Separation, marginalization, collaboration - St. Augustine's Slave Galleries

Sometimes we compartmentalize our lives.  Work, school, home, church - we divide our resources between the activities and demands that call us.  Sometimes the lines blur, but often we work to keep them separate.


During today's morning routine of coffee and laptop, I skimmed the headlines of Episcopal Life Online and found a historical example of such separation.  Fairly front and center is a story on the recently renovated and interpreted slavery galleries in St. Augustine's Episcopal Church on New York's Lower East Side.  The church, built in 1828 (a year after slavery was abolished in New York State) collaborated on a renovation project with the Lower East Side Tenement Museum on the historic building's slave galleries, two small rooms behind the organ where blacks were allowed to worship - out of site and separated.  


This is the second recent project (within my awareness) where an Episcopal congregation has dedicated resources to understanding their own past in terms of slavery.   Why the Episcopalians?  On the modern end of the timeline, we've done a lot of soul searching of late (complete with hard work and loss) about owning differences and removing separations.  On the other end of the timeline, if one generalizes about Colonial congregations, Episcopalians tended towards possession of wealth, status, and in some cases, slaves.  The rooms existed in St. Augustine's because there was a (perceived) need.  Some congregants owned slaves (or had free blacks in their households depending on the date) as did some of the founding fathers who attended Christ Church in Philadelphia, another congregation putting commendable effort into revealing its past associations with slavery.  The Christ Church Preservation Trust sites a "mandate from the 2006 General Convention of the Episcopal Church to give a full, faithful, and informed accounting of its history" as the impetus for delving into their past and designing a tool for engaging that past in the present.  Sarah's Story is a 30 minute interpretive experience offered at Christ Church during the summer months.  An interpreter portraying a young, black, female slave shares stories of several historic figures, black and white, in a deliberate review of "early Philadelphia and its silent past." 


I remain proud of the Episcopal Church's work to own who we are and choose whom we will be.  Issues of segregation and marginalization are not only in our past. May we continue to find the strength to own and discuss past examples in our efforts to remove such obstacles from our present and our future.  Also continuing to "do good history" in the process - well, that's a delightful benefit.  Road trip to New York, anyone?

Review: Mary Lyon on the Web

Mary Lyon on the Web

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/marylyon

Designed and constructed by the Mount Holyoke College Office of Communications.

Reviewed November 17-22, 2009

The founder of Mount Holyoke College and a pioneer in women's education, Mary Lyon left school at age 13. Aimed at students of the same age, the site opens with questions for consideration, sets Lyon in context, and invites students to picture themselves in the story. Pages focused on specific themes follow: Childhood, Student, Founding, Opening Day, Seminary, Daily Life, Science, and Legacy. The pages are clear, interesting, and consistent. Each has a pictorial header, quote from Lyon, historical narrative, and a picture. Sidebars appear on two pages, listing facts placing Lyon's story into the larger context by sharing information about life in 19^th Century United States. One discusses childhood, the other historical highlights. Additional pages include a “cool facts” list, suggestions for school projects, and links for further research on Lyons and on women in the 19^th Century.

The content is written to appeal to the adolescent student and be appropriate for use in a classroom. For example, no mention is made of religion or of Lyon's death in 1849. Lyon is presented at all times within the lens of education – either a learner or a teacher. While keeping the target audience well in mind, the narrative considers issues of gender and to some extend class. No mention, however, is made in the narrative about race. A single sidebar bullet mentions slavery and the abolition movement. The reader leaves the Web site with a sense of daily life for girls and women in 19^th Century America and the understanding that the story of Mary Lyons and the young women who attended her seminary was the exception for the day, not the norm. A slight slant towards appealing specifically to and focusing on young women can be explained, if not excused, by the ownership of the site by Mount Holyoke College, and the assumption that while a teaching tool, it is in at least some small part a recruitment tool also.

The use of pictures is striking, especially those of personal objects. They create a tangible link with Lyons while also depicting a facet of life for a women of her time – a pin cushion, drawings she made, the green velvet bag in which she collected donations for the opening of the school – making the experience seem three dimensional. The site does not make creative use of other Web based technologies. This may be a result of being created in 1997. However, this lack is tempered by the crispness of the design and the creative interplay of narrative, list, and picture.

This site provides a biographical snapshot of a woman whose accomplishments directly affected women's history in the United States, appropriately written for its target audience of middle school students. Whether as a source for a student paper or as part of a classroom presentation, the site provides solid history.

Lyndsey Brown

Temple University

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Tools of the Trade

Questions Questions

A goal of our Managing History course, and of Temple's Public History program as a whole, is for each of us to wrestle with and construct an informed definition and answer to the questions, "What is public history?" and "What do public historians do?"  While this is an evolving process for anyone in this field, every historian must define an initial place to stand and from which to speak.  This is mine:

Public history is any process through which an individual tangibly studies the past in order to understand the present and to be an informed, active participant in the creation of our collective future.

