This week's readings focused on how the practice of history has been changed by the continually emerging technology, especially since the 1990s. Each piece placed emphasis on computers and the internet as new methods for teaching and storing history.
Joshua Brown's piece on History and the Web examines history placed on the internet and removed from the pages (and comforts) of books. His work on the Who Built America? Website, that complimented a book of the same name, shows a lot of the strengths that the internet and digital formats have to offer public historians and teachers. The CD-ROM composed of 5,000 pages and thousands of primary sources (music, charts, articles, pictures, film, etc) shows just how ellaborate historic research can become- if historians can imagine it then programmers can design it. One interesting feature of the CD was that allowed students/historians the opportunity to examine their documents in their own order. This allows viewers to create their own narratives and analysis. Books, even with indexes, cannot do this as well. When a person reads a book they must read it in the order the author chooses for them; they may skip from chapter to chapter or topically but ultimately they are reading the sentences in the layout already chosen by the writer. The allowance of choice that technology provices is a real step forward in the democratization of historical understanding.
Daniel Cohen's pieces focused on the digitization of historical resources, particularly primary resources. Unlike other pieces which focused on the scanning of images and documents and making them available on the internet, Cohen looks at how the internet itself is an archive of webpages. Like the events of Pearl Harbor, after September 11, 2001 historians and others new that they were watching history right at that moment in time and that efforts to archive these great events must happen immediately, rather than waiting years to start. When historians began to archive Pearl Harbor they focused on media coverage, soldiers' experiences, and other memorirs. However, with September 11th the materials are just astounding. Instead of three major television networks there are 100. Firefighters and police officers experiences were saved but so too were average citizens. These citizens saved and donated their experiences via pictures and text but also via webpages and blogs. The sheer amount of materials is astounding.
Reading these articles and thinking about other materials on digital archives has resulted in a variety of complicated thoughts. The internet is a great tool and a fact of life but there is something so impermanent about it. An example of this is when searching the September 11th digital archives- you cannot go someplace and examine the materials. You can only find them on the internet. This results in a variety of limitations for historians. In traditional paper-based archives a researcher can often search the catalogue but they can also go into the folders and just sit and find materials that did not come up in the search. I experienced this personally when I started a project on the Tallahassee Garden Club. A search at the state archives yielded three folders- two were entirely pictures. The third was writings from a woman who had been a member of the garden club (which is why her work showed up in the search) but whose actual documents were about something entirely different. I ended up researching this woman and her events and leaving the club behind. I would never have found this if I had not been able to go in and handle the materials because I would not have known what to search. With digital archives (be they scanned or websites) researchers are at the mercy of the archivists who provide the search terms and key phrases. Scholars will only find what they know to search for and other things may be left out of results. Much like the class's work on the Heritage Protocol, if someone looks at our work they will only find it if they search a phrase that we thought to put in, otherwise they may never find what they are looking for. That, I think, has made the importance of what the class did weigh more heavily on me than at the start of the semester.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
A Shared Authority
Michael Frisch's book A Shared Authority points out that by encouraging a more democratic approach to the telling of history, then both professional historians and the public can simultaneously particpate in how history is expressed.
One of the more interesting essays in this book is"Oral history and the presentation of class consciousness." It deals with The New York Times and how their editorial choices told a story of bluecollar angst when the oral histories of Buffalo, New York were, in actuality, more expressive of how unemployment affected all kinds of people at all stages of their lives. The histories also presented a narrative that was more general to the country, rather than specifically to the hardships of Buffalo alone. The point that Frisch makes here, and in last week's article, is that the presentations of oral histories are often enmeshed in presentations of power. The editors of the oral histories wanted to tell a specific story and used the resources to tell it rather than shaping a narrative around the documents presented. Frisch, just as Rose and Corley last week, argues that more democratic approaches to storytelling would result in richer, fuller, more complex histories.
However, maybe the editors didn't want a more complex history. They wanted something simple and, just as Corley and Rose accused Burns of doing, the editors found proof of their argument in the histories rather than finding an argument in the evidence. They would certainly get an A + in Bad History 101.
