The text of “Theses on Theory and History” is a potential turning point in the field, and for that I am grateful to its authors. While there are some pitfalls in the text, there is no question that in their criticisms of the intellectual culture of modern professional historical practice, the authors are onto something. In naming anti-intellectualism as nothing less than a threat to the profession, the text opens up space to challenge the reigning disciplinary orthodoxy of chasing an audience or engaging a public, often of our own imagining, by restricting historical thought and writing to narrative history, to the telling of new stories. That is not to challenge or dismiss the importance of narratives, ideas of the public, of public institutions, or of the goal of being a public intellectual, but rather to insist that if we let ourselves be governed by a fear of being seen...

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