Public historians commit to creating access for all individuals and communities to the most current research on what historians know and understand about the past, presenting that information in ways that allow for direct, personal experiences, and advocating the stance that knowing and understanding how past events unfolded is critical to creating and living in a healthy, stable society.  

So we have to know the history, share the history, make learning the history a tangible, livable experience, and assure that everyone in our society has access to that experience.  How do we do that?  As in any other trade, we do it with tools.  Let's add another question to those I'll spend a career defining. "What are the tools of a public historian?" As several of our readings this week explored new media and digital technology, let me focus in this post on how these new developments serve as tools or allow us to use old tools in new ways.

Tools of the Trade

Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig wrote the book "Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web" to address the question, "What is the process of '...doing digital history, (of) making use of the new computer-based technologies?'" (Introduction)  They identify "the need 'for a guide to gathering, preserving, and presenting the past on the web,'" review the "qualities of digital media" that allow historians to work, and counter with a list of dangers that the same technologies present.  In doing so, they have simultaneously gifted historians with a tool (the book) and a review and analysis of the tools provided by digital media.  Additionally, they have challenged an area of concern regarding access, means, by publishing the book not only in traditional paper form, available for purchase, but also on the web, available for anyone with digital access.  What other tools do we use?

Information  Historians work with facts, data, stories, opinions, dates - in short, information.  History can be defined as what we know about what happened that we have at hand to share with others.  New media has changed not only how historians disseminate history but also how we gain the information in the first place, i.e.  research. From online archives to discussion groups such as H-Net to Google Scholar to the ability to access JSTOR from my home office, the access historians have to data and discussion continues to increase daily.

Interaction  History is created by the interaction of people with objects and with each other.  (While an idea may be born in a vacuum, the effects of that idea ripple out beyond the individual.)  One new technology offers an answer as to how to "bridge the gap between online communities and the physical world."  In his article, "Hyperlinking Reality" librarian Nate Hill explains how a two dimensional bar code, such as your library may use to tag their books, can be placed on an object in the community.  Individuals can then take a digital image of that tag, connect with a website linked to the code in the tag, and either gain or share information about the object or location.  Hill explains how this might build community in cyberspace. "Now an online community can grow each time an individual happens to walk by the park bench, take a picture, and collaborate, much the way that conversation and interaction happen in a real-world community."  Hill's article speaks to how technology may connect individuals and may help create sources for the recording of interactions that may eventually become history. He also shares a tool that we historians might be able to use.  What if we place a bar code placed on the back of historic marker? When you take a picture of the bar code with your cell phone, a link to a website is saved.  When you get home, you access the website and expand the knowledge gained by seeing the space and reading the sentence on the marker.  The tag for the marker of a battlefield could lead to a map of the battle, a personal story of a soldier who fought and died there, and the coordinates of his grave back home in another state.  Upon which, perhaps, is another bar code.

Objects  Some will ask why we need the bar codes.  One can go and see both the site of the battle and the grave of the fallen soldier.  A fear raised by technological advances specific to objects is that people will content themselves with representations of things and no longer desire interaction with things themselves.  However, digital media can also allow us a type of physical access to objects.  I cannot go to see this piece of lace personally, but I can examine it digitally.  Moreover, even if I was able to travel to the location where it was displayed and the lace was on exhibit, I would be limited to looking at the object through a glass case, from at least inches, if not feet away.

Spacial sites  The concept of sites, physical locations of interactions of note, is a tool used frequently by historians.  The attraction of historical localities as places to visit and learn is centuries long and still relevant per recent studies.  The importance of spaces to the study of history is not new, and the expansion of the definition of "space" continues.  Last week in Prosthetic Memory we read Alison Landsberg's concept of transferential space - a public, constructed space "in which people are invited to enter into experiential relationships to  events through which they themselves did not live." (p. 113)  Digital history can take us into spaces in a way we may not be able to experience physically.  Whether a set of pictures accompanied by text, a virtual tour or a rendering of a building that no longer exists, digital resources let us explore spaces.  New endeavors in social media sites such as Second Life allow one not only to explore a museum but to interact with other people at the same time, adding the benefit of building community.

The Future   The future itself is a tool.  By considering where we as a culture and civilization may be, we can speculate about what we may need to know.  We can then use that lens when deciding what to teach about our past so that we make conscious choices about our future.  The Center for the Future of Museums (CFM) is a think tank that "helps museums explore the cultural, political and economic challenges facing society and devise strategies to shape a better tomorrow." (p. 3)  Its report, "Museums and Society 2034: Trends and Potential Futures" is fascinating reading.  A group of very smart people, Reach Advisors, "...poured over nearly a thousand articles, data sets, interviews and discussion forums to identify the trends that are most likely to change U.S. society and museums during the next 25 years." (p. 4)  This paper should be required reading for any American with a stake in the year 2034.  From an population that is increasingly multi-ethnic and aging to a society with dramatic changes in gender roles and an unprecedented divide between those who have means and those who do not to possible mindsets about energy, consumerism, technology, and globalization, the possible future painted is one we should not go into blindly.  Speaking specifically about museums, Elizabeth Merritt, Founding Director of the Center for the Future of Museums, adds a challenge to public historians.  "Working together we can help create a healthy, stable society in which every person has the leisure and ability to enjoy what museums have to offer."