Some of Frisch's argument, while impressive for its time, feels stale in 2009. It seems that historians today are constantly trying to find more democratic approaches in their work and if they fail to do so it is one of the first criticisms that other academics will point out. Perhaps today's historians today have gotten more better about keeping other scholars accountable.
One of the more interesting essays in this book is"Oral history and the presentation of class consciousness." It deals with The New York Times and how their editorial choices told a story of bluecollar angst when the oral histories of Buffalo, New York were, in actuality, more expressive of how unemployment affected all kinds of people at all stages of their lives. The histories also presented a narrative that was more general to the country, rather than specifically to the hardships of Buffalo alone. The point that Frisch makes here, and in last week's article, is that the presentations of oral histories are often enmeshed in presentations of power. The editors of the oral histories wanted to tell a specific story and used the resources to tell it rather than shaping a narrative around the documents presented. Frisch, just as Rose and Corley last week, argues that more democratic approaches to storytelling would result in richer, fuller, more complex histories.
However, maybe the editors didn't want a more complex history. They wanted something simple and, just as Corley and Rose accused Burns of doing, the editors found proof of their argument in the histories rather than finding an argument in the evidence. They would certainly get an A + in Bad History 101.
Some of Frisch's argument, while impressive for its time, feels stale in 2009. It seems that historians today are constantly trying to find more democratic approaches in their work and if they fail to do so it is one of the first criticisms that other academics will point out. Perhaps today's historians today have gotten more better about keeping other scholars accountable.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Filmmakers as Public Historians
Can a movie be accurate enough to please historians? This seems to be the thematic question asked by the majority of this week's readings regarding the interaction of history and Hollywood. That is simplifying the issue surely but certainly no more than how some historians accuse producers, directors, and screenwriters of downsizing historical events and people.
The articles from this week were motivated by the inclusion of filmmakers as public historians. Including the creators of movies into the realm as public historian is both exciting and frustrating. Some, like Toplin, find the medium of film as incredibly revealing about both and present and past cultures. Others find plenty to criticize.
The first to consider are documentaries. Frisch examines the oral histories in a PBS special on the Vietnam War experience. Rose and Corley research the documentaries made for PBS by Ken Burns. Both articles find documentaries lacking and for similar reasons: both Burns and the documentary on the War selectively choose what to present to the public which results in a less than honest depiction of history. Burns claims that he is compensating for poorly trained history teachers and he blurs the line between director and educator. Sometimes he seems to purposely be both and using either to support his goals of the moment. In this way the authors find him particularly dangerous to the public because he plays both sides of the coin and the authors seem to want him to fit neatly into either one category or the other.
Hollywood movies result in different analysis. In the article on Le Retour de Martine Guerre, the author Natalie Davis laments how her research on a 16th century French story resulted in a less than realistic understanding of peasant life. Her frustration of the style of trial shown in the movie did not lend itself to sympathetic ears. Without the filmmakers ability to account for their actions the debate is one sided. The directors expressed sincerity at including Davis and used her counsel regularly throughout the film process. Perhaps the choice in a public trial had to do with other things, like making the judges less of the villian that private trials would certainly have implied. Davis critiques the directors anachronistic choices without accounting for the development of plot and narrative functions (symbolism, simile, metaphor, etc).
Toplin's conclusions are different. He understands artistic license and expects less historical accuracy because he sees the movies as products of the present rather than exploration of the past. Toplin's article is the most interesting because he evaluates movies much as other texts from the class have evaluated museum exhibits. By allowing movies to speak about the present instead of criticizing every mistake, the films could become more valuable to historians. Contextualizing the time that the movies were made could yield much to to cultural and social historians.
When it comes to film, be they blockbusters or PBS specials, the public and historians should take what they can and discard the rest. It is plausible that more should be expected from documentaries but when profit is the motive than is is understandable that people would make something that would sell to investors and an audience. Burns is backed by General Motors. If he failed to make things that did well than he might lose funding. The reality of having millions of dollars pulled from projects is something that few professors will ever have to face, until then maybe we should cut them some slack.
Winston Churchill once said "the farther back you look, the further forward you will see."
