Online Learning Outcomes – Reflection

Perhaps online learning has changed a bit since I last took a course. I was surprised, and pleased, to discover that online/blended learning yielded better learning outcomes than those in a traditional brick and mortar institution. I wonder what is causing this. The reason I am surprised is because with my online learning experiences, a couple of things happen. First, it is always a race to check the box, finish the task, get it done as quickly as possible so I can continue with the rest of my life. Second, I find the most useful aspects of learning the time spent in a classroom, where I have the opportunity to set aside time to digest new information, interact with my fellow students and then continue the learning process.

How can that be replicated online? Are these institutions doing something fundamentally differently? Does it help to have clear outcomes and tasks established so that attendance does not equal productivity? I am now thinking back to conversations I have had with my PhD friends, who struggle with their students to complete any assignments, to pass tests, to write essays. Is there something to completing a task and marking it done that this generation in particular appreciates? Is there something to knowing where you are in the learning process and being encouraged to continue to completion, rather than just get to the end of the semester?

I particularly enjoyed the video of Paul Callota (?) from Rhode Island and his ideas about allowing students to all learn at individual paces. If students are ready to move on, let’s do it! If they are not, let’s give them more time to understand the concepts. This is fantastic. If students learn the material, grasp the concepts and then are able to apply them in an unrelated context, that is the most important thing. Whether that occurs online or in a traditional classroom is irrelevant to me. I have always valued a physical classroom over the online environment because I have not benefited as much from the online environment. Perhaps this generation is different. Perhaps online learning (in a civilian context, outside the military) has improved since my last encounter. I’m excited now to see where we go in this course.

The Wages of History

Amy Tyson has written an impressive story in her The Wages of History: Emotional Labor on Public History’s Front Lines. Her story brings to life the interpreters at Historic Fort Snelling, especially their commitment to living history despite the financial, physical and emotional challenges they face. I find it difficult to find something to critique. Her book “examines museum interpreters as service workers and cultural producers . . . exploring how people negotiate significant workplace issues alongside desires to contribute to something meaningful through their work”. (4) Her tone indicates surprise that interpreters would place so much meaning and emotional investment into these low-paid service jobs. I do not find this surprising, since we are public historians and by the very nature of our chosen occupation will never (likely) become rich. Yet we also place a great deal of emphasis on the emotional component of our work. We have talked all semester about connecting with the public, challenging ideas and making a difference. Simply because the interpreters at Fort Snelling may not be trained historians does not automatically mean that they do not possess similar values or goals. Similarly, any person choosing a profession in the arts should know that riches and fame seldom come to the writer or artist or musician. Unless, of course, you are Prince. Then being an artist pays extraordinarily well.

It is also unsurprising that people do not like to be micromanaged. In Chapter 4, she discusses how personally some interpreters took the micromanaging of the staff. She discusses likely causes of micromanagement (insecurity and inability to exert true authority), but none of this is new. One can find micromanagement in any organization, alongside employee resentment at having their judgment questioned and inventiveness stifled. The chapter explores this issue well, but I do not see it as much different than any other industry.

More interesting to me were her discussions of gender and race. In Chapter 3, she examines the strong connection interpreters have with their specific roles. She takes this as far as indicating that a suicide may have been connected with one man’s idea of himself. In the suicide note, he states “he was going to Valhalla”. (111) He had never served in the actual U.S. Army, only the simulated 19^th century Army at Fort Snelling. In Chapter 4, she takes the significance of role play into an exploration of gender roles and masculinity. Her description of the two different locker rooms for men and women (the “men’s” and “civilian” versus the “women’s” and “ladies’”) caused me to wonder how much the interpreters wanted to take on the personas of the people they role played. Were they simply fascinated with the history? Or were they escaping their everyday (likely financially insecure, perhaps unfulfilling) lives? This point certainly could be true of the men who relished the weapon acquisition and alcohol consumption (starting at 9:20 AM). However, it seems less likely for the men who started changing in the “civilian” locker room, where behavior tended to be more professional and less crass. Could this example work as a case study in larger areas of masculinity, exploring how men allow certain behaviors to occur even though those same behaviors make them uncomfortable?

Her chapter on “Painful Histories” also offers some interesting ideas. Tyson focuses on the interpreters themselves, how they think about painful histories (slavery and American Indians); how they look for body language cues from visitors and use race/gender/age to determine if they would exercise their “interpretative freedom” to discuss slavery or American Indians. However, she does not connect her previous discussions about emotional fulfillment to a perceived hesitation to discuss these painful histories. If part of the (emotional) reward of the job is the (positive) connection with visitors, what incentive do interpreters have (either via management or inside themselves) to discuss these topics? Interpreters might miss a lunch break to discuss the finer points of some more innocuous part of history. How might that connection differ if the American Indian wars come up? Additionally, if interpreters are already emotionally drained with routine visitor interaction (98-9), do they have any reserves to deal with slavery or American Indians effectively? How much should management or the visiting public or public historians expect from these interpreters?