What about the challenges?

While digital resources can create access by allowing one to read newspapers stored in a basement a country away or see markings on a vase only visible from one inch away, one still must have the access to a computer and the knowledge to use it.  If we want to be able to teach with these resources, public historians must be committed to working towards a society where access to technology is not limited by one's class, race, or gender.  Cohen and Rosenweig urge historians not to leave the issue of access "...to the technologists, legislators, and media companies, or even just to our colleagues in libraries and archives." (Introduction)

There is also the concern of translation.  Cohen and Rosenweig note Gertrude Himmelfarb's dissent on the new technology.  "The Internet does not distinguish between the true and the false, the important and the trivial, the enduring and the ephemeral....Every source appearing on the screen has the same weight and credibility as every other." (Introduction)  Virginia Heffernan, in "Haunted Mouses," poses the concern that personal information added to the internet creates neither cohesive memory or tangible history.  "Today's new methods of making and sharing digital images have not allowed us to see things more clearly....Rather, they've introduced new kinds of visual and auditory static."  Heffernan makes a follow up comment, however, that offers a possible "in" for public historians determined to make this information relevant.  "The Internet's greatest production might in fact be just this beguiling static, unpredictable bytes of sound and light that fly around in cyberspace until someone interprets them."  Interpretation.  That's part of what we do, right?  Cohen and Rosenweig's book can be a resource here, too.  The chapters of their book walk historians through how they might personally use digital resources, specifically the internet, to teach and interpret history.  

The AHA has also weighed in on helping historians use both digital media and digital history.  The May 2009 issue of Perspectives on History provided the forum, "Intersections: History and New Media," a collection of articles on topics from teaching and research to public history challenges to information about blogs.

The response from both academic and public historians as to how all historians can use the internet and other digital media is perhaps the most important tool we all have to hand as it both explains new tools and suggests ways they can help us better use older, more familiar ones.  It also suggests ways said new tools may help to further blur the line between the academy and the community, refocusing us all on our ultimate goal - the study of change over time and the dissemination of that information to others for the betterment of the whole.

How Does One Remember - Commodity and Empathy

commodity ~ empathy ~ memory ~ history ~ sensuous ~ cognitive ~ agency ~ distance ~ structure ~ rupture ~ vision ~ perception ~ action ~ feeling ~ pain ~ cost

Elie Weisel asked, "How does one remember?" Alison Landsberg has answered specifically from our vantage point of a society infused with, and in many ways defined by, mass culture.  In her book, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture, Lansberg  adds to the historiographic record of the study of memory by examining how specific mass culture tools - film, books, television, comic books, experiential museums - have been used to instill memories of specific cultural events - immigration, slavery, the Holocaust - in those who did not live through the experiences themselves.

I am at a loss.  Cognitively, I can see Landsberg's theory and argument, understand how they fit into the historiographic record of studies on memory, and even respect how she bridges memory study with social history questions of class and race.  I follow the logic.  But I cannot see through her eyes to share the memories because I do not share with her any of the points of entry.  While I know of every source she uses, I have not lived through - watched, read, visited - any of them.  Yes, I've walked through the room while Blade Runner and Total Recall have blared out of the television.  I remember when Roots aired as a mini-series.  The volume containing Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is upstairs on a shelf.  I've read Morrison, but not Beloved; Butler but not Kindred.  While I have the means to experience this "new form of memory largely made possible by the commodification of mass culture" I have not braved the experience of sitting through the experience that is Schindler's List nor had the opportunity to visit the Holocaust Museum.  I have not lived through the specific experiential and meaningful contact that she posits might allow me to "see differently," and through sensual, not cognitive experiences, enter a "transferential space" where I can perceive another's experience to the point of creating personal pain.

However.  I think she's onto something.  The ability to pay to physically partake in an experience that stimulates our senses through a technologically possible medium.  The rupture of one's one comfort or experience or timeline as a mechanism for being able to see through someone else's eyes or walk through another's experience.  The human ability to be transported through empathy to creation of a memory.  And the possibility for social action or change because of that assumed - or prosthetic - memory.  Yes,  I can see that.  I don't yet possess it.  I cannot draw the personal analogy to her specific examples.  As Jay Winter says in his essay, "The Generation of Memory: Reflections on the "Memory Boom" in Contemporary Historical Studies", I haven't experienced the trauma. Or going back to Landsberg, paid the cost.  However.  While I do not feel, I do think.

Her work supports thoughts we've had this fall that comfort, while good for tourism, doesn't support the social agenda of public history.  That if through discomfort our perspective can be shifted to a point where divisions of "other" are dissolved through the sharing of memory, then there is hope for political and social action that can further erode boundaries and create understanding.  We've already on the path.  We've gone from using film to propagate nationalist concepts of "American" sameness in the 1920s to educating - and experiences - the horrors that have occurred when nations erase differences.  We have, one could say, the technology.  Now to use share that technology with more and more people, widening the base of those who share the memories and choose to take the subsequent actions.

