writing. I don’t think it is such a sin in writing in the humanities, but I first learned academic writing in the physical sciences, where the personal pronoun, singular or plural, is rare (though not unknown). Instead, one would use phrases like ‘the present author’ where in less formal writing one would say ‘I’. I guess this is to avoid the academic equivalent of breaking the fourth wall. On the other hand, taking ownership of a sentence with a personal pronoun is a good way to avoid the dreaded passive voice.

So, am I worrying too much about this? Does anyone care about this any more? Should I just embrace ‘I’? Here’s the poll:

In an academic piece of writing, would you feel comfortable about using personal pronouns or not?
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