Once More Unto the Historiographic Breach: A Response to Rebecca Brittenham

Mv first response to Rebecca Brittenham's "professional plea" was, I confess, downright sixties-ish: "Yes! Down with the settled past, closed inquiries, and poorer political and cultural spectrums! Up with raking, reopening, resituating!" I was?and am?excited by her approach to doing history, and I appreciate her rereading of the 1960s, and specifically the pedagogy of "happenings," through the lens of a variety of cultural and institutional documents, including a JFK speech, The National Interest and the Teaching of English, The Port Huron Statement, pam phlets from student groups, and so on. I learned a lot, both from what Brittenham says and from how she says it. But most of all, as a reader and a writer of our field's history, and as a believer in the principles of