Everyday Living

One of our Managing History readings this week was the November 12, 2007 New York Times article, "Auctioning the Old West to Help a City in the East" by Eric O'Keefe.  The article highlighted auctions held to sell more than 800 objects purchased by Harrisburg, PA Mayor Stephen R. Reed for the purpose of establishing a National Museum of the Old West.  Instead, the items were sold to raise funds to help balance the city's deficit budget.  A quote from a Western memorabilia expert about the mayor's collection jumped out at me.  "The mayor's vision of the Old West was incredible.  He bought pots and pans, cans of evaporated milk, and coffee tins, things for everyday living.  He wanted the whole picture, not just the highlights."


The collection of readings for this week are diverse.  In addition to the NYTimes article we read two articles from The Public Historian, the journal of the National Council on Public History.  "The End of History Museums: What's Plan B?" by Cary Carson and "Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and The Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco's Mission District" by Nancy Raquel Mirabal.  


Carson asks if "history museums, and historic house museums in particular" are in a "nosedive to oblivion."  His article looks at attendance at cultural organizations as a whole over the last thirty years, what may and may not have attributed to declining interest in museums, and the industry's response to perceived and real decreases in attendance.  He highlights both what has worked in the past, what has not, and what is working now.  


I appreciate Carson shaking his finger at public historians, urging us to move away from the temptation to raise museum revenue by hosting weddings and cocktail events, relegating history to "sideshow" status. (p. 15).  He also chastises us to remember that attendance cannot be the sole measure of a healthy museum.  In these statements, he raises the topic we've discussed regularly in class this fall.  The public historian's obligation to teach history.  "We must never forget that fundamentally we are history teachers.  If our institutions of lifelong learning are not teaching history, or if we are teaching to ever-smaller numbers of learners, then those are the problems we need to tackle and solve." (p.15)  


Also of immense value is Carson urging us to consider how the generations currently visiting museums learn and get excited about learning.  He specifically challenges current arguments that one must instill trust (can we translate this as comfort?).  "Trust is not the issue.  What is, is the ability of museums to make effective connections with the way people today have become accustomed to engaging in the learning process...how today's learners actually prefer to organize information and put it together to make meaning." (p. 17)  


What do today's visitors to museums want?  "To be transported back in time...to meet ordinary people to whom they can relate."  They don't want to hear about the past or see a display about it.  They want to live it by relating directly to historical figures.  They want everyday living and the whole picture, and they want to "live it - feel it - experience it." (p. 18)


The individuals and families in Mirabal's focus group aren't museum visitors who want to experience history firsthand; they are a class of people whose history was dislocated and erased by the gentrification of the Mission District of San Francisco during the dot-com boom of the late 1980s, early 2000s.  Mirabal's article relays the findings of a student-driven oral history project started in 1999 designed to investigate "the reasons for the economic and political changes in the Mission District." (p. 9) While I knew of gentrification as a concept, I'll admit to having been in the only category of folk who assumed or were taught that gentrification is "an organic, natural, and even random process, shaped by an uncontrollable market economy." (p. 16)  Mirabal builds a solid case, using individual voices and empirical research, to show that the Mission District gentrification was a "calculated process designed to benefit developers, real estate companies, speculators, and investors." Not to mention politicians or city planners who wish to change the commercial and ethnic complexion of a neighborhood from "bad" to "good." (p. 16) 


What does an essay on gentrification of a working class neighborhood - even a really good essay - have to do with public history?  Because part of the success of gentrification is erasing the neighborhood that existed previously and imposing a new persona in its place.  Mirabal uses concrete examples such as the whitewashing (read destruction) of (city sanctioned and national landmark credited) murals in order to make space for logos of new dot-com companies now in residence in buildings that used to house Latino families to represent what one interviewee described as "taking out our culture."  (p. 23) Equally alarming is her tale of historical markers scattered through the neighborhood now.  "The prevailing thought is that memorials based on a constructed past prevent erasure and allow for a collective remembering of a neighborhood, people, and community that no longer exists.  I don't buy it.  Because in the end, whose memories are the ones that we are allowed to remember, whose memories are the ones officially on display?  Who decides how we remember and why?" (p. 30)


While Mirabal isn't shaking her finger in frustration - and hope - at public historians specifically, I hear her nonetheless.  We must remember that the presentation of history requires deciding whose memories to preserve and choosing to whom you focus the telling. To tie back to last week's discussion, when we are studying history with the goal of interpreting it, we must also remember the context within which such markers were made.  Mirabal's oral history helps preserve that context by recording voices of the people who were displaced.  To use another example, we can look back at my childhood friends, the New York State Historical markers.  To understand those markers in context, we need to look at who chose which, or whose, history to share, what the state of the nation and the world was when the text was written, and who the State of New York thought would be reading those blue and yellow metal signs.  


