If two clues I’ve picked up in the last week—in the history profession, at least—are any indication of a trend, post-modernism may already have run its course, to be replaced with … an updated modernism. Oh this is fun.

I sat in on a Grad Seminar at a local university yesterday. It was an American history class, and the students were reading George Marsden’s Fundamentalism and American Culture.

I went because I’m curious about the department, as I intend to enroll there in the fall for European history, and an unrelated field is a good way to judge the departmental culture.

As is often the case, it was a tangential comment that I found most intriguing: in response to a student’s observation that Marsden seems rather defensive of the Christian place in the academy, the professor pointed out that the book was written in the early 1980s (and is still in print because it’s authoritative), back in the days of post-modernism. That's what he said.

Post-Modernism the historical artifact.

I’m sure it’s old news to those who’ve been in the academy throughout this shift, but it’s really remarkable. After all, for a while, when it looked like all the Frenchy isms would win, it was kind of scary. I mean, they were really out to destroy knowledge (or at least undermine it).

What, then, is replacing the revolution? A step back. On Saturday I picked up a book off the public library’s new book shelf: Champlain's Dream. It's a biography of a leading founder of French Canada, Samuel de Champlain. 

Author David Hackett Fisher, history prof at Brandeis, makes this impressive statement in the introduction, on page 10:

Two generations ago, historians wrote of European saints and Indian savages. In the last generation, too many scholars have been writing about Indian saints and European savages. The opportunity for our generation is to go beyond that calculus of saints and savages altogether, and write about both American Indians and Europeans with maturity, empathy, and understanding ...

After the delusions of political correctness, ideological rage, multiculturalism, postmodernism, historical relativism, and the more extreme forms of academic cynicism, historians today are returning to the foundations of their discipline with a new faith in the possibilities of historical knowledge.

All of which is another way of saying: the postmodernists, the historical relativists and their kin have been listened to, and thank you for the helpful correction.

The revolution was over before tea.