My thoughts on week 15 readings

This week’s e-articles addressed the still nebulous response of the public history profession to the internet, despite the more than two decades which this technology has existed for. Joshua Brown’s piece made interesting points about the dichotomy between database-like interconnectivity versus narrative storylines in electronic history media. His observation on the difficulty of producing commercially viable historical e-media like the Who Built America project reminded me of our in class discussion two weeks ago on history in video games. Modern consumers of video game-like electronic media such as the Lost Museum Flash application are used to an ever increasing level of sophistication as the electronic media industry evolves, making it very difficult for academic projects with limited funding to compete for popular attention. This is likely to continue to be a problem of “popular history” types of electronic media.

            Both Cohen and Brennan and Kelly deal with the difficulty of documenting, archiving, and sharing episodes of recent history in the digital era. I appreciated Cohen’s observations about the paradox of digital media simultaneously expanding the range of documentary evidence of a historical event, and threatening the survival of that evidence by the media’s fickle nature. Brennan and Kelly’s article was also interesting in its exploration of people’s hesitation to utilize an electronic archive that discussed recent history. After reading Archive Stories, this hesitation is understandable, if unfortunate. Politics, in the broadest sense of the word, is always present in archives of any type. This observation is simply much more obvious in easily accessible archives that are committed to incidents of recent history, when the politics are still “hot.” The fear that one’s personal contribution to an archive might be picked instantaneously by any of a limitless number of bloggers and then disseminated to the entire internet in a radically re-contextualized manner is reasonable. One can only hope that people realize this is the risk of sharing such content in a democratic institution such as the internet, and will have the courage to contribute in spite of it.    

My thoughts on the readings for week 13

This week’s readings deliberately blurred the line between “public” and “popular” history by considering the medium of historical films. Glassberg’s study of public reactions to Ken Burns’ The Civil War was extremely interesting, and went to further illustrate his main contention that history serves the American public in ways that academic historians often fail to recognize. Like the rest of Sense of History, this chapter left me feeling conflicted about the desirability of what Glassberg describes. Does it matter that The Civil War does not address the thorny racial issues of the antebellum and reconstruction eras as well as it could? I would like to hear Glassberg debate James and Lois Horton on this point. That said, I think it is a little ridiculous to compare The Civil War with Birth of a Nation as some academic critics did.

I also had mixed feelings regarding Michael Frisch’s article, although for different reasons. Unlike The Civil War I have never seen Vietnam: A Television History, so I had no frame of reference for evaluating Frisch’s commentary. Nevertheless, I felt that some of Frisch’s basic criticism of the public use of oral history was troubling. Why does Frisch claim that there is not much “critical self-consciousness of what oral history is?” This is manifestly not the case, even in 1990. As far as I could see, all of the issues which Frisch raises about oral history have been dealt with even in the literature on oral history we have read as part of this class. I suspect that Frisch’s real discomfort comes not from the utilization of oral history, but from the fact that Vietnam does not employ a blatant interpretative narrative, giving the audience the opportunity to apply their own meanings to the events under discussion. Again, I think an academic debate between Glassberg and Frisch would be interesting.

My Thoughts on the Readings for Week 12:

Oral History and Public Memories was another excellent introduction to a subfield of public history. I liked the editor’s premise that oral history and the academic discipline of memory studies ought to collaborate more since their communities of practice are very similar. Of the individual chapters, my favorite was probably the very first one by David Neufeld. Not only does it bring out the special dynamics of oral history as opposed to the more traditional textual historical approach favored by the Canadian Park Service, it also gets to some of the core difficulties of the modern movement towards including the perspective of marginalized groups in historical accounts. What should be done when the perspective of these groups is so radically different from one’s own that it cannot be integrated within the same framework, in this case western science? The idea of presenting “two cultures side by side” is better than letting the dominant culture to continue to dominate the historical narrative, but this approach also raises questions about how cultural reconciliation can take place in a context of separation.

Another overriding theme of the book is the importance of oral history as unmitigated source material. Nothing is more effective in combating stereotypes than listening to the direct experiences of actual, complex human beings, irrespective of how trustworthy such contributions are as objective facts. Riki Van Boeschoten exemplified this in his fantastic observations about student interactions with Albanian immigrants in Greece. The parallels with our own country are starkly obvious. The same observation occurred to me when I listened to my Studs Terkel interview. I heard a 1968 interview with Jimmy White, a former Chicago gang leader and high school dropout. However, the majority of the interview related to White’s observations on the education system, his appreciation of poetry, and beliefs about society, not areas of interest traditionally associated with street gangs. Studs Terkel is amazing.

My Thoughts on Week 11 Readings:

            Archive Stories brings to light how archives, which many historians consider to be the most dry and tedious subsection of our profession, are in fact dynamic institutions where power struggles are played out, memories are unearthed or buried, and encounters between diverse individuals occur frequently. Chapters I particularly liked included Jeff Sahadeo’s troubling revelations about the legacy of soviet era historical censorship and the stark disparities between first world researchers and third world archivists in modern Uzbekistan. I also liked Helena Pohlandt-McCormick’s discussion of heavy handed government destruction of documents in South Africa and Craig Robertson’s frustrating experiences trying to access an exclusive niche of the supposedly open and public National Archives of the US.