The articles from this week were motivated by the inclusion of filmmakers as public historians. Including the creators of movies into the realm as public historian is both exciting and frustrating. Some, like Toplin, find the medium of film as incredibly revealing about both and present and past cultures. Others find plenty to criticize.
The first to consider are documentaries. Frisch examines the oral histories in a PBS special on the Vietnam War experience. Rose and Corley research the documentaries made for PBS by Ken Burns. Both articles find documentaries lacking and for similar reasons: both Burns and the documentary on the War selectively choose what to present to the public which results in a less than honest depiction of history. Burns claims that he is compensating for poorly trained history teachers and he blurs the line between director and educator. Sometimes he seems to purposely be both and using either to support his goals of the moment. In this way the authors find him particularly dangerous to the public because he plays both sides of the coin and the authors seem to want him to fit neatly into either one category or the other.
Hollywood movies result in different analysis. In the article on Le Retour de Martine Guerre, the author Natalie Davis laments how her research on a 16th century French story resulted in a less than realistic understanding of peasant life. Her frustration of the style of trial shown in the movie did not lend itself to sympathetic ears. Without the filmmakers ability to account for their actions the debate is one sided. The directors expressed sincerity at including Davis and used her counsel regularly throughout the film process. Perhaps the choice in a public trial had to do with other things, like making the judges less of the villian that private trials would certainly have implied. Davis critiques the directors anachronistic choices without accounting for the development of plot and narrative functions (symbolism, simile, metaphor, etc).
Toplin's conclusions are different. He understands artistic license and expects less historical accuracy because he sees the movies as products of the present rather than exploration of the past. Toplin's article is the most interesting because he evaluates movies much as other texts from the class have evaluated museum exhibits. By allowing movies to speak about the present instead of criticizing every mistake, the films could become more valuable to historians. Contextualizing the time that the movies were made could yield much to to cultural and social historians.
When it comes to film, be they blockbusters or PBS specials, the public and historians should take what they can and discard the rest. It is plausible that more should be expected from documentaries but when profit is the motive than is is understandable that people would make something that would sell to investors and an audience. Burns is backed by General Motors. If he failed to make things that did well than he might lose funding. The reality of having millions of dollars pulled from projects is something that few professors will ever have to face, until then maybe we should cut them some slack.
Winston Churchill once said "the farther back you look, the further forward you will see."
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Hard Times and Oral Histories
This week's reading was a collection of oral histories, taken by Studs Terkel in his book Hard Times. The histories were taken from a variety of people who lived during the Great Depression as well as young adults, growing up in the late 20th century, and how they understood the Depression, if at all.
Oral history is a funny thing. It feels more permanent than a conversation but less reliable. It is, after all, a memory and we all know how fuzzy they can be. In class it was discussed that the reliability of the memory is not at all detracting from a historian's work; that the feelings and emotions evoked were what was important. These feelings are what make oral histories so useful.
However, the real bugger of this topic is accuracy. In class it was discussed that with the rise of literacy and the believed permanencec of printed documents that these documents were somehow more reliable, more evidentiary, more accurate, and more Truthful than anything else. Historians and archivists held on to diaries and newspapers and receipts, as well as photos, advertisements, film reels, and anything else from the time as somehow more honest and accurate than other sources. What were these other sources? They aren't always described but the point here is that if it was printed on paper than it was taken as somehow more accountable for historic study than living people's memories.
It seems problematic to argue that something taken from the past is somehow more accurate than anything else. The argument here is about perspective. All of these materials are equally honest because they are all the subjective truths of the person who writes them or emits them. They are neither more or less honest than other documents- what matters is that they are true to them. Accuracy in any source is not the point because historians may never get to that material.
It is somehow flawed to argue that oral history is legitimate because it evokes memories and feelings and that accuracy is somehow unimportant. Oral history is legitimate because it is history. Accuracy is something that no written or oral document can produce because all of it is truthful to the person associated with it and one can be neither more or less accurate than the other. Whether it is contemporary or removed by decades does not matter because neither can be held acccountable as being more accurate than the other. What about documents of numbers? Surely numbers are more accurate but censuses are lost, people lie, estimates are made. Numbers provide a level of accuracy about certain experiences but even they only seem to marginally increase information.