Local History and Local Influence

Andrew Burns and Cathy Stanton have written two fascinating, in-depth and richly detailed books. I applaud Burn’s dedication to examining more than simply the museums and their exhibits. She wants to understand the evolution of these museums:

It is clear that the complex institutional histories of African American museums and other public history sites will become as vital for historians to preserve, document, and analyze as the artifacts that the public sees and interprets on a daily basis. (14)

With this purpose at the forefront of her thinking, Burns’ book becomes more about the internal and external debates and the political voices all vying for primacy in African American museum development. As much as I concur with her in this argument, I would have liked to have seen more about the exhibits in the museums themselves. Because these were first neighborhood museums, and because they focused so intently on identity, I wanted to see more how the museums attempted to relate to the lives and concerns of the local people (or if they did at all). Did they cover controversial topics? Did they laud African American abilities to adapt and overcome racism in society? How did the Black Power movement (which she also highlights throughout the book) influence those exhibits and interpretations? Charles Wright argued that “civil rights were not enough” and wanted his museum to influence “the psychology of African Americans” and to re-write “350 years” of history which dehumanized African Americans in America. (29) That may require another book, but one I believe needs to exist.

Burns’ From Storefront to Monument reminds me of Lonetree’s Decolonizing Museums in many ways. First, the frameworks are similar. As Burns takes the reader from neighborhood museums to the debate and eventual establishment of a national museum, so Lonetree takes the reader on a tour of local history and cultural centers before addressing the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Burns and Lonetree also analyze these local museums in terms of identity, culture and neighborhood support. The museums are designed to be by and for the local people, and to provide community centers.

While battling often adverse conditions, the leaders of these institutions elevated the recognition of black history and culture, provided space for community gatherings and attempted to develop a strong sense of identity and self-affirmation among African American audiences. (5, italics added)

Both types of museums emphasize shared authority in exhibit development, purposefully wanting to draw from a community beyond academic historians. Both also must address conflicting perspectives in this pursuit of shared authority. We see this most clearly in the Philadelphia museum debate – from establishment to location to exhibition to money. Here too, we see similarities with the volatile debates in A Misplace Massacre. Many voices compete for their interpretation of history and their desire to memorialize (or not).

Differences exist as well. Fundraising and political contestations feature much more prominently in Burns’ book than in Lonetree’s book. The Native American museums and cultural centers in Lonetree’s book maintain primary authority over their stories. Even in instances where local populations partner with local historical societies (such as in the Minnesota Mille Lacs example), Lonetree portrays these collaborations as fairly equal shared authorities. Burns’ museums seem to politicize fairly rapidly, seeking money and attention to make grander political statements about African Americans and civil rights.

Stanton’s book, The Lowell Experiment, also takes a local perspective. I admit to feeling apprehensive about the book when I read her introduction and she dated the emergence of public history from the 1970s. After our early semester discussions about public history origins and Meringolo’s book, I was expecting to disagree with Stanton from the start. Though she failed to convince me completely of her perspective, I feel she handled the discussion well. She situates Lowell in the “contemporary” public history movement, and draws the connection (or elimination) between history and heritage.

The perceived tension between history and heritage is in some ways the entire basis for this book, which explores how critical historical viewpoints have fared within a large-scale heritage-oriented project. (26)

She might have strengthened her argument by adding a discussion of AASLH, since her analysis focuses exclusively on the local context of Lowell. Despite this small critique, I really enjoyed the book. Her framework especially impressed me, in that she believes understanding both visitor and historians are equally important.

I suggest that park visitors and public historians alike use this site in ritual ways, coming to terms with their separation from ethnic and working class forebears while simultaneously seeking a means of locating themselves more securely within a changing postindustrial economy. (xv)

Her analysis of visitor and historian alike finding themselves, their roots and their future in Lowell fascinated me. I find it interesting that children and parents often found themselves emotionally distanced from each other. Once the children move from working class to middle class, which their parents worked hard to ensure happened, the parents fail to see why they feel distanced from their children, or even attempt to understand that their children have done exactly what the parents wanted them to do. The parents’ voices are missing from the book. We hear them in remembrances of the children, but not the parents (or grandparents) themselves. Having felt this myself with my mother (though she was the first person in her family to go to college, we still had a distance. Perhaps because she held one of the health industry “gateway” jobs), I would be very interested to speak with the parents. Overall, this was a great book which wove together various aspects to produce the most comprehensive perspective we have yet seen in our readings.

Is History Bunk? Or Entertainment?

Swigger has written an ambitious book in History is Bunk. She examined the evolution of Greenfield Village, the local politics and ramifications for the Village and analyzed visitor experiences and responses in an attempt to understand how visitors shaped the museum experience. She mostly succeeds. I applaud her ambitions, and her detailed analysis of the visitor surveys. She presents a solid narrative of how Greenfield Village has changed over time, clearly delineating amongst four periods – that of Henry Ford, the “interim” years, that of Skramstad and that of Hamp. I enjoyed how she brought the 1930s guides’ journals of visitor experiences in with later visitor surveys. Skramstad exerted the most influence over the Village (after Ford’s death, anyway). He also attempted the best balance between history and tourism: “The new curriculum . . . should not ‘deny the nostalgic impulse’, but ‘take that emotional reaction and build upon it an understanding of historical truth . . .” (148) Hamp, with his IMAX theater, made the Village an “attraction”. While this fact dismayed me (as Swigger had nearly convinced me to make the trip to Michigan), the perceived necessity to provide entertainment alongside history is a conversation worth having. Doesn’t the Air and Space Museum have an IMAX theater? I feel like visitors shaped the presentation and content only in as much as the leadership interpreted what they thought visitors wanted. Do we really want to give visitors what they want? Where is the line between entertainment and history?

