Regressive Taxation

Additional Thoughts on Popular Historymaking

Mulling over yesterday's discussion, I was better able to articulate my own, and perhaps others', frustration with the limits of popular historymaking. The participants surveyed in Rosenzweig and Thelen almost universally lamented the facts-and-figures driven nature of traditional high school courses and their texts. If we consider the five W's (Who, What, Where, When, and Why) and accept them as useful points of inquiry, it becomes clear that high school textbooks and standardized curriculums have a tendency to stress the first four of these (Who, What, Where, When) and do a satisfactory job relaying those findings (depending on the texts), but do so in disservice of the last and arguably most important question (Why? i.e. structual and historical context). Anyone who has encountered the work of sociologist James Loewen is familiar with this criticism.

Applying this dilemma to those surveyed in Presence of the Past, it seems that popular historymakers have a similar tendency to stress the Who, What, Where, and When, but neglect the Why. They're simply exchanging political and economic data with social and familial data. The Why is nowhere to be found, which is where the professional historymaker comes in. If nothing else, historians are trained to consider, interpret, and reinterpret the Why, this is what we offer to an engaged public, this is the value of our contributions.

This isn't to deny the value of anyone's personal Who's and What's - this is often the fun stuff of history, the utility of the Past. Nor am I suggesting that cataloguing such material is a fruitless endeavor. The mission of many oral histories is precisely this, a cataloguing of a particular group of historical actors' four W's. But without the Why that material ceases to be historical and is simply in service of the various personal fulfillments I discussed in my previous post (dare I call it past-urbating?). Historians are here to answer the Why, and it would seem then that one of the central goals of the public historian is the marriage of this professional methodology with the personalized contributions of the popular historymaker. A tall order, but one I look forward to exploring further.

It's Just All About You, Isn't It?

Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, Presence of the Past (Columbia, 1998)

Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority (SUNY Albany, 1990)

Hyounggon Kim and Tazim Jamal, "Touristic Quest for Existential Authenticity" (Annals of Tourism Research, 2007)

Three readings this week, each adopting different methods, yet each providing commentary on a common goal. If last week's readings explored how professional historians have attempted to engage with a broader public, this week is largely about the public's own engagement with historical material.

If there is a common thread through all three works it is this: the popular historymaker (to borrow Rosenzweig and Thelen's term) is primarily concerned with their own personal relationship to the past, whether it be facilitated through family and community (Rosenzweig and Thelen), a traveling exhibit (Michael Frisch), or even, remarkably, a Ren fair (Hyounggon and Jamal). For each of these varied audiences, history is first and foremost an experiential and existential affair, something to be witnessed, a testimonial to past, present, and future.

Huzzah!: Self-affirmation through exploration of the past


The results of this kind of historical engagement can lead to a number of positive and empowering outcomes, among them, a deeper connection to their ethnic community or neighborhood, strengthened bonds between parent and child, even self-affirmation of public and private identity. As Rosenzweig and Thelen suggest, such evidence of active involvement should be encouraging to professional historians - this research confirms the existence of a diverse, open-minded, intelligent audience.

But I also must second Rosenzweig's larger concerns about method and popular historymaking's neglect of structural analysis. This nagged at me throughout Presence of the Past, and it was comforting to read Rosenzweig voice similar concerns in his afterthoughts. He and Thelen seem optimistic that popular and professional historymaking yet have much to learn from each other, that collaboration between these two camps is the path to historical relevance and longevity. Some ten years removed from the publication of their book, one wonders how successfully the authors have forged those bonds. Certainly there are some inspiring examples of this "shared authority": Brooklyn Historical Society's Public Perspectives series comes to mind (http://www.brooklynhistory.org/exhibitions/perspective_series.html).

Courtesy Brooklyn Historical Society's Public Perspectives: Brooklyn Utopias?

As an aspiring academic, I must admit I have great difficulty compromising the methodology and analytical framework of professional historymaking. Articulating one's personal engagement with the past is a valuable endeavor; I'm not yet convinced, however, that such an endeavor requires the guidance or participation of academic historians, that their missions are the same, that they can truly share such authority. I'm curious what others are thinking on this point.

“The Memory of Things Said and Done”: Ian Tyrrell, Carl Becker, and Cathy Stanton

Each of our readings this week consider the role of the historian in the public sphere, specifically the myriad ways in which professional historians themselves have articulated and approached such a dilemma.

Carl Becker, in his presidential address to the American Historical Association, “Everyman His Own Historian” (1931), attempts to reduce history “to its lowest terms.” Beginning with the pedestrian concept that “History is the knowledge of events that have occurred in the past,” a definition more in line with the German-inspired scientific scholarship of the late nineteenth century, Becker then whittles down, and subsequently expands, the arena of history as “the memory of things said and done.” Becker thus democratizes the field, suggesting that the material and methodology of history are universal and infinitely attainable, perhaps even quotidian. Recent scholarship reveals the extent to which historians have continued to struggle with such a concept throughout the twentieth century.

Carl Becker


For Ian Tyrrell, that dilemma is largely self-imposed. Tyrell’s Historians in Public (University of Chicago, 2005) demonstrates that from the outset of late nineteenth century professionalization, historians have simultaneously embraced and feared the specialization and fragmentation of their work. Contemporary historians grappling with the explosion of social history and multiculturalism are not unique; they are in fact following the trends of one hundred years of historical scholarship and the ongoing quest for historical utility, the search for a usable past. Tyrrell never clearly articulates the extent to which historians were successful in their attempts to engage a larger public, whether it be through attempts at universal synthesis, journalistic narrative, or film and radio projects, but he successfully demonstrates that the impulse was always on historians’ minds.



In her opening chapter to The Lowell Experiment (University of Massachusetts, 2006), Cathy Stanton more directly tackles the stakes of public history, specifically its potential for civic engagement, historical ownership, and perhaps more controversially, social justice. Her politicization of the field is both illuminating and frank, and her debt to Becker is clear.

Each of these readings thus raise powerful questions with respect to our future work in this classroom and beyond. Namely, what is the primary role of the public historian? What lessons can we glean from academic scholarship and public historians’ previous efforts to answer this question? And lastly, how do we perceive our own unique role in this task? Does the archivist cataloguing public records of mid-century Philadelphia strive toward social justice? In what ways are they contributing to the grand narrative of Americanism that Tyrrell suggests so many early twentieth century scholars were striving toward? Does he/she utilize unique, highly specialized methods, or are they performing innate human tasks, and if the latter, to what extent does that de-legitimize or devalue their work? These are just some of the questions I look forward to exploring in the coming weeks.

Introductions

Hello. My name is Patrick Grossi and I am an entering PhD student at the Temple University Department of History. This blog is being developed in combination with Seth Bruggeman's Managing History course, but I hope to expand it beyond those horizons.

I have taken a strange route to the discipline of history. For several years I studied and practiced cinema and photography, particularly experimental and non-fiction work. Over time I found myself missing the classroom and became increasingly interested in the principal narratives and methodologies of American history. I am primarily interested in late nineteenth and early twentieth century urbanism, in particular public transportation, community mapping and development, and political culture.

Additionally I have a strong interest in the public exhibition of historical material, the ways in which both academically and non-academically trained individuals make use of public spaces and material artifacts toward shaping their notions of the past. It is on these latter points that this blog will primarily be interested.