It is interesting that Hard Times evoked such feelings. It certainly was unexpected.
Oral history is a funny thing. It feels more permanent than a conversation but less reliable. It is, after all, a memory and we all know how fuzzy they can be. In class it was discussed that the reliability of the memory is not at all detracting from a historian's work; that the feelings and emotions evoked were what was important. These feelings are what make oral histories so useful.
However, the real bugger of this topic is accuracy. In class it was discussed that with the rise of literacy and the believed permanencec of printed documents that these documents were somehow more reliable, more evidentiary, more accurate, and more Truthful than anything else. Historians and archivists held on to diaries and newspapers and receipts, as well as photos, advertisements, film reels, and anything else from the time as somehow more honest and accurate than other sources. What were these other sources? They aren't always described but the point here is that if it was printed on paper than it was taken as somehow more accountable for historic study than living people's memories.
It seems problematic to argue that something taken from the past is somehow more accurate than anything else. The argument here is about perspective. All of these materials are equally honest because they are all the subjective truths of the person who writes them or emits them. They are neither more or less honest than other documents- what matters is that they are true to them. Accuracy in any source is not the point because historians may never get to that material.
It is somehow flawed to argue that oral history is legitimate because it evokes memories and feelings and that accuracy is somehow unimportant. Oral history is legitimate because it is history. Accuracy is something that no written or oral document can produce because all of it is truthful to the person associated with it and one can be neither more or less accurate than the other. Whether it is contemporary or removed by decades does not matter because neither can be held acccountable as being more accurate than the other. What about documents of numbers? Surely numbers are more accurate but censuses are lost, people lie, estimates are made. Numbers provide a level of accuracy about certain experiences but even they only seem to marginally increase information.
It is interesting that Hard Times evoked such feelings. It certainly was unexpected.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Archive Stories
The anthology Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, edited by Antoinette Burton, attempts to contextualize the archive not only as a space for primary sources but also as a historical player as well; an actor in the discipline of history that participates in the making of history as much as scholars and those studied. The work is ambitious but overwhelmingly effective. Archive Stories uses Foucault’s analysis of the panopticon to argue that the archive is a place that constructs (and now deconstructs) power. The essays “attempt to denaturalize the presumptive boundaries of official archive space, historicize the production… of archives, and point to contemporary political consequences” of the archive (6).
One of the more interesting chapters on the ephemeral qualities of some archives is Renee Sentilles’ chapter on the use of the World Wide Web as archive. Her analysis is that almost every website is, in its own way, an archive. Simple searches through Google resulted in an ever-changing number of “hits” depending on the day she searched. The author struggled with the lack of accountability on the Internet; she repeatedly found mistruths and myths reported as certainties, without any attempt at noting the sources. This section had a particular effect on the reader. Each week the students in this class blog about their reactions to books; when the class is over, will there continue to be a record of discussions? All one has to do is delete the blog and it is as if the entire thing never happened. While at the beginning of the semester the blog idea seemed to provide a level of permanence, it now resembles a mist in the air- over in mere moments and easily replaced the next day.
As a graduate student in the 21st century, what Sentilles said about the usefulness of the Internet is interesting. She argues that the Web leads to research but cannot be an effective replacement for research in the traditional archive. An analogy of this would be the library online card catalogue: it can be searched but most materials are missed until someone looks in the stacks. In an age where things can be digitized and scanned, does the Internet offer more or less permanence to historical record? It certainly adds to the ever increasing scope of the record but as anyone who has ever experienced spontaneous computer failure knows, everything can be gone in a moment without the slightest chance of being returned. This is all rather cynical. Afterall, the Internet and digital archives in temporary existence are better than never having been, but while an improvement they are not a replacement. Digital archives do not yield the same tangible results or emotions in a person that the material histories do. Sentilles said it best: “virtual archives will never serve as more than a place to begin and end the research journey; never as a place to dwell,” (155).