Less convincing is Swigger’s claim that visitor surveys shaped the museum experience. Sometimes it did, as in the additional hiring of African-American interpreters. (156-7) However, needing the visitors to insist upon more African-American interpreters in the African-American Family Life and Culture Program seems a bit unreasonable. The intelligent professional staff should have been able to make that happen independently. Sometimes Swigger’s unclear about visitor preferences. She spends some time discussing the car show and the country fair, but never conveys how popular these events were. Did ticket sales rise dramatically on those days? Did visitors make comments, or request more events such as those? Sometimes the visitor surveys did not have an impact at all, specifically in Skramstad’s tenure. In his desire to instill more history, and a different narrative to the Village, he changed many things around. Often, the visitors noted their disappointment in the surveys. Here is where the reader discovers that visitors enjoyed the car show and country fair. Evidently when they were gone, (the assumed repeat) visitors mourned their loss. Later, the new ideas became more popular.

The connection with local politics is more evident. Any museum near a city that entrenched in racism would struggle to attract visitors. It seems like Henry Ford’s original themes, especially those of “self-made (white) manhood” simply exacerbated the situation. I find myself conflicted about the amount of space Swigger dedicated to discussing local politics. Certainly, the racist politics form an important part of the story, and one not generally known to an audience outside of Michigan. However, it takes up a significant portion of time. Perhaps Swigger could have included more of the story in footnotes, leaving the reader to focus on the direct implications rather than have to learn all about Hubbard and others before getting back to the museum.

The Presence of the Past permeates the visitor experiences, their search for the nostalgic and finding connection with things closest to their personal lives. We see this as early as the 1930s: “Wilford was struck by ‘the way visitors will get more out of seeing something they know all about than seeing something of which they have never heard before.’” (92) We see this in the 1960s and 1970s, in Skramstad’s vision. We also see it in the Mattox house, though the visitors’ ability to relate only extends as far as their personal experiences: “It was clear that some visitors made strong connections between their personal or family histories and the Mattoxes, but did not necessarily recognize the vat differences between their legal rights and those of the Mattox family.” (162) How important is it that visitors can relate? And how much interpretation should the museum offer? If visitors are permitted, even encouraged, to interpret completely independently, are they learning? Does it matter? (92-3) If visitors primarily feel nostalgic, is it really a museum?

The connection with Colonial Williamsburg clearly influenced the Village, and is interesting to read immediately following last week’s book: “by the late 1970s, the actions of both Shelley’s and Caddy’s administrations suggested that the leadership’s answer to the question Allston Boyer asked in 1951 – ‘what is it then?’ – was that Greenfield Village was a museum whose primary purpose was to please its audiences”. (132) This leaves me uncertain about visiting the museum. Swigger offers a disappointing perspective on Hamp, especially after all the changes Skramstad instituted in the 1980s. How much would I learn if I visited the Village? Would I feel like I was entering a glorified theme park? I don’t know. I do applaud Ford and the administrators who followed for creating a museum not about politics or war. And I applaud Swigger for her book. It has made me think about a museum should be, what visitors might want it to be, and helped me to understand the importance in (regular) visitor surveys.

Neither New or Old History at Colonial Williamsburg

Handler and Gable claim “to show that social history has hardly had the kind of insurgent effect its critics claim for it” at Colonial Williamsburg. (8) They certainly demonstrated that the “new history” differs little from the “old history”. They give a clear impression that Colonial Williamsburg looks a lot more like Disney World than like a history museum, that “it is a big entertainment center and not an education institution”. (171) However, they focus so much time and effort on understanding the corporate side of the foundation, the tension between the corporate side and the education side, and focusing on the employees relationship with management, that they fail to answer some of their basic initial questions. The authors promised to examine,

How might museum exhibits take shape and change as they pass through the various phases of their development within a large organization like Colonial Williamsburg? What do different people contribute to the making of those messages? What are the different kinds of social interactions in which museum meanings are generated?(10)

They also argue that African American history serves as the “linchpin of historical revisionism” (22-3), yet the reader finds almost no discussion of African American history in the book. Overall, the book clearly shows that the “new history” contains more rhetoric than substance, and does an excellent job of examining the corporate side of the foundation. It would be difficult to do more than that in one book.

One of my first criticisms lies in the ignorance of the public visiting Colonial Williamsburg. We discover early that most visitors come from the Northeast; that they are white couples, sometimes traveling with children. Diversity arrives through “urban school groups”. (20) Yet the authors never delve into why these individuals happen to visit Colonial Williamsburg, and admit that the corporate leaders’ market research fails to address this as well. (162) One might think that understanding a museum’s audience – why they visit, what they are looking for, and beyond that, understanding who does not visit, and what might entice others to visit, might be important to an educational institution. If African-American history is the “linchpin of historical revisionism”, why is there no effort to discuss the fact that the primary source of minority visitors is urban school groups? Why do African Americans not visit? Why do other minorities not visit? Further, if Colonial Williamsburg is a business, why has it not sought a broader visitor base? Why has it not worked to attract a more diverse clientele?

Contemplating these questions is difficult. Dramatically changing the clientele at Colonial Williamsburg would prompt a complete review of the history presented. Management, historians and frontline employees alike might have to think seriously about the presentation of “just the facts” if a diverse America began visiting. For what do they see of America at Colonial Williamsburg that makes room for them as Americans? It’s not just African-Americans, either. The authors ignore gender constructs entirely. African-Americans appear the sole recipients of marginalization in 18^th century Virginia. There seemed no understanding or attempt to address women’s live and roles (black and white). This reinforced the traditional historic view that “men make history”.

