Interesting Find

My journey to Temple includes a significant commute.  While I can read for the hour I'm on the train in each direction, the hour in the car can feel like wasted time intellectually.  On my "to do list" was to find academically relevant material to listen to during the drive.  While visiting the web site for the Library Company of Philadelphia recently, I found that they have several programs saved in podcast format.   

Thoughts on Readings for 9/14/09 Class Discussion

Managing History readings for this week are: Ian Tyrrell's, “Historians in Public," Cathy Stanton's intro to “The Lowell Experiment,” and Carl Becker's presidential address to the AHA.

These readings are a foundation for understanding our chosen field – its history, key figures, affect on culture, morality, economics, etc. They also start us – very solidly – thinking about the obligations inherent in our choice to serve as historians within the public sphere.

Tyrrell's work provides an immense amount of critical information. If as historians we espouse studying our past in order to understand our future, Tyrrell's book provides data that can help us avoid the hypocrisy of not knowing our own past. (It's one thing to join the American Historical Association (AHA). Its another to realize that it has existed since the late 1800s and to examine its role in shaping the field of history.)

Becker's piece challenges us, as it did Tyrrell, to question how, in 1931, he was representative of historians' views of the public and of their obligation to the public and how he was revolutionary.

Stanton gives us another analysis of the rise of public history. While she and Tyrrell draw on similar sources, the tones are different, perhaps because they have different reasons for presenting the information. Tyrrell is looking backward, documenting where we've been in order to explore the role the teaching of history plays. Stanton is setting a current example of that role in context.