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.