Absolutely everyday life of everyday people can be shared, in new and technologically brilliant ways, with Generation X,Y,and Z.  In order to ethically do so however, we as historians need to capture the history of everyday people and also remember to ask hard, pointed questions of the preserved history to determine whose lives might not have made the cut into the historical record.  

The 21st Century House Museum, Or, Love and Politics

Looking Forward

I may be privileged in the next year to be part of researching the history of a specific family and creating interpretation for the house in which they lived.  The readings for this week's Managing History class are critical building blocks as I begin to think about a house museum of the 21st Century.  Partially, because they are defining works in the field.  Largely because they speak about - some to, some against - themes I know to be critical to running an ideological organization. Love and politics.  

Backstory

The professional hat I am training to wear is that of historian.  Another hat in my professional closet is fundraiser.  Early in my career I was gifted with the opportunity to work for the undergraduate college of a medium-sized research university.  This college had a curriculum based on a very simple, yet fundamental premise.  "Students learn best when they love what they study."  This modus operandi resonated with my belief in "heartstring" fundraising.  People philanthropically support that which they love or about which they feel passionately.  Viable nonprofit organizations are built around a well-defined, well-articulated core purpose.  Successful fundraising occurs when one matches individual passions with community visions.  Idealistic? Yes.  Feasible? Yes.  Messy?  Absolutely.   About 97% of the time.  Why is matching people with purposes messy? Because making a match relevant requires passion.  To make it real requires politics.  Involving politics moves you from the passions of a few to the processes of the many.  Holding on to what you love, or protecting what someone else loves, can be very challenging when dealing with hierarchies of authority, rules, and regulations.  

Interpretation

Definition: An educational activity which aims to reveal meanings and relationships through the use of original objects, by firsthand experience, and by illustrative media, rather than to simply communicate factual information." (p. 33)

Excerpt: "If you love the thing you interpret, and love the people who come to enjoy it, you need commit nothing to memory.  For, if you love the thing, you not only have taken the pains to understand it to the limit of your capacity, but you also feel its special beauty in the general richness of life's beauty."  (p. 126) 

Freeman Tilden was a writer who dedicated half of his life to exploring how staff at national and state parks interacted with the public.  In Interpreting Our Heritage, his book specifically on interpretation, he presents six principles of interpretation which he then sums up to be one - love.  I think Mr. Tilden would understand my approach of heartstring fundraising, and we could have a wonderful walk in the woods discussing the topic.  

Williamsburg's Social History Grade

The New Social History in an Old Museum, is Richard Handler and Eric Gable's critique from the 1990s of Colonial Williamsburg's implementation of the new social history movement started in the 1970s.  In short, they felt the museum had failed and were very blunt is saying so in their final chapter, "The Bottom Line."  Handler and Gable would likely scoff at my mindset, call it naive, and cite an example from their book of a duped donor whose money was shifted to fund another project, one that achieved no goals and fulfilled no one's desires.  Handler and Gable would speak to me of the politics of funding and the hierarchies of management and warn me that trying to relate unbiased history in a museum setting is as much a mythical beast as fair and honest fundraising.  

Domesticating History

Where Freeman Tilden may be my newest prophet, Patricia West may well be my new hero.  Her book, Domesticating HIstory: The Political Origins of America's House Museums is phenomenal, for many, mostly related, reasons.  She grounds the history of America's house museum firmly in the historiographic record, explaining how four different house museums were specifically products of the political and social cultures of their time.  Of very specific interest to me (and my project) she uses the lens of public history to trace historical changes in "the nature of women's relationship to the public sphere." (p. 39)  I am completely fascinated by especially her first two chapters and the histories of how women stood and spoke in the public sphere, manipulating politics and public opinion to save specific homes and the carefully crafted, mythic versions of stories of American heroes and heroines.  

Bound By Time and Place

On interpretation, at the end of her book Wise states, "Above all, the history of American historic house museums demonstrates their missions, far from being neutral and far from meriting the status of inviolability, were manufactured out of human needs bound by time and place." (p. 162)  Human needs.  Passion.  Love.  Bound by time and place.  Politics.   Messy? Yes.  Worth it?  Absolutely.   Why?  Because finding the story, discovering the history behind the story, and sharing the story is my passion.  And, as Tilden, Wise, Handler and Graber all say in very different ways and arenas, passion and politics are two sides of the same coin.  

Preservation: Independence Hall

Diana Lea has written, "The strongest initial impetus for preservation in America was the new country's conscious effort to memorialize the heroes of the Revolutionary War.  One of the first buildings to be preserved as a shrine to the Revolution was Philadelphia's Old State House, later called Independence Hall." (Stipe, ed., A Richer Heritage, p. 1)

Do you know why the Old State House was picked first?  The Marquis de Lafayette wished to see it.