One of the more interesting chapters on the ephemeral qualities of some archives is Renee Sentilles’ chapter on the use of the World Wide Web as archive. Her analysis is that almost every website is, in its own way, an archive. Simple searches through Google resulted in an ever-changing number of “hits” depending on the day she searched. The author struggled with the lack of accountability on the Internet; she repeatedly found mistruths and myths reported as certainties, without any attempt at noting the sources. This section had a particular effect on the reader. Each week the students in this class blog about their reactions to books; when the class is over, will there continue to be a record of discussions? All one has to do is delete the blog and it is as if the entire thing never happened. While at the beginning of the semester the blog idea seemed to provide a level of permanence, it now resembles a mist in the air- over in mere moments and easily replaced the next day.
As a graduate student in the 21st century, what Sentilles said about the usefulness of the Internet is interesting. She argues that the Web leads to research but cannot be an effective replacement for research in the traditional archive. An analogy of this would be the library online card catalogue: it can be searched but most materials are missed until someone looks in the stacks. In an age where things can be digitized and scanned, does the Internet offer more or less permanence to historical record? It certainly adds to the ever increasing scope of the record but as anyone who has ever experienced spontaneous computer failure knows, everything can be gone in a moment without the slightest chance of being returned. This is all rather cynical. Afterall, the Internet and digital archives in temporary existence are better than never having been, but while an improvement they are not a replacement. Digital archives do not yield the same tangible results or emotions in a person that the material histories do. Sentilles said it best: “virtual archives will never serve as more than a place to begin and end the research journey; never as a place to dwell,” (155).
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Remaking America
John Bodnar’s work, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century¸ (1992) uses cultural history to study the relationship between social meaning and public ceremony and memorials. Bodnar defines public memory as a system “of beliefs and ideas about the past that help the public or society understand both its past and present and, by implication, its future,” (Bodnar, 15). Although the author does not mention Michel Foucault, Bodnar does seem to use the theorist’s methodology regarding discourse as a multicultural, multivocal act. This discourse revolves around the cultural elite and what Bodnar calls the “ordinary people,” (16). Bodnar argues that the former uses public memory to emphasize as history of unity and nation building; the latter uses history to support its own goals, usually on a much more local level.
Bodnar begins his work by examining public memory at very regional or local levels by exploring and comparing twentieth-century Cleveland, Indianapolis, and different ethnic communities across the Midwest. His last portion of the book explores commemoration on a national level: the National Park Service, the Civil War Centennial, and the American Revolution Bicentennial. Overall Bodnar concludes that at the national level there is a consistent use of history that emphasizes a particular discourse of patriotism that relies heavily on service and sacrifice. On more local levels history is used in multiple ways. An example of this is the 1974 Kansas Wheat Centennial. The centennial celebrated the use of winter wheat which revolutionized Kansas’ economy. The commission pursued rhetoric of nationalism that placed Kansas’ agriculture at the center of nation building. However, Russian Mennonites- who had brought over the winter wheat seeds- used the ceremonies to place their unique contributions to Kansas into a national as well as local past.
Ultimately Remaking America illustrates that government officials and others who benefitted by keeping a status quo use history to their own ends. By examining the local uses of public memory Bodnar argues that history is used by different groups to insert their unique pasts into a nation’s history. This allows the “ordinary people” to feel as though they belong inside the past rather than the nation’s history being an unchanging nebulous of dates, names, and events that may have little or nothing to do with today’s individuals. There is something eloquent about Americans using something that Bodnar argues is highly standardized- US history- to teach a multicultural past.
Bodnar’s book is valuable to those seeking to study a kind of crossroads between social and cultural history. Sometimes his portrayal of the “ordinary people” is a bit too simplistic. It was disappointing that he did not include more research on African Americans’ and their relationship with public memory. His footnotes also suggest that he relied heavily on already published manuscripts, rather than primary sources, for much of his work. While the book is not exactly inspiring it will remain valuable to an audience trying to study public commemorations and their symbolic meanings.