Creating and presenting a critical history is not possible at Colonial Williamsburg. According to the authors,

. . .the foundation’s critical historians have much less power to effect historiographical policy than they often claim to have. Market concerns did indeed dominate pedagogy in insidious if obvious ways, yet this ‘fact’ was systematically obscured by the production of convenient propaganda (228)

They proved this point, emphasizing the corporate culture’s focus on 1) meeting and exceeding visitors’ expectations, and 2) (employees) always doing their best. The focus lies on customer service, not on historical education. It sounded exactly as I would expect a theme park, hotel or other customer-service oriented business to sound. Frontline employees often heard that they were free to tell any story they wanted, as long as they kept the visitors happy. Here again, the authors (and corporate side of the foundation) fail to show what the visitors actually want. Market research showed what visitors were willing to pay for entry and tours, but did not reveal expectations. (162) The authors conducted “more than fifty interviews” with visitors, but we hardly hear their voices in the book. (23) Instead, we learn about training for the frontline employees, listen to their gripes about management and wages. I would argue that no one – not the corporate side, the museum side or the authors understand what the current set of visitors expects when the visit Colonial Williamsburg.

The work Handler and Gable conducted is important. They revealed “unexamined assumptions and patterns the revisionists either overlooked or underestimated”:

1) (assumptions) concerning objectivity, authenticity, reality, and facts; 2) (assumptions) concerning good vibes, or pleasant interpersonal encounters in a world of anonymity; 3) (assumptions) concerning the relationship between culture and business, between an intelligentsia and management. (221)

Understanding how the corporate and museum sides function together, and how the different levels of employees interact with each other, is critical to understanding Colonial Williamsburg’s focus. It is also critical to understanding that history really plays a minor role in an otherwise financially-driven institution. Even here, for me the most interesting point lay buried in the middle of the book – neither ticket sales nor hotel revenue made the foundation profitable. Capital gains and dividends from the foundation’s endowment covered the shortfalls in the business. (155) So why the corporate focus on hotels and golf courses? Unfortunately, this question never gets answered, and this necessary analysis meant that the questions regarding making of messages and social interactions never quite get answered either.

Consumerism and Memorialization

 

Tourists of History is for me what Monument Wars is for Alyssa. Sturken’s book has become a new favorite. I have often felt people are “tourists of history”, and am not sure people are thinking critically about their museum or memorial visits. I have felt they are seeking the “easy” way to deal with trauma, to get the experience by going to the museum. We discussed this briefly regarding the Holocaust Museum. If one visits a museum, has one been changed by the experience?

Sturken does not simply deride these practices. She seeks to understand the kitsch and the “culture of comfort”. (Sturken, 7) She follows the events and the memorialization to a “renewed investment in the notion of American innocence”. She discovers the underlying fear and insecurity driving investment in militaristic vehicles such as the Hummer. She ties together beautifully a perceived sense of innocence in these tragic events, ignoring the numerous acts of aggression that may have created bitterness and resent leading to acts of violence. This innocence becomes critical in justifying further acts of violence, such as the invasion of 2003 Iraq. (Sturken, 7) She creates the sense of fear pervading Americans, despite the physical security inherent in the remoteness of the continental United States. In most aspects, I applaud her thoughtful analysis.

Let’s talk about the Hummer. She uses this consumer product as an example that evokes “power and safety” but that actually became “death traps for American soldiers” in Iraq. She blames an unprepared Defense Department that “rushed into action with adequate supplies”. (Sturken, 89) I completely disagree with her.

The High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) represents freedom in all that it can do. The HMMWV was never intended to be a protection vehicle. It was intended to carry equipment and personnel, over any terrain, to include fording rivers when necessary. The HMMWV was virtually indestructible, could handle anything and therefore was fun to drive. Her comments about “power” are absolutely accurate, but not “safety”. The HMMWV had to be light. As Sturken mentions, the vehicle is a “gas-guzzler” without armor. If the Defense Department had originally constructed it with armor, it might have been cost-prohibitive to operate.

HMMWVs were not armored because improvised explosive devices (IEDs) did not exist until Iraq late-2003. I challenge her to find data that identifies IEDs as a threat – at all. The Defense Department generated the Up-Armored HMMWV (UAH) and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles as knee-jerk responses to service members dying in Iraq. Simultaneously they ignored commonly accepted notions of good counter-insurgency (COIN) practices that mandated close access to the population. American troops in their armored vehicles could not access the people. The U.S. prioritized safety and security of its own people over conducting effective COIN and possibly opening the door to success. Actually, she could have used the UAH as an example of “vehicle of empire” and “domestic militaristic safety”, to ampify her point about the HMMWV. (Sturken, 89)

Linenthal’s book on the Oklahoma City Bombing struck a particular chord in his discussion about length of time between event and memorialization of that event. He argues that memorialization usually occurred only after a generation or two had passed, such as Civil War. People “saw their numbers dwindle and feared that their sacrifice and the lessons supposedly learned from the event would not be actively recalled by subsequent generations”. (Linenthal, 4-5) He views Oklahoma City as a change in how people memorialize. I wonder if the timeframe and level of involvement might be factors. Meaning, the Civil War encompassed a nation’s population over four years. The Oklahoma City Bombing involved one city, affected only 186 family and friends and was over in an instant.