            Although the stories compiled by Burton were unfailingly interesting and thought provoking, coming as they do from professors with extensive writing experience, I felt the collection would have been better had it included contributions by archivists themselves. Having worked in two archives myself, I can confidently state that even the most observant researcher only sees a select aspect of any archive. Hence the wonder shown by authors such as Pohlandt-McCormick when permitted to access the shelved collections themselves. How would the archivist in attendance have told the story of Pohlandt-McCormick’s “discovery” of the shelved political posters? An inside perspective or two would have enriched the collection. That said, Archive Stories is a very interesting and engaging work that would be of interests both to current and future professors and current and future archivists.      

My thoughts on week 10 readings:

John Bodnar’s chapter struck me as an especially apt case study of some of the themes previously discussed in class. Namely, the fact that the past is immensely relevant to a vast number of people, and that because of this fact, people will always interpret the past according to personal priorities rather than outside interpretive frameworks. Bodnar argues that the US government used the Civil War Centennial of 1961-1965 and the Revolutionary War Bicentennial of 1975-1983 as opportunities to design programs of historical commemoration that would revolve around the themes of unity, heroism, and patriotism. Despite a few flops, these programs largely went forward as planned, but were joined by a host of alternative and competing commemoratory activities which varied from glorification of local identity to outright criticism of the country’s government and economic system. While Bodnar suggests that the government appointed bodies in charge of the “official” commemorations were sometimes disturbed by the proliferation of alternative commemorative activity, such as civil war reenactments, it would have been absolutely naïve to not expect such developments. Unlike the People’s Bicentennial Commission, I don’t see the government’s attempts to encourage loyalty to the existing political order as some sinister big business plot, but rather the natural outcome of government involvement in historical commemoration which is, inevitably, also historical interpretation. Governments, as such, will naturally use historic commemoration to advance what they interpret to be their own wellbeing, whether through American Revolution Bicentennial Administrations or the heroic statuary of Eastern European regimes which Levinson discussed. The difference lies in the fact that since the United States is not an autocracy, its citizens will necessarily exercise their right to dissent, in this case by commemorating the important episodes of national history according to their own priorities and agendas which may coincide with those of the government, but often does not.

My Thoughts on Week 9 Readings:

                I found Sanford Levinson’s Written In Stone to be frustrating at some times, challenging at others, and interesting throughout. I’m sure everyone shared my occasional frustration when Levinson drifts geographically from Boston to Hungary to Virginia to Texas and stylistically from historian to constitutional lawyer to public policy advisor with little explanation or justification given for these shifts. Levinson’s unannounced and unexplained segue into the role of constitutional lawyer in discussing the use of the Confederate flag is particularly challenging, because he adopts a strictly “legalese” line of reasoning to reach a conclusion—that states have the right to fly Confederate flags if they wish to do so—that he then denounces on moral grounds. This seems to be a risky path to take, given that an inattentive reader could easily misunderstand Levinson’s position. The potential for a deliberately out-of-context misquotation is also highly dangerous. Levinson might serve, therefore, as an example of how NOT to present ideas in public history where the audience might not recognize an academic thought experiment, and where interest groups of all kinds are ready to pounce on the smallest statement from an academic authority that seems to support their claims, honestly or otherwise.

                Beyond these disadvantages, Written in Stone offers fascinating analyses of the role of monuments and public art in modern society. I especially liked the way Levinson treated monuments, like historic buildings, as objects that have complex histories. Monuments are constructed to commemorate past events, but reflect also the realities of the time in which they were built, and acquire new meanings as they age and social attitudes change. A good example is the Liberty Monument in New Orleans that has at various times been seen as a tribute to courage, a bald statement of racism, and an object for historic preservation. Another interesting comparison Levinson makes is between the European context in which monuments are usually constructed by governments and demolished, almost as a matter of course, when those governments are succeeded by new ones, and the American scene in which monuments often originate from private interests and are subject to reinterpretation more often than replacement.

My thoughts on week 7 readings

Chapter 6 in Glassberg’s Sense of History highlighted the fact that historic preservation in locations which have witnessed multiple historical experiences, as most locations have, necessarily involves the preservation of one history over any others. While this issue emerged in Nolan’s article last week, Glassberg presents an even more compelling example in the McKnight neighborhood of Springfield, Massachusetts. McKnight’s recent white residents wished to restore the neighborhood houses to the architectural style of the late 19^th Century when the houses were first constructed, while the long time African American residents preferred to bring back the neighborhood as was in the 1950s and 60s. Architectural details such as aluminum siding and chain link fences separated the two styles to be preserved.

            The issue is so much more poignant in Glassberg’s example because, unlike Monticello or Montpelier, the McKnight neighborhood is a living community, not just a designated historic site. No director or team of curators can therefore make a professional decision about what interpretive framework to pursue. Also, a “post-modernist” approach such as that attempted by the Montpelier staff is impractical due to the fact that almost everyone seems to view neighborhoods as organic whole whose unique “character” depends on preserving all aspects of the community as consistently as possible, and in reconciling those aspects that are not in line with the overall atmosphere. Unfortunately, no two people, much less different social groups, seem to be able to agree on what that atmosphere should be, relying instead on a mixture of personal priorities unique to each individual. Given the complexity involved in the issue of historic neighborhood designation, it is definitely one in which authority sharing with the public should be maximized, since almost nothing is more likely to produce an emotional response than one’s own home and the environment surrounding it.