A few weeks ago I had the honor of attending the panel discussion, Public History: Making 18th-Century Life Relevant to 21st-Century Lives, presented as part of the 2009 annual meeting of the East-Central American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies hosted by Lehigh University.  One of the panelists was Diane Windham Shaw, Director of Special Collections & Archives at Lafayette College, who spoke on "Retooling an 18th Century Hero for the 21st: A New Look at the Marquis de Lafayette."

The Marquis de Lafayette was a hero of the American Revolution, a protege of George Washington, and one of the young country's greatest fans. In 1824-25, the Marquis visited his adopted home, touring the country on his "Farewell Tour."  Cities in America outdid themselves competing to offering him the best welcome.  As Lafayette had voiced an interest in seeing the site where the Declaration of Independence was signed, the city of Philadelphia scurried to clean and refurbish the somewhat neglected building, bringing the Old State House to a condition worthy of being viewed by a man then held in extremely high regard by most Americans.

A few related links: press release for another Shaw lecture on Lafayette's Final Tour, Lafayette College's web site about the Marquis, a NPS document on Independence Hall.

Lived Reality

The syllabus for my Managing History class lists this week's discussion topic as "Preservation Politics." Professor Seth Bruggeman joked that he chose the terminology because he liked the alliteration.  Alliterative allegations aside, preservation is politics.  Individuals may chose to actively preserve a location or concept or object because they love it.  Preservation as a movement and a component of our society exists because of laws, policies, and court rulings.  The means and the ends are connected.  Diane Lea, in the intro to A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century tells us, "Historic preservation has flowered and endured in the United States because the very concept incorporates some of this nation's most profoundly defining ideals.  The concept of preservation is built on a finely wrought and sustained balance between respect for private rights on one hand and a concern for the larger community on the other." 

Historically, fights for private rights have often been battles for private comforts.  Cathy Stanton, in her ethnographic study of public historians The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City, explores, and questions, the balance reached in Lowell when park rangers take visitors "beyond public historical space and into the lived reality of the city."  Stanton's work explores many of the concerns of the larger Lowell community and the push-pull within both historians and visitors to reconcile realities of modern Lowell with their internal, middle class comfort levels.  

Stanton goes beyond and behind the scenes of historic preservation and education efforts in Lowell, Massachusetts to examine the perspectives, needs, and expectations through which individuals craft their realities within a postindustrial society.  By placing the ethnic backgrounds, class status, political opinions, and reasons for interest in Lowell of the public historians who work at Lowell, the visitors who take the Park Service tours, and herself within the context of a postmodern society, she exposes us to concepts not necessarily taught on the tour. (A few of these are Lowell's continued existence as an immigrant city that struggles with high poverty and unemployment levels, the dynamics of a community with clear local/outsider identities, and her contribution to discussions of levels of comfort within historic-tourism contexts.) White, middle class visitors and historians, posits Stanton, are seeking to connect with working class and ethnic roots while reassuring themselves of the safety of their own position in society and culture. Furthermore, public historians are concerned with the negative societal effects of capitalism, frustrated about how to balance discussing historic fact and modern realities without encroaching on comfort levels, and somewhat unaware of their own place as benefactors of a postmodern society via their employment in the creation of culture.  Is Stanton's concern that middle class needs for internal comfort mask the needs of the remaining members of an urban community relevant outside of Lowell? 

I recently received my first copy of Preservation, the magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  (It happens to be the September/October 2009 issue.)  Flipping through the pages, one finds an article on the first four-year academic program teaching the hands-on skills of preservation, highlights of preservation successes, and pages of tourism ads for historic destinations.  There's no discussion of economic concerns or urban worries.  Instead, there's information on a career path similar to those discussed by Stanton, with pictures of white, mostly male participants.  

Preservation is a fascinating magazine and has been a hit with everyone in my house, read cover to cover by all three adults and even perused by the ten year old.  Said adults do, however, exactly fit the demographic Stanton discovered at Lowell.  We are white, educated beyond the high school level, interested in history, and employed in postmodern service professions. Like many of Stanton's subjects, we are able to point to members of our families making the move from wage to professional labor within the last two generations.  Two of us are also representative of the "twilight of ethnicity," being several generations away from a clear connection to one specific ethnic heritage.  Reading Preservation makes me excited that we're saving building and skills and long to see these places myself.  It does not upset my comfort level or raise my curiosity about how my desire for preservation may affect the lives of others.  This isn't overly surprising.  Discomfort doesn't sell magazines, or memberships to cultural organizations.  Having stopped to think about it and look for it, I am a bit surprised that there isn't any (obvious) reference to political legislation or court concerns.  Is all quiet on the preservation front or does political intrigue not sell subscriptions, either?  

Stanton's book is a critical read for anyone interested in pursuing public history as a career or interested in social history of the 20th century.  Lea's article in a crisp, concise summary of the preservation movement in America, an excellent background for anyone who appreciates the phenomenon but may not know its history. 

Introducing: Places to Visit

One of my hopes for this blog is to create a welcoming, inquisitive environment where "arm chair tourists" can join me on my path. Some locations will be ones I've been lucky enough to visit personally; others will have been discovered in my readings and studies.  Stay tuned!