Are we more likely to memorialize quickly if a discrete event affected a limited number of people? If Linenthal is correct, then the concern that the sacrifice will be forgotten, that the lessons will not be learned becomes more pressing. We see this today. How many people remember Oklahoma City at all? How many remember September 11^th? How many children listened to their parents talk about the bombing or the planes crashing? How many people felt the pain of loss? It was only the first year or two after September 11^th I remember seeing memorial services. Today, we may pause on the day. There may be a memorial service in NYC or Washington, D.C. But you do not see everyone in a neighborhood lighting a candle and walking out of his or her home to share the moment with his or her neighbors, as I remember on September 11^th, 2002.

Perhaps the most important thing I learned from Sturken and Linenthal is the requirement to meet people where they are. I do not agree with snow globes sold at memorials. I do not see the value in leaving teddy bears by a chain-link fence. I have often shook my head at the people who spend as much time in the gift shop as anywhere else. But it is not for me to question these things. As a public historian, I feel I must simply understand them. If I hope to be heard, then I must first listen. We have been discussing this all semester. Yet I feel like we have wanted people to understand on our terms, to hear what we are trying to say first. I think we need to flip our understanding. I think we need to do the really hard thing, and understand. This can only happen at an individual level, which makes it exponentially harder. It cannot happen at an institutional level. Or can it? Could we create memorials that ask questions of visitors before they enter, to determine what kind of experience or understanding they are seeking? Could this shape their experience, and the experience we design for them?

Monuments and Memorials

When I talked about my morning runs, I always bragged that I enjoyed the most beautiful run routes in the world. From the Pentagon, my three miler took me to the Lincoln Memorial; my four miler to the WWII monument; my five miler to the Washington Monument and the front of the Capitol (thank you, General Grant) celebrated a nice, long seven mile run. So I find Kirk Savage’s description of how the Mall came to be fascinating – especially the fact that the planners seemed oblivious (or at least, uncaring) about the extreme heat produced by removing so many trees, and that the views themselves were not universally though to be beautiful.

As seems usual, the focus of monuments, memorials and the like remains on the military and martial sacrifice. This does not surprise me. I find interesting that Savage seems to find this surprising, and that others seem to find this surprising as well. Serving in the military means many things. First and foremost, it means going to combat to defend one’s nation, one’s beliefs, one’s values. In that defense, one may kill. One may die. One may incur permanent and disabling injuries (mental and physical). Last week, we discussed aspects of martial sacrifice, and that winning in battle is not nearly so important as sacrificing oneself for a greater cause (whether one’s buddies or one’s nation). If sacrifice were the important concept, we asked, why do we not have memorials to so many others who have sacrificed (outside the military)? This week, Savage revisits this idea, also asking why the military retains more importance than other sacrifice and suffering. One of my favorite lines:

It is important to make clear that this idealization of toil and pain and strife was a preoccupation of affluent men, the white-collar corporate class. Most of the nation’s (and the world’s) people were already too familiar with the strenuous life an would gladly have exchanged it for a bit more comfort. (227)

He refers here to Theodore Roosevelt, and that President’s desire for a strenuous life. Savage is too harsh, and he misses the elephant in the room. For how many times do we claim that “anything worth having is worth working for”? And how commonly do people (of the nation, and the world) understand that the greatest gifts are those hardest won? Military service still epitomizes much contained in these concepts. So yes, it is about sacrifice (not winning, though winning is always preferred). But it is also about being called upon to give of oneself, to push oneself beyond preconceived limits of mental or physical endurance, to become a greater human being through work and strife. Of course, military service is not the sole method of gaining these things. Nor should it be. But it does help to explain why the military – whether the commanders of the nineteenth century or the masses of troops in the twentieth – dot the landscape in such great numbers. Rather than dismissing it as Savage does, as the irrational proclivities of the white-collar, affluent class, we should seek to understand it. In this way, we might shape future monuments which speak to more than one side. Dare I say it – might we meet in the middle to make something better?

Bodnar addresses this to a certain extent in Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Celebrations in the early twentieth century often focused on the patriot and the pioneer. We are already familiar with the patriot. But the pioneer concept embraces many of the same qualities – striving through hardship and suffering. It also speaks to the “building a great nation” narrative. While not directly related to the military “defense of the nation”, this pioneering attitude puts the nation-state front and center, where we know it likes to be. It also valorizes the common people. They were the ones crossing rivers in winter, trekking through Indian territory and building towns and farms where none had existed before – not Savage’s affluent white-collar men. Bodnar puts it best:

The Northwest Territory Centennial Celebration was enormously popular because it was able to combine its promotion of civic loyalty and anti radicalism with the popular language and images associated with pioneers and local history. It mediated diverse interests including those of the nation-state, cultural leaders, and ordinary people. (135)

He does not condone or support the celebration, but does seek to understand its popularity. People must understand or believe that they received something in exchange for their toil and suffering. Whether defending a nation or building a nation, they must receive something equally great in exchange for their time, their toil, their lives. Vietnam stands in stark contrast to these patriotic and pioneering celebrations. Savage captures that difference well in analyzing the inscriptions on the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial. The contradiction in “giving life” and soldiers’ lives “being taken” leads one to “multiple interpretations of death”. (279) This memorial is more about healing, understanding and honoring than about celebrating.

