Steven Ozment Brings History Home

Steven E. Ozment, also known as the world's leading authority on the early modern family, grins under purple-rimmed reading glasses and admits that his specialty "may be a return to my real-life interests."

The real life of the McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History has been dominated by his own family since his marriage at age 18 and the birth of his first child a year later.

Now, with five children ranging in age from 10 to 37, he concedes that his experiences as a father probably sensitized him to the stories of parents past.

"I didn't know it at the time, but going through the complexity and trauma of child-rearing may have given me a predisposition to family history," Ozment says. "The personal, human side of history is never lost in studying the family."

The personal side of Ozment, 57, has included a childhood in Camden, Ark., two years at the University of Arkansas on a football scholarship and then a transfer ("I got beat up pretty bad," he says of his football experiences) to the smaller Hendrix College, also in Arkansas.

While at Hendrix, he took a class on the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation, an area of interest which he would develop in graduate school at Harvard.

"I think my attraction to the Reformation era is a result of growing up in deepest, darkest Arkansas and winding up in the Northeast," Ozment says. "That experience made me interested in transitions."

Ozment's work on the Reformation era continued with a stint at an institute for Reformation study in Germany. The requirements of this position made even more evident the intertwining of his family life and teaching career.

"Moving to Germany was a big shock because I found out they wouldn't let me take the position without a Ph.D. My wife and two children had to eat, so I finished my dissertation in a year, which has to be one of the fastest times ever," he says.

"I worked day and night on that dissertation. It was the most horrible experience I think I've ever had," he adds.

Ozment returned to Harvard as a member of the Faculty in 1979, having taught at Yale for several years. Since then, he has taught several Western Civilization survey courses, including History 10a last fall in addition to courses in his specialty.

"Many History 10a students did not realize how lucky they were to be taught by one of the foremost Reformation scholars of this century," Martine Van Ittersum, Ozment's head Teaching Fellow for History 10a, writes in a fax. "At a University where many professors loathe teaching survey courses, Prof. Ozment is unique."

Ozment's lectures in 10a were often highlighted by his colorful wardrobe, including bright red dress shirts and the purple glasses accompanied by slightly off-color historical anecdotes.

In one instance, Ozment was describing the medieval belief in succubi, demons who would seduce men and then transform into swine. Ozment jokingly pointed out what a "downer" it would be to suddenly hear "Oink, oink," in the middle of a passionate embrace.

As for his wardrobe, Ozment says, "It may come from being an Arkansan in the dark Northeast. I have always dressed colorfully in winter in order to encourage spring to come on."

While remaining busy at home with his own family ("I'll never have an empty nest," he says) Ozment has written a series of books examining family archives and correspondence in the early modern period.

"Family correspondence is a source that can really talk back, as opposed to court records or simply quantitative data," Ozment says. "After you read 1,000 letters from a person, you know that person really well--it's like marriage in that you come to see all of their pros and cons."

"A source like that is hard to over-simplify," he adds.

Ozment says that some historians consider the outlook he has developed on the historical family overly "rosy," but he vigorously defends the legitimacy of his approach.

"There's been a trend in history to deconstruct the past, and the truth found underneath is very often a dirty truth," he says. "There's a lack of human sympathy in that approach which offends me."

"We have to learn to be fair to the past in order to be fair and realistic about ourselves."