Thinking Versus Feeling Good

*blink* The sheer amount of thought-provoking and curiosity-peaking information presented in this week's "Managing History" readings has me tempted to issue a self-challenge to write a blog-a-day for a month.  I've been alternately making notes about historical detail I didn't know and Googling referenced initiatives, people, exhibits, museums, and books. I've set up two new Bookmarks folder - [Public] Historians and Teaching History.  Most gratifyingly, I feel vindicated.  While I have learned something from every set of readings for both classes this fall, no other set has engaged me as this set has.  This is reassuring as the material is on the nitty gritty of public history - the controversies and ethics playing out recently in the field.  That I am inhaling the material, asking questions, and excited, tells me two things.  One, I'm on the right path.  Two, those creating discourse about the challenges for public historians are on the the right path.

The first correct path is likely simple and obvious.  Responding emotionally and critically when hearing first hand from voices in the field about what public history is right now tells me I've picked the right career.  The second speaks to a recurring theme in the reading - the need for the presentation of history to generate contemplation and discourse not (only) trigger positive thinking.  In short, encountering history should make you think and question, not simply feel good.

The readings are: Roger D. Launis' article,"American Memory, Culture Wars, and the Challenge of Presenting Science and Technology in a National Museum" and Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory," edited by James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton.

The main goal, which is achieved, of Slavery and Public History is to demonstrate the necessity of including education and discussion of slavery in the general American discourse.  These articles dug me several layers deeper into the issues and challenges historians face when sharing history with today's public.  I simultaneously gained context about hot topics in the last 20 years ago concerning the presentation of history, especially touchy subjects, and was more solidly grounded in the background of American slavery.  Discussion from a modern view point about how intertwined American slavery is within the development of race definitions and relations in American and also the defining of class structure is timely as my social history of Early America class has been investigating the same topic but from the lens of an early time period.

One set of thoughts triggered by both readings circle back to the article by Amy Tyson discussed two weeks ago about comfort levels within interpretations (by both those learning and those teaching.)  The concept of emotional response to the topic of slavery cannot be ignored.  Memory, myth, and history of slavery are as shaped by emotion as are our personal responses when encountering the topic today.  Launius references allowing history to be "fragmented and personal."  I was struck by this language.  Fragmentation is seldom allowed a positive connotation these days.  In Launius' usage, fragmentation doesn't weaken history, it adds strength by allowing for multiple voices.   American history is complex and complicated.  Emotionally, it can be easier to gloss over the uncomfortable parts and tell just part of the story.  At times in our history we've done just that.  Even in this decade Americans still do so.

The readings also give voice to the folks in the trenches fighting to juggle public interest with educated awareness.  Dedicated, passionate people are working very hard to bring the historical perspectives on slavery, race, class, and gender gained within the academy in the last few decades into the common understanding.  Despite resistance, opportunities to talk and think about slavery and the definition of America are slowly increasing.  We are learning to talk about painful, conflicting facts.  We are learning to distinguish between fact, memory, and history.  I leave these readings (for now) convinced that memory, history, and the interplay and friction between the two are the stuff from which public historian challenges are made today and will continue to be made in the foreseeable future.

Relevance and Subjectivities

The Annual Meeting of the East-Central American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies was held this past weekend in Bethlehem, PA.  Jan Ballard, Executive Director at Jacobsburg Historical Society, chaired a panel on, "Public History: Making 18th-Century Life Relevant to 21st-Century Lives."  The speakers and topics were: 

• Rusty Baker, Membership & Marketing Coordinator, PFMHO, "Statewide Funding Issues in Historical Organizations"
• Bernard Fishman, Executive Director, Rhode Island Historical Society, "The John Brown House in Providence, RI: Bringing Your Historic Home From Saint, To Sinner, To Historian"
• Diane Windham Shaw, Director, Special Collections & Archives, Lafayette College, "Retooling an 18th Century Hero for the 21st: A New Look at the Marquis de Lafayette"

The theme of relevance was mentioned in all three presentations.  Whether in the form of a personal connection to a place or a concept, an appeal to one's sense of nationalism, a topic of interest in popular culture (youth, celebrity, and mentorship were all mentioned), or the existence of beauty, something about or within a museum must resonate with a visitor if a connection is to be created.  I was reminded of the set of questions raised in the last couple of weeks in my Managing History Class.  Does the object define the experience or does what the visitor brings to the object define the experience?  

I have just finished reading Mary Kelly's book, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education and Public Life in America's Republic. Her argument is that a subset of white elite and middle class women living during the Early Republic and Antebellum eras in America were able, due to the possession of economic, social, and cultural capital, to attend female seminaries and academies which offered courses similar and often identical to those offered at male colleges.  This education provided access to ideologies and ideas which these women questioned, debated, and internalized, creating personal subjectivities.  These subjectivities, or inner senses of self and mission, contained a dedication to learning and a mandate to present what was learned in social settings for the purpose of stimulating further discussion and debate.  