These men served ‘in’ the war, but what did they serve ‘for’? To what moral end, if any, did they give their lives? The inscription brings the soldiers right to the brink of heroic agency but then pulls back, because it fails to declare that their actions were effective or even purposeful. (279)(italics inserted)

Vietnam marks a permanent break with how the nation views wars, its warriors and the meaning of it all. Though the WWII Memorial comes rather late, not beginning construction until the twenty-first century, its celebration feels fun and light-hearted rather than solemn and quiet. It is hard to imagine that there will ever be a memorial for Iraq or Afghanistan. Like Vietnam, what did we fight for? What did our service members give their lives, and pieces of themselves, for? In the end, only for each other. And with less than one percent of the nation’s population serving in the military, and with no more pioneering to be done, it looks like we are out of patriots and pioneers. Perhaps now there may be room for other types of toil and strife. Perhaps we will see more memorials like that of Martin Luther King, the National Museum of the American Indian and the 9-11 Memorial. Perhaps we need to find new spaces to remember and celebrate, and define who we are.

Honoring War and Venerating Death

The books this week lived up to my expectations. I wanted to understand why Americans are so committed to their battlefields. Both did a good job of explaining the why. Two themes stand out. First, Linenthal teaches us about the “process of veneration, defilement and redefinition that have characterized public attitudes toward America’s most famous battlefields”. (Linenthal, 1) His key concept, patriotic orthodoxy – “war as holy crusade, bringing new life to the nation and the warrior as a culture hero and savior, often likened to Christ” – resonates in each of his five case studies. (Linenthal, 4) In this framework, it matters not which side “won” the battle. National narrative and public memory revolve around the American service members and their sacrifice to the nation, memorializing all as heroes. Kelman takes us down a different path. The process of memorializing the Sand Creek massacre site challenges Americans to remember an event “in which American citizens were neither heroes nor victims, but perpetrators”. (Kelvin, 167) Both paths are fraught with controversy. Both require hard conversations about killing and dying, and the meaning we ascribe to each.

Linenthal sets up his themes clearly in the Introduction, and explores five instances of battlefield memorialization: Lexington and Concord, the Alamo, Gettysburg, the Little Big Horn and Pearl Harbor to prove his argument:

These battle sites are civic spaces” where Americans come “to compete for ownership of powerful national stories and to argue about the nature of heroism, the meaning of war, the efficacy of martial sacrifice, and the significance of preserving the patriotic landscape of the nation (Linenthal, 1)

He sets the stage at Lexington and Concord, the rhetorical place where American freedom was born. First, he argues the minutemen “became a powerful cultural model for generations of Americans at war and at peace”. These “instinctive warriors . . . nurtured republican principles that protected them from the moral pollution of old-world warriors”. (Linenthal, 11) It is at Lexington and Concord that Americans begin venerating the American service member. This man (for women are not warriors) willingly puts himself in harm’s way to protect the American people and their way of life. He accepts the sacrifice of hardship, deprivation and possibly his life for a higher ideal. Linenthal argues that monument building makes one “worthy of being a descendent”. (Linenthal, 4) This idea extends far beyond monument building. Every year, Marines celebrate the Marine Corps Birthday by remembering the Marines that came before them. Every battle in which the Marine Corps has ever fought holds a place of honor in Marine Corps history. The glories of Iwo Jima stand equally next to the ignominies of Vietnam. Marines currently in uniform are called upon to live up to the memory of the warriors who came before them, to be worthy of the title “Marine”. Current warriors will go to great lengths to feel worthy of that title, which leads to Linenthal’s next theme.

Second, Linenthal uses Lexington and Concord to identify the precedent set that winning is not nearly as important as the sacrifice and heroism of the minutemen who died. The Minutemen did not defeat the British. They fired at them, and they died. Yet the story lives on in American memory as one of success. This is how Marines view every battle as a success, whether BelleauWood, Iwo Jima or the retreat at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea. The most important aspect is how valiantly the Marines fought (always with honor), the sacrifices made in hardship, injury and loss of life, and the heroism inherent in those sacrifices. It is crucial that Linenthal set this up at Lexington and Concord for the veneration of Americans at places such as the Alamo, Little Big Horn and Gettysburg to be remotely comprehensible.

Third, Linenthal walks the reader through four methods of veneration: patriotic rhetoric, monument building, physical preservation, battle reenactment at Lexington and Concord.  (Linenthal, 4) Patriotic rhetoric seems most important:

Patriotic rhetoric persistently warns that the danger of falling away from the ideals of the culture heroes who dies in battle is always present, and the weakening of patriotic resolve, clearly apparent in any unwillingness to obey the nation’s summons to arms, is considered clear evidence of indifference to or hostility toward the welfare of the nation. Such attitudes are heretical: they make the blood sacrifice of past generations of American warriors meaningless. (Linenthal, 5 – italics inserted)

Is this why people thank me for my service? Does this partly explain the fascination bordering on obsession of battlefield sites and re-enactments? Are so many Americans unwilling “to obey the nation’s summons to arms”, feel shame and a need to compensate? And is this why we tell ourselves that we have been successful in Iraq and Afghanistan? For that is the Marine Corps story today – that we have spent the past fourteen years in the longest period of successful combat operations in our nation’s history. But I’m running short on words for this post.