Bodnar begins his work by examining public memory at very regional or local levels by exploring and comparing twentieth-century Cleveland, Indianapolis, and different ethnic communities across the Midwest. His last portion of the book explores commemoration on a national level: the National Park Service, the Civil War Centennial, and the American Revolution Bicentennial. Overall Bodnar concludes that at the national level there is a consistent use of history that emphasizes a particular discourse of patriotism that relies heavily on service and sacrifice. On more local levels history is used in multiple ways. An example of this is the 1974 Kansas Wheat Centennial. The centennial celebrated the use of winter wheat which revolutionized Kansas’ economy. The commission pursued rhetoric of nationalism that placed Kansas’ agriculture at the center of nation building. However, Russian Mennonites- who had brought over the winter wheat seeds- used the ceremonies to place their unique contributions to Kansas into a national as well as local past.
Ultimately Remaking America illustrates that government officials and others who benefitted by keeping a status quo use history to their own ends. By examining the local uses of public memory Bodnar argues that history is used by different groups to insert their unique pasts into a nation’s history. This allows the “ordinary people” to feel as though they belong inside the past rather than the nation’s history being an unchanging nebulous of dates, names, and events that may have little or nothing to do with today’s individuals. There is something eloquent about Americans using something that Bodnar argues is highly standardized- US history- to teach a multicultural past.
Bodnar’s book is valuable to those seeking to study a kind of crossroads between social and cultural history. Sometimes his portrayal of the “ordinary people” is a bit too simplistic. It was disappointing that he did not include more research on African Americans’ and their relationship with public memory. His footnotes also suggest that he relied heavily on already published manuscripts, rather than primary sources, for much of his work. While the book is not exactly inspiring it will remain valuable to an audience trying to study public commemorations and their symbolic meanings.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Sanford Levinson
Sanford Levinson’s Written in Stone analyzes monuments and how their interpretation changes over time as cultures evolved. Levinson focuses on the Southern United States primarily. Levinson argues that the messages interpreted by the public are seen as official statements by the state.
Levinson begins by examining the Millennium Monument in Budapest. With each regime change from Habsburg to State to Communist the previous characters on the monument are removed and replaced with whoever is deemed more appropriate at the time. Levinson uses the example of the Millennium Monument is illustrate how commemorative objects can be erased as if the history behind them never happened.
The author then goes on discuss one potential possibility for the state’s role in monuments. As a Constitutional lawyer, Levinson uses Owen Fiss’s argument over true state neutrality. It seems that Fiss (and Levinson) believes that real neutrality would result in the state funding of almost any and all public art or commemorative projects. An interesting example that Fiss makes is that true neutrality would require cities to cease naming streets after Martin Luther King, Jr. and instead also include ones named for Eugene “Bull” Connor (86). Levinson argues that this example reveals that true neutrality is not really accessible. Another possibility for neutrality would be to cease funding of public monuments entirely and even remove already existing ones. Would this solve any problems? Well, it might stop public argument over interpretations but what would a country be without heroes or memorials of important events? Some would argue that there could be no nation-state without people and events to celebrate. What would a national identity be without monuments?
Levinson begins by examining the Millennium Monument in Budapest. With each regime change from Habsburg to State to Communist the previous characters on the monument are removed and replaced with whoever is deemed more appropriate at the time. Levinson uses the example of the Millennium Monument is illustrate how commemorative objects can be erased as if the history behind them never happened.
The author then goes on discuss one potential possibility for the state’s role in monuments. As a Constitutional lawyer, Levinson uses Owen Fiss’s argument over true state neutrality. It seems that Fiss (and Levinson) believes that real neutrality would result in the state funding of almost any and all public art or commemorative projects. An interesting example that Fiss makes is that true neutrality would require cities to cease naming streets after Martin Luther King, Jr. and instead also include ones named for Eugene “Bull” Connor (86). Levinson argues that this example reveals that true neutrality is not really accessible. Another possibility for neutrality would be to cease funding of public monuments entirely and even remove already existing ones. Would this solve any problems? Well, it might stop public argument over interpretations but what would a country be without heroes or memorials of important events? Some would argue that there could be no nation-state without people and events to celebrate. What would a national identity be without monuments?
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