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. 

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.

Managing History Readings for September 21, 2009

I am intrigued by a question in this week's texts. “How does an individual use history to define one's self?”

According to the readings, individuals do not seek out history to understand someone else's life; they do so to understand their own. Moreover, they view the historical fact or object or story through their own cultural lenses and interpret it with personal senses of self. While there is an emotional response, the ultimate result is personal validation, or an “existential” authenticity.

Authenticity is a term historians use – are guilty of over using – when validating the representation of a time, person, or place. I will admit to having cavalierly bandied about the term, most often in reference to the (proper) representation of a time period through (appropriate) use of external props that are justified by documented knowledge. However, the survey and sociological survey studied suggest that authenticity is internal, not external; that the use of a 1930 teacup isn't emotionally satisfying because its use places us in another period of time, but because our internalizations of that period of time is one more layer in our definition of who we are, how we fit, where we come from, and what we want to be.

Perhaps the next logical question to be asked by public historians requires flipping the observation of an exhibit or object from,“What does this object say of the past” to “How can this object help define someone's future?”

Texts referenced include: Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000) and Hyounggon Kim and Tazin Jamal, "Touristic Quest for Existential Authenticity" in Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 181-201, 2007.

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.