Kelvin takes us down a slightly different road, though some themes remain. The Sand Creek Massacre was a massacre against men, women and children. Numerous sources and investigations have attested to this during the century and a half since the incident took place. Yet not everyone agrees. What does it say about our society that less than a year after Congress passed legislation regarding the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site (instead of Battlefield), some Americans continued to stand behind the military in its role? Kelvin argues that the resurgence of American support for the military “through a black-and-white lens” caused some Americans to question Sand Creek as a massacre. “The colonel was just doing his duty” or “The Indians were on the warpath”. (Kelvin, 189-191) How could we have come so far regarding a shared understanding of Sand Creek, to have Linenthal’s patriotic rhetoric come roaring back to keep Chivington and his cohorts as patriotic heroes simply “doing their duty”?

There is little encouraging in either Linenthal or Kelman for young public historians. It seems the challenges are constant, the emotions are high and any rewards transitory. Perhaps we must return to the idea that the process becomes more important than the outcome.

Slavery in U.S. Memory

In Race and Reunion, we learn about the creation of Civil War memory. Blight introduces three different forms of memory: a Reconciliationist Vision – dealing with the war dead, prisons, hospitals; a White Supremacist Vision – delivering the country a “segregated memory of its Civil War on Southern terms”; and an Emancipationist Vision – “embodied in African Americans’ complex remembrance of their own freedom and in the conceptions of the war as the reinvention of the republic and the liberation of blacks to citizenship and Constitutional equality”. (p. 2) Though the title places “race” before “reunion”, Blight argues clearly that “reunion” proved the dominant focus in the first fifty years after the Civil War – not “race”. Blight takes his reader on a path of a nation struggling to forget – the causes of the war, the suffering, the dying, the rupture of a nation and the ignominy of slavery. White America seeks closure to the pain of the Civil War, to connect across the cultural divide between North and South.

The chapters detail a nation unwilling to admit wrongdoing (South) and unwilling to take the cause of the war (slavery) to its ultimate conclusion (equal citizenship for African-Americans). The lessons contained in the stories of terror and violence, of North-South military reunions, of the early end to Reconstruction and the glorification of the “Lost Cause” are twofold. First, these stories convey important facets of identity. People find facing the worst parts of themselves at best difficult and at worst impossible. Many Southerners preferred to ignore the evils of slavery. Instead, they engender a story of glory encompassed in the Lost Cause narrative, creating nostalgia for an imaginary antebellum South, plantation life and the allegedly loyal slaves. For African-Americans, many wanted to remember their part in the war, as active participants in the fight for freedom. Slavery was a source of shame. Not in surviving slavery, maintaining heritage or familial ties in the face of tremendous obstacles did African-Americans find pride. But fighting – that was a source of pride – for both white Southerners and African-Americans. W.E.B. DuBois captures this sentiment in his thoughts on the Shaw Memorial:

How extraordinary, and what a tribute to ignorance and religious hypocrisy, is the fact that in the minds of most people . . . Only murder makes men. The slave pleaded; he was humble; he protected the women of the South, and the world ignored him. The slave killed white men; and behold, he was a man! (p. 339)

Second, the lessons in Blight’s stories offer a clue regarding the deeply held beliefs still present in America, the implicit racism in people and institutions, and the ignorance of the nation’s history regarding slavery. For public historians, understanding these points are critical. One cannot hope to discuss thoughtfully the problems of slavery without understanding, acknowledging and working within 150 years of willful ignorance.

In Slavery and Public History, Horton and Horton deal with the twenty-first century consequences of those Civil War memories. The essays discuss the challenges inherent in having the hard conversations about American slavery, and the additional difficulty due to the ways history textbooks have ignored or changed the history of slavery. In Horton’s essay, “Slavery in American History”, he reminds public historians of a great opportunity. Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen found that while just over a third of people surveyed trusted their high school teachers (regarding history), almost eighty percent “had faith in museums”. (p. 43) With the public’s interest in visiting museums, public historians have an opportunity to engage the public on this most difficult of subjects, with some credibility. However, Horton might consider another aspect critical to Rosenzweig’s and Thelen’s analysis. People surveyed looked to understand the past to better understand themselves. They wanted to know their personal histories, to understand how their identities had been shaped and how they came to be who they are. This is perhaps the most important point to remember. If people are indeed so closely connected with an identity of themselves tied to that of their ancestors, then public historians must tread gently. Implicating a person’s ancestors as having done wrong may cause defensive or angry reactions.

This proves equally true for African-Americans, as seen in the essay, “The Last Great Taboo Subject”. In an effort to shed light on a little known aspect of African-American life during slavery, John Michael Vlach created an exhibition called “Back of the Big House”. Intended to celebrate ways in which African-Americans maintained family, religion and heritage despite their status as slaves, the exhibit came under protest from African-Americans on staff at the Library of Congress – before it even opened to the public. Rather than a celebration, the employees viewed the exhibit as a painful reminder of their perception of their current working conditions.

This also reminded me of the controversy in Native American circles regarding museums. Native peoples co-curated the original exhibits at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). These exhibits focused on “survivance”. They showed Native lifeways today, how Native peoples have survived despite the tragedies in their past. Many Native peoples (like the African-American employees at the Library of Congress, and indeed those contained in Blight’s book) did not want to re-visit the harshness in their past. They did not want to create exhibits designed around the “hard truths of colonialism” (Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums, 171). What is the right answer? When must public historians deal with these hard truths, and when must public historians honor the people involved? This challenge will likely never be solved definitively, and will force public historians to re-evaluate their purpose, their methods and their end state continuously. It should also force constant conversations with the public involved, creating opportunities for engagement and greater understanding.