When working on understanding the concept of subjectivities, I thought of the phrase, "Everything within us that we bring with us to the table." My next thought was, "Ought we be speaking terms of subjectivities when we discuss the relationship between seeker and museum?  Does understanding what one's own subjectivities are affect the relevance we attach to an object or concept?  Can we as historians make assumptions about other's subjectivities in order to present a topic accurately and in a relevant manner?   Should historians take individual's perspectives and opinions into consideration?    How do you decide whom to target?  Do you change the object if you change your assumptions about other's perception of it? 

Going back to relevance as key within a museum setting for creating a sense of ownership or sparking curiosity or in simply attracting visitors.  What is our obligation as public historians to create that relevance?  Where on the spectrum do we need to fall between defining that relevance ourselves and in trying to predict cultural subjectivities and shaping the relevance to match?   I don't have answers yet.  But I think the questions are fascinating.  

From Moravians to Objects

I love the sudden right turns one can take while during research.  There are no wrong destinations.  Just not enough room in the filing cabinet for all the finds. 

Today I was looking for information on the 19th C Moravian communities in Pennsylvania, specifically in terms of social history.  What I found was a new public history book.  (See what happens when I get lost on the UPenn Press website?) 

Do Museums Still Need Objects by Steven Conn is so new that my copy is still sitting in the virtual shopping cart.  Publication date is October 2009 - one assumes they're working on it.  

A subsequent search resulted in a new-to-me public history publication, Origins, and Cohn's blog.  

More than Just Muppets

"Jim Henson's Fantastic World is a collaboration of The Jim Henson Legacy and the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) was designed by Karen Falk, curator of the exhibit and archivist at The Jim Henson Company, to comprehensively showcase the breadth of Jim Henson's art and creativity.  The exhibit was viewed at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.  The tour began September 2007 and runs through October 2010.  

The exhibit aims to preserve not only the physical results of Henson's creativity, but the process of creativity itself.  Quotes from Henson and his works are painted on the walls.  Henson speaks directly to the audience about his ideals and goals in a video history compiled from various interviews through the years.  Beloved and well-known popular culture icons Kermit, Bert, Ernie, and Mahna Mahna are there in muppet form and share space with the sketches that captured Henson's original conceptualizations."  


If you have ever been curious about Jim Henson as an artist, you will find answers in this exhibit.  The staff at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, PA has done a great job connecting the SITES exhibit with its own mission and creatively networked with other Bucks county arts organizations.   In addition to an extensive offering of in-house art classes, other cultural offerings available this fall range from a Jazz concert celebrating the music of Sesame Street to a collaborative film series highlighting Henson films to a variety of programs offered at the Bucks County Free Library, located just across the courtyard.  


What does a traveling exhibit classified as an art display and offered in an art museum teach us about history?  In the case of The Fantastical World of Jim Henson, one's sense of social and cultural history is expanded, in many cases built upon personal memory.  Fascinating in their own right as art, the objects document not just Henson's story, but for anyone of Generation X they also tell our own, triggering memory and generating an emotional response.  Those of the Sesame Street generation are likely to leave the screening room humming, “The King of Eight.”  The memory is triggered again, and one's knowledge expanded, when one views the storyboard and biographical background for that specific skit later on in the exhibit.  

Jim Henson's Muppets are without question a part of my cultural context.  I am one of the early members of the Sesame Street generation. Evening television as a young child consisted of half an hour of The Muppet Show and half an hour of M*A*S*H.  (I've suspected for years that there's a lot of explanation there for who I am, but that's likely another post.)  I learned counting and language skills from the Sesame Street.  I also learned its okay to be a bit odd or not perfectly funny, or to believe in a dream.  I also had my first glance at myriad performers - Harry Belafonte, Candice Bergen, Danny Kaye, and Vincent Price among so very many.  From Sesame Street to the Muppet Show to the Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, I traveled the public path of Henson's creative journey.  At the Michener, I saw some of the not-so-public journey.

Fantastical World is fascinating to me as a historian because it places my friends in context.  Henson and his ideologies are introduced in person via a documentary-style video.  A large poster-style timeline chronicles biographical data and career highlights.  A nice touch is a corresponding poster-style homage to Henson's supporting cast – his family, friends, and colleagues whom together are woven into what we have come to know as the Henson experience. 


Yes, I saw actual Muppets and learned more about their history.  I also learned more about my larger history and asked questions about where we are now.  Cookie Monster started as Wheel Steeler in IBM commercial in the late sixties - IBM had commercials in the late sixties?  One of Henson's proposals for a television show had a hand-drawn cover.  I was struck that today, if it wasn't computer generated, it might go straight to the slush pile.  This wonderfully witty, personal, piece of functional art.  What might we be losing in the technological age?  


Jim Henson was a shy man who imagined fantastical creatures and shared them with the rest of us.  I am grateful to The Jim Henson Legacy and the Smithsonian for offering the opportunity to glimpse behind the curtain, or under the floor in some cases, at the genius behind the characters we, and Henson, loved and made a part of our own histories.