“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.