Silencing the Past – A Foundation for Public History Practice

In Silencing the Past, Trouillot offers insights into historical practice for a variety of audiences, and purposes. In Decolonizing Museums, we focused on the silences Trouillot identifies inherent in the historical process: at the moment of fact creation (sources); fact assembly (archives); fact retrieval (narrative); retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance). (p. 26) We spoke at length about the silences created at every level of Native American history, and the voices which were missing. Oftentimes, it was the Native voices we were missing and (like much of history in the United States) we were relying on white male voices in power to maintain the documents, to collect them in archives and to tell the story. For every other book that semester, we asked, “Where are the silences? How can we give them voice? Where could we look?”

As enlightening as Trouillot made our reflections that semester, I believe we barely scratched the surface of possibilities. There is much more to Trouillot than simply understanding that silences exist, and using that knowledge to seek out the silences and give them voice. Part of that discussion necessarily include an analysis of power dynamics. Trouillot argues that those in power not only (or simply) get to shape the historical narrative, they create, or eliminate, the sources which make a historical narrative possible. Those in power automatically give voice to historical actors in power, which shapes the historical narrative possible.

Trouillot also identifies as critical the difference between “what happened” and “that what is said to have happened”. (p. 2) The first instance includes mere events. The second refers to the historical narrative created, and may vary depending upon sources, voices and interpretations applied. Throughout the book, Trouillot argues that the sociohistorical process – “that what is said to have happened” is more important than “what happened”. The process of understanding and interpreting history to develop a historical narrative is more important than a mere recitation of the events themselves. For public historians seeking a framework with which to engage the public, one which focuses more on the process than on the product, Trouillot’s ideas build a foundation.

Trouillot would likely support Zachary Schrag’s perspective that research is a messy process, one that finds an individual going forwards only to go backwards and take side routes. The point really is the journey, not the destination. If history is constantly unfolding and being re-interpreted, then all we really have is the process. All we have is the intellectual process of inquiry, exploring the silences, analyzing the sources of power and developing interpretations. The destination will likely change into something completely different from what one first suspected it was by the time a person gets there.

Does this make it easier to involve the public in the shared inquiry and shared authority process? It does, simply because if none of us really knows where we are going, then any of us can get there. Anyone – with or without a PhD – can ask probing questions. Anyone can thoughtfully examine the sources on hand to understand better a series of events. What’s more, public historians may give voice to the silences by engaging the public – those who experienced the “what happened”. The use of oral histories becomes one more method to use to expand the historical narrative. The public may be the best people to get at a different interpretation of history because it means more to them than others. The public may be more interested because it has to do with identity. Here Trouillot and Rosenzweig agree as well (The Presence of the Past) – it has everything to do with identity and how a person’s history influences who they are today and where they came from.

Even then, Trouillot challenges us. He asserts “The production of a historical narrative cannot be studied, therefore, through a mere chronology of silences.” (p. 28) He’s trying to tell us that identifying and employing the silences is a mere first step. Without the proper context of historical events or movements (of those in power), whatever narrative we create remains incomplete. Rosenzweig emphasizes a similar point: “that popular history makers who emphasize the experiential and the firsthand may sometimes underestimate larger structures of power and authority”. (Presence of the Past, 187) And despite Trouillot’s dislike of some postmodernists’ beliefs that “we have no roots” (xviii), he invokes Foucault to emphasize the importance of context: “I don’t believe that the question of ‘who exercises power’ can be resolved unless that other question, ‘how does it happen?’ is resolved at the same time.” (p. 28) How did those in power come to be in power? And what are the implications for any given historical narrative? We must examine as full a picture as possible. The process is never-ending.

One point continues to plague public historians in search of sharing inquiry and sharing authority: “Can authority really be shared with people who are interested in victory rather than conversation?” (Presence of the Past, 185) This question applies to everyone involved or interested in the historical process – whether they are in power or not. I suspect we will see this most clearly when we embark on our reviews of historical memory. Whether political or business leader, common soldier, homemaker or factory worker, people deal with memories in vastly different ways. Often, they remember a past the way they want to remember it, or in a way that holds meaning for them. What neither Trouillot nor Rosenzweig offers their readers is a way of approaching these individuals. They both admit it happens. Trouillot spends an entire chapter analyzing an “Unthinkable History” of a successful slave revolt. Whites could not fathom that slaves might revolt against their chains, do so successfully and establish their own government. Because it was unfathomable to those in power, it virtually disappeared from the historical narrative. Rosenzweig worries that “their views of the past (were) as narrow and parochial as those of the most traditional professional historians”. (Presence of the Past, 186)

Perhaps this relates to my final point from our discussion last week – that professional  historians have a responsibility to get out and engage with the public. If history is to be useful, then we must communicate with the public. We must assist that public in asking more difficult questions, in confronting hard facts and acknowledging a (different) historical narrative. Trouillot does offer one piece of advice, which calls all historians (academic, public or amateur) to meet each other as colleagues and friends: “Hard facts are no more frightening than darkness. You can play with them if you are with friends. They are scary only if you read them alone.” (p. 71) We can confront the hard facts of history, to see they are not as threatening we might fear,